It irritated him sometimes, especially when Grimaldi tried to use words like tactics or strategy or logistics when Kyle could tell from Orozco’s expression that Grimaldi didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about. Sometimes, usually late at night, Kyle thought about saying good-bye to Orozco, packing up his and Star’s few belongings, and getting out of here.
But bad moods like that never lasted very long. The Ashes could be annoying, but he and Star were eating at least one meal every day here, and had a safe place to sleep. Considering some of the places they’d been, that all by itself made it worth putting up with a little irritation.
Beside him, Star shivered. “Cold?” he asked.
I’m okay, she signed back even as she shivered again.
“You could go sit over there by the alcove,” Kyle suggested. “You’d be out of the wind there.”
But then I won’t be able to see anything, she pointed out.
“That’s okay,” Kyle assured her. “I can watch alone for awhile.”
Star shook her head. I’m okay.
Kyle sighed. Star considered his sentry duty to be her sentry duty, too, and she took the job every bit as seriously as he did. Aside from physically carrying her over to the alcove, there was no way he was going to get her there, and aside from physically sitting on her, there would be no way he could make her stay.
“Fine,” he said. Standing up, he walked around her and sat down again so that he was at least between her and the wind.
She gave him one of those half patient, half exasperated looks that she did so well, and for a moment Kyle thought she was going to get up and go sit in the wind again just to show him she didn’t need babying. But Kyle was as stubborn as she was, and they both knew it, and so rather than playing a pointless game of leapfrog with him and the wind, she just rolled her eyes, drew her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her thin arms around them.
Smiling to himself, Kyle turned his eyes back to the ruined city.
The wind apparently wasn’t nearly so potent down at street level, and he could see a soft mist rolling in from the direction of the ocean, the drifting tendrils masking some of the jaggedness of the streets and rubble-filled lots below.
Unfortunately, the mist did an equally good job of masking the movements of people and animals, which was going to make Kyle’s job that much harder. Keeping his eyes moving, paying particular attention to the spots where he knew some of the neighborhood’s troublemakers liked to gather, he settled down to the long hours ahead.
There wasn’t much activity today. A few of the other residents were out and about, mostly scrounging for canned food that might have been missed by earlier searchers. Some of the Ashes’
residents were out, too, though mostly they were digging through the rubble for building materials to prop up a section of the building’s southern wall that Grimaldi’s people said was in danger of collapsing. There was very little gang movement, with only a few members of one of the packs roaming the streets several blocks to the south. That would change when darkness came, though.
As for Skynet, all Kyle could see of its presence was a single HK moving back and forth across the eastern sky. If any of the T-600 Terminators were out and about, they were someplace he couldn’t see them.
Noon came and went. He and Star each had a few sips from the post’s water bottle, and about an hour after noon they shared a small piece of coyote that Kyle had saved from breakfast. By mid-afternoon most of the locals had finished their foraging, either finding what they were looking for or else giving up, and had headed back to secure their homes against the nighttime gang activity.
It was late afternoon when Star tapped Kyle urgently on the arm and pointed to the east.
Hunching over a little, Kyle sighted along her arm, searching for whatever it was that she’d seen.
There it was: a group of people approaching down one of the area’s better east-west streets.
There were six men in the main party, escorting two heavily-laden burros each, and there were at least two outriders Kyle could see traveling along a block ahead of the others. The main group was keeping to the middle of the street, where it would be harder for someone to ambush them.
“Did Orozco say anything about traders coming here today?” he asked Star.
Not to me, she signed.
Kyle pursed his lips. This could be exactly what it looked like: a visit by the traders who came in sometimes from the hardscrabble farmlands to the east and north. Just because Star or even Orozco hadn’t heard they were coming didn’t necessarily mean anything. Traders didn’t exactly operate on a regular schedule.
But it could also be a gang of robbers masquerading as traders in hopes of getting the people in the area to let their guard down. The burros might not be carrying trade goods, but merely the robbers’ collection of loot. It was a ploy that Orozco had often warned his sentries to watch out for.
“Binoculars, please,” he said.
She nodded and retrieved the scuffed leather binocular case from the equipment alcove. She handed the case to Kyle, then returned to the alcove, standing ready beside the tray of signaling stones.
Carefully, Kyle removed the binoculars from the case. Technically, he remembered Orozco saying once, this was actually a monocular, since the left set of lenses was broken. Lifting the instrument to his eyes, he focused on the approaching men and animals.
They were definitely not the same men who’d been with the traders who’d come through the neighborhood six months ago.
Kyle grimaced. The fact that he hadn’t seen them before also didn’t necessarily mean anything.
People out in the farming regions came and went as often as people here in the city did. Still, Orozco’s number one rule was that it was better to be safe than sorry. Lowering the binoculars, he gave Star a nod.
“Three and two.”
She nodded back and selected five of the fingertip-sized stones from the tray. Crossing to the ragged-edged opening between the alcove and the stairway, she got down on her knees and carefully dropped the first three stones, one at a time, down the hole. She paused, and Kyle watched her lips move as she counted out five seconds, then dropped the other two, again one at a time.
And with that, there was nothing for them to do but wait and continue watching. Lifting the binoculars again, Kyle first gave his whole sector a careful sweep, then turned his attention back to the approaching men.
The party had made it about half the distance to the Ashes when Kyle heard the sound of footsteps on the stairway. He lowered the binoculars just as Beth, one of the building’s fourteen-year-olds, stepped into view.
“I’m supposed to take over,” she announced, panting with the exertion of her climb. “Orozco wants you down at the main entrance.”
“Got it,” Kyle said, standing up and handing her the binoculars. The girl winced like he was offering her a live snake, but gamely took them. A few months ago Beth had been unfortunate enough to be present when her older brother Mick had been goofing around and had dropped one of Orozco’s other sets of binoculars. She’d also been present when Orozco chewed the boy out over the incident, and had been terrified of binoculars ever since.
Going down the stairs was just as hazardous as going up, but at least it was faster and didn’t take as much effort. Kyle and Star reached the main entrance to find Orozco and three of Grimaldi’s men in quiet but earnest conversation beneath the archway. All four were armed, Orozco with his usual M16 and Beretta, the others with some of the building’s collection of hunting rifles and shotguns.