Savored the needles of pain along her scalp. She settled on twirling her long, dark hair around her finger and tugging. Mama said she’d worry it bald if she kept scratching at it. The other kids, the plague kids, who lived in the Homes.Īmy Green shifted in her desk chair. Benson said from the chalkboard, can produce mutations in embryos.Ī bacterium caused the plague generation. Send the next monster in on your way out.” “I want you to get the hell out of my sight. Shackleton’s smile disappeared along with Dog’s file. “I don’t know what you want from me, sir.” More than that, though, Dog wanted to prove himself. They wrote the rules in such a way to trick you into Discipline. A place nobody can ever bother you.”īrain always said to play along with the normals so you didn’t get caught up in their system. He said, “What kind of place would that be?” He’d never been inside it, but he knew the stories. The red door led downstairs to a basement room called Discipline, where the problem kids went. Take you to a special place.”ĭog glanced at the red door at the side of the room before returning his gaze to Shackleton. He set the file folder on his thighs, licked his finger, and flipped it open. Satisfied, Shackleton sat back in the chair and planted his feet on the desk. “If you, Enoch, have capabilities, you could prove you’re worth the food you eat. “I never heard of such a thing,” Dog said. Like Spider-Man, if Spider-Man half looked like a real spider.” Another who could hear somebody talking a mile away.” “I saw a kid once who had gills and could breathe underwater. Some of you are beginning to show certain capabilities.” Living high on the hog for the past fourteen years in the Homes. I’m here to find out if you’re special.”Īgent Shackleton planted his elbows on the desk. Did they want to hurt people, ever have carnal thoughts about normal girls and boys, that sort of thing. Trying to find out if they were still human. You know the drill, don’t you, by now?”Įvery year, the government sent somebody to ask the kids questions. “I’m Agent Shackleton,” the government man said through another cloud of smoke. Many parents had named their kids XYZ before abandoning them to the Homes. His mama had loved him enough to at least do that for him. Enoch Davis Bryant.”Įnoch was the name the teachers at the Home used. Brain once told him these signs of humanity were the only thing keeping the children alive. The teachers made sure he spoke good and proper. The other kids, I mean.”ĭog growled when he talked but took care to form each word right. Dropped a file folder on the desk and studied Dog through a blue haze. He sat in Principal Willard’s creaking chair and lit a cigarette. His shiny shoes clicked across the grimy floor. The government man came in wearing a black suit, white shirt, and blue-and-yellow tie. If Dog owned it, he would have kept driving and never stopped. Somebody loved it once then parked it here and left it to die. Out the window, Dog spied the old rusted pickup sunk in a riot of wildflowers. A steel fan whirred in the corner, barely moving the warm, thick air. The Georgia sun glared through filmy barred windows. Maybe, if only for a few seconds, she felt special. Maybe she liked the attention, even if it wasn’t the nice kind. Maybe it was just reflex, seeing somebody pointing a camera at her. What Dog wanted to know was why she smiled. Or, maybe, why did the world allow a child like this to live? Rubbery, barbed appendages extending from her eye sockets. A fourteen-year-old girl smiled on the cover. O n the principal’s desk, a copy of Time. And when a body is found, it may be the spark that ignites a horrifying revolution. The tension between Enoch’s world and those of the “normal” townspeople is ready to burst. He believes one day he’ll be a respected man.īut hatred dies hard. The people in the nearby town hate Enoch, but he doesn’t know why. Each bearing their own extreme genetic mutation. They’re members of the rising plague generation. He loves his friends, even if the teachers are terrified of them. They’ve called him a monster from the day he was born.Ībandoned by his family, Enoch Bryant now lives in a rundown orphanage with other teenagers just like him. But it’s a powerful book, and it will change you.” - Seaman McGuire “This is not a kind book, or a gentle book, or a book that pulls its punches. Known as “the plague generation” a group of teenagers begin to discover their hidden powers in this shocking post-apocalyptic coming of age story set in 1984.
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