the way, that’s why I could skate with no toes. A figure skater, a speed skater, an NHL forward, sure, you need your toes for control, but all that finesse takes a backseat when all you’re trying to do is slam somebody into a wall and break all his teeth.”
“Hockey,” mused Marcus. “The sport of kings.”
Tovar paused, his eyes focused on a distant memory. “Sometimes I think that’s what I miss most about the old days. The old times. We had so much of just about everything, we could waste it all on stupid junk that nobody needed. ‘The Golden Age of Man.’” His smile returned, wry and sour. “Pride cometh, as they say, before the fall.”
Jayden nodded, smiling faintly. “I can’t say as that story makes me trust you any more than I did, but it does make me like you.”
Tovar nodded back. “Very kind of you, under the circumstances.” He pulled a flask from his back pocket, took a drink, and offered it to Jayden. The soldier took a swig and passed it back.
“I must admit,” said Marcus, “that as a medic I am still waiting to get to the good part of this story.”
Tovar looked surprised. “Excuse me?”
Marcus grinned. “The toes, man, bring out the toes!”
The soldiers cheered, and Tovar smirked. “You asked for it.” He leaned down and started to unlace his boot. “Every biotech in North America offered gene treatments to regrow them for me, wounded veteran and all, but I figured a war wound was a war wound, and I had no business pretending I didn’t have one. Now: The proprietor of this freak show recommends that all women and children avert their eyes before the coming horror, but as that includes pretty much all of you, I imagine he’s going to be disappointed.” He wiggled out of his boot, peeled back his sock from his pale, hairy leg, and whipped it away from his toe with a flourish. “Behold!”
The whole room gasped, half in shock and half in laughter, and Kira found herself smiling and grimacing at the same time. Tovar’s foot was a lump of scar tissue and calluses, the four smaller toes burned or blown away and the big toe, the last one remaining, curled awkwardly to the side. The toenail was gone, and the whole foot was stark white.
“That is disgusting,” said Kira, forcing each word through bursts of laughter. “How did you say you did that again?”
“I was a specialist in the Marine Corps,” said Tovar, wiggling his deformed toe. “Demolitions.”
The feeling in the room changed so suddenly Kira swore she could feel it: an icy chill in the air, a spray of cold water droplets as the soldiers swung their guns into place in a furious blur. Even sitting down, Tovar lost his balance and staggered back, fumbling with his sock and nearly falling off the couch as he pressed himself away from the guns.
“What the—what’d I do?”
“You have ten seconds to tell us where you’ve been in the last forty-eight hours,” said Jayden, sighting down his rifle, “or we start shooting you just in case.”
“What are you talking about?” screamed Tovar.
“Nine,” said Jayden fiercely. “Eight.”
“Hold on,” said Kira, holding out her hands to try to calm everybody down. “Give him time to think.”
“Seven,” said Jayden.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” said Tovar.
Kira leaned forward desperately. “Just calm down,” she said firmly. “He doesn’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t do anything stupid, Kira.”
Kira turned to Tovar. “It’s because you said you were in demolitions. We’ve had kind of a bad day, explosively speaking, and all they want to know is if you have been—”
“Not another word, Kira, or he’ll know exactly what to deny.”
Kira kept her eyes locked on Tovar’s. “Just tell us where else you’ve been.”
“I was in Smithtown yesterday,” said Tovar. “Came straight here from there. They’ve got a farm there on an old golf course. I was selling them guns.”
“Guns?”
“What, do you think I sell puppies? I’m a marine, I sell what I know, and out here without your Long Island Defense Grid to watch over them, people need guns. Most of these old houses have a gun safe in the basement, so I . . . blast them open and sell the guns.”
“You’re not sounding any less guilty right now,” said Jayden.
Tovar’s voice was thick and desperate. “As hard as it is to believe with ten-odd guns pointed at me, not everyone on the island has one. Not everyone on the island has a Defense Grid patrol ready to leap into action every time somebody looks suspicious. Out here, people know there’s a war coming, between East Meadow and the Voice, and people need to be able to help themselves. I just make sure they have the tools to do it.”
“He’s lying,” said a soldier.
“You don’t know that,” said Kira. “You can’t shoot someone on a hunch.”
“Did somebody try to blow you guys up?” asked Tovar.
“See?” cried the soldier, stepping forward. “He knows!”
“Stand down,” said Jayden. “Do not shoot without my order.”
Kira swallowed. “It doesn’t take a genius to look at the last few minutes of this conversation and guess that someone tried to blow us up. If he knew about the bomb, he wouldn’t have told us he was a demolitionist in the first place, would he?” She turned to Tovar. “Have you ever been to Asharoken?”
He shook his head. “That can’t possibly be the name of a real place.”
“You say you sell guns and ammunition,” said Jayden. “Do you sell explosives, too?”
“I’d be an idiot if I did,” said Tovar. “Anyone who’d buy them would either be after the same stuff I am, or planning something worse—like whatever happened to you guys. I keep all my explosives secret.”
“Where?” demanded Jayden.
“Some in the cart, some in little caches around the island.”
Gianna leaped away from the cart. “I’ve been leaning on a bomb?”
“It’s stable,” said Tovar, standing up. The soldiers retrained their guns on him, but he held up his hands in a show of innocence. “They’re perfectly stable, okay?” He shuffled to the cart, limping in one heavy boot and one bare foot. “It’s a water gel—it’s completely inert until you activate it, and even then it needs a detonator.”
“Where do you find explosives out here?” asked Jayden, still following him with his rifle. “I thought the military gathered up all that kind of stuff years ago.”
“They got the weaponized stuff, yeah,” said Tovar, “but this is used commercially
