Before the Dawn

Chapter three A home for Max

As she watched from the corner, the nine-year-old Max — a foreign figure in this residential neighborhood, her thin blue-gray Manticore smock flapping in winter wind, her bare feet planted on the cold concrete of a sidewalk — tried to comprehend what the young child was up to...

But the genetically bred soldier-in-the-making simply had no idea what the female child was doing, rolling a ball of snow across the white yard, making a bigger ball of it with her every step.

Focusing in, Max looked closely at the child across the street — a girl whose long black hair peeked out from beneath a red stocking cap. A little older than Max, at least a year or two, the girl had full lips, a short nose, and wide-set blue eyes beneath long, butterfly lashes.

Mesmerized, as if witnessing a dream, Max watched as the girl rolled the ball of snow back the other way. The round white thing came up almost to the girl’s waist now, and Max still couldn’t figure out what this kid thought she was doing.

After backing up to the corner and ducking behind a car, Max watched the girl for a moment, then slipped across the street, a blue-gray shadow. Now on the same side of the block as the girl, Max edged behind the corner house without being seen, and took off across the backyards, heading for the third house, in the front yard of which the girl was playing. This snow-rolling behavior Max had never seen before — what sort of strategy was this? — and she needed a closer look.

When Max rounded the third house and crept up to a spot behind a large evergreen to watch, the girl was still at work in the snow. To Max, her nightshirt and bare feet seemed suddenly inconsequential, compared to the wild-colored clothes of the other girl: red stocking cap, green mittens, pink parka, blue jeans, and canary yellow boots.

Max stared in rapt fascination as the girl in the red stocking cap decided this ball was big enough, abandoned it in the middle of the yard, and moved down near the sidewalk to start another. The girl packed snow onto the new ball until it was too big to hold, then she rolled it as she had the last one.

When the child was finished, the second sphere of snow was only slightly smaller than the one next to it, and it too came nearly to her waist. The girl tried to lift it up to set it on top of the first ball, but couldn’t quite get it off the ground.

Knowing she should retreat and avoid any contact, well aware she needed shelter, food, and warmer apparel, wanting to keep moving, Max nonetheless remained frozen with something other than the cold: something about this girl kept her here, kept Max watching...

No matter how hard the girl in the red cap tried, it seemed, she couldn’t raise the second ball on top of the first. Without really realizing what she was doing, Max stepped out from behind the evergreen and moved in to assist the other child.

One of the few human instincts that remained strong in her, despite Manticore’s best efforts, was the need to help her “brothers and sisters”... and this girl, so close to her own age, touched that sibling cord within the X5-unit.

When Max appeared, the girl in the red cap stood up straight and her mouth fell open in obvious surprise. Max didn’t say a word, just moved to the other side of the ball and put her hands underneath it. The snow felt cold against her hands, yet it was oddly bracing, not unpleasant at all, and the bare skin on her arms, where the sleeves of the nightshirt rode up, began goose-pimpling.

The girl in the red cap grasped the plan immediately and moved to help. Together, the two little girls — for Max was, for all her training, despite the genetic tampering, a little girl, too — lifted the new globe of snow up on top of the first one.

“Hold it there for a minute,” the girl in the red cap asked, panting, not able to keep up with Max, “willya?”

Max nodded dutifully, keeping her hands on the ball to keep it from rolling off.

Catching her breath, the girl in the cap said, “I’ve... I’ve got to... pack some snow around it... to keep it from falling off. Y’know?”

Max nodded again, even though she had no idea what was going on. Finally, she asked, “What is the object?”

The girl in the cap looked at Max curiously. “Huh?”

“What are you doing here? What purpose is served?”

“Purpose?... We’re building a snowman, silly.”

“Oh. A kind of... decoy?”

The little girl frowned. “Does Frosty here look like a duck to you?”

“No!.. Is this is a statue?”

The other little girl obviously had never thought of it that way. “Well... yeah. Sort of.”

“But the statue will melt. It is impermanent.”

“Of course he’ll melt, someday. But not while it’s this cold.”

“If the statue will melt, what’s the purpose?”

“It’s fun!”

This word had been heard before by Max, but represented a foreign concept; such was the nature of much Manticore training.

“Aren’t you having fun, helping?” the girl in the cap asked, her breath pluming. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Max.”

“Max? Isn’t that a boy’s name?”

“No. I’m a girl.”

“Duh! I can see that... I’m Lucy. Lucy Barrett.” The girl kept packing snow as they conversed, smoothing and securing the snow orbs. Max, a quick learner, imitated the action.

“Lucy is your name. Hello, Lucy.”

“Hello, Max. Aren’t you cold?”

Max shrugged again. “A little.”

The girl in the cap explained that “Frosty” now needed a head; Max pitched in and they fashioned a smaller ball.

“Are you sick, Max?”

