The Night Children Read online

  WHAM. He sprawls.

  Oh, noooo!!!

  Burt has skidded out of hiding, tripped and fallen into the middle of something very big. This is a Very Important Meeting. Even Burt can tell.

  Above the fountain in the executive courtyard at the center of the biz sector, a monster Zozzco banner hangs. There are at least forty people sitting in gilt bamboo chairs around the fountain, and Burt knows from the number of stripes that they are important. Only the bigwigs in Zozzco get a stripe, according to Mag, who keeps track of these things for him. These people all have three or four. They must be very big deals. Still!

  In a sea of black Zozzco uniforms, one person stands out.

  In the middle of the sea of black stands a tall, elegant figure dressed in dazzling white. The gold stripes on her sleeve go all the way up to the elbow. She stands at a lectern in front of a pyramid of golden Zs topped by a gold dollar sign. She is addressing her minions.

  “Zozzpeople!” she cries.

  Everyone bows.

  What is it about this tall, really important woman in her gold platform shoes that looks so . . . What? Familiar!

  Sprawled on the marble where anybody who happens to look down will see him, Burt looks up. Right, her picture was in his reader, back when he used to go to school. And . . . Where else? Wow. In that gi-normous painting in the Castertown Town Hall.

  Standing up there, in person, is the legendary Isabella Zozz. The face of Zozzco. The power who stands in front of the power that runs this fabulous shopping world.

  The woman is so famous that the very thought makes Burt dizzy. Me in the same place as Isabella Zozz.

  In Castertown, this is as close as you get to seeing the gods. The only thing scarier would be coming face-to-face with the reclusive founder of the Castertown MegaMall, the legendary Amos Zozz.

  Lucky for Burt that the amplifiers are on high. Applause drowned out the noise just now, when he tripped and fell flat on the marble floor.

  This means instead of turning to see him squirming to safety, the Zozzpeople keep staring up at their leader. Visible for miles, Isabella Zozz is tremendous. Like a statue. So perfect that it’s scary. Nobody this perfect can be real. She positively gleams in the spotlight. So do the stripes on her sleeve.

  “Whatever Zozz wants,” she says in a huge voice.

  Forty people shout as one, “Whatever Zozz wants.”

  “And Whatever he requires.”

  They rumble in unison, “Whatever he requires.”

  “Whatever it takes!”

  They seem to be sighing, at least a little bit. “Whatever it takes.”

  “And what we say here stays here.”

  “Stays here.”

  “And.” Her voice drops to a deep, thrilling note. “Nobody learns our secrets.”

  The crowd echoes, “Nobody.”

  “Pain of death,” she says.

  “Pain of death.” This comes out in a single ominous roar.

  Burt doesn’t mean to groan. It just comes out. “Agh!”

  Nothing happens. Nobody moves. They are too mesmerized to hear!

  Shivering, Burt crawls into the shadow of an ornamental planter. Like a trapped panther he crouches, peering out through the fronds of a big dieffenbachia. He is trying not to breathe.

  He has caught the Zozzpeople in the middle of the biggest moment of their lives.

  “Now, the corporation is in the black,” Isabella Zozz says, “and you are all richer than you have ever been. Now. Do this right and you will be even richer.” Her voice drops to a thrilling whisper. “There is always one notch higher that you can rise!”

  “One notch higher.” The suits split the air with the company battle cry. “One notch higher.”

  “One more stripe to gain!” She touches the emblem on her collar. “And in the end, you may even win the golden Z!”

  “The golden Z!”

  “For excellence.” Isabella raises her fist. “For Zozzco!”

  Forty fists rise. “For Zozzco!”

  “For survival,” she adds, but nobody wants to hear. “Now, we’ve tried to put this off,” Isabella says when the echoes die, “but what Amos wants, Amos gets.”

  The group repeats, “Amos gets.”

  “Now,” she announces, “about Phase Two.”

  Awed and frightened, forty people whisper, “Phase Two.”

