I had fallen into another pit inside my nightmare, a deeper layer, and nothing was finished yet. We all fell—me, Conner, Ben, and Griffin.

“You have to believe me, Quinn. I just can’t remember what happened.”

“All right, Odd.”

I heard music playing.

Crazy Jack dreams up all kinds of shit.

And sometimes it’s accompanied by music.

I held my breath.

I had to be out of my mind.

It sounded so far away, floating: a jangling, grinding, metallic sound, the wheezing strains of a high-pitched organ.

“Do you hear that?” Quinn said.

“I don’t know what it is,” I whispered. “It sounds like a circus.”

Musical monsters.

“It’s Fent.”

Quinn nudged my shoulder and then went back toward the place where the hatch lay open. “Time for us to settle in, Billy.”

*   *   *

We sat on our beds, across from each other, and listened to the music as it got louder at times, and then drifted away like a wind.

I’d been scared plenty of times—in Marbury, and in other places—but there was something about that music and the thought of it being connected to someone who was looking for me and Conner that was more unnerving than anything else I could remember.

“Why do they do it?” I said.

“The music? Fent just wants us Odds to know they’re coming. Hunters, too. I guess it saves the Rangers on ammunition. Everyone runs from them.”

“Do they know about this place?”

“Of course they do, Odd.”

The music was clearer now. It sounded, ridiculously enough, like a single small accordion; the kind they call a concertina.

“It doesn’t scare you they know about you?”

“You really don’t know nothing, do you?” Quinn sighed. “Join or die, Billy. Join or die. They don’t fuck with the Odds till we turn sixteen. Well, except for the depraved ones, they don’t. Or till we look like we’re sixteen.”

Quinn shifted on his bed, leaning toward me, leering. “How old are you, anyway? Heh-heh.”

That explained some of it, I guess.

“How old do I look?”

“You? You look like you’ve been around for a really long time, Odd.”

He was fucking with me again.

I wanted to get out of there. If I didn’t get away from Quinn, as good as things might be at his firehouse, I was certain he was going to push me into doing something bad.

I lay down and stretched my legs across the cot. I was completely exhausted.

“What do you want me to do if they show up?”

Quinn got up from bed and lowered the mantle on the oil lamp.

It was as black as if I’d shut my eyes, but they were wide open. I could hear his bare feet padding across the floor, the squeak of his bedsprings as he sat down again on his cot.

“Don’t be scared, Odd. I’ll take care of you. I can handle Fent and the Rangers. If they show up tonight, you just get up on the roof. You’ll be safe there till I come get you. Okay?”

I gritted my teeth, forced the words from my constricted throat. “Thanks, Quinn.”

“Don’t worry about them.”

“Okay.”

I remembered something.

And I told him.

“There’s a settlement across a desert. They call it Bass-Hove. You ever hear of such a place? There are people in it. Real people who don’t call themselves Odds. There’s girls, too. They still have some power there. Trains. Locomotives that take people out, to another city. A fortress behind big walls, named Grove. Did you ever know anything about those places? That’s where the Rangers are going.”

I had seen it all before. I had been to those places, could still feel the gritty, windless heat of the air at the Bass-Hove Settlement, could picture the sheer walls of the fortified city at Grove, where Conner and I took the other boys after we’d crossed the mountains.

“You’re making that shit up, Billy.”

I heard him roll over onto his side and exhale a tired breath of air.

And I was certain he knew exactly what I was talking about.

*   *   *

The Rangers came that night.

I was hard asleep, and at first I felt Quinn’s hot breath against my ear when he whispered, “Billy. Billy, wake up.”

He shook my chest gently, and I thought it had to be a weird dream.

I dreamed of being on the water again.

“Psst! Billy!”

Then I heard the music, louder now, the squeal of the concertina wheezing in and out, in and out.

It sounded as if it were right outside the firehouse door.

“Huh?” I shot up in my bed, disoriented, everything swirling and smearing like a watercolor painting that had been left out in a summer storm—Glenbrook, here, there, Marbury, my friends, the Odds, Quinn Cahill.

“Shhhhh … Quiet now, Odd.”

Quinn’s mouth was so close to my ear I could feel his lips moving. “Remember what I said. Get up the ladder now. Come on, get humping, Odd. They probably just want some water. I got to go down and talk to them.”

I stood, shaky and weak.

Quinn lit a lamp. The kid lifted the lid on the footlocker. I heard him flip the switch inside it—his electric fence. Then he nodded at the ladder and went out the door and downstairs to the entryway.

This was it, I thought.

I started toward the ladder, holding my shorts up as I walked. Then, I’m not sure why I did it, but I looked back at the room. And I thought, If they come up here and see two beds have been slept in, they’ll know somebody else is here. Quinn can’t be that stupid.

He’s fucking with you, Jack.

So I went back and pulled the blanket and sheet from my bed.

The music outside stopped.

I tossed my pillow across to Quinn’s cot and I grabbed my pants and boots from the floor where I’d hidden them under my bed. I even slipped my hand inside to make sure the broken lens was still tucked into my pocket.

Same old Jack, no matter where he is.

And as I bundled my things in the bedsheet, I got the idea that I should leave. I glanced at the door, strained to hear anything, but it was all so quiet. I jumped across to Quinn’s closet and slipped inside. I didn’t bother to look, I grabbed as much as I thought I could carry—cans, mostly—and one plastic water jug.

My hand ached, but I got everything up that ladder and onto the roof.

Then I shut the hatch behind me.

I stripped out of the shorts and got back into my pants. I hooked up my belt, could feel the weight of that knife, as it slapped against my thigh when I laced up the boots.

Sure you used to have a knife like this one, Quinn. That’s because you left it at that old man’s house, didn’t you?

I put the shorts he’d given me, and everything I stole from him, inside the blanket. Then I tied the corners into a tight bundle that I slipped over one arm. I knotted my sheets together and thought about how stupid I was, because this stuff never worked in real life, did it?

Yeah. This is real life.

I secured one end of my sheet-rope to the bar on the outside of the hatch and then threw the end that was probably going to break my leg in the best case, or kill me in the worst, over the side of the firehouse.

And even if I made it to the very end, I estimated I’d still have to drop ten feet—and that would be from a full-out stretch. So I clenched and re-clenched my injured right hand, wondering if I could hold my own weight; wondering what kind of shit was down there for Jack to land on.

But before I’d go over the edge, I had to see what was going on.

Just a peek.

You’re an idiot, Jack.

I went to the front of the deck and looked down.

I could see Quinn, standing awkward and scrawny, naked except for a pair of baggy gym shorts, so he looked like he was maybe twelve years old. And he was talking to a group of soldiers—six or seven of them at least—who were mounted on horses that nervously twitched and shifted, rolling their eyes and throwing their heads back like they knew if they stood still too long the Hunters would come. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Quinn was holding out his white arms, palms up, like he was imploring the riders to believe him. I wondered which one was Fent.