“Sick?”

“You look like you walked out of a hospital or somethin’.”

“Oh. No. I am well.”

“Good,” Lucy said, putting finishing touches on the third ball. “You live around here?”

Max shook her head, helping lift the “head” onto the snow statue.

“Are you staying with relatives, too, Max?”

“Relatives?”

“Where’s your mom? My mom would be really mad if I came outside without my coat, my boots, my mittens, or my stocking cap.”

“Mom?” Max braced the final ball as Lucy patted it into place, until it felt more solid, like it wouldn’t move if she were to let go. Max didn’t let go, though.

“You do have a mom don’t you? Or do you live with your dad?”

“Dad?”

Lucy removed a carrot from one pocket of her winter coat and two lumps of coal from another; she made a face out of them — Max understood that instantly — and then they stood and looked at their work of art, considering it carefully.

The older girl looked carefully at Max, too, and seemed only to be half kidding when she asked, “You aren’t a refugee from a loony bin, are you?”

“Loony bin?”

The girl in the cap frowned. “Listen, are you from another country?”

“I’m an American.” Max knew that much.

“Well, don’t you have a mom?”

“I never had a mom.”

“How can that be?”

“Lucy... I don’t even know what a mom is.”

The girl in the cap began to laugh.

“Did I say something funny?” Max asked, a little irritated, but not knowing why.

Lucy’s laughter caught in her throat. “You’re... you’re serious? You don’t know what moms are?”

Suddenly feeling very ignorant, Max said, “Uh, no.”

“Well... how do you think you got here?”

Max wanted to say, I escaped from Manticore, stowed away on a truck, then...

But she didn’t say that; she might be unschooled in the ways of the outside world, but Max nonetheless knew that this wasn’t what Lucy meant.

Lucy had another question, faintly mocking: “You were born, weren’t you?”

Another question Max had no answer for.

Now Lucy stepped forward, patting the snow, smoothing the statue. “Is that why you’re dressed like that? ’Cause you got nobody to take care of you?”

Max wondered how she could have received so much training in the last nine years, learned so much, studied so hard, and yet still this girl in the red cap could come up with all these questions, the answers to which Max had no idea.

They moved to the shoveled cement front steps of the house and sat down. Lucy asked, “You aren’t from around here, are you?”

Finally, a question she knew the answer to. “No.”

“Me neither. My mom’s inside visiting with my aunt. We’ve been here since yesterday. I like it here, ’cause Dad isn’t along... But we’ll be leaving for home soon.”

Max said, “An ant is an insect.”

Lucy laughed. “Not that kind of ant! Are you kidding?... Aunt Vicki is my mom’s sister.” Again the laughter was replaced by a look of concerned curiosity. “Max — did you run away?”

“Uh... yeah. I ran away.” The questions seemed to be getting easier now.

Lucy pulled off her mittens. “Here — you take these.”

Gratefully, Max tugged on the mittens. They were wet from the snow, but they still were better than nothing, and she appreciated the warmth of Lucy’s gesture, even more. “Thanks.”

“So, Max... you don’t have a home.” It was a statement, not a question.

“No, Lucy.”

“And I don’t have a sister.”

“I have sisters. And brothers.”

“Really? Where?”

“We... we’re all split up.”

“Broken home, huh... I know a lotta kids in your situation.”

Somehow Max doubted that.

Lucy was looking toward the house, a split-level with a large picture window in the living room upstairs; then her eyes returned to Max, and a new excitement was glittering there. “You don’t have any clothes, or anywhere to stay, or anything to eat, right?”

Again Max found herself at a loss for words. But now that her hands were warmer, she started to realize how cold the rest of her had become. She started shivering and had to work to keep her teeth from chattering.

“Max, my mom is a real softie. She wanted me to have a sister, but she and Dad couldn’t.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. But I do know one thing: my mom could help you.”

Frustrated, Max said, “Lucy, I still don’t know what a ‘mom’ is,” shaking her head, not liking where this seemed to be going.

Looking confused now herself, Lucy pondered that for a moment. Absently, she rose from the steps and went back to work on the snowman, smoothing it as she considered the problem. Max joined her, standing as silent as Frosty.

Finally, still filling in gaps in the snowman, Lucy said, “Mom is the person who gave birth to me, and you, too.”

“Yours mom gave birth to me?”

Lucy laughed again, stopped herself, shook her head. “No, not my mom... Your mom, whoever she is, or maybe... was... gave birth to you. You have a belly button, don’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“A navel?”

“Of course I have a navel.”

“Well, that’s where you used to be connected to your mom, when you were born. That proves it. Whether you know her or not, you had a mom, all right.” Lucy shrugged. “Everybody does.”

“So... moms are always girls?”

“Women,” Lucy said seriously, seeming to take this teacherly responsibility to heart. “When we’re older, we’ll be women, and moms, too.”

