“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you-”
But I was talking to thin air. He’d gone. Once more he’d run like Satan himself was after his ass.
Only this time I saw that he ran toward a group of people who stood at the junction of the street. They weren’t moving, but they were taking a close interest in me. I noticed, as well, that they were armed.
The kid ran straight at them to stand alongside a guy who carried a pump-action shotgun. My instincts had nearly steered me wrong with the kid earlier, and maybe I was a fool to put my trust in gut instinct again, but I put my hands out at either side of me to show that I wasn’t carrying a gun. Then I moved slowly for-ward. I figured the time had come to speak to someone.
Sixteen
“We can’t give you food.”
The girl with black eyes told me this as we sat by the fire that crackled away like crazy in the yard of a house. When I say she had black eyes I don’t mean that she’d been in a fight. No… it was the color of the irises. They were this pure onyx black. A lustrous, glossy black. Believe me, I’d not seen eyes like those before. I found myself staring as she talked to me. But then, there was something pretty compelling about her. She had a thin waif face and a body to match. Her clothes were clean, considering, while her long hair was as glossy and as dark as her beautiful eyes. I put her age at around eighteen.
“We lost what was left of our food two days ago. The last place we were staying got jumped by a bunch of hornets. We were lucky to escape with our skins.”
“Hornets?” I shook my head, not understanding.
“Hornets. You know?”
I shrugged.
“Bread bandits?”
“Oh, right.” I nodded.
Now she shook her head. “Have you been in hiber-nation? No one’s called the bad guys bread bandits in months.” Her face there in the firelight never broke into a smile once. In fact the whole party wore grim expressions. She continued with a nod at the boy. “He got so shaken up that he ran off the moment we got here. We’d been looking for him for hours when we saw the pair of you in the street.”
“Has he told you what happened?”
“He said you found a hive in an apartment. That you torched the place.” Her lips gave a little twist, the closest to a smile I’d seen on her face. “Good work. The filthy bastard deserved it.”
A guy of around twenty in a cowboy hat picked up on the conversation. “What we don’t understand is why there weren’t any hornets guarding it. They don’t usually desert a hive.”
I frowned. “You’re losing me again. Hive? What is this hive? The kid used the word after we set fire to it.”
“Sweet Jesus, you have been out of circulation.” The girl pushed another piece of wood into the flames. “Where did you say this town was where you lived? On the moon?”
Yeah, she was joking. But still not smiling.
I shrugged. “We keep to ourselves.”
“You can say that again.”
“But it sounds like a nice place to be,” chipped in one of the others. “You say you’ve got electricity? Clean water? Food?”
“We must have gotten lucky.”
“I’ll say.”
“I’m going to get a hold of a handful of dirt from your town and keep it in my pocket.” The kid gave a grim smile. “Maybe some of your luck will rub off on me.”
“A decent meal would be pretty good right now.”
“Pretty good? We’d be in damn heaven.”
I’d got questions that could do with buddying up with some answers, but suddenly this dog-eared group of people around the fire started shooting one-liners at each other.
“Give me beefsteak with mayonnaise.”
“Mayonnaise?”
“I don’t know why. I just want to eat mayonnaise. I haven’t tasted it in months.”
“Give me the beefsteak. A couple of pounds medium rare would work some magic for me.”
“With a dozen beers.”
“And an order of fries.”
“Golden fries.”
“Give me a loaf of bread. That’s all I need right now.”
“Coffee and a cigarette. It’s weeks since I had a cigarette.”
“You don’t smoke.”
“I did once. Until the crap hit the fan.”
“See? Every apocalypse has a silver lining. If you don’t smoke you’ll live to be a hundred.”
“Yeah. Live to a hundred in some shack with nothing to eat but dirt and leaves, and nothing to drink but ditch water.”
“Wait,” I said, breaking into their fantasy food orgy. “Tell me more about these hives.”
“Do you mind, man?” The guy sounded annoyed. “We were talking about food.”
“Seeing as we don’t have the real thing,” added the black-eyed girl.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But there’s something been happening in the outside world. Something important that I don’t know anything about. Listen, I find a room full of pink goo that has body parts floating in it that are still alive like… like fish in a damn fish tank! In my book, that’s important!”
“And so is mayonnaise.” The guy in the cowboy hat growled, angry now. “Or do you think we’re all going to get fat dining on fucking fresh air?”
“No, I’m sorry, but-”
“Sorry my ass, you-”
Another broke in, “We take you off the street, give you protection, give you a place by the fire we made, and you get ticked off when we talk about something we want to talk about.”
The boy spat on the ground. “Yeah, we never have enough to eat. You don’t know what it’s like to be so hungry you feel as if your brains are on fire.”
I spoke as patiently as I could. “All I want to know is, what are these hives you’re talking about? Should I be warning the people in the town where I live?” Some might have said I should warn my people. But Sullivan wasn’t my people. I didn’t like nine tenths of them. I bore it no allegiance. Yet I knew young children still lived in the town. And then were was Ben and a few others who were decent, including Lynne’s husband and daughters. As for the rest, well, damn them. I didn’t give so much as a flying fuck.
“You really want to know about the hives?” The girl looked at me with those eyes that were like black jewels.
“Of course I do. Are they dangerous? Are there lots of them? Should we be searching for them and burning them to crap? I mean, if we’re-”
“Wait.” She held up her hand to stop me. “You want answers from us?”
“If these things are dangerous, we need to-”
“Just one moment there.” Again she interrupted. “You know the old saying, you don’t get anythin’ for nothin’?”
I nodded.
“Then,” she said, standing, “get us food and we’ll tell you what we know.”
I looked at those thin, half-starved faces. “OK,” I agreed after a moment. “It’s going to take a little time.”
“We don’t have planes to catch, buddy,” growled the guy in the cowboy hat. “Take your time.”
