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  TO SUNNY: MY FIRST AND BEST READER, MY FIRST AND BEST EVERYTHING.

  THINGS FALL APART; THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD; MERE ANARCHY IS LOOSED UPON THE WORLD

  —WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

  THE PEOPLE OF ELL AYE

  THE ANGELENOS

  THE DOMINANT PEOPLE OF ELL AYE, THEY ARE A LARGELY PEACEFUL FEMALE-LED SOCIETY WHO LIVE PRIMARILY IN THE HILLS. THEY ARE MADE OF FOUR INTERRELATED PEOPLES:

  • THE HOLY WOOD

  THE OLDEST ANGELENO SETTLEMENT, ON THE SHORES OF THE LAKE OF THE HOLY WOOD AND THE OLD HOLY WOOD SIGN.

  • THE MALIBU

  THE FARTHEST WEST OF THE ANGELENOS, WHO LIVE IN THE MOUNTAINS NEXT TO THE OCEAN OF MALIBU.

  • THE DOWNTOWN

  THE DOWNTOWN GUARD THE FORMER TOWERS OF ELL AYE AS SACRED GROUND AND LIVE IN A GIANT STADIUM IN A RAVINE.

  • THE SAN FERNANDOS

  THE SAN FERNANDOS LIVE IN THE GREAT VALLEY NORTH OF THE HOLY WOOD AND FREQUENTLY COMPETE WITH THE HOLY WOOD FOR SCARCE RESOURCES.

  THE LAST LIFERS

  A FERAL BAND OF CHILDREN WHO’VE GONE MAD IN ANTICIPATION OF THEIR EARLY DEATHS; THEY LIVE THROUGHOUT ELL AYE IN VIOLENCE AND CHAOS BECAUSE THEY FEAR NO CONSEQUENCES.

  THE PALOS (THE BITERS)

  A CANNIBAL SOCIETY FROM THE SMOKING PALOS VERDES PENINSULA, THEY ARE ELL AYE’S MOST FEARED ENEMY. THEY ARE INTELLIGENT, VICIOUS, AND WELL ARMED.

  THE ICE CREAM MEN

  A WANDERING TRIBE OF TRADERS WHO TRAVEL ON THREE-WHEELED ICE CREAM CARTS, THE ICE CREAM MEN KNOW ALL THE PEOPLES IN ELL AYE.

  THE KINGDOM

  A MIGHTY CIVILIZATION BUILT BY FORMER GANG MEMBERS, THE KINGDOM OCCUPIES A HUGE CASTLE FORTRESS IN ORANGE COUNTY, THE OH SEE.

  PROLOGUE:

  THE ICE CREAM MAN MASSACRE

  Little Man tries to wait for the screaming to stop before he enters the battlefield, but he can’t help himself.

  The ice cream carts are tossed carelessly around the outside of the bank that used to be Ice Cream Men’s Hydin Hole, as if giant hands had been digging for toys. The Ice Cream Men are lying on the ground, just bodies now. It’s a horrible, bloody mess, carried out by monsters. Little Man hasn’t been so proud of himself since the first time he made a Giant.

  One of those Giants stands next to him, breathing hard and splattered in blood. Patrick. He used to be one of Little Man’s enemies in the Cluster, but now he’s as loyal as he is mean. He’s also frozen in time by the Making that will keep him from dying young, and that stimulates extra growth. Seeing him plowing through the Ice Cream Men as if they weren’t there? That’s a good day.

  Stanford, his captain and Head of the Jocks, makes his way through the wreckage, not looking down at the bodies at his feet. “A hundred down on their side, Little Man,” Stanford says.

  “And us?” he says. Not that he cares. He wishes he had been able to bring the Last Lifers with him to jump in front of the Ice Cream Men’s bullets, but the Cluster said it would be too much for this battle. They’re still stung by the loss to the Kingdom only weeks ago. Little Man wasn’t leading that one, but the Chosen had been coming to rescue him. The blame got so intense that Little Man had to kill one of the captains of that attack to shut them up.

  “Six.” Little Man smiles.