Max didn’t like the sound of that much. “Do we have to?”

“Well... why do you have to ask such hard questions, Max?”

That there were things Lucy didn’t know seemed oddly comforting to Max; made her feel less ignorant.

“Anyway,” Lucy was saying, as she appraised Frosty one last time, “my mom can help. She can give you food and maybe Aunt Vicki’s got some old clothes...”

More people — that was bad... wasn’t it? Suddenly, Max feared she never should have stopped, never should have spoken to this little girl.

“No,” Max said. “That’s okay. I fend for myself. I adapt and survive.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t tell anyone you saw me, okay?”

Lucy seemed perplexed.

“Lucy, please. Don’t make me...”

“Make you what?”

Kill you, Max thought.

Lucy’s eyes brightened with realization. “It’s ’cause you ran away, isn’t it? You’re afraid Mom would send you back!”

Slowly, Max nodded. She touched the girl’s arm; held it firmly. “Promise me, Lucy?”

Lucy’s bare hand touched Max’s mittened one. “Max — were they mean to you? I mean, where you ran away from... were they strict?”

In her mind’s eye, Max saw Eva fall dead from Lydecker’s bullet.

“They were strict,” Max said.

“They were mean to you there?”

“Very mean.”

Lucy forgot about her mom as she became captivated with the notion of Max’s dilemma. “Gee — what did they do?”

“They took me away from my mother,” Max said, stating her own sudden realization, “and then told me she never existed.”

“They really did that?”

A car, one block over, rolled by, Max looked up, saw the car, and ducked back behind the evergreen, Lucy hot on her heels.

“They really did that?” Lucy repeated.

“Oh yes,” Max said. “And they’re chasing me now. You could be in danger, too, just being with me... That’s why no one can know that I’m here.”

Lucy seemed to understand, yet the danger Max had mentioned only seemed to excite the child. “Listen, Max... I’ve got an idea. We can hide you. You can go with us. We live far away, really far away... Whoever’s looking for you would never think to look there.”

A warm feeling came into Max’s chest, something she’d never felt before: hope. “But if we do that, won’t you have to tell your mom?”

“Trust me — she’ll want to help you.”

Max shook her head vigorously; she had trusted Lydecker...

“Mom likes kids, she’ll help you and keep away the people chasing you. Look, she tried to adopt a sister for me and they turned her down.”

“Adopt?”

“Take in a kid whose mom was dead or something. But my dad... they said he wasn’t ‘suitable,’ or... anyway, she’d give anything for me to have a sister.”

Unconvinced, Max said, “Thank you, but I better get going.” She tugged off the mittens and handed them back to Lucy.

“You can’t leave — you’ll freeze in those jammies! You’re shivering.”

Max shrugged. “I would rather freeze to death than go back.” She turned and started to walk around toward the rear of the house.

Catching up with her, Lucy put a hand on Max’s arm. “How about if it’s just our secret, you and me?”

Skepticism etched Max’s face.

“Honest,” Lucy said. “You can hide in the car and when we get home, you’ll be miles and miles away.”

“Really?”

“Nobody will ever have run away better!.. We can do it, Max, if you can stay quiet.”

Max shrugged. “I’m always quiet.”

“You kind of are. Deal?”

Lucy stuck out her hand; this was a gesture Max knew, from Manticore: she shook the other child’s hand.

Sneaking another furtive glance at the house, Lucy led the way out front to where a tired old SUV sat in the street. When they got to the far side, Lucy said, “When I open the door, you get in quick. There’s a blanket in the back... crawl under it and stay on the floor by the backseat. Quiet as a mouse, now!”

“I can be quieter.” To Max’s ears, mice were terribly noisy.

“Mom always makes me sit in the back,” Lucy was saying, “with my seat belt on. If we’re quiet, we can whisper... and if I can get a snack from Aunt Vicki for the road, we can share it. I’ll sneak you some!”

“Snack?”

“Food, Max. You do eat, don’t you?”

A smile slipped out despite her fear. “Yes — and it’s been a long time since I did.”

Lucy nodded. “Okay, I’ll get ya something... This is exciting! This beats building a snowman all to shit!”

Max’s eyes widened, hearing the forbidden word from this kid.

“Now get inside the SUV,” Lucy ordered, “and get under the blanket.”

Lucy opened the door and Max, trained to follow her group leader, did as the other girl had instructed. The inside of the truck was technically cold, but so much warmer than the outdoors. At least she was finally out of the wind and, with the blanket, Max started to get warm almost immediately.

Less than an hour later, the back hatch door flipped up and Max nearly panicked... but Lucy’s mom didn’t look twice at the blanket when she shoved two suitcases into the storage area... one of them awfully close to Max’s nose... and slammed the door again.

