The Diamond of Darkhold - 4 by Jeanne DuPrau Page B

bottles and boxes fell to the floor, bouncing and breaking. Doon noticed that this family had still had a fair amount of food when they left the city—enough to keep a family in Sparks going for several days at least. He made a mental note. There might be many houses the Troggs had not yet looted.
    “All right!” cried Trogg finally. “We’re finished here. Load the stuff in the wagon, and on to the next.”
    It was like this the rest of the day. Doon followed along as they looted the homes and businesses of his former friends and neighbors. As they left each place, kicking aside the mess of scattered and broken belongings, Doon said a silent apology to the people who had lived there. They would never know their homes had been robbed and wrecked, nor would they know he had watched it being done. But even so, he felt sorry and guilty. He hated being part of this.
    At the end of the day, the Troggs gathered around the fire in Harken Square. They all seemed excited. Doon saw that they were building the fire up higher than usual and that they’d set up a sort of rack at the edge of it—two piles of stones with a metal rod stretched between them, a curtain rod, maybe, or a pipe.
    Yorick slouched up to his father. “Shall we go get it, Pa?” he said.
    “Sure,” said Trogg. “You go, too, Kanza, and help him. I’ll stay here.”
    Yorick and Kanza went to the wagon loaded with the day’s loot and tossed it all out onto the ground. Then they went off down Gilly Street, pulling the wagon behind them.
    Doon became aware of Minny, standing a little distance away, saying something in a trembly voice. Trogg noticed her, too. “What, Min?” he said. “Speak up!”
    She took a step forward and murmured some more, holding out a folded black cloth.
    “Oh, the lightcap,” said Trogg. “Well done!” He strode over and took it from her and handed it to Doon. “This is for you,” he said. “Get one of those candles over there and stick it in this part.” He pointed to the tube at the front.
    Doon fetched a candle from a box of them behind the armchair. He held it to the fire to light it, and he put it in the cap and then put the cap on his head. It fit well and gave a useful amount of light. He wondered why no one in Sparks had yet thought up such a thing.
    “Kanz and Yorick will be gone awhile,” Trogg said. “In the meantime, you can help us get ready.” He picked up a bucket and handed it to Doon. “We’re going to need some more water. See that brown door over there? The one on the corner?” He pointed at an apartment on Gilly Street. “That’s ours. Go upstairs and fill the bucket.”
    Doon was puzzled. “Upstairs? But—”
    “Aha,” said Trogg. “I know what you’re thinking. When I first came to this place, I couldn’t figure out where the water came from, either. I knew they must have had it. They had sinks; they had bathtubs. But where did the water come from?”
    From the river, thought Doon.
    “It was a good thing we’d brought some bottles of water with us,” Trogg said, “because it took us a couple days of exploring to find it. But we did. You wouldn’t believe what we found.”
    Doon waited.
    “An underground river!” Trogg said. “Yes, it’s true. We had to go down about a hundred steps to get to it. Did quite a bit of unpleasant cleanup on the way.”
    “Cleanup?” said Doon.
    “Bodies,” said Trogg. “Must have been some sort of stampede there, maybe as people were leaving the city. Quite a few dead folks lying around. We dragged them down the steps and shoved them in the river, and it swept them away.” Trogg shook his head, wrinkling his nose in disgust.
    Bodies, Doon thought. Trogg seemed to think of them as garbage. But they were citizens of Ember, people he’d probably known, caught in the panic of the last-minute exit. Inwardly, he winced in pain, thinking of it—but Trogg was going on. “So the river,” he said. “When this city was in working order, the water was