THREE

Theo heard footsteps, which caused him to anticipate two things.

The first was that Billy’s soft snoring would stop. They slept close enough together that when Billy woke to the sound, Theo felt Billy’s huge body shift and tighten in response to possible danger.

“It’s all right,” Theo whispered to his friend. “I’m awake. It sounds like little Phoenix.”

It wasn’t pitch black in the soovie because it had been cloudless when nightfall arrived to tamp out some of the day’s heat, and there had not seemed much of a chance of rain before they’d cocooned themselves for the night. No cardboard cutouts to block the soovie’s window openings or the light of the half moon, or to muffle the raucous sounds of the soovie park.

Theirs was a stripped soovie, with a low weekly rental that they paid by working in the nearby glass smelter. No upholstery on the ceiling, no panels on the interior of the doors. Carpet ripped out. All wiring long removed for the value of the copper. Even the seat paddings were gone, springs removed. Theo liked to imagine what it might have been like two generations earlier, humming down a highway. Before gasoline rationing became permanent and before the government realized it could control migration with selective gas coupons. The ubiquitous six- and eight-passenger vehicles had become junk, millions of them, useless—until after the Wars, when families were forced to set their axles on blocks and convert them into homes. The vehicle graveyards became the neighborhoods of a generation whose mobility was limited to these gutted metal shells.

When it came to hearing, Billy Jasper never questioned Theo’s judgment. So Theo didn’t have to explain that when Phoenix’s left foot dragged, he could distinguish the slight rasping contact against the ground from all other noises. She and her mother lived in a soovie down the row and across.

“She shouldn’t be out,” Billy whispered back. It was an obvious statement, so Theo knew Billy meant it as a question.

Curfew began immediately after dark. In the summer, like now, that meant later at night. Community policing was instant and often brutal. It had to be. A soovie was a fine place to sleep out of the elements, but it was essentially a trap. Few had windows, so makeshift cardboard cutouts were used instead. The wealthier among them had sheet metal windows that could be put into place at night. When the weather was bad, a soovie with blocked windows—cardboard or sheet metal—gave the occupants no chance to see out. In a matter of seconds, an intruder could do a lot of damage to a sleeping occupant.

Then came the second thing that Theo had anticipated.

A tap on the door. The girl always came to them when she needed help.

“Billy? Theo?” Phoenix was only six, but no child survived in the soovie park without street smarts. She was whispering too, hoping not to wake anyone in the soovies around them. It was a huge risk. There was barely enough room from soovie to soovie to open a door.

Theo didn’t hesitate. He was sitting upright and had slipped his glasses on at the sound of her footsteps, at least a full minute before she’d arrived. Theo leaned across Billy, who was still on his back, and cracked open the door.

“Inside,” Theo said.

With the lightness that only a child could possess, Phoenix scrambled over Billy. She didn’t giggle the way she usually did around Billy. The man was a giant, but children sensed his gentleness with far greater acumen than adults.

Theo liked the soovie for the most part. The two front bucket seats provided a place to sit on afternoons when the soovie’s interior wasn’t too hot. Just pull out the cardboard window cutouts and let a breeze go through. Steering column was gone, so Theo found it roomy. Billy, on the other hand, would have felt crowded anywhere, so he didn’t complain either. Plenty of interior storage for their meager possessions and, where the engine block had been removed, a storage area that was securely padlocked.

The back two-thirds served as a sleeping area. Theo had the driver’s side because he wasn’t nearly as large as Billy, who needed to fold down the front passenger seat to be able to stretch out completely.

With the upholstery and padding gone, not many places for rats or mice to hide, so no scratching or chewing sounds to distract him as he fell asleep. With the wiring gone, it meant no possibility for light supplied by electricity from the central circuits. But Theo was fine with candles. He was also fine with showering and sewage arrangements—none. Billy and Theo were required to walk about a hundred yards among the rows of soovies to reach the communal outhouse. Because of curfew and intense embarrassment at using a chamber pot with Billy close by, Theo simply avoided drinking water any time after four in the afternoon. It left him parched, but that was better than the alternative.

As for the metered showers near the communal outhouse, neither could afford them. This was good too. If Theo were clean, then he’d smell Billy at night in the soovie. Or vice versa. Both had to be clean, or both had to carry the sooty stink of their jobs, and then one didn’t notice the other.

All in all, when they hunkered in for the night, Theo didn’t mind living in a soovie. His prison dorm at the Factory in Appalachia hadn’t been much larger. And for all that it lacked, he now had the one essential he’d risked his life for when he’d escaped the Factory. Freedom.

Theo savored this every day, even if the freedom came with a price—accepting the leadership of the soovie park’s authorized gang. As long as he followed the rules, he didn’t have to answer to anybody.

But little Phoenix had broken the rules. Theo didn’t have to wait long to find out why she’d risked so much trouble.

“Billy,” she said, breaking into a sob that she must have fought hard to muffle as she snuck past the other soovies. “You need to help. The death doctor is coming.”