Hers neither. If it had been Max doing this, his face would have lit up like a strawberry. They found strawberries growing sometimes, in summer.
Leaders didn’t blush. Millie straightened up and looked at Citron. He had such a baby face. If he was lucky, he’d never sprout. She’d heard that some people didn’t. Max said it was too soon to tell, because the pandemic had only started two years ago, but Millie liked to hope that some kids would avoid the horrible thing. No temper getting worse and worse. No changing all of a sudden into something different and scary. Millie wondered briefly what happened to the ones who didn’t sprout, who just got
“She took her music box to check her traps?”
“Doesn’t matter. That’s where we’re going to go.” She stuffed Jolly’s socks into her coat pocket, then shoved her shoulder against the swollen door and stepped out into the watery light of an early spring morning. The sun made her blink.
Citron asked, “Shouldn’t we get those two to come along with us? You know, so there’s more of us?”
“No,” growled Millie. “Just now you wanted me to go all alone, but now you want company?”
“But who does trading this early in the morning?”
“We’re not going to wake Max and Sai, okay? We’ll find her ourselves!”
Citron frowned. Millie shivered. It was so cold out that her nose hairs froze together when she breathed in. Like scattered pins, tiny, shiny daggers of frost edged the sidewalk slabs and the new spring leaves of the small maple tree that grew outside their squat. Trust Jolly to make her get out of a warm bed to go looking for her on a morning like this. She picked up three solid throwing rocks. They were gritty with dirt, and the cold of them burned her fingers. She stuffed them into her jacket pocket, on top of Jolly’s socks. Citron had the baseball bat he carried everywhere. Millie turned up her collar and stuck her hand into her jeans pocket. “Let’s go.”
Jolly’d put a new batch of traps over by that old grocery store. The roof was caved in. There was no food in the grocery anymore, or soap, or cough medicine. Everything had been scavenged by the nearby warrens of kids, but animals sometimes made nests and shit in the junk that was left. Jolly’d caught a dog once. A gaunt poodle with dirty, matted hair. But they didn’t eat dogs, ever. You were what you ate. They’d only killed it in an orgy of fury and frustration that had swelled over them like a river.
Really, it was Millie who’d started it, back before everything went wrong, two winters ago. They’d been at home. Jolly sitting on the living room floor that early evening, texting with her friends, occasionally giggling at something one of them said. Millie and Dad on the couch sharing a bowl of raspberries. All of them watching some old-time cartoon movie on TV about animals that could do kung fu. Waiting for Mum to come home from work. Because then they would order pizza. It was pizza night. Dad getting a text message on his phone. Dad holding the phone down by his knee to make out the words, even though his eyesight was just fine, he said. Jolly watching them, waiting to hear if it was Mum, if she’d be home soon. Millie leaning closer to Dad and squinting at the tiny message in the phone’s window. Mouthing the words silently. Then frowning. Saying, “Mum says she’s coming home on the easthound train?” Dad falling out laughing. East
There hadn’t been an easthound before that. It was Millie who’d called it, who’d made it be. Jolly’d told her that wasn’t true, that she didn’t make the pandemic just by reading a word wrong, that the world didn’t work that way. But the world didn’t work anymore the way it used to, so what did Jolly know? Even if she
Jolly and Millie’s family had assigned adjectives to the girls early on in their lives. Millie was The Younger One. (By twenty-eight-and-three-quarter minutes. They’d been afraid she wouldn’t make it.) Jolly was The Kidder. She liked jokes and games. She was the one who’d come up with loup-de-lou, to help keep Millie’s mind off the agony when she’d lost her hand. She’d still been able to feel the missing hand there, on the end of her wrist, and the pain wouldn’t let her sleep or rest, and all the adults in the world were sprouting and trying to kill off the kids, and Max was making her and Jolly and Citron move to a new hiding place every few days, until he and Jolly figured out the thing about sprinkling peppermint oil to hide their scent trails so that sprouteds couldn’t track them. That was back before Sai had joined them, and then Churchy. Back before Churchy had sprouted on them one night in the dark as they were all sharing half a stale bread loaf and a big liter bottle of flat cola, and Max and Citron and Sai had grabbed anything heavy or sharp they could find and whaled away at the thing that had been Churchy just seconds before, until it lay still on the ground, all pulpy and bloody. And the whole time, Jolly had stayed near still-weak Millie, brandishing a heavy frying pan and muttering, “It’s okay, Mills. I won’t let her get you.”
The feeling was coming back, like her hand was still there. Her wrist had settled into a throbbing ache. She hoped it wasn’t getting infected again.
Watchfully, they walked down their side street and turned onto the main street in the direction of the old grocery store. They walked up the middle of the empty road. That way, if a sprouted came out of one of the shops or alleyways, they might have time to see it before it attacked.
The burger place, the gas station, the little shoe repair place on the corner; Millie tried to remember what stores like that had been like before. When they’d had unbroken windows and unempty shelves. When there’d been people shopping in them and adults running them, back when adults used to be just grown-up people suspicious of packs of schoolkids in their stores; not howling, sharp-toothed child-killers with dank, stringy fur and paws instead of hands. Ravenous monsters that grew and grew so quickly you could watch it happen—if you were stupid enough to stick around. Their teeth, hair, and claws lengthened, their bodies getting bigger and heavier minute by minute, until they could no longer eat quickly enough to keep up with the growth, and they weakened and died a few days after they’d sprouted.
Jolly wasn’t tending to her traps. Millie swallowed. “Okay, so we’ll go check with the warren over on Patel Street. They usually have aspirin and stuff.” She walked in silence except for the worry voice in her head.
Citron said, “That tree’s going to have to start over.”
“What?” Millie realized she’d stopped at the traffic light out of habit. She was such an idiot. And so was Citron for just going along with her. She started walking again. Citron tagged along, always just a little behind.
“The maple tree,” he puffed. When you never had enough to eat, you got tired quickly. “The one outside our place. It put its leaves out too early, and now the frost has killed them. It’ll have to start over.”
“Whatever.” Then she felt guilty for being so crabby with him. What could she say to make nice? “Uh, that was a nice line you made in loup-de-lou last night. The one with eyes and spies in it.”
Citron smiled at her. “Thanks. It wasn’t quite right, though. Sprouteds have bleedy red eyes, not shiny ones.”
“But your line wasn’t about sprouteds. It was about the…the easthound.” She looked all around and behind her. Nothing.
“Thing is,” Citron replied, so quietly that Millie almost didn’t hear him, “we’re all the easthound.”
Instantly, Millie swatted the back of his head. “Shut up!”
“Ow!”
“Just shut up! Take that back! It’s not true!”
“Stop making such a racket, willya?”
“So stop being such a loser!” She was sweating in her jacket, her skinny knees trembling. So hungry all the time. So scared.
Citron’s eyes widened. “Millie…!”
He was looking behind her. She turned, hand fumbling in her jacket pocket for her rocks. The sprouted bowled her over while her hand was still snagged in her pocket. Thick, curling fur and snarling and teeth as long as her pinkie. It grabbed her with paws like catcher’s mitts with claws in them. It howled and briefly let her go. It’s in pain, she thought wonderingly, even as she fought her hand out of her pocket and tried to get out from under the
