His full name was William Hopkins, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with his right eye, thank you very much, but that never seemed to matter. Since the accident when he was a kid, everyone called him Blind Billy.

The accident had clouded his left eye, and touched him a bit in the head, according to his mother. Whenever he had heard his mother go on about the little boy he used to be, the one that would cuddle with her, and pick flowers for girls, he thought that that Billy sounded like kind of a pussy.

What the accident had actually done, according to Billy, was make him an excellent Finder of Things.

Billy understood what fear was, or at least what it was supposed to be. A thing could hurt you, so you felt something in your chest that made you want to stay away from it. He understood that, but he didn't think he felt it the same way other people did. That was why when his friend David had bet him that he wouldn't pick up a rattlesnake, all those years ago, Billy had not only won David's shiny switchblade, but realized his true calling.

Billy could go places other people couldn't, and places other people wouldn't, and find just about anything,

So when someone really, really wanted something, they told Jake, and Jake would find Billy in one of his hidey holes (Jake was himself a pretty good Finder of Things.)

The list Jake brought him this time was very specific.

A scalpel from a real Before hospital. That was easy enough, but had necessitated a trip to the Ruins. By most people's reckoning he nearly died three times, but it didn't bother Billy much. He was good at the Ruins.

Hair and fingernails from a corpse that was rotting in the dust. That was no problem. The ground was full of bodies out here. He found one marked with a white stone. He had to dig, of course, but Billy liked digging. Digging was how you made hidey holes. He had cut off hunks of hair with a knife, and pulled out her nails with pliers. He twisted off the head, and carried it with him for a few days. When that got boring, he tossed it away.

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For the third item, Billy had to travel far out in the Breaks to a little stream. He had turned over a big rock, right where they said it would be, and the ground underneath was shiny and blue. They wanted any pebbles that were touching the blue part, so Billy scooped them up and put them in his pocket. He felt sick all the way home.

The last was the easiest. He waited an hour in the hot sun for another man to show up. The other man had put something in his hand. It was a long hair, like from a girl. It was purple. At first Billy thought it was a joke, and there was nearly a fight. In the end, he had shrugged, and left with the hair.

He approached the cabin with his haul. He was getting antsy for his payment. Billy only worked for Juice (he could find anything else he needed.) Specifically, he only worked for bad batch Juice.

You didn't know it was a bad batch at first. Only after a couple of people died did you really know. After that, you pretty much had to get rid of it. Word got around that Blind Billy actually wanted the bad batch Juice, and, just like that, deals started getting made. Jake once said that he was his own cottage industry. He had laughed when he said it, and Billy thought he was making fun of him. Jake didn't know how close he was to losing an eye that day, but in the end Billy figured they would just start calling him Blind Jake, and that would get too confusing.

When you guzzled a bad batch, a really bad batch, it put you on your back for days. It was like being dead, except for the dreams. Billy was never very imaginative, but on a bad batch he had the most wonderful dreams. Full of dark, wriggling, angry things.

Billy had been hearing about a really special batch, and his payment for this haul was two liters of it. Also, he would get to spend an hour with one of the girls who worked with Vance Halladay. He'd been banned from Halladay's place due to a series of incidents, but if Alex with Malice said he could, prissy little Vance wasn't going to say squat.

He was met at the door by a man with thin hair and glasses. Billy didn't know his name, but he had seen him around. Alex with Malice paid him to build things. Things that weren't very nice.

This guy was one of the few people that made Billy nervous. At least, that's what Jake said the squirmy feeling in your stomach was called. Nervous. It was the way the guy looked at people. Like he wondered what you looked like on the inside.

The guy held out his hand, but Billy wasn't giving up the haul until he saw his payment. Billy stared back until the guy rolled his eyes and went to get it. While he was gone, Billy could see further into the house, past an open door.

There was a girl tied to a chair. Billy thought she was probably 15. She had long honey hair. Pretty. And afraid.

When the guy got back, Billy asked if he could have a turn with her, instead of with one of the Halladay girls. The guy had practically snarled at him, and the squirmy feeling got bigger. Billy snatched his payment and left.

He put about fifty paces between himself and the cabin before he stopped and opened the package, and looked at the two glass bottles. He brought them up to his nose and sniffed. They smelled moldy and pungent, just like a bad batch should. Strong.

He'd be lucky to survive.

Blind Billy smiled.

It was going to be a good few days.