She really didn't require this much sleep, but the girl was sort of… saving up, not knowing what awaited her. Making sure she was unobserved, she began exploring a little, keeping the SUV in sight at all times.
The weather here was slightly warmer than in the place they'd left, and the snow had practically disappeared, just patches here and there. The SUV sat in the parking lot of a two-story U-shaped concrete building, with the Barretts' numbered door right in the middle of the bottom of the U. Only twenty or so cars occupied the large lot, and most of them had license plates from the state of Utah.
The girl found a glass door marked LOBBY, peered through and saw lights on, inside. She tried the door and found it unlocked; but when she opened it, a buzzer buzzed. Ducking back outside, behind a parked vehicle, Max watched through the window as a young blond man in a white shirt and tan pants came out of a rear room, looked over the counter at the door, shrugged, then went away again.
Beyond the counter, in the center of the lobby, Max saw a table with a large bowl of fruit in the center. Her stomach rumbled with anticipation. She looked again at the door with that annoying buzzer.
Her training had taught her that no obstacle was unconquerable. She considered the problem for what felt like a long time, her eyes darting to the fruit more often than she would have liked; she should have better control. What was she, a child? Finally, she decided there had to be another way in, and she started around the building to find it.
At the far end of the left upright part of the U, she found what she wanted: another door, this one accessible only by the insertion of a keycard; it didn't seem to have a human guard, and that alone would make it easier.
She retraced her steps to the Barretts' SUV, and searched the inside, looking for what she needed. She didn't find a screwdriver, but in the glove compartment she did come upon a small pocketknife.
Five minutes later she had the front cover off the keycard box, had crossed the wires and accessed the hall, then followed it to the lobby where her reward waited in the fruit bowl. After ducking back down the hall with the entire bowl, she quickly devoured two bananas and an orange, leaving the peels as evidence of the hungry animal who'd scavenged here.
Then Max explored long enough to find a bathroom and get a drink of water from the sink, before making her way back to the SUV, a banana and two apples still tucked in her arms.
She nibbled her fruit until finally Lucy and her mom showed up and Max slipped under the blanket, and then they were on the road again.
Lucy wanted to whisper, but Max shook her head, not wanting to risk it. Her belly full, this strange world seeming to the X5-unit surprisingly easily dealt with, Max disappeared under the blanket and slept, contentedly.
Eight hours later, when the vehicle finally stopped for good, and Lucy and her mom had disappeared again, Max climbed out of her hiding place to find herself in a land of sunshine, warmth, and palm trees.
Training videos had shown her country like this before, but it had been an abstraction— she'd never seen anything like it in person. As she stood outside the SUV, she let the sunshine bathe her face, hands, and legs. She couldn't recall ever being so warm in her life, and she loved it.
Max was standing before a small frame house, smaller than the one where she'd met Lucy; parked in the yard was the SUV, which stood between her and the street, a long, blacktop road with one-story houses lining either side for as far as she could see.
Though they were out of her view, Max heard kids laughing, somewhere. Thinking Lucy might be with them, she took one step before the sound of a woman's voice stopped her.
“You must be hungry.”
Max whirled to see Lucy's mom standing behind a screen door. “Uh… ”
A kind adult face, with echoes of Lucy's, bestowed a smile nearly as warm as the sunshine. “It's all right, honey— Lucy told me about your trouble.”
Max's first instinct was to run, just run; but the only other adult female she'd ever spoken to outside the gates of Manticore— Hannah— had helped her. And, like Hannah, this woman didn't seem upset with her— had called her “honey,” an apparently affectionate designation that the woman had also granted her daughter.
Right now, in fact, the woman held open the screen door for Max— held it open wide.
“Wouldn't you like to come in?” Lucy's mom asked, displaying a wide toothy smile. “Maybe get something to eat?”
Tentatively, Max approached the woman; getting her first close look at the “mom,” Max couldn't help wondering if all moms looked like this. Perhaps five foot five inches, and 125 pounds, with dark brown brown hair piled high, Lucy's mom had her daughter's wide blue eyes, full lips, and those same long eyelashes. She wore a pale blue dress with small pink flowers on it.
“I shouldn't,” Max finally managed.
“Look, Max… It is
isn't it?”
Max nodded.
“Is that short for Maxine?”
“I don't think so.”
The woman's smile lessened but did not disappear, and she still held that door open. “Look… Max. Lucy's told me you have nowhere else to go, and that the people you were staying with before will hurt you if they find you. Is that right?”
Another nod.
“Then you need a new place to live, don't you?”
Max looked down the street as if the answer might be there somewhere; but why would these almost identical houses hold any better answer than this one?
Finally, Max nodded a third time.
“Then… would you like to stay with us?”
She shrugged. She didn't know how to respond to that.
“Well, come in, dear… have some food, and we'll talk. Work it out.”
Max looked the other way, up the street, and found no potentially better answers in that direction, either. Haltingly, she took a step toward the house. With the screen door open, she could smell the aroma of roast beef as it wafted through the home, curling its finger invitingly…
The desire for a real meal overcame her misgivings and Max strode into the house.
The living room was small. Though bigger than Hannah's, this one was less immediately inviting. The smell of old cigarettes hung in the air; the source seemed to be a worn-looking overstuffed chair to her left, which had a couple of empty beer cans sitting on a table next to it, no doubt adding to the stale odor of the room.
Still, the aroma of the beef beckoned, overcoming the tobacco odor, and Max followed Lucy's mom into a small dining room to a wooden table with four matching chairs. Though the food looked the same as what she'd received at Manticore, it smelled much better: roast beef, carrots, mashed potatoes and gravy, and fresh-baked biscuits.
Lucy, looking guilty and perhaps apprehensive, sat on the far side of the table, and her mom moved toward the far end, pulling out the near-side chair for Max as she went by.
“Lucy's dad won't be here for dinner tonight,” the mom said. “He's working— he's a truck driver.”
Max nodded. She wondered if that meant he was like the man whose truck she'd hidden in.
“He'll be home tomorrow. Do you like roast beef, Max?”
Swallowing saliva, Max said, “Yes, very much.”
“Well, dig in. Lucy, give her a hand… Plenty to go 'round.”
Piling her plate high, Max dived in and thought that she'd never eaten anything that tasted this good.
“So, dear— were you born in Casper?”
Max turned toward the mom. “Casper?”
“You know— the town where you met Lucy?”
“No, I wasn't born there.” She said this with assurance, though inside herself, Max had doubts: since she'd known nothing of mothers and births before yesterday, who could say?
“Judging by what Lucy says,” the mom said, “and from that smock you're wearing, you escaped from an