Max listened as the mom said good-bye to Aunt Vicki, who also said a loud good-bye to Lucy.

“Get your seat belt on,” Mom said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Lucky answered, her weight dropping heavily onto the seat just behind Max.

Shoving the suitcase away a little, Max silently rolled over and took stock of her small world: the seat Lucy was in sat high, with an unused storage area beneath. Max crawled under the high seat, her head hugging the floor; she looked up to see Lucy looking down at her. The other girl had to cover her own mouth to keep from squealing in delight. What to Max was an exercise in survival was to Lucy a great adventure.

“You okay, Luce?” Mom asked.

“Fine. Just fine.”

The engine turned over and the SUV coughed to life. “It’ll warm up in here soon, dear.”

“Good. I am kinda cold.”

“Catch your death making that silly snowman.”

“Didn’t you like Frosty, Mom?”

“He was very handsome, dear.”

After a while, the heater was putting out admirably, and Lucy looked at Max, who gave her a little nod. “We’re warm enough now, Mom.”

“We?”

“My new friend... uh... Max... uh... can’t you see her? She’s sitting right next to me.”

Mom let out a little laugh. “Another invisible friend?”

Lucy shrugged.

“Honey, aren’t you getting a little old for that?”

Another shrug. “Max’ll be the last one.”

The banter went on like that for a few more minutes, Lucy slipping Max cookies when Mom was watching the road, Max chewing as quietly as possible. As Max listened to the conversation between mother and daughter — a conversation nothing like the talk between adults and the X5 kids at Manticore... the Mom seemed... nice — the young stowaway realized just how alien a universe she was entering.

Finally, the talking quieted, and music from the car radio played the country western Max was used to, from the Manticore night staff’s boombox. Eventually, Lucy went to sleep, and not long after her, Max drifted off as well.

When Max awoke, the SUV wasn’t moving.

Tensing, she peeked out from beneath the seat, and saw no sign of Lucy’s feet hanging down. Crawling back into the rear of the vehicle, she discovered that the suitcases were gone, too. She listened, but all she heard was silence punctuated by traffic and night sounds.

Max was alone again. Slowly, she crawled out from under the blanket. A glance out the window told her it was the middle of the night; she determined that the Barretts were probably behind the numbered door in front of the SUV, which was parked in a stall indicated by white lines painted on black paving.

Getting out of the vehicle, with all the caution her training had bestowed her, nine-year-old Max climbed down and stretched her tired legs. Being folded up under the seat had taken its toll on her muscles and bones; but on the bright side, she was warm and dry, and judging from the inner calm she felt, Manticore was far behind her. She really didn’t require this much sleep, but the girl was sort of... saving up, not knowing what awaited her. Making sure she was unobserved, she began exploring a little, keeping the SUV in sight at all times.

The weather here was slightly warmer than in the place they’d left, and the snow had practically disappeared, just patches here and there. The SUV sat in the parking lot of a two-story U-shaped concrete building, with the Barretts’ numbered door right in the middle of the bottom of the U. Only twenty or so cars occupied the large lot, and most of them had license plates from the state of Utah.

The girl found a glass door marked LOBBY, peered through and saw lights on, inside. She tried the door and found it unlocked; but when she opened it, a buzzer buzzed. Ducking back outside, behind a parked vehicle, Max watched through the window as a young blond man in a white shirt and tan pants came out of a rear room, looked over the counter at the door, shrugged, then went away again.

Beyond the counter, in the center of the lobby, Max saw a table with a large bowl of fruit in the center. Her stomach rumbled with anticipation. She looked again at the door with that annoying buzzer.

Her training had taught her that no obstacle was unconquerable. She considered the problem for what felt like a long time, her eyes darting to the fruit more often than she would have liked; she should have better control. What was she, a child? Finally, she decided there had to be another way in, and she started around the building to find it.

At the far end of the left upright part of the U, she found what she wanted: another door, this one accessible only by the insertion of a keycard; it didn’t seem to have a human guard, and that alone would make it easier.

She retraced her steps to the Barretts’ SUV, and searched the inside, looking for what she needed. She didn’t find a screwdriver, but in the glove compartment she did come upon a small pocketknife.

That should be adequate.

Five minutes later she had the front cover off the keycard box, had crossed the wires and accessed the hall, then followed it to the lobby where her reward waited in the fruit bowl. After ducking back down the hall with the entire bowl, she quickly devoured two bananas and an orange, leaving the peels as evidence of the hungry animal who’d scavenged here.

Then Max explored long enough to find a bathroom and get a drink of water from the sink, before making her way back to the SUV, a banana and two apples still tucked in her arms.

She nibbled her fruit until finally Lucy and her mom showed up and Max slipped under the blanket, and then they were on the road again.

Lucy wanted to whisper, but Max shook her head, not wanting to risk it. Her belly full, this strange world seeming to the X5-unit surprisingly easily dealt with, Max disappeared under the blanket and slept, contentedly.

