“No,” I muttered, shutting the lid, hiding my treasures from view. “But you might want to check your room, as well. And return anything you borrowed recently, just in case.”
“I haven’t borrowed anything for months,” Stick said, sounding frightened and defensive at the thought, and I bit down a sharp reply. Not long ago, before Rat came to the group, I would often find Stick in his room, huddled against the wall with one of my books, completely absorbed in the story. I’d taught him to read myself; long, painstaking hours of us sitting on my mattress, going over words and letters and sounds. It had taken a while for Stick to learn, but once he did, it became his favorite way to escape, to forget everything right outside his door.
Then Patrick had told him what vampires did to Fringers who could read books, and now he wouldn’t touch them. All that work, all that time, all for nothing. It pissed me off that Stick was too scared of the vamps to learn anything new. I’d offered to teach Lucas, but he was flat-out not interested, and I wasn’t going to bother with Rat.
Stupid me, thinking I could pass on anything useful to this bunch.
But there was more to my anger than Stick’s fear or Lucas’s ignorance. I wanted them to learn, to better themselves, because that was just one more thing the vampires had taken from us. They taught their pets and thralls to read, but the rest of the population they wanted to keep blind, stupid and in the dark. They wanted us to be mindless, passive animals. If enough people knew what life was like…before…how long would it be until they rose up against the bloodsuckers and took everything back?
It was a dream I didn’t voice to anyone, not even myself. I couldn’t force people to want to learn. But that didn’t stop me from trying.
Stick backed up as I stood, tossing the sheet over the box again. “You think he found the other spot?” he asked tentatively. “Maybe you should check that one, too.”
I gave him a resigned look. “Are you hungry? Is that what you’re saying?”
Stick shrugged, looking hopeful. “Aren’t you?”
I rolled my eyes and walked to the mattress in the corner, dropping to my knees again. Pushing the mattress up revealed the loose boards underneath, and I pried them free, peering into the dark hole.
“Damn,” I muttered, feeling around the tiny space. Not much left—a stale lump of bread, two peanuts and one potato that was beginning to sprout eyes. This was what Rat had probably been looking for: my private cache. We all had them somewhere, hidden away from the rest of the world. Unregistereds didn’t steal from each other; at least, we weren’t supposed to. That was the unspoken rule. But, at our hearts, we were all thieves, and starvation drove people to do desperate things. I hadn’t survived this long by being naive. The only one who knew about this hole was Stick, and I trusted him. He wouldn’t risk everything he had by stealing from me.
I gazed over the pathetic items and sighed. “Not good,” I muttered, shaking my head. “And they’re really cracking down out there, lately. No one is trading ration tickets anymore, for anything.”
My stomach felt hollow, nothing new to me, as I replaced the floorboards and split the bread with Stick. I was almost always hungry in some form or another, but this had progressed to the serious stage. I hadn’t eaten anything since last night. My scavenging that morning hadn’t gone well. After several hours of searching my normal stakeouts, all I had to show for it was a cut palm and an empty stomach. Raiding old Thompson’s rat traps hadn’t worked; the rats were either getting smarter or he was finally making a dent in the rodent population. I’d scaled the fire escape to widow Tanner’s rooftop garden, carefully easing under the razor-wire fence only to find the shrewd old woman had done her harvest early, leaving nothing but empty boxes of dirt behind. I’d searched the back-alley Dumpsters behind Hurley’s trading shop; sometimes, though rarely, there would be a loaf of bread so moldy not even a rat would touch it, or a sack of soybeans that had gone bad, or a rancid potato. I wasn’t picky; my stomach had been trained to keep down most anything, no matter how disgusting. Bugs, rats, maggoty bread, I didn’t care as long as it faintly resembled food. I could eat what most people couldn’t stomach, but today, it seemed Lady Luck hated me worse than usual.
And continuing to hunt after the execution was impossible. The pet’s continued presence in the Fringe made people nervous. I didn’t want to risk thievery with so many of the pet’s guards wandering about. Besides, stealing food so soon after three people had been hanged for it was just asking for trouble.
Scavenging in familiar territory was getting me nowhere. I’d used up all resources here, and the Registereds were getting wise to my methods. Even if I crossed into other sectors, most of the Fringe had been picked clean long, long ago. In a city full of scavengers and opportunists, there just wasn’t anything left. If we wanted to eat, I was going to have to venture farther.