The Scavengers by Michael Perry

Author:Michael Perry
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780062026163
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

Hatchet and the parrots still squawk every morning, the GreyDevils and solar bears are still dangerous, and even with Dad and Ma gone, we have to keep living and working. When Toad and Arlinda hatched out a batch of chicks, they gave three to Dookie, and every day he tends them so gently I’m not even sure it’s him. He holds them tucked beneath his chin and hums quietly. I keep scavenging for scrap and building whirligigs from Daniel Beard’s book. On the days I go down to help Toad sort scrap, Dookie comes along and spends the day staring at fish and flicking miniature boomerangs. On the days I go to town with Toad, Dookie stays in the house with Arlinda, helping her bake but mostly sitting in the taxidermy room having mystery conversations with the cross-eyed muskrat.

On every trip to town with the Scary Pruner I watch for any sign of Dad and Ma. In particular, I keep an eye out for GreyDevils wearing any of their clothes. That’d be about the worst thing I could see, but at least it would be a clue. It’s the hardest thing, not knowing: Dead? Or alive? Either way, at least I’d know what to do with my heart.

I miss them so much. I have Dookie, sure, but I feel like a boat with no keel, moving forward but sliding sideways now and then. I keep up the tough talk and steady face for Dookie’s sake, and even for my own sake—sometimes you have to fool yourself into being strong—but I feel hollow where my heart should be.

Every day while I am working I puzzle over what happened to Dad and Ma. Something about the attack doesn’t make sense. It could have been GreyDevils that came up the ridge to plunder Goldmine Gully, but they rarely travel that far—although there was the GreyDevil I saw on my way down the ridge that day. But even if a stray GreyDevil wandered up this way, it’d be even rarer for them to be organized enough to manage an attack like this.

The other thing that was weird was Ma and Dad being gone. It was possible that something had gone wrong and Ma and Dad were overwhelmed in the attack. But what didn’t make sense was them being utterly, completely, without a trace, absent. GreyDevils don’t take prisoners. They might kill or maim in order to get what they want, but they’d leave your body behind. And as far as taking someone hostage, they haven’t got the attention span to come up with a plan, and if you’ve ever watched them howl and swirl at the sight of a kernel of URCorn, or pitch over on their faces after drinking PartsWash all night, you know they’d never put it together to hold someone prisoner and arrange a ransom.

As horrible as it was to consider, I had been ready, in my searching, to find their bodies. But to find nothing?

It didn’t make sense.

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