  The Cluster, the council that thinks it still runs the Chosen, warned him not to do this. The Ice Cream Men were too important. They provided too much food to the Chosen. What they really meant is they brought all the delicacies and the pills the Cluster loves.

  “How many guns?” Little Man says.

  “Fifty.”

  “There should be more.” Still, the Cluster will be happy. It will give Little Man all he needs to launch the real war against the Angelenos—and the Kingdom.

  “We have some survivors inside the bank,” Stanford says.

  “Start questioning them,” Little Man says. He doesn’t want to kill them all, not yet. He wanted more weapons to make sure his war goes his way. Everyone knows the Ice Cream Men held all their extra weapons and riches in safe spots throughout Ell Aye, places they called Hydin Holes. It would only take a few living victims to flush those out.

  Blood coats the glass wall of the bank next to him. He steps out gingerly among the bodies. He pushes down his revulsion. He doesn’t mind this. He knows he’s looking at the beginnings of the Battle of Ell Aye.

  The boys and girls lying on the ground are mostly dead. When they’re not, he motions to Patrick, who casually stabs them with his lance.

  He steps over a body—and sees the body stir. He looks down, calling for Patrick. The boy beneath him rolls over, and Little Man starts. He’s never seen this boy before—but he has. This is the Ice Cream Man he saw in a vision in the Haze, the one who traded with Jemma and Pico and Lady.

  And he really wants to know where Jemma and Pico and Lady are.

  “Let’s keep this one breathing for now,” he says to Patrick.

  Little Man squats next to the boy and drips water down his throat. Gently. “It’s okay,” he says. “It’s all gonna be okay.”

  “Doubt it,” the Ice Cream Man says. He’s right. Looks like he’s been shot in the gut and the leg.

  “How you feeling?” Little Man says. “Bet you’re a little sore, huh?”

  “You some kind of nurse?”

  “Yeah. I’m a nurse,” Little Man says. Warm.

  The Ice Cream Man blinks. He tries to focus on Little Man, but his attention falls to Little Man’s arm, to the tattooed bars on the inside of his wrist. He’s thinking what they all think: Three kills, on a kid who is this small and this young?

  The boy’s voice comes out as a croak. “You Little Man,” he says.

  Tommy is surprised, really surprised. “Normally people don’t figure that out,” he says. “I’m easy to look past.” He’s usually just little Tommy, small and nine and blond. Smart but harmless.

  “I don’t look…” The Ice Cream Man stops, and forgets what he was going to say. Maybe it’s the blood seeping out of his thigh. Someone has tied it off in a tourniquet. “You come for our guns,” the Ice Cream Man says.

  Little Man nods. “Little Man meets the Ice Cream Man,” he says. “You’re smart. I like you.”

  “You a tiny little weird little dick,” the boy says.

  “Well, now I like you less,” Little Man says.

  How much time does he have before the Ice Cream Man bleeds out? Five minutes? He has to get him talking.

  “We got friends in common,” Little Man says. “The kids from the Holy Wood.”

  The Ice Cream Man seems to remember them. “Jemma…?”

  “I want to know where they went,” Little Man says.

  “You gon kill em?”

  Little Man shrugs. “I mean … maybe? But they know something I wanna know. So I would probably want to talk to them first. Like … this.” And he pushes his thumb into the Ice Cream Man’s stomach.

  The kid can’t even scream, it hurts that much. The kid
just gasps until Little Man stops pushing. Little Man says, “They know things about the End, I think, things that I should have known first. And Jemma can see things.” He hates that she can see things. It was supposed to just be Little Man.

  “I ain’t gonna tell—”

  Little Man moves his thumb back to his stomach. “I can make your End as painful as you like.”

  “She’s gon find the Old Guys,” the Ice Cream Man says, seeming to want to pull the words back in. Everyone betrays their friends, Little Man thinks.

  “The Old Guys?” Little Man tries to be gentle again, but it doesn’t come as naturally this time. He wants to know too much.

  “She gon find all the answers there,” the Ice Cream Man says. “They was there fore the End. They knows the way back. Don’t you knows the stories?”

  “I didn’t,” Tommy says, and an angry flush creeps up over the pink skin. “Where do they live?”