  Isabella is so stern that Burt flinches. “This means we must all be very, very careful. Listen to me now, and listen hard.” Raking the hall with her eyes, she points a long finger, shouting, “WHATEVER YOU DO, WATCH OUT FOR SPIES!”

  Burt flinches.

  “STARTING NOW!”

  Spies! Burt’s belly shrivels.

  “If you see one,” she growls, “hunt down and destroy.”

  He can’t keep holding his breath. He has to keep holding his breath. If he moves, the plants will start shaking and they will catch him then, for sure.

  A mutter runs through the crowd. “Spies, spies, what kind of spies?”

  Isabella does not answer. Instead she says, “You’ll know them when you see them. Feral. Hidden. Here.”

  Burt doesn’t know what “feral” means, but he knows she is talking about him. The kids. His gang. All the gangs. He has to escape. He has to warn them, but how?

  “But that’s not the real reason we’re here,” she says, and Burt gives a little sigh of relief. “Now. My father’s agenda.”

  “Agenda.” Worried, they mutter, budda-budda-budda. The Zozzco executives sit taller in their seats, waiting to be told.

  “Item one.” With the next word, Isabella electrifies the room. “If.”

  Burt is about to die here under the plants. If they don’t finish soon, he will die of holding still.

  “If you want to make it to Phase Two . . .” Isabella Zozz looks down at her notes. When she looks up, she is troubled. “You might as well know, not everyone will make it to Phase Two.”

  A group gasp of shock rocks the hall.

  “First,” she says, “you will be judged. On sales. On performance. Production. On your profit line on the merit chart. There will be fitness reports. And if you don’t measure up . . .”

  “We lose our stripes!” They moan, “Oh, nooooo.”

  She says darkly, “You will lose more than that.”

  “Noooooo.”

  “You will be judged by your fitness reports. And,” she says before anybody can ask questions, “on the last day there will be certain tests.”

  “Tests?” “Fitness reports.” Her people fret: buddabudda-budda, “Tests . . . tests . . .” They ask, “What kind of tests?”

  “Never mind. Just prepare for the day. Now.” Isabella leans forward, putting all her weight on her knuckles. “Repeat after me. What Amos wants . . .”

  Desperate to please, the suits mutter, “What Amos wants . . .”

  “Amos gets.”

  Then Isabella says the scariest thing yet: “Meanwhile.”

  They shudder. “Meanwhile.”

  “He wants us to get rid of superfluous prisoners.”

  Prisoners! Burt’s head comes up so fast that it smacks the dieffenbachia and the plant topples backwards into the flower bed. Is that what he has in the Dark Hall? Prisoners? What kind of prisoners? Bad kids. He gulps. Bad kids like . . . Gulp. Like me? All the bushes in the planter shake like frantic cheerleaders. Burt is so upset that he doesn’t see the shadows closing in on him until the great voice of Isabella Zozz splits the air: “Grab him!”

  The fake plants part and strong hands close on him.

  FIFTEEN

  IT’S DEATHLY QUIET IN the MegaMall. The closing bell rang at nine and the last cleaning crews hopped on trams and headed back to their cars an hour ago. The guards in every sector made their rounds and retreated to their steel-plated guard stations behind artificial plants so thick that the public never knows.

  Jule is creeping along behind Tick Stiles. They have just slipped into a gallery she’s never seen before, not in a
ll the years she’s been coming to the MegaMall. Models in sable and mink and sassy fox jackets pose behind safety glass in store windows framed in malachite and jade. On an island that runs along the central corridor, lifelike leopards and raccoons and glistening black bears roam. Only the very rich shop here.

  She whispers, “Where are we going?”

  Tick says over his shoulder, “Foraging. You don’t have to whisper. The surveill cameras just watch, they don’t listen.”

  They are deep inside the Fur Fantasies sector, where ordinary people can’t afford to shop. Scouting at closing time, Willie spotted a bonanza in the Polar Bear Food Court. There’s an abandoned microwave in back of Patisserialto and outside Delmonico’s, a case of steak dinners—a week’s worth of hot meals for the tribe. Now Tick and Jule have come with a tennis net to snare the goods and drag them back over marble floors slicker than blown glass.

