“Ourselves,” I said. “What else is there?”
She turned away in disgust, then turned back. “Do we have to join your cult if we travel with you?”
“No.”
“All right then!” She turned her back and walked ahead of me as though she’d won something.
I raised my voice just enough to startle and projected it at the back of her head. I said, “We risked ourselves for you today.”
She jumped, but refused to look back.
I continued. “You don’t owe us anything for that. It isn’t something you could buy from us. But if you travel with us, and there’s trouble, you stand by us, stand with us. Now will you do that or not?”
Allie swung around, stiff with anger. She stopped right in front of me and stood there.
I didn’t stop or turn. It wasn’t a time for giving way. I needed to know what her pride and anger might
drive her to. How much of that apparent hostility of hers was real, and how much might be due to her pain? Was she going to be more trouble than she was worth?
When she realized that I meant to walk over her if I had to, that I would do it, she slid around me to walk beside me as though she had intended to do that all along.
“If you hadn’t been the ones to dig us out,” she said, “we wouldn’t bother with you at all.” She drew a deep, ragged breath. “We know how to pull our own weight. We can help our friends and fight our enemies. We’ve been doing that since we were kids.”
I looked at her, thinking of the little that she and her sister had told us about their lives: prostitution, pimp father… . Hell of a story if it were true. No doubt the details would be even more interesting. How had they gotten away from their father, anyway? They would bear watching, but they might turn out to be worth something.
“Welcome.” I said.
She stared at me, nodded, then walked ahead of me in long quick strides. Her sister, who had dropped to walk near us while we were talking, now walked faster to join her. And Zahra, who had dropped back to keep an eye on the sister, grinned at me and shook her head. She went up to join Harry who was leading the group.
Bankole came up beside me again, and I realized he had gotten out of the way as soon as he saw trouble between Allie and me.
“One fight a day is enough for me,” he said when he saw me looking at him.
I smiled. “Thank you for standing by us back there.”
He shrugged. “I was surprised to see that anyone else cared what happened to a couple of strangers.”
“You cared.”
“Yes. That kind of thing will get me killed someday. If you don’t mind, I’d like to travel with your group, too.”
“You have been. You’re welcome.”
“Thank you,” he said, and smiled back at me. He had clear eyes with deep brown irises— attractive eyes. I like him too much already. I’ll have to be careful.
Late today we reached Salinas, a small city that seemed little touched by the quake and its aftershocks. The ground has been shuddering off and on all day. Also, Salinas seemed untouched by the hordes of overeager scavengers that we had been seeing since that first burning community this morning. That was a surprise. Almost all of the smaller communities we’d passed had been burning and swarming with scavengers. It was as though the quake had given yesterday’s quiet, plodding paupers permission to go animal and prey on anyone who still lives in a house.
I suspected that the bulk of the predatory scavengers were still behind us, still killing and dying and fighting over the spoils. I’ve never worked as hard at not seeing what was going on around me as I did today. The smoke and the noise helped veil things from me. I had enough to do dealing with Allie’s throbbing face and mouth and the ambient misery of the highway.
We were tired when we reached Salinas, but we had decided to walk on after resupplying and washing.
We didn’t want to be in town when the worst of the scavengers arrived. They might be calm, tired after their day of burning and stealing, but I doubted it. I thought they would be drunk with power and hungry for more. As Bankole said, “Once people get the idea that it’s all right-to take what you want and destroy the rest, who knows when they’ll stop.”
He got the old man down to a price he seemed to think was fair, then he called us over, “Any of you know how to handle a relic like this?” he asked.
Well, Harry and I did, and he had us look the rifle over. In the end, everyone had a look at it, some with obvious awkwardness and some with familiarity.
Back in the neighborhood, Harry and I had practiced with the guns of other households— rifles and shotguns as well as handguns. Whatever was legal back home was shared, at least in practice sessions.
My father had wanted us to be familiar with whatever weapons might be available. Harry and I were both good, competent shots, but we’d never bought a used gun. I liked the rifle, l liked the look and feel of it, but that didn’t mean much. Harry seemed to like it, too. Same problem.
“Come over here,” Bankole said. He herded us out of earshot of the old couple. “You should buy that gun,” he told us. “You took enough money off those four junkies to pay the price I got that guy to agree to. You need at least one accurate, long-range weapon, and this is a good one.”
“That money would buy a lot of food,” Travis said.
Bankole nodded. “Yes, but only living people need food. You buy this, and it will pay for itself the first time you need it. Anyone who doesn’t know how to use it, I’ll teach. My father and I used to hunt deer with guns just like this.”