  “Fine. Don’t hurt me none. Stories say they lives in the Dead Lands,” the Ice Cream Man says. “That’s a good place for you.”

  “Let’s talk more about that,” Little Man says. “Let me get you more water.” Trying to keep him alive just a few minutes longer.

  When he turns back, something looks different. The boy has shifted. Trying to get away that close to dead? Tommy’s impressed despite himself.

  Little Man crouches down. “Here’s your water,” he says.

  “You believe in Man Jesus?” the Ice Cream Man says.

  Little Man scowls. “I only believe in me,” he says. Then he notices the egg.

  All of the Ice Cream Men carry them, Long Gone bombs to protect their carts from thieves, just like him. Tommy thought his soldiers had collected all of them, but there’s an egg in the Ice Cream Man’s trembling hand, fingers twitching under a pulled-out pin, just barely holding down the lever that will release and kill them all.

  The Ice Cream Man gathers himself up and throws the egg as far as he can. Not much of a throw. Not much. But it drops at the feet of the clump of Chosen ten feet away.

  “Shit,” Little Man says. He sees the blur of a huge body in front of him, feels a hand punch him in the chest, feels himself flying backward through the air.

  Three, two— He doesn’t hear the blast, just sees the white swallowing them all. He has the most ridiculous thought: Hello, Man Jesus.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE MAYFLIES

  Jemma has never rested this long in her life. No one has. She’s been awake two days, and most of it has been spent in bed. In the world before the Camp, no one stopped working unless they were dying.

  She hates it. Lady left of boredom hours ago, her bullet energy finally too much for the hospital room, and Jemma has no one to talk to. That’s enough to make Jemma decide to explore the Camp. Good thing she can finally move without puking. She rises to her feet, glad they let her change out of her gown yesterday. Her hospital gown. Less than a week with the Old Guys, and she’s already learning words that are Long Gone.

  The lights flicker in the hospital room. She notices they’ve been flickering awhile, as if they’re tired. She supposes they are. All the machines should have been Long Gone a long time ago.

  Jemma leaves the room into a blank hallway and turns right, then another right into a dead end. A metal door with a window, cut by diamond wire. She steps to the glass and sees boxes like Teevees. Some are dark, like she’s used to seeing, but others glow.

  It’s not magic, she tells herself. But it feels like it. She jiggles the handle. It’s locked.

  “Stay out of the computer room,” a voice behind her says. It’s Gil. He’s the nurse here, but doesn’t seem much interested in his only patient.

  Puters, she mouths to herself, tucking it in with the other new names she’s learning.

  “You’re not cleared for walking,” he says. “You’re supposed to have another day of medical observation.”

  “Lucky for me,” she says, “I don’t know what none of that means.” And brushes by him and into the sun. She hasn’t memorized the outside yet; she’s spent so little time there. The Camp consists of four concrete bunkers around a courtyard, each half-buried into the ground in a giant, shallow bowl. To the north are mountains. To the west, hidden from her view, is the ocean.

  In the middle of the courtyard are three of her favorite shapes in the world: Pico, the tiny former Exile who unlocked the secret of the End; Grease, a gawky mechanical genius with homemade glasses; Lady, short and curvy with cropped hair. Lady, her best friend. They left their home in the Holy Wood Hills, and fought through Biters and Last Lifers and the poison of the Dead Lands to find the place where the End never happened.

  They’re safe here, safe as it’s possible to be. To the north are the Dead Lands, poisoned when the Lectric plant—the nuclear—broke. It’s impassable to all but the desperate, like they were, or to the Old Guys, who cannot die. She found bodies in the dust there, blistered and burned. To the south is San Diego, Long Gone and empty. Their enemies might still be out there, but they won’t find Jemma at the Camp.

  The Camp is a former military base, and the home of the only scientists in the world. More important than that: the only people in the world older than seventeen.

  “You’re walking,” Pico says.

  “Had a concussion, not a broken leg,” Jemma says. “Show me all this stuff you guys been talkin bout.” While she was unconscious and then shut up in the bed, they explored the Camp and met most of the Old Guys. They keep on telling her stories that don’t make sense, like giant cows wandering through fields of Long Gone war machines. She has to see it herself.

