“Are those two okay?” I asked.
Harry nodded. “They’re scared and shaken up, but they’re all right. Everyone’s all right— except him and his friends.” He gestured toward the dead man.
There were three more dead lying nearby.
“There were some wounded,” Harry said. “We let them go.”
I nodded. “We’d better strip these bodies and go too.
We’re too obvious here from the highway.”
We did a quick, thorough job, searching everything except body cavities. We weren’t needy enough to do that yet. Then, at Zahra’s insistence, I did go behind the ruined house for a quick change of clothing. She took the gun from Harry and stood watch for me.
“You’re bloody,” she said. “If people think you’re wounded, they might jump you. This ain’t a good day to look like you got something wrong with you.”
I suspected that she was right. Anyway, it was a pleasure to have her talk me into something I already wanted so much to do.
I put my filthy, wet clothes into a plastic bag, sealed it, and stuffed it into my pack. If any of the dead had owned clothing that would fit me, and that was still in wearable condition, I would have thrown mine away.
As it was, I would keep them and wash them the next time we came to a water station or a store that permitted washing. We had collected money from the corpses, but it would be best to use that for necessities.
We had taken about twenty-five hundred dollars in all from the four corpses— along with two knives that we could sell or pass on to the two girls, and one gun pulled by a man Harry had shot. The gun turned out to be an empty, dirty Beretta nine millimeter. Its owner had had no ammunition, but we can buy that-maybe from Bankole. For that we will spend money.
I had found a few pieces of jewelry in the pocket of the man who attacked me— two gold rings, a necklace of polished blue stones that I thought were lapis lazuli, and a single earring which turned out to be a radio. The radio we would keep. It could give us information about the world beyond the highway. It would be good not to be cut off any longer. I wondered who my attacker had robbed to get it.
All four of the corpses had little plastic pill boxes hidden somewhere on them. Two boxes contained a couple of pills each. The other two were empty. So these people who carried neither food nor water nor adequate weapons did carry pills when they could steal them or steal enough to buy them. Junkies.
What was their drug of choice, I wondered. Pyro?
For the first time in days, I found myself thinking of my brother Keith. Had he dealt in the round purple pills we kept finding on people who attacked us?
Was that why he died?
A few miles later along the highway, we saw some cops in cars, heading south toward what must now be a burned out hulk of a community with a lot of corpses. Perhaps the cops would arrest a few late-arriving scavengers. Perhaps they would scavenge a little themselves. Or perhaps they would just have a look and drive away. What had cops done for my community when it was burning?
Nothing.
The two women we’d dug out of the rubble want to stay with us. Allison and Jillian Gilchrist are their names. They are sisters, 24 and 25 years old, poor, running away from a life of prostitution. Their pimp was their father. The house that had fallen on them was empty when they took shelter in it the night before. It looked long abandoned.
“Abandoned buildings are traps,” Zahra told them as we walked. “Out here in the middle of nowhere, they’re targets for all kinds of people.”
“Nobody bothered us,” Jill said. “But then the house fell on us, and nobody helped us either, until you guys came along.”
“You’re very fortunate,” Bankole told her. He was still with us, and walking next to me. “People don’t help each other much out here.”
“We know,” Jill admitted. “We’re grateful. Who are you guys, anyway?”
Harry gave her an odd little smile. “Earthseed,” he said, and glanced at me. You have to watch out for Harry when he smiles that way.
“What’s Earthseed?” Jill asked, right on cue. She had let Harry direct her gaze to me.
“We share some ideas,” I said. “We intend to settle up north, and found a community.”
“Where up north?” Allie demanded. Her mouth was still hurting, and I felt it more when I paid attention to her. At least her bleeding had almost stopped.
“We’re looking for jobs that pay salaries and we’re watching water prices,” I said. “We want to settle where water isn’t such a big problem.”
“Water’s a problem everywhere,” she proclaimed.
Then, “What are you? Some kind of cult or something?”
“We believe in some of the same things,” I said.
She turned to stare at me with what looked like hostility. “I think religion is dog shit,” she announced.
“It’s either phony or crazy.”
I shrugged. “You can travel with us or you can walk away.”
“But what the hell do you stand for?” she demanded.
“What do you pray to?
