“Like Lucas,” Ethan says below his breath.
“Yeah,” I say. But there have been others. And I’m sure that Ethan has lost plenty of people too.
A hint of movement, a shadow maybe, passes by a wall down an alley like a whisper. “Look,” I say. “Did you see that? Across the street.”
“What was it?” Ethan asks.
“I thought I saw something move.”
Ethan grips his baseball bat tightly, his eyes fixed on the buildings across from us. I hold the handgun in front of me and I switch the safety off. I don’t have an extra magazine, and it’s been a while since I’ve practiced. As I’ve said, Lucas didn’t like to travel with guns, but on occasion we would find ourselves with one. I take a few steps forward and Ethan follows behind.
“If it’s a lone greyskin…” Ethan begins.
“I’ll let you take it out,” I interrupt. I know the procedure of fighting greyskins. Use a gun as a last resort — a quiet kill is a quiet escape.
As we scan the street in front of us, I see nothing and I start to wonder if my mind was playing tricks on me. But if I did see something then it wouldn’t have been a greyskin, because a greyskin never hides. They are too dumb to hide. I take a couple of more steps forward when I hear a clicking noise to my left. I point my gun toward the noise and what I see makes my stomach drop.
Two men stand in front of us, rifles pointed at our heads.
“Put it down,” one of them says.
“We don’t want any trouble,” I say. “We’re just looking for some fuel.”
“There’s no fuel here,” the other says.
“You raiders?” Ethan asks.
The two men are silent.
That’s when I hear more movement to my right where I first thought I saw a shadow. There are three more people standing with guns pointed at us. For a brief second I think that these people are the same raiders from yesterday, but they aren’t. And there’s no Scarecrow.
“There was a third,” one of them says.
“He’s looking for a tube to siphon gas,” I say. My hands are shaking, leaving me little confidence for a clear shot at any of them.
“Just set the gun on the ground. And you, the bat.”
I hear the bat fall to the asphalt behind me and I know Ethan has given up. “Just do it,” Ethan whispers to me.
“They’re going to kill us,” I say.
“Not if you drop your gun,” one of the men says.
I bend down and set the gun on the ground, my hands still shaking. “What do you want with us?” I ask.
“Foley is our territory,” says one of the men to my right. He has white, pale skin and red hair and he seems about as nervous as I do.
“We are travelers,” Ethan says. “We’re trying to get to a town far north of here but we’re almost out of gas.”
“We’ve got all the gas,” the redhead says. “Best you just move on.” His eyes instantly light up as he sees Gilbert behind us. I turn just in time to see him take cover behind the SUV, his rifle trained on the redhead.
“Put your weapons down!” Gilbert yells out. “I swear I’m not afraid to go down fighting.”
“There is no need for bloodshed,” the redhead says. “Just put down your gun and drive away from here.”
They clearly aren’t raiders. If they were, they would have already tried to kill us to see what supplies we might have. If they were looking for food, they would be out of luck. But if they were looking for…weapons! Everyone wants weapons.
“We’re willing to make a trade!” I blurt out.
“We aren’t doing anything until your friend here puts down his gun,” the redhead says.
I turn and glare at Gilbert. His jaw is clenched and he looks back at me like I’m one of the enemies, but he knows we will all die if he doesn’t give up. He stands from his crouch and tosses the rifle to the ground, glaring at me the whole time.
But I ignore him and turn back to the redhead. “Now will you be willing to talk?”
“I don’t know what you might have to offer,” he answers, gun still pointed at Gilbert. “We are a fairly small group with few resources.”
“But you have fuel,” I say. “And we have weapons.”
He swallows and looks at me, but he says nothing.
“We need the weapons far less than we need fuel,” I say.
“What are you doing?” Gilbert says through grinding teeth.
“We have rifles, handguns, and plenty of ammunition,” I continue. “All we ask is for a full tank of gas and a bit of food for the road.”
I am met with a long silence. Redhead and a few of his men whisper at each other so we can’t hear them.
“We need those weapons,” Gilbert says to me.
I turn my head to see Gilbert’s face twisted into a mix of anger and fear. “Not more than we need to get to Crestwood. You said it yourself, we could get there by the end of the day if we had a full tank. We won’t need the weapons there.”
The redhead calls out to me. “Is your group in full agreement?” he asks.
My eyes are fixed on Gilbert but doesn’t look at me so I turn to the redhead. “Yes.”
“We want to see the weapons.”
“How do we know you won’t just shoot us and take them?” Gilbert asks.
“Because we aren’t animals,” the redhead says. “We aren’t raiders. We’re just trying to protect our people here.”
Gilbert grits his teeth a couple of more times then walks to the back of the SUV and opens the back hatch. He steps away from it, his eyes angry as if he’s almost about to burst. “Take a look for yourself.”
The redhead motions for a couple of his men to follow while the others keep their guns pointed on us. They rummage through the back of the SUV, talking excitedly about the prospect.
“You would trade all this for a tank of gas?” the redhead asks, walking away from the SUV.
“And some food,” I say.
The redhead stands there for a moment. The others around us shift from side-to-side, and, for the moment, all is quiet until he finally looks up and nods. “I want you three to stay close together and keep your hands where we can see them. Leave the keys in the SUV.”
We stand in the middle of the street, twenty feet away from a school with three men pointing a gun at each of us. The redhead, whose name we learned is Walter, left us behind to go into the school to talk to someone about us.
“This is just great,” Gilbert mutters. “We came in for gas, and now we’re held hostage, forced to give up our weapons. We should have never let you and your boyfriend join us.”
“Shut up,” Ethan says. “We might not have gotten any fuel without Waverly.” He looks my way and I give him the slightest, thankful smile.
Gilbert doesn’t say anything else as we wait a few more minutes for Walter to return with a couple of new faces beside him. The man on his left has dark hair and a gaunt face, and he’s looking at us with suspicious eyes. The man on Walter’s right is fat and bald, but for the chops along the sides of his face, forming into a thick mat of hair at his chin. Walter introduces the man on the left as Barry, and the man on the right as Hank.
Walter tells his men to stop pointing their guns at us and smiles apologetically. “Barry’s going to put fuel in your vehicle while Hank here will take you to get some food for your journey,” he says. “I will call for you as soon as everything is in order.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“It’s a business transaction,” Walter says.
“Shady business,” Gilbert says. “We’re getting ripped off.”
“Oh I don’t know about that,” Hank belts out with a laugh. “I’ve got some mighty fine food in my storeroom. You all follow me.”
Walter nods at us and Hank leads us up the steps and through the front of the school. As we walk through the hallways, we see lockers lining the walls with classrooms in between. Occasionally we will see people look up at us as we walk by, some of them more concerned than others. All the while, Hank carries on about their location.