Eight hours later, when the vehicle finally stopped for good, and Lucy and her mom had disappeared again, Max climbed out of her hiding place to find herself in a land of sunshine, warmth, and palm trees.

Training videos had shown her country like this before, but it had been an abstraction — she’d never seen anything like it in person. As she stood outside the SUV, she let the sunshine bathe her face, hands, and legs. She couldn’t recall ever being so warm in her life, and she loved it.

Max was standing before a small frame house, smaller than the one where she’d met Lucy; parked in the yard was the SUV, which stood between her and the street, a long, blacktop road with one-story houses lining either side for as far as she could see.

Though they were out of her view, Max heard kids laughing, somewhere. Thinking Lucy might be with them, she took one step before the sound of a woman’s voice stopped her.

“You must be hungry.”

Max whirled to see Lucy’s mom standing behind a screen door. “Uh...”

A kind adult face, with echoes of Lucy’s, bestowed a smile nearly as warm as the sunshine. “It’s all right, honey — Lucy told me about your trouble.”

Max’s first instinct was to run, just run; but the only other adult female she’d ever spoken to outside the gates of Manticore — Hannah — had helped her. And, like Hannah, this woman didn’t seem upset with her — had called her “honey,” an apparently affectionate designation that the woman had also granted her daughter.

Right now, in fact, the woman held open the screen door for Max — held it open wide.

“Wouldn’t you like to come in?” Lucy’s mom asked, displaying a wide toothy smile. “Maybe get something to eat?”

Tentatively, Max approached the woman; getting her first close look at the “mom,” Max couldn’t help wondering if all moms looked like this. Perhaps five foot five inches, and 125 pounds, with dark brown brown hair piled high, Lucy’s mom had her daughter’s wide blue eyes, full lips, and those same long eyelashes. She wore a pale blue dress with small pink flowers on it.

“I shouldn’t,” Max finally managed.

“Look, Max... It is Max, isn’t it?”

Max nodded.

“Is that short for Maxine?”

“I don’t think so.”

The woman’s smile lessened but did not disappear, and she still held that door open. “Look... Max. Lucy’s told me you have nowhere else to go, and that the people you were staying with before will hurt you if they find you. Is that right?”

Another nod.

“Then you need a new place to live, don’t you?”

Max looked down the street as if the answer might be there somewhere; but why would these almost identical houses hold any better answer than this one?

Finally, Max nodded a third time.

“Then... would you like to stay with us?”

She shrugged. She didn’t know how to respond to that.

“Well, come in, dear... have some food, and we’ll talk. Work it out.”

Max looked the other way, up the street, and found no potentially better answers in that direction, either. Haltingly, she took a step toward the house. With the screen door open, she could smell the aroma of roast beef as it wafted through the home, curling its finger invitingly...

The desire for a real meal overcame her misgivings and Max strode into the house.

The living room was small. Though bigger than Hannah’s, this one was less immediately inviting. The smell of old cigarettes hung in the air; the source seemed to be a worn-looking overstuffed chair to her left, which had a couple of empty beer cans sitting on a table next to it, no doubt adding to the stale odor of the room.

Still, the aroma of the beef beckoned, overcoming the tobacco odor, and Max followed Lucy’s mom into a small dining room to a wooden table with four matching chairs. Though the food looked the same as what she’d received at Manticore, it smelled much better: roast beef, carrots, mashed potatoes and gravy, and fresh-baked biscuits.

Lucy, looking guilty and perhaps apprehensive, sat on the far side of the table, and her mom moved toward the far end, pulling out the near-side chair for Max as she went by.

“Lucy’s dad won’t be here for dinner tonight,” the mom said. “He’s working — he’s a truck driver.”

Max nodded. She wondered if that meant he was like the man whose truck she’d hidden in.

“He’ll be home tomorrow. Do you like roast beef, Max?”

Swallowing saliva, Max said, “Yes, very much.”

“Well, dig in. Lucy, give her a hand... Plenty to go ’round.”

Piling her plate high, Max dived in and thought that she’d never eaten anything that tasted this good.

“So, dear — were you born in Casper?”

Max turned toward the mom. “Casper?”

“You know — the town where you met Lucy?”

“No, I wasn’t born there.” She said this with assurance, though inside herself, Max had doubts: since she’d known nothing of mothers and births before yesterday, who could say?

“Judging by what Lucy says,” the mom said, “and from that smock you’re wearing, you escaped from an institution... an orphanage?”

“What’s an... orphanage?”

“A place, dear, where children without parents live.”

“Yes. Yes, it was an orphanage.”

“And they were cruel there, dear?”

“Oh yes.”

Lucy’s mom moved her food around on her plate with a fork, but didn’t eat anything; her eyes were damp, and moving side to side, in thought.

