Darwin’s Children

“Is Strong Will still here?”

“He doesn’t like that name. They call us names like that because they say we stink. Come on back. Nobody’s going anywhere soon, right? They sent me out here to see who else old Fred snared.”

Stella followed Kevin to the back of the long building. They passed four empty rooms equipped with cots and folding chairs and cheap old dressers.

At the very back, three young people sat around a small portable television. Stella hated television, never watched it. She saw that the television’s control panel had been covered with a metal plate. Two—an older boy, Will, Stella guessed, and a younger girl, no more than seven—sat on a battered gray couch. The third, a girl of nine or ten, curled up on a blanket on the floor.

The girl smelled bad. She smelled sick. She coughed into her palm and wiped it on her T-shirt without taking her eyes away from the television.

Will pushed off the couch and stood. He looked Stella over cautiously, then stuck his hands in his pockets. “This is Mabel,” he said, introducing the younger girl. “Or Maybelle. She doesn’t know. Girl on the floor doesn’t say much. I’m Will. I’m the oldest. I’m always the oldest. I may be the oldest alive.”

“Hello,” Stella said.

“New girl,” Kevin explained. “She smells really shook.”

“You do,” Mabel said and lifted her upper lip, then pinched the end of her nose.

Will looked back at Stella. “I can see your freckle name. But what’s your other name?”

“I think maybe her name is Rose or Daisy,” Kevin said.

“My parents call me Stella,” she said, her tone implying she wasn’t stuck with it; she could change the name anytime. She knelt beside the sick girl. “What’s wrong with her?”

“It isn’t a cold and it isn’t flu,” Will said. “I wouldn’t get too close. We don’t know where she comes from.”

“She needs a doctor,” Stella said.

“Tell that to the old mother when she brings your food,” Kevin suggested. “Just kidding. She won’t do anything. I think they’re going to turn us in, all at once, together.”

“That’s the way Fred makes his moochie,” Will said, rubbing his fingers together. “Bounty.”

Stella touched the sick girl’s shoulder. She looked up at Stella and closed her eyes. “Don’t look. Nothing to see,” the girl said. Her cheeks formed simple patterns, shapeless. Free Shape. Stella pushed harder on the girl’s arm. The arm went limp and she rolled onto her back. Stella shook her again and her eyes opened halfway, unfocused. “Mommy?”

“What’s your name?” Stella asked.

“Mommy?”

“What does Mommy call you?”

“Elvira,” the girl said, and coughed again.

“Ha ha,” Will said without humor. That was a cruel joke name.

“You have parents?” Kevin asked the girl, following Stella’s lead and kneeling.

Stella touched Elvira’s face. The skin was dry and hot and there was a bloody crust under her nose and also behind her ears. Stella felt beneath her jaw and then lifted her arms and felt there. “She has an infection,” Stella said. “Like mumps, maybe.”

“How do you know?”

“My mother is a doctor. Sort of.”

“Is it Shiver?” Will asked.

“I don’t think so. We don’t get that.” She looked up at Will and felt her cheeks signal a message, she did not know what: embarrassment, maybe.

“Look at me,” Will said. Stella got to her feet and faced him.

“You know how to talk this way?” he asked. His cheeks freckled and cleared. The dapple patterns came and went quickly, and synchronized somehow with the irises of his eyes, his facial muscles, and little sounds he made deep in his throat. Stella watched, fascinated, but had no idea what he was doing, what he was trying to convey. “I guess not. What do you smell, little deer?”

Stella felt her nose burn. She drew back.

“Practically illiterate,” Will said, but his smile was sympathetic. “It’s the Talk. Kids in the woods made it up.”

Stella realized Will wanted to be in charge, wanted people to think he was smart and capable. There was a weakness in his scent, however, that made him seem very vulnerable. He’s broken, she thought.

Elvira moaned and called for her mother. Will knelt and touched the girl’s forehead. “Her parents hid her in an attic. That’s what the kids in the woods said. Her mom and dad left for California, and she stayed behind with her grandmother. Then the grandmother died. Elvira ran away. She got caught on the street. She was raped, I think, more than once.” He cleared his throat and his cheeks were dark with angry blood. “She had the start of this cold or whatever it is, so she couldn’t fever-scent and make them stop. Fred found her two days after he found me. He took some pictures. He keeps us here until he has enough to get a good bounty.”

“One million dollars a head,” Kevin said. “Dead or alive.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Will said. “I don’t know how much he gets, and they don’t pay if we’re dead. If we’re injured, he could even go to jail. That’s what I heard in the woods. The bounty is federal not state, so he tries to avoid the troopers.”

Stella was impressed by this show of knowledge. “It’s awful,” she said, her heart thumping. “I want to go home.”

“How did Fred catch you?” Will asked.

“I went for a walk,” Stella said.

“You ran away from home,” Will said. “Do your parents care?”

Stella thought of Kaye waking up to find her gone and wanted to cry. That made her nose hurt more, and her ears started to ache.

The wire mesh door rattled. Will pointed, and Kevin left to see what was going on. Stella glanced at Will and then followed Kevin. Mother Trinket was at the cage door. She had just finished shoving a cafeteria tray under the mesh frame. The tray held a paper plate covered with fried chicken backs and necks, a small scoop of dry potato salad, and several long spears of limp broccoli. The old woman watched them, eyes milky, chin withdrawn, strong mottled arms hanging like two birch logs.

“Yuck,” Kevin said, and picked up the tray. He gave it to Stella. “All yours,” he said.

“How’s the girl?” Mother Trinket asked.

“She’s really sick,” Kevin said.

“People coming. They’ll take care of her,” Mother Trinket said.

“What do you care?” Kevin asked.

The old woman blinked. “It’s my son,” she said, then turned and waddled through the door. She closed and locked it behind her.

The girl, Free Shape, was breathing in short, thick gasps as they carried Stella’s tray into the back room.

“She smells bad,” Mabel said. “I’m scared for her.”