  Suddenly Tick grunts. “Duck. Surveillcam.”

  In the week she has spent with Tick and his Crazies, Jule has learned to do as their leader says. For the first time in perhaps forever, she’s part of a group. Feisty and in depen dent as she is, she’s learning that she is not her own master. To get along here, she has to play with the team.

  The rangy boy with the dark hair and the wild grin is in charge here, and to make it in the MegaMall—and she has to make it in the MegaMall because she’s afraid to go back to that empty house—to make it in the MegaMall, she has to duck when Tick says so, help gather food and take care of the smalls, who are too young to take care of themselves. An only child with an only aunt for company, she’s beginning to like playing with the team. The more she’s here, the more she likes Tick, and the more she likes Tick, the easier it is to do what he says. She . . .

  “Freeze,” Tick says, and she freezes.

  As the red eye of the surveill camera sweeps across their path, they turn to stone. Jule still isn’t used to the idea that they are being watched. She imagines a hundred guards like falcons glaring at a hundred dozen screens, waiting to pounce. She says through her teeth, “They really don’t watch all the time?”

  “Not unless they see something move.”

  “Why aren’t they watching?”

  “They think they’re watching, but they’re lazy.” The camera moves on and he dodges into the food court with Jule on his heels. At the top step of a sunken area as blue as a polar bears’ wading pool, Tick stops to complain. “They’re using all these backup things that weren’t in the original plans.”

  “How do you know they weren’t in the original plans?”

  He doesn’t answer; he just goes on. “They put locked gates between sectors. Electrified bars, if you touch one, zap. Gas. Jail, for all I know. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

  “What wasn’t?”

  “The Security system.”

  Jule says, “Wait a minute. You mean they weren’t supposed to come at us with nets and bats?”

  “They weren’t supposed to come at you at all.” Tick scowls. “That system was set up to take care of people, not hurt them.”

  “Who says so?”

  Tick grimaces. Remembering. “My dad. There were supposed to be headquarters in every sector, nice walk-in places you could go to if you got hurt or if you happened to get lost and didn’t know what to do,” he says sadly. He looks into his hands and then looks up. “I think my folks designed Security too.”

  “You said they were architects.”

  “They did what Zozzco said.”

  “So did mine.” Bells start going off inside Jule’s head. Strangers in the house after she went to bed. The disturbance in the night. When I woke up they were gone. She sits down with a thud. “They were happy designing cedar chests until somebody paid them to design something bigger, and . . . How could they?”

  Tick sighs. “I guess they didn’t want us to be poor. They did whatever he wanted and now they’re gone.”

  “They did what he wanted and one night the big black car came.” She is buzzing with pain. “When I woke up they were gone.”

  Tick sits down next to her on the step, close enough to let her know he cares. “Are you OK?”

  “Not really.” It takes Jule a minute to gather herself to ask. It comes out in a rush. “What if Zozzco took them?”

  “Yours or mine?”

  “Both of ours.” This is so scary that she shudders. “They all worked for Zozzco and . . . Aunt Christy. She works—worked—for Zozzco until she disappeared, we got MegaMall discounts and free passes, until . . . Until last Monday. Oh. Oh, wow.”

  “Do you think they took her?”

  “Unless she got sick of me and ran away. She’s just as gone.” Jule sighs. “She was pretty mad about that phone.”

  “Right. You thought it was your fault,” Tick says. “I thought if I was a good boy they’d come back for me.”

  She looks up. “You thought it was your fault too.”

  “I did.”

  “It was never our fault,” Jule says.

  “No.” Tick is quiet for a minute. He is considering. He says carefully, “If Zozzco took our folks, what did they do with them?”

  “You mean, did they hurt them or did they take them away or what?”

  “It’s the or what that scares me.” Tick leans closer. His voice drops to a whisper even though there’s nobody around. “What if they’re still here?”

  “Here in the mall?”

  “Yes. What if . . .”

