Giving Willa the side-eye, Claire asks, “Then why do you talk to him?”
“Because I miss him and this helps me. Beau was my friend.”
“He was my friend too.”
“I know, Claire. He loved you very, very much,” Willa says, then straightens her legs. “Would you like a cuddle?”
For a moment, the girl looks like she’ll say no, or make a snarky remark more typical of a tween in the old world. Instead, she gives in to her need for affection and folds herself into Willa’s lap, her head nestled under Willa’s chin. Her hair smells of the wilds and sweat. Willa never knows how long Claire will want this, so she wraps her arms around the girl and gives her a firm squeeze.
That must be sufficient, because the girl sits up suddenly and stares right into Willa’s eyes in that disturbing way she does. “Beau wasn’t like the other men.”
“Which other men? You mean he was older than the ones at our camp?”
She shakes her head. “No, they aren’t like the other men either.”
A little alarm bell starts ringing somewhere in her head. “Which men, Claire? How are they different?”
Claire jerks her chin toward the trees. “The men by the river where the rocks are, just past the best fishing place.”
The alarms are loud now, mostly because that location is a good distance from their camp. It’s also off limits. Willa carefully puts her hands on the girl’s shoulders. Too quick, and she’ll dart away. It has to be done just right, so she knows Willa is being serious and her question requires an answer. “How do you know about those men, Claire?”
The girl shrugs dismissively. “I watch them too. They smell angry. Everything they do is angry. They’re waiting for something and that makes them even more angry.”
Willa’s heart sinks. There was always the chance that the men being where they were was a coincidence, that they would move on. There was always the hope that the male world beyond the mountain had figured out a way to move on for the time left to them.
That hope is dashed now. Claire can read the world like most people read books. Remarking on still-unacknowledged tensions between two people in the most embarrassing way possible is a common thing with this girl. She can tell who is irritated, who is having a bad period, and who is feeling sadly nostalgic. She doesn’t know the nostalgia centers on missing mocha lattes in the mornings or anything detailed, but she knows when they’re feeling sad.
“How do you know they smell angry, Claire?” she asks.
The girl shrugs her sharp shoulders. “It’s sour underneath, like baby shit after they first start eating food.”
Willa doesn’t correct the profanity. For Claire, poo is what happens when someone uses the outhouse. Shit is what happens when you’re too far from camp and have to go in the woods. It’s Beau’s fault. One too many times, he answered silly questions with, “Does a bear shit in the woods?”
The answer is also complete enough that Willa understands Claire is probably correct. With so few people in her world, this is Claire’s gift. She knows the people around her in ways adults never learned. So, if she says the men are waiting and smell angry, then they are.
Her bony butt is digging into Willa’s legs, but she merely scoots a little to relieve the pressure. She lets go of the girl’s shoulders, but says, “Claire, you need to answer my questions completely, now. It’s very important. How were you watching them? What did you see when you watched them?”
Sensing Willa’s discomfort, Claire hops up from her lap and plops herself back down across from her. “I want fish, but they’re too close, so I watched them to see if they would leave the fish area. They’re too loud though and the fish don’t like it.”
“You were that close to them? Claire, you can’t do that. It’s not safe.”
“I’m always safe.”
Willa shakes her head. The girl is at home in the wilds, but she’s also overconfident. “It only takes one slip for you to be seen or found. Think of everyone else here too. Your father.”
This gets through to her and her eyebrows draw together as she thinks. “Yes, Papa would be very angry and then he would be sad too.” Her features smooth and she smiles. “I won’t go there anymore.”
“Thank you, Claire. Now, tell me what you know so far.”
*****
Silence falls around the fire as they consider what Willa has told them about the group of men by the river. Everything Claire said has been duly passed on. Claire is observant, but she’s also not an adult with experience of the world before The Dying, so Willa has added her interpretations to the recitation.
They all know what it means.
Running a hand over her rounded belly, Bee says, “They’ll come for us eventually. If Claire says they’re looking at the cliff-side, then that’s because they think it’s unguarded and the best way to sneak up on us.”
“It is the best way and it is unguarded,” says another woman. “We should have been watching more carefully and not only at the paths or road.”
Bee holds up a hand to stop the argument before it starts. “Yes, we know that now. On the other hand, we’ve also now established that they’ll come from that direction and if we don’t make it obvious that we’re now guarding it, then we have the advantage. True?”
The other woman grunts agreement, but she still doesn’t look happy about it.
Willa knows this kind of discussion can get overly detailed and less useful very quickly, so she interrupts the flow and says, “The important thing is that they aren’t sure who we are yet. They don’t know if it’s women or men here. That’s the real advantage. The question is whether or not we risk confronting them first or do we wait to see if they attack?”
Bee is still rubbing her growing belly, her face pulled into