  Most of the activity in the Camp takes place inside the courtyard, based on the deep trails crisscrossing the grass. But the base seems to stretch on for miles and miles beyond their outpost, high up the hill. Far below she sees an old runway for skyplanes, and to the south she sees a Children’s playground and crumbling office buildings. Immediately below the bunkers are three fenced-off large ponds, which must be the drinking supply.

  “Up there,” Lady says, tapping Jemma’s shoulders. Jemma follows the direction of Lady’s arm pointing up the hill, where she sees a hundred fluffy brown shapes. A herd, grazing among old war machines pointing toward the sea.

  “The cows,” Jemma says.

  “Not quite,” Pico says. “Bison. The Old Guys call em buffalo.”

  “They pets?” Jemma says. She likes their comically large, shaggy heads.

  “No. There used to be millions of them in America, and they were almost wiped out by the Parents. Now there’s thousands just in the Camp.”

  “More than the Parents,” Jemma says.

  Her friends lead her around the barns and greenhouses, where the Old Guys seem to grow everything they need. Jemma sees gray heads among the tall plants. They duck down when the Children pass.

  It wasn’t the machines of the Camp that startled her; after meeting Grease and Pico, she’s accustomed to machines and Lectrics though she still feels as if they’re the fingerprints of gods come to earth. It was James’s hair, gray but not buried in the ground; James rescued her in the Dead Lands.

  There are no adults in this world. The Parents were scraped from the earth. All the greatness of the Parents, all their stupidity—all gone. A century has passed since the End, and the Old Guys should have passed with it. They’re the ones who began the End.

  “How many Old Guys here?” Jemma says.

  There are fifty Old Guys in the Camp, some scientists, some people who were subjects of the Long Life Project and others who worked on it in less crucial jobs.

  “We ain’t seen em all,” Lady says. “But they say it’s fifty. Not all scientists but all of em know how to fight.”

  “Armed, too,” Grease says. “It’s like they forgot the world isn’t making more weapons.”

  “They don’t talk to kids much,” Pico says. “We scare em. Mebbe they gonna talk to you.”

  They will. They’ll talk about the End and the Haze t
hat causes it, running free in the world for a hundred years. They’ll talk to Jemma because she’s the only person who can control it. Maybe that’ll give them hope that it can be controlled, and the End can be stopped. That’s Jemma’s hope.

  “We’re gonna get the whole story of the End,” Grease says.

  “You din’t ask them already while I was laid up?” Jemma says.

  “We tried,” Pico says.

  “They said they wouldn’t explain until you were ready, too,” Grease says. The two of them look perturbed.

  “Hell, I’m ready,” Jemma says. And they go to find James.

  He is in a conference room surrounded by glass walls, covered almost completely by the ink of bright-colored markers. Other Old Guys are there, too: Gil, the nurse; Brian K, the engineer; some Muscle; and a woman with gleaming white hair to her shoulders, white-watery blue eyes that see everything. Jemma hasn’t noticed her before. She finds herself drawn to her.

  “Jemma, I’d like you to meet the rest of the … Old Guys,” James says, bemused. “I guess that’s as good a name as any.” The Old Guys are a few colors: some with dark skin, some who look almost like the Angelenos, but most pink like James. James goes around the room and leaves the white-haired woman for last. When he does finally introduce her, he pronounces her name sourly, as if there’s years of distrust between them. “And this is … Alice. Our lead geneticist.”

  “So you’re the girl who can speak to the Haze,” Alice says kindly. “Very impressive.” Jemma feels flattered. Chosen.

  “Yeah,” Jemma says. “We ready to learn more.”

  “You and your friends are from different tribes, aren’t you?” Alice says. “How do you refer to yourselves?”

  “I…” She doesn’t know. She and Lady grew up in the Holy Wood, and Pico joined them as an Exile from the Malibus, another Angeleno tribe. When they left Ell Aye, they found the Kingdom, a tribe of Knights and cowboys, and took Grease with them. At each turn they picked up another, like a rock rolling through mud downhill. They’re not Holy Wood or Angeleno or Kingdom. They’re just friends.