“Interesting mix,” said Marcus. He looked at Jayden. “What’s the deal with this place?”
“Grunt salvage went through a few days ago,” said Jayden. “They logged a clinic, a pharmacy, and a ‘weather station,’ whatever that means. So now I get to go all the way back out there on a bunny run. You can imagine my joy.” He walked to the front of the wagon and climbed up beside the driver, a young woman Kira had seen a few times before — still a year or two below the pregnancy age, which made her fit for active duty. “All right, Yoon, giddyup.”
The girl flicked the reins and clucked at the four-horse team — the Defense Grid had a few electric cars, but none strong enough to haul a load this heavy with any degree of efficiency. Energy was precious, and horses were cheap, so all the best electric motors had been commandeered for other purposes. The wagon lurched into motion, and Kira put her arm behind Marcus to grip the side of the wagon. Marcus pressed in closer.
“Hey, babe.”
“Hey.”
Andrew Turner looked at them. “Bunny run?”
“That’s just slang for a salvage run, with specialists like you guys instead of the normal grunts.” Kira glanced at the man’s growing sunburn. “You’ve never been on one?”
“I did a lot of salvage in the early days, like everyone, but after a year or so I was assigned to solar panels full-time.”
“Bunny runs are easy,” said Marcus. “North Shore’s kind of spooky, but we’ll be fine.” He glanced around and smiled. “Road conditions aren’t great outside of the settlement, though, so enjoy the smooth ride while you can.”
They drove for a while in silence, the wind whipping through the open wagon and tossing Kira’s ponytail straight toward Marcus. She leaned forward, aiming the frenzied hair squarely at his face and laughing as he spluttered and brushed it away. He started to tickle her and she backed away in a rush, slamming into the soldier beside her. He smiled at her awkwardly — a boy about her age, obviously pleased to have a girl practically sitting in his lap, but he didn’t say anything about it. She scooted back into place, trying not to laugh.
The soldier next to Kira barked an order. “Last marker. Eyes up!” The soldiers in the truck bed straightened a little, held their weapons a little closer, and watched the passing buildings with hawk-like intensity.
Kira turned, watching the vast, empty city roll past — it looked empty, and it probably was, but you could never be too careful. The markers showed the edge of the East Meadow settlement, and the edge of the region their military could reasonably patrol, but it was hardly the edge of the actual urban area. The old-world city stretched out for miles in every direction, almost coast to coast on the island. Most of the survivors lived in East Meadow, or in the military base to the west, but there were looters, drifters, bandits, and worse sprinkled all around the island. The Voice had become the biggest fear, but they were far from the only one.
Even outside of East Meadow, the road here was well traveled and fairly open; there was garbage, of course, and dirt and leaves and the random debris of nature, but regular traffic kept the asphalt relatively clear of plants, and only rarely did the wagon bump over a major rut or pothole. The realm beyond the curbs was another story: Eleven years of disuse had left the city derelict, the houses crumbling, the sidewalks cracked and buckled by burgeoning tree roots, rampant weeds, and vast masses of kudzu that coated everything like a carpet. There were no lawns anymore, no yards, no glass in any of the windows. Even most of the side streets, less traveled than the main roadway, were crisscrossed with lines of green, Mother Nature slowly reclaiming everything the old world had stolen.
Kira liked it, in a way. Nobody told nature what to do.
They rode in silence a while longer; then one of the soldiers pointed to the north and hollered.
“Pack rat!”
Kira twisted in her seat, scanning the city, then caught a flash of movement in the corner of her eye — a school bus, the sides hung heavy with odds and ends and the top piled high with boxes and crates and sacks and furniture, all precariously strapped down with hundreds of yards of rope. A man stood beside it, siphoning gas from the tank of a parked car; two teens, Kira guessed maybe fifteen and seventeen years old, stood next to him.
“Dude,” said Marcus, “he’s still using gas.”
“Maybe he’s found a way to filter it,” said Gianna, peering at the bus with interest. “A lot of the outer communities do — still destroys the engines, but it’s not like we’re running out of those anytime soon.”
“They should just move into town,” said Turner. “He could have a real house, we could hook him up with electricity and security and … well, everything.”
“Everything but mobility,” said Gianna. “And anonymity, and freedom—”
“What do you mean, ‘freedom’?” asked the soldier sitting next to Kira. His name tag said BROWN. “We have freedom — what he has is anarchy.”
“Safety, then,” said Gianna.
Private Brown hefted his rifle. “What do you call this?”
“Large communities were the first to fall in the Partial rebellion,” said Gianna. “Population centers make easy targets, and if the Partials, wherever they are, develop a new strain of RM that overcomes our immunity, guns aren’t going to do any good against it. A place like East Meadow would be the worst possible place you could be.”
“Well, you’re welcome,” said Brown. “I’m glad all my life-risking is so appreciated.”
“I’m not saying you’re not appreciated,” said Gianna. “I’m just saying … well, I just said what I’m saying. Obviously I chose to live in East Meadow, I’m just pointing out why he maybe didn’t.”
“He’s probably a Voicer,” growled another soldier. “Raising those kids to be spies or assassins or hell only knows what else.”
Private Brown cussed him out, and Kira turned away, ignoring them and feeling the wind on her face. She’d heard enough of these arguments to last a lifetime. It was a hot day, but the wind made it pleasant enough, and she always enjoyed the chance to snuggle up to Marcus. She thought about her night, and her morning, and the dead child and everything else. What was it my father used to say? she thought. “I am stronger than my trials.”
I am stronger than my trials.
CHAPTER THREE
It was hours later when they reached Asharoken, and the sky was already beginning to dim. Kira hoped they could finish the salvage quickly and camp somewhere farther from the shore. Asharoken was more of a neighborhood than a town, connected to the rest of the island by an unbroken mass of houses and roads and buildings, but Kira could instantly see why the grunt runs had avoided it for so long — it was a narrow isthmus of land stretching north from the island, the sound on one side and a bay on the other. One shore made people nervous enough; two was almost too much to handle.
The wagon stopped in front of a small veterinary clinic, and Marcus groaned.
“You didn’t say it was a dog clinic, Jayden — what are we going to find here?”
Jayden jumped down from the wagon. “If I knew that, I would have picked it up myself when I was here two days ago. Grunts tagged meds and an X-ray machine; go do your thing.”
Marcus hopped down to the street, and both he and Jayden held up a hand to help Kira. In a fit of mischief she took both hands, and smiled inwardly as they helped her down with sullen scowls.
“Sparks, Brown, you go in first,” Jayden barked, and half the soldiers began to pour out of the truck, hauling one of the generators with them. “Patterson, you and your team secure the area, keep it secure, and escort the medics to the next site. It looks like someone’s been through here since yesterday, and I don’t want any surprises.”