Then the mom said, “We tried to get a nice girl like you, through... official sources. But they wouldn’t let us. My husband... has a drinking problem. I guess you have a right to know that.”

Why would anyone have trouble drinking?

Then the mom blurted, “Would you like to stay with us?”

Still chewing, Max just looked at her.

“You and Lucy could be like sisters.”

Max glanced over at Lucy who was nodding emphatically, a wide smile on her face.

“We can’t have any more children, Lucy’s dad and I, and God knows, we could use another hand around here.”

Max held the woman’s gaze. “Would anyone have to know?”

The mom’s eyes flared. “No! They couldn’t know, dear... or you’d be taken back to where you ran from.”

Max shook her head, violently. “I wouldn’t want that.”

“You’re my late cousin’s Beth’s girl.”

“I am?”

The mom smiled. “You are now... We’re your foster family. Will you stay with us, Max?”

Knowing what the woman wanted, Max slowly nodded. Then and there, just that easily, she had a new home.

Lucy spoke for the first time since they’d sat down. “Will it be all right with Dad?”

“I’ll convince him. Don’t you girls worry. He can be... difficult... but he’ll know what this means to me. And as long as Max is willing to work around here... you are, aren’t you Max?”

Max nodded.

“Well, then, we won’t have any trouble. In the meantime, I’m going to see to it you get plenty to eat, and then we’ll get you some new clothes.”

Glancing down at her soiled nightshirt, Max knew that wasn’t a bad idea.

The mom beamed at her. “Now, you make sure you leave room for pie — it’s lemon meringue.”

Max had never had this exotic dish before, and it was incredibly, deliriously delicious.

The next night, Max found out what a dad was, and it wasn’t near as good as a mom: a dad (this one anyway) was a burly bully with stringy graying hair, putrid breath, a foul mouth, and a vicious temper. Oh, the dad could be nice, but only when he hadn’t been drinking.

Which wasn’t often (and it didn’t take Max long to learn what a “drinking problem” really was).

After just ten minutes with Jack Barrett, Max knew she’d been wrong thinking Lydecker was mean. Lydecker was only businesslike, cold but not brutal; Lydecker was monstrous — this “dad” was a monster.

That first night, Mr. Barrett had come in the door, brushed past his wife with the greeting, “Get me a beer,” and then he dropped into his recliner, lit up a smoke, and turned his eyes toward Max (in a pink T-shirt and jeans), who stood next to Lucy at the side of his chair. “Who the hell is this?”

Popping the top on his beer, Mrs. Barrett said, “This is Max. Say hello to Mr. Barrett, Max.”

“Hi, Mr. Barrett.”

The dad ignored Max. “What the fuck is that war orphan doing here?”

How could he know she was an orphan? And a soldier?

Rubbing her hands on the front of her apron, Mrs. Barrett said, “Be nice, Jack... She needs a place to stay for a while.”

He turned to glare at Mrs. Barrett. “Another goddamn mouth to feed?”

“Jack, I want this.”

“Joann, I—”

“I put up with a lot, Jack. If you don’t like it, you’ll come home to an empty house — no meals, Jack. No laundry. Even get up and get your own beer.”

He was gazing at her like his wife was on fire. “Don’t get mouthy...”

“You can hit me, Jack... but I’ll go. I’ll leave. I really will this time. You know what this means to me.”

He turned away. Clicked on the TV with his remote and gulped his beer.

Mrs. Barrett turned and walked off in a huff. “Come on, girls.”

“Not so fast!” Mr. Barrett bellowed. He turned to Max again. “You!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well... you’re polite, anyway. Kinda scrawny... maybe you’ll fill out like Lucy, in a year or two... You gonna help around here, earn your keep?”

Max nodded.

“This one,” he jerked a thumb toward his daughter, “don’t do squat, half the time.”

Lucy said, “I always do—”

Mr. Barrett swung around in his chair and slapped his daughter — the crack rang in the small house, like a gunshot.

Lucy’s mouth was tremblingly open, as tears rolled down her face, but no sound came out.

“Don’t talk back to your father.”

Between gulps of air, Lucy managed to say, “Yes, sir.”

“That’s better.”

Max took a step forward. “Don’t hit her.”

Jack slapped Max even harder, the pain shooting through her jaw, her teeth, through every fiber of her being. She resisted the urge to strike back; maybe this was how families behaved. She could always kill him later.

“You want to stay here,” Jack yelled, “you want three squares and a bed? You keep your fucking mouth shut unless you’re told to speak.”

Her cheek still throbbing, Max stood there silently, glaring at Jack Barrett.

He slapped her again. “Don’t stare at me, and when I tell you something, you show me the proper goddamn respect. Stick with that ‘Yes, sir’ shit, and we’ll get along just fine.”

