He didn't know what that meant. Was she going to kill him? He didn't think she would kill him. That would be suicide with the Annies outside and the others down the hall. His brain started working again, after the momentary shock of being taken unaware by something that he had assumed was an Annie. He could hear Tejada's voice in his head, saying something salty about assuming.
"You're not going to shoot me," he said.
"Oh yeah, what makes you say that?"
"Because you'd be dead if you did. You'd bring more Annies–"
"Annies? Is that what you call them? The dead?"
"Yeah."
"That's cute. Just give me your food, and I'll get the hell out of here."
"What happened to your shopping cart?"
"There was too many of 'em. They knocked it over. I couldn't get away fast enough. I had to leave it all in the snow."
"So, you followed us?"
"I just need the food."
"We have plenty of food," he said. "Why don't you just stick with us?" He didn't know why, but he liked the idea. Maybe he liked her. Even with a shotgun placed on the back of his neck, he realized that he didn't mind. He hadn't really talked to a woman in some time. No one on the Nike campus had been interested in his overtures.
"It's not just for me. You think I needed all that food for myself? If I was that stupid, I would have been dead a long time ago."
"There's more of you," he mused. Then he was dizzy, his head swimming. When the world righted itself, he realized that he now had a thundering headache, and he was on his knees.
The woman was stuffing food into her own sack. He tried to say something, say anything, but his tongue seemed to have grown three sizes bigger in his mouth. He watched her cinch up her own backpack and throw it on with practiced ease. She gave him one last look, and he saw the guilt in her eyes, but the set of her jaw let him know that she wasn't going to change her mind about what she was doing.
"Stay safe," she said.
Walt balled his hands into fists and placed them on the ground. He eased forward, leaning on his arms. When he was able to lift his head again, she was gone. He managed to push himself to his knees, and he stumbled to the window. She broke a trail in the distance, and he wondered how he was going to tell Tejada that he had just been robbed at gunpoint. The child inside said, "Don't tell him. He'll never know otherwise." But he knew Tejada. The moment he didn't pull out food and eat with the rest of them, he would have to spill it all anyway.
Leaning on the wall to keep his balance, he stumbled to the back of the office building and prepared to face his destiny… a square-jawed, square-headed destiny.
Chapter 11: Ordered Not to Die
"From now on, two people are keeping watch. I must be slipping in my old age. I don't give a fuck if we're locked in a bank vault, two of you motherfuckers are staying awake."
"You want us to go after her?" Whiteside asked, a strange leer on his face.
Tejada didn't like that look. He knew what was on Whiteside's mind. He was reacting in the only way he had ever been taught to, with violence and anger. Tejada wouldn't let Whiteside catch the girl. He wouldn't be responsible for that type of situation. But the question did bear examination. You want us to go after her?
Did he? The answer should have been "No." But there was something else there, a part of himself that he thought had been destroyed in the Target parking lot along with Day, a sense of compassion and responsibility. He had sworn himself to protect a country that no longer existed anymore. He had sworn to protect the citizens and their freedom, sometimes even from themselves. He had lost a man because of it. But wasn't that what their job? No, those were the old ways.
"I'll go after her," Walt said.
Tejada's head snapped up. He wasn't angry at the boy until just now. "You can barely stand on your own two feet. You couldn't chase your own tail without falling over. Now go sit over there, and I don't want to hear another word out of you."
Walt slunk over to the corner and plopped down awkwardly, pointedly ignoring the looks of the other soldiers. Even Rudy and Amanda were looking at him. He had never felt so goddamned weak in his life.
"She said there were others," Rudy said.
Tejada ran his hand over his scalp. The hairs did not poke at his hand as they should. This meant his hair was getting too long. Maybe he was slipping.
"I can do it," Allen said. "Gimme Brown and Epps, and we can check it out."
Goddamn it. They seem to want to do it.
"And what are you proposing to do?" Tejada asked.
"Keep out of sight. Use my rifle. Make sure she gets home alright."
"No, it's too great of a risk," he said.
"What if she has children?" Amanda asked. "What if she's out here trying to provide for her kids."
Children… he silently cursed Amanda. She had known the one damn thing that would break him down. Say what you would about the woman that had robbed Walt, but if she was a mama bird and there were a couple of baby birds waiting back at the nest for her, well, that wasn't something that he could have on his conscience, and he was already spending most of his spare time digesting Day's death, among others.
"I must be out of
