Life on the Preservation, US Edition by Jack Skillingstead Page B

dizzy and blurry so you can’t even read, while He lets Father Jim limp all over town with a bullet in his head.”
    “Yeah, God’s a jerk. Anyway, I can see okay now, most of the time.”
    “Mom says God favors the lucky.”
    “Right.”
    Kylie flipped through the pages. “It’s poems. I want to read the one about the wall.”
    “Kylie, we have to talk first. Go shut that door. You know how Maggie always listens.”
    Kylie closed the book and the door then returned to the bed.
    Keeping his voice low, Billy said, “I heard what you said to your mother.”
    “That rock wasn’t anything.”
    “Shhh.”
    “It wasn’t anything,” Kylie repeated, in a softer voice.
    “It’ll get worse.”
    Kylie zipped her thumbnail down the pages of the book.
    “A lot worse,” Billy said.
    “Mom won’t let them hurt me. And I won’t let anybody hurt you, Billy.”
    “Kylie–”
    “I want to read the one about the wall.”
    Billy was quiet a minute, then quoted, “‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.’ That’s totally you, Kylie.”
    “I guess,” Kylie said.
    “There are walls, then there are walls.”
    “I like the part about the apple trees not sneaking into the neighbor’s field,” she said.
    “Yeah, it’s funny.”
    “Okay, okay, Billy, go ahead.”
    “What?”
    “Go ahead and tell me how it’s going to get worse. I know you’re dying to.”
    “First let’s talk about something good,” Billy said.
    “Okay.”
    “You remember what I was saying before the priest came to the door?”
    “About running away?”
    “That and the Seattle Dome.”
    “What about it,” Kylie said.
    “I know what’s inside it.”
    “How could you know?”
    Billy sat up a little. “The skin-and-bone people come from the Dome. They were inside, all of them.”
    Kylie stared at him. “I don’t believe it,” she said, not knowing whether she believed it or not. She was thinking about the city under the Dome. Seattle. It was the Say Anything city, the Sleepless city. Kylie had been to Seattle in real life, but the movies she watched were more vivid than her memories.
    “If they were really in there,” Kylie said, “how did they escape?”
    “They didn’t escape. They got thrown out.”
    “Why?”
    “That part I’m not sure about. When I lived on the Big Boat we saw a lot of SABs. Most of them were like what you’re used to seeing, barely human. But some were fresh. The fresh ones looked more normal and they could talk. They were in shock, most of them, and confused. They talked about being in Seattle, living their lives and then slowly becoming aware that something was wrong. From what they said we started to piece it together, Kylie. We think the Dome is some kind of zoo or living museum. Like one of those natural history museums where you can see what life was like in prehistoric times? Only this one’s for humans and it’s way more sophisticated than a natural history museum. It’s a whole functioning world and nobody knows they’re in it. They think it’s just regular Seattle. Except sometimes they do know they’re in it. At that point they get thrown out.”
    “You know, I’m probably not as dumb as I look, right?”
    “You’re not dumb at all. And everything I’m telling you is true. Listen, we have to make a plan and get moving before things really go to hell around here. I want to take you to the Big Boat. It’s relatively safe there, at least it was when I left. Probably a lot of people have died since then, but there will be plenty left, too. They aren’t ignorant hicks, Kylie. They aren’t scared of Father Jim’s stupid Judgment Day. They’re hard-headed people, some of them, engineers and scientists. They’ve studied the Seattle Dome. They have a plan. And they’ll welcome you with open arms, Kylie, because you can do something none of them has ever done.”
    “What can I do that guys like that don’t know how to do?”
    “Fly an airplane.”
    Kylie laughed. “They