Pain shot through her body again and this time a tear welled in her eye, but Max willed it not to fall. “Yes, sir.”

“Then she can stay, Jack?” Mrs. Barrett said.

“Kid can stay. For now.”

“Oh Jack, thank you.” And she kissed her husband on the cheek, and he brushed her away.

Mom (as Max had now begun to call her, and think of her) escorted Max to the bedroom she was sharing with Lucy.

“Stay on Jack’s good side,” Mom advised, “and don’t talk back when he’s... in a bad mood.”

Later Lucy said, “I hope... I hope you don’t think this is worse than where you escaped from.”

In her own warm bed, Max was weighing that. Getting slapped was better than getting shot.

“It’s fine,” Max said.

That had been February. There were more slaps and even some outright beatings in March, April, and May. Sometimes Mr. Barrett would enter the room in the middle of the night and take Lucy away with him; the girl would look scared, but when she returned, she’d say at least her dad hadn’t hit her.

Max had been too sexually naive at the time to really understand what was happening; but she knew it was something bad. As for the beatings, they were commonplace around the Barrett house; and Max, in an effort to fit in, had only fought back one time.

That had been in early March. Jack (as Max now thought of him, never coming to think of him as, much less call him, Dad) had waxed her pretty good, and when Max had gotten to her feet and he reached out to slap her again, she’d sidestepped the blow, caught his hand in hers, and broken two fingers before he’d wrenched it back.

But hurting Jack had been a mistake.

Max was forced to go without food for a week, which only bothered her a little — she’d had deprivation training, after all — but when he’d come home from the emergency room, he’d beaten Lucy so badly the girl couldn’t walk for two days.

“If you ever, ever raise a hand to me again,” Jack told Max, “your sister pays.”

From then on, Max had done as she was told; and Jack had been smart enough not to lay his hands on his new “daughter.” At least until that day in June, when the whole world changed forever...

June 8, 2009, had seemed like any other day — school had gotten out the week before, and Max and Lucy were settling in for a summer of no schoolwork. Max had fit in surprisingly well at school, mostly keeping to herself, though the seizures that were a side effect of her genetic breeding caused a share of embarrassment, until the school nurse finally provided an unlikely nonprescription medication — tryptophan — that would curtail and control them.

Jack kept them busy enough around the house, and of late he’d been even angrier than usual. The Dodgers — the only thing he truly loved in this life — had been losing, and the skid had only served to give him more reason to beat on Lucy and Mom.

On this June evening, the sisters were steering him a wide path. He was parked in his recliner guzzling beers and chain-smoking, as he watched the Dodgers fall behind early, 3–0. Mrs. Barrett had taken refuge in the bedroom, leaving Max and Lucy to fulfill Jack’s needs and receive the brunt of his rage. Jack had already raised his hand to Lucy once tonight, and the girls hovered in the background, being careful to not rile him again.

Finally things started to look up a little: the Dodgers had men on second and third and only one out. Max had learned some baseball from being forced to watch the games while she waited on Jack, and she recognized the beginnings of a rally when she saw one. For their own safety, the girls had become Dodgers fans, too. If the team did well, Jack was less apt to slap them around.

When the electricity went out, just after nine, Max grabbed Lucy’s hand and led her to the basement where the two girls hid under the stairs while Jack went berserk. As they huddled there — tears running down Lucy’s cheeks, and Jack tearing the house apart looking for them so he could “beat their asses” — Max made a decision.

Once these people had all gone to sleep for the night, she was out of here. As things turned out, no one went to sleep that night, but they still managed to miss the beating...

Tired of searching for them, his anger subsiding as he remembered the impending Dodgers’ rally, Jack Barrett staggered back upstairs and turned on a portable radio, which relied on batteries. Jack was pissed when he couldn’t find the game on the dial, but when his alcohol fog cleared some, his anger disappeared and he called Mrs. Barrett and the girls to his side.

“Something terrible’s happened,” he said, his voice suddenly sober, and not at all hateful.

In fact, he sounded frightened, like a scared kid.

Soon they had all gathered around the radio to listen.

“This is the Emergency Broadcast System,” a voice said. “At twelve-oh-five A.M., eastern time, terrorists detonated a nuclear instrument over the Atlantic Ocean. This has triggered an electromagnetic pulse that has destroyed virtually every electronic device on the eastern seaboard.”

Mrs. Barrett hugged Jack and gathered the girls to her, as well.

“All communications are down east of the Mississippi River, and there is currently no timetable for the reestablishment of contact with those areas. The threat of another terrorist attack in the western half of the country is still a possibility, and all citizens are asked to remain in their homes until further notice.”

The little family huddled together like that for the next two and a half hours. The EBS continued to broadcast the same message over and over, with no new information. Finally, Jack grew bored and restless. He pulled Lucy away from her mother.

“Get me a beer,” he growled.

