Apocalypsis 04 - Haven

marked. Handing it over to me, she pointed to the last two entries. “Read them for yourself. I translate them and then burn the notes so no one can put two and two together and figure out the code.”
    I read the first one:
    Bad penny in the cans and wings. Watch your feed.
    Then I read the next:
    All is well. Sending friends. Please welcome them in.
    The words - bad penny - made me sick to my stomach. “So what’s the deal?” I asked Jenny. “What do these mean?”
    “Well, that’s the thing. That first one is more like our usual message. There are codes inside the codes. But I don’t know what they mean by bad penny. Cans are usually canners.”
    Now I wasn’t just sick, I was dizzy too. “Bad penny is Gail. That’s what I always used to call her. I said that to Kirsten one time.”
    “Watch your feed?” asked Paci. “Is that code?”
    Jenny shook her head. “Wings means the birds themselves. Their feed is their food. That’s all I can figure out. And the second one looks fine to you, I know, but that’s not like any message I’ve ever seen.”
    “Did you ever get anymore about Bodo?” I asked, suddenly fearing for all my friends who’d had contact with that Bad Penny.
    “Just the one saying he’d arrived and then the one saying he was going to the Keys. That’s it.”
    I nodded.
    “So do you think someone was telling us that Gail is with the canners and did something to the bird feed?” asked Paci.
    Jenny nodded. “Maybe.”
    I walked over and looked at the feed. “Does she mean this feed?”
    “That’s the same batch we started with,” said Jenny. “She didn’t know anything about it when we began, and then she was always just trying to get in here and learn the codes. She never touched the birds or their food.”
    “Why was she so damn interested in the codes?” I asked. “It’s not like she was trying to fit in any other way. Why fit in with the birds?”
    “Do you want to know what I think?” asked Jenny in a small voice.
    “Of course,” said Paci.
    “Yeah, speak up,” I agreed. “This is freaking me out.”
    “I think that she was trying to learn the codes so she could use them against us.”
    “What makes you say that?” asked Paci.
    “Because she never had anything nice to say about anybody. She was angry that she got turned away from here and the treehouse. She was bitter about being rejected.”
    “It was her own damn fault,” said Paci.
    “Yes, but she never saw that. She thought that everyone was stuck up. That’s what she always said. So when you sent her to the Amazons, I think she worked to get in with the birds there, too. See that entry?”
    She pointed to another line a few above the messages I’d just read.
    Greasy flea on the birds. Pest. Got any remedy?
    “Greasy flea?” I asked.
    Jenny shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. “You know how her hair is always greasy and stringy … they call her a greasy flea, I guess.”
    “What did you answer them?”
    “My answer?” She shrunk down so that her head was practically resting on her shoulders, her neck disappearing.
    “Yessss …,” prompted Paci.
    “I told them: Trial by error.”
    “Oh boy,” I said, smiling at the cleverness of it. “I hope she never read that.”
    “If they translate their messages like we do and keep them in a book, then she did. But whether she’ll know there’s a code in a code is another thing. Looks like she doesn’t.”
    “Why do you say that?” I asked, looking down at the book again.
    “That second message wasn’t sent by the regular code-keeper. It’s too plain. In regular English. We never send codes like that or they’d be too easy to figure out.”
    Paci took the book from me and studied it for a little while. “You’re right. All these are just a bunch of goofy stuff if you don’t have the context.”
    I put two and two together. “So that means if the code says ‘friends are coming welcome them in’, and it wasn’t the code keeper who sent it …”
    “And it was Gail or one of her friends who sent it …,” added Paci, sounding just as sickened as I felt.
    “Then you’d better get ready for someone not very friendly to be coming to the gates very soon,” finished Jenny. “Someone you don’t want to let in.”
    Paci and I took one look at each other and ran for the front of the building.
    I yelled as I went. “Jenny! Send a message to anyone you can! Tell them you think the EWS has been compromised at the Amazon