She never thought she'd be so happy to be outside the city. She was not a country girl, had never fallen in love with horses, and didn't know shit about camping, but she thought she could get used to it.
"Alright, lemme hear your ABC's," she said to Hope.
Amanda had taken to quizzing Hope and teaching her as they walked. The girl, despite her obvious intelligence, didn't seem to know half the stuff that she expected a five-year-old to know. She supposed her parents had been forced to be lax in their education of her. It's hard to take the time to teach a kid when you constantly have to scavenge just to keep them alive.
Hope, in her tiny little voice, ran through the ABC's quickly. She knew the song and didn't miss any letters.
Ahead of her, Amanda caught a snatch of a conversation between Gregg and Masterson. "Listen, man. The rebellion is the bad guys. The empire is the good guys."
Gregg scoffed at him, wiping at the sweat in his beard. "You're crazy. They were blowing up planets."
"So would you say America is the bad guys for dropping atom bombs?"
"All I'm saying is that you can't go around busting up planets and call yourselves the good guys," Gregg said.
Masterson laughed, "But what if you can end the whole battle with that one weapon? What if you could stop all wars just with the threat of blowing up another planet?"
"That's just like being held hostage, man. No one wants that."
"All I'm saying is what the hell were they rebelling against in the first place? Cool outfits? A little order, a little structure? The rebellion comes off like a bunch of pissant terrorists in my book."
"They were fighting for good!"
"They were religious fanatics. The force, Jedi. Come on now. That's just some crazy cult shit right there."
"What are they talking about?" Hope asked.
"They're just talking about an old movie," Amanda said.
"Oh, I remember those. I used to watch Shrek. That was my favorite."
Amanda only half-listened as Hope went through the plot points of Shrek with a focus on the finer points of the film that only a child's mind could point out.
The road ahead of them was long. To their side, grass fields buried under snow raced away to meet the edge of the forest. Above the treetops, they could see the shadow of mountains in the distance, purple in the haze. There were a few houses dotted about, but they were set far back from the road. For now, the road was open, with nary a stalled vehicle in sight.
There were no dead out here, and they could just walk. The sun shone down on the snow, melting it. It only came up to her ankle now, but she wondered how far the sun's power would reach. As they climbed in elevation, at what point would the heat of the sun stop being strong enough to melt the snow? Would they come to a point in the mountains impassable with snow?
"This is the life!" Brown said off to her right. He walked with his hands on his head, stretching his shoulders and his back. "Ain't got no dead things breathing down my neck. I got food in my bag, bullets in my gun, and nothing but open road for miles to see."
"It ain't gonna last, you dumb sumbitch," Whiteside said.
"Why you gotta be like that?" Brown asked, genuinely annoyed with Whiteside.
Whiteside looked at Brown, and for once, he actually seemed to understand that he was being a dick. "Sorry," Whiteside said.
Brown marched on, sullenly.
Hope finished her recital of the movie Shrek, and Amanda tried to figure out how to teach her math. She didn't know how important it would be. She had never really found much use for it. The only real math she had ever needed was simple addition and subtraction, and how to figure out a tip. But there was no tipping now, no restaurants or waitstaff to tip. If the world ever came back, she didn't think tipping would come back with it. In the end, she held out her hands to Amanda, and they played a simple game of addition and subtraction with their fingers, Hope coughing occasionally.
D.J. looked on. Rudy had taken a liking to the boy, and he frequently picked the child up and carried him on his shoulders. They went well together. For Amanda's part, she felt like she was pulling teeth getting Hope to like her. The little girl didn't dislike her, but she tended to stay where her brother was, watching over him, making sure he didn't do something wrong. She was like a sheepdog watching after a flock of one. She supposed the behavior had been instilled in her by her parents. If Amanda were to bet money on it, she guessed it would always be like that for her, even once they were grown and strong enough to stand on their own.
It took her a second to realize that there was another sound besides the chatter of the soldiers and the crunch of slushy snow underneath boots. "Do you guys hear that?" Amanda called out.
They stopped and listened. Then they all heard it—the sound of a motor.
****
"Get off the road," Tejada snapped, "into those ditches."
Tejada pulled his handgun from its holster and scanned the area around them. He watched Rudy and Amanda snatch up the kids like they were spare baggage. He ran behind them, his head turning left and right as the noise grew louder. It wasn't just one engine; there were multiple. He could pick out the distinct sounds. They