  Jule finishes the thought so fast that it frightens both of them. “What if they’re trapped in the Dark Hall?”

  Absorbed, Jule and Tick are careless where they should be vigilant. They should have heard soft footsteps approaching. They should have seen the wiry, barefooted stranger dart out from behind the concession stands above the arctic dining area and slide down the artificial snowbank that rings the artificial pond, but they didn’t. They’re too deep in their own thoughts to notice as the shadow moves behind the plastic evergreens that ring the curved steps where they are sitting. On the glazed blue surface of the pretend pond in front of them, everything is still. Frosted stools and tables sit in the marble dining area like floating blocks of ice.

  Grimly, Tick repeats, “The Dark Hall.”

  “Guys.” It’s so loud and sudden that they both jump. “Guys!”

  Jule whirls. “Who?”

  “Guys.” The girl’s red hair is wild and her eyes are full of what she has to tell them. “Listen, guys!”

  Jule’s on her feet before Tick. At the sight of the short, furious little redhead, all that bad business with the Dingos comes rushing back. “Mag!”

  Tick turns. “You know this girl?”

  “You bet I do. That’s Mag Sullivan, she works for Burt.”

  “Not any more.”

  Jule remembers Mag gripping the Kryptonite lock, shoving her along. She remembers Mag’s fingers locked in her hair. “Who says so?”

  “Are you going to shut up and listen, or what?”

  “Don’t trust her,” Jule says. “Watch out.”

  Mag snaps, “No, you watch out. This is important.”

  “Watch out for her, I mean it. You can’t trust her, she’s a Dingo girl.”

  She bares her teeth at Jule. “I told you, not any more.”

  “Don’t lie to us.” Jule gives Mag a push.

  Mag pushes back. “Get over yourself.”

  “You’re not taking me back to the Dingos.” Jule punches Mag’s arm. “And that’s that!”

  Then Mag Sullivan grabs Jule by the shoulders and turns her around so they are facing. “Don’t be stupid. When the guards came down, who do you think let you go?”

  Tick says quietly, “I saw you and your gang with Jule, you had her tied up. So, where were you taking her?”

  “Dark Hall,” Mag says. “That is, Burt was. I don’t know what he thought he was doing, he was all about a sacrifice. Like that would change everything for us.”

  “Sacrifice!”

  �
�Then you came along.”

  “I did not, he caught me!”

  “Burt said catching you was, like, a humongous gift. The next thing I knew we were on the march.”

  “I was a sacrifice?” Jule is upset. “Sacrifice to what?”

  It hurts Mag to say, “If I knew, I’d tell you. Do you believe I was trying to help you escape?”

  “How do I know what you were trying to do?”

  “Do I look too weak to hang on to you?” Even Jule can see that Mag is all muscle.

  The little redhead turns to Tick. “Do you believe Burt wants to get rid of you guys?”

  He nods. “That, I believe.”

  “Revenge, or something worse. That’s why I quit.”

  Jule says, “I bet he kicked you out.”

  “And now you’re asking to join up with us.” Tick is counting on his fingers. Mouths to feed, maybe. Places to sleep. “I don’t know if . . .”

  “Don’t be a jerk. I don’t want to join you, I came to warn you.”

  Mag and Tick begin a fast exchange—new girl and tribe leader, who asks: “Warn us. About Burt?”

  “No. About a lot of things. I’ve been on my own for a week now, and I’ve been exploring. There’s more going on in this place than you know about.”

  Tick nods. “We know.”

  “You only think you know,” Mag says ominously. “Do you know they’ve been meeting in a different sector every night?”

  “They?”

  “The suits. The old man’s Zozzpeople. Like, the brains behind this operation. Something big is coming up.”

  Still stewing over that march to the Dark Hall, Jule elbows her. “I suppose you know exactly what this big thing is and when it’s going to happen.”

  Mag spits, “I wish! They’ve got some kind of orders to do something with . . .”

  Jule spits words back at her. “Yeah, orders. Yeah, right.”

  “Don’t fight.” Tick puts himself between them. “We have to work together here.”