Lucy went to the kitchen and came back with a fresh beer, popping the top for him; but the can slipped out of her hand as she tried to give it to him, and landed upside down in Jack’s lap, soaking his crotch.

He jumped up and stood before them, his face reddening in anger, the can bouncing across the room, his pants looking as though he’d just wet them.

Max laughed.

The livid Jack took a step toward her, his hand shooting out; but Max had already decided to leave, so there was no reason to endure the abuse anymore. As the dad reached for her, she ducked, kicked out, and swept his feet from under him, dropping him to the floor in a heap.

He howled in rage and, as he tried to get up, she delivered an elbow that broke his nose and knocked him flat again.

Jack shrieked in pain.

Finding the sound strangely satisfying, Max backed off then, moved toward the door; but the fight wasn’t out of Jack yet and he crawled after her. Spinning, she delivered a kick to the side of his head that dropped him one last time and left him lying on the floor unconscious.

With one last look back at an astonished Lucy and Mrs. Barrett — her sister and Mom didn’t seem to know whether to be upset or elated — Max whispered, “Thank you.”

And she walked out of the shabby little house for the last time. She didn’t know where she was going, but she did know she wasn’t coming back here — ever.

In the days to come, Max — like everyone — learned from the remnants of the media what had occurred.

The Pulse had screwed up everything but good. Every electronic and motorized device from New York to Des Moines bought the farm when that thing detonated. Within seconds, power grids, telecommunications networks, transportation systems, banking systems, medical services, and emergency systems had become museum relics.

One minute, the United States of America was a superpower where everybody had jobs, money, food, all their needs met. The next, the American tapestry unraveled and left the country reeling... No jobs, no money, no food, people forced to start fending for themselves.

No more drive-up, no more New York Stock Exchange, no more school... the entire eastern half of the country came to a grinding, screeching halt. Everything people were sure of yesterday was in doubt today, and there was no telling how long... or even if... the country could recover from such a catastrophe.

Even though, on the night Max left the Barrett home, the effects of the Pulse hadn’t yet reached California, the X5-unit found herself in the same leaky boat as everybody else. Genetically enhanced or not, a nine-year-old could do only so many things in an upside-down world; so Max quickly turned to petty theft. She did fine for a while on her own, stealing enough to eat, sleeping wherever she could find a place.

Though the East’s destruction had been nearly instantaneous, the West took longer to feel the effects; but as the West Coast economic depression caught up with the upheaval in the East, the pickings for foragers like Max became more and more sparse.

Still, Max had managed to build a loner’s life for herself there in Los Angeles. As the people around her broke up into smaller groups in order to protect themselves, she continued to live the outlaw life, finding herself a remote spot within the confines of Griffith Park, from which she ventured only when she needed supplies. To Max, the three years she lived in the park were like an extended Manticore field exercise.

With one important difference — she was free.

Whenever she started to get down about the state of her life, that one thought could bring her back up. But she wondered if the others — if there were any still outside the wire — missed her as much as she missed them...

... defiant Eva, shot by Lydecker, the catalyst for their escape, dead for sure; Brin, the acrobatic one; Zack, their leader and her older brother; Seth, the boy who’d been caught that night and dragged back by the guards; and her best friend and sister Jondy...

These and other sibs seemed to constantly occupy her thoughts; yet she kept going. Getting bigger, stronger, smarter, Max knew these things would help her to find her sibs in this postapocalyptic America, no matter where they were.

Those were the goals that needed to be met, not spending her time worrying about what might be. If she could make herself good enough, finding the sibs would take care of itself.

They weren’t the only ones she missed, though. Lucy, and the situation Max had left her in, still bothered Max — her other sister, back in Jack Barrett’s house, his world. Then, in the spring of her twelfth year, when she finally returned to the Barrett home to rescue Lucy, she found the house abandoned.

All the way back to her home in the park, tears streamed down her cheeks, as she realized that Lucy was probably out of her life forever. Finding her siblings would be difficult enough — locating a normal child like Lucy? Next to impossible.

Three weeks later, early May, the Big Quake hit.

Measuring 8.5 on the Richter scale, the quake struck in the middle of the night, killing thousands in their beds, taking far many more lives in California than the Pulse had. Fires raged for weeks, buildings collapsed, houses slid down the sides of mountains, overpasses fell, crushing late-night drivers.

Max’s small sanctuary in the park survived, but with literally millions homeless now, the job of protecting her niche, and still trying to forage enough for her own survival, was becoming hopeless. She lasted a year that way, but with supplies getting harder and harder to find, she was forced to scavenge farther and farther from home.

And like so many young girls had in that time just before hers, Max made her way to Hollywood, although in her case it wasn’t to star in the movies: her journey ended up being more of a simple migratory path...

... a path that led her straight to Moody and the Chinese Clan.