Sue said, “I’ll go get it.”
“No. Leave it sit for a while. Just to be safe. It may be bait.”
“Flies will get it. And ants and God knows what else.”
“That old man might have a partner sitting on the side of the hill with a scope on a rifle. He could put a bullet through your left eye if he wanted from that distance.”
“He sounded sincere. And nice.”
I scowled at her. “Are you willing to bet your life for a piece of fish for dinner?”
The twenty-two remained in my hand as I worked my way to the left, where a stand of vines and thorns hid me. The sun was setting, and the pan was in the open. There was no sight of him. Apparently, the man hadn’t wanted to get too close to us, either. It was fifty steps away. Only a madman would try to get it and he’d used the higher brush at the edge of the river to cover his retreat. However, I was hungry.
I sprinted from cover, moving most of the distance in a few seconds, zigged, and snatched the handle of the pan as I raced past where it sat. A zag and then another zig carried me safely into the dense foliage.
Sue was panting and her face stark white. She hissed at me like an angry snake, “I thought you said it was too dangerous.”
“You were hungry,” I said lamely.
“And what would have happened to me if you’d died out there?”
I averted my eyes as my hand reached for the fish, a slab that filled the frying pan from side to side. It was not hot but had been cooked with a few spices and tasted as good as any fish in history. Sue accepted a piece of fish and continued to stare daggers at me that I couldn’t avoid, especially since I knew she was not only pissed at me but correct for doing so. It had been a stupid reaction on my part.
Stupid is a word I found myself using a lot lately. Not only for me but for others. If people didn’t die from the flu, they do for something that was generally stupid—like delivering a pan full of fish to travelers armed with guns. Or travelers who took the bait from traps shaped like frying pans. Talking to strangers had become a life-threatening choice. Not talking to them, the same. Silence or avoidance could be taken as secretiveness and passive aggression.
A man or woman killing another human for a pan of salmon should be unthinkable. Maybe cavemen fought over a meal, but not for a long time, especially in America. Any perceived slight could bright out the knives, guns, or clubs.
Sue seemed to relax as she ate and wiped greasy her hands on her thighs. She said, “There must have been fifty motorcycles back there in Darrington. They were all better riders; it was easy to see you barely knew what to do. Why didn’t they come after us?”
It was a question I’d debated with myself because there were so many possible answers. It could have been because they were scared of me but that wasn’t it. The men were new to each other and probably didn’t even know each other’s names yet. They hadn’t bonded. Why would they risk their lives for people they didn’t know? Besides, most were drinking heavily, others were on drugs, some were probably passed out, and others were like the three who came after us. Pretenders. If one of the real bad-asses had jumped on a bike and called for the others to follow him, most would have joined in the chase like a wild roundup of mustangs a hundred years earlier.
Yes, they rode the big bikes and decked themselves out like the riders in those old movies. Freedom of the open road. Bands of brothers. But most of them were like my cousin who worked nine to five jobs and rode their hogs when their wives let them escape into fantasyland an hour or two before hauling the kids to a birthday party in the family minivan.
Not that the ones in Darrington were any better or worse than others. And certainly not that they couldn’t morph into genuine bad-asses in a matter of days, those that survived. But loyalty to each other hadn’t developed yet. Besides, we’d taken them by surprise.
From what little I saw, they had taken control of the entire town, probably had killed many locals, and sent others into hiding. The weak bikers wouldn’t last long. They’d say or do something and one of the others would knock him down. Maybe shoot him. Others would arrive in town on their hogs and with each passing day, the gang would weed out the weak and replace them with stronger, more vicious members.
Then another gang, or perhaps a group of veterans, or ex-police officers, would move in. Maybe a drug lord or minor CEO of a lumber company with lumberjacks to enforce their orders. The stronger groups would kill off the weaker ones and, in a year, only the strongest would be alive, maybe ten percent of those alive today. I’d made up the ten percent statistic, I think, but may have heard or read it somewhere. It sounded accurate.
To Sue, I said in answer to her question, “They didn’t care enough about us to chase us on slick streets, I guess. Too much trouble to run us down but you’re right, they could easily have caught up with us because this is the first big bike I’ve ever been on and couldn’t get it out of third gear for twenty minutes.”
She gave me a vexed look of disapproval. “We risked our lives so you could steal a motorcycle you didn’t know how to drive?”
“If you put it that way, yes.” I didn’t look away or flinch. It was important to me for her to understand my reasoning.
“Why? I’m just asking, not saying you shouldn’t have.”
She deserved the truth. “They would have followed our tracks in the snow back to the mine tunnel and killed us. If we had run somewhere else, they would have followed on their bikes ten times as fast as we could run and caught up with us in no time. At the moment, stealing the bike seemed the right thing to do.”
“You’ve never ridden one?”
“A little one my cousin had. It was a small dirt bike. This one is different, but not that much when you get right down to it.”
“Tomorrow, you need to teach me how to drive it.”
I barked a laugh and cut it off when I realized that not only was she serious, it was a good idea. Being fourteen didn’t mean she couldn’t drive. The world had changed. Any skill she learned might help her survive—and maybe me. I said, “Okay.”
“And shoot,” she added.
Darkness had fallen with light rain. We attempted to make a tent out of extra clothing, then decided to keep it dry for the morning. With our backs to a cedar tree trunk, we watched the down-sloped branches shed almost all the drizzle and we remained fairly dry. We fell asleep, our guns at our sides, ready for action.
In the morning, we ate the rest of the fish and placed the pan out in the open so the old man could locate it. A note of thanks or a small gift was in order, but we couldn’t think of what to leave. We put the bottles of wine inside the pan and hoped he had a corkscrew.
The drizzle had quit. Sue pulled the map of Washington out again. She spread it on the ground and stared at it as if the squiggly lines had shifted or changed. I scouted around the campsite, more to be alone and think than to find anything of value. When I arrived back, Sue was still kneeling and looking at it intently, her total attention focused on one area where her finger touched.
“See something of interest?” I asked, more for conversation than expecting an answer.
“Maybe.”
I went to her side. She moved her hand across everything east and south of Everett and the river. “No way across without being ambushed. It’s the same approaching Everett from the north.” She wiped her hand across part of the map north of Marysville where we were headed if we continued on the same road.