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“Supposed to be scouting, not gardening.” But Eddie signaled to the dogs so they leaped out of the bed of the truck as Flynn moved into the trees. “Gotta be some houses back through here,” he continued as Flynn crouched down to dig with his knife. “Not on scavenging either, but it doesn’t hurt to look. Somebody might be holed up. It ain’t right nobody’s nowhere.”
Lupa let out a soft, warning growl that had Flynn rearing up, stumbling back as the girl flashed out of a tree, knife slicing.
Eddie lifted his rifle, lowered it as Flynn danced back a second time. “Uh-uh, just no. I’m not shooting at some kid!”
“She’s old enough to slice me open,” Flynn snapped back.
Lupa solved the problem by leaping up, knocking the girl back, standing on her shoulders while she sucked in the air the fall had stolen.
Flynn moved fast enough to blur, wrenched the knife out of her hand before she could jab it at Lupa.
“He won’t hurt you. We won’t hurt you.”
She aimed a fierce look at Flynn out of golden brown eyes. “Don’t touch me. If you do, I’ll hurt you.”
“Nobody’s touching nobody.” Eddie swung the rifle back over his shoulder, held both hands up. “Everybody chill, okay?”
Joe bellied over to her, licked her face. Her lips trembled as she closed her eyes.
Flynn sheathed his knife, stuck hers in his belt. He crouched, put a hand on Lupa’s head.
And spoke to the girl’s mind.
I’m like you.
Her eyes flew open. Lies, lies.
No. I’m like you. I’m Flynn. Eddie isn’t like us, but he’s with us. We’re not like the ones who went by on the road.
“Come on, Flynn, call Lupa off. Let the kid up.”
“We’re talking.”
“You’re … Oh. Okay, cool.”
You don’t have to run. But if you need to, we won’t chase you. We have some food in our packs. You can have it.
“Is she hungry? She’s pretty skinny.” Skinny, dirty, and pretty damn pissed to Eddie’s eye. “You want some food, kid?”
Flynn smiled. “You see? He’s with us. She’s thirsty,” he said, pulling off his pack and drawing the bottle of water from the side pouch. “It’s all right, Lupa.”
The wolf backed off, sat.
“Don’t touch me.”
Saying nothing, Flynn set the water beside her, rose, and stepped back.
“Look, she’s, like, twelve. We can’t just leave her out here by herself.”
“Fourteen,” Flynn said, reading her thoughts.
“Whatever. It ain’t safe, man.”
“She can take care of herself. But there’s no need to be alone,” Flynn continued as she snatched up the water, drank. “Unless you want alone. We have people, good people.”
“Girls,” Eddie said. “It’s not just guys and stuff. You ought to come with us.”
“I don’t know you.”
“Yeah, stranger danger, but still. Out here alone ain’t safe.”
“We won’t hurt you. You’d know that if you look.”
She watched Flynn as she drank again. “I don’t know how. I don’t know why I can hear you in my head.”
“Or become the tree, the rock?” He smiled at her again. “It’s what we are. I can help you learn. We won’t make you come, but you should.”
“Maybe you got lost?” Eddie suggested. “If you’ve got people, we can help you find them.”
“They’re dead. All dead!”
Flynn took her knife out, laid it on the ground. “The rest of us have to live. We’re going to walk to the houses nearby, see if anyone is alive and needs help. If no one is, we’ll take supplies if we can find them. Come with us. There are more like us where we live now. More like Eddie, too.”
She grabbed the knife, got to her feet. Her hair, nearly the same color as Flynn’s, nearly the same color as the bark of the tree, hung in matted tangles. Her eyes, big and dark, projected belligerence more than fear.
“I can leave when I want.”
“Okay.” Flynn turned and started to walk. Though it made him nervous to have some wild girl with a knife behind him, Eddie fell into step with Flynn.
“Does the dog have a name?” she asked.
“He’s Joe. He’s a great dog,” Eddie said. “And Lupa’s a good dog, too, for a wolf.”
Flynn didn’t bother to glance back. “Do you have a name?”
When she laid an unsteady hand on Joe’s head, the dog sent her a happy, tongue-lolling grin. Her lips nearly curved, nearly smiled for the first time in weeks.
“Starr. I’m Starr.”
* * *
Using the back entrance of the hospital—out of sight from the road—they loaded up the truck. Kim kept watch in the front of the building.
Since the last trip someone else had gone through. Someone more interested in opiates and morphine than sutures and bandages and antibiotics. Jonah loaded in an EKG machine, a fetal monitor, and—remembering the twins’ delivery—scavenged all he could from the NICU. Poe rolled out more on a gurney, and Aaron followed with more, including an autoclave.
As before, Jonah ignored the dried blood spatters on walls, on doors. At least this time there were no bodies to be carried out and burned in a mass pyre.
But the stench of death took a long time to fade.
“It’s a good haul,” Jonah decided once they’d loaded the box truck. “Poe, can you drive this?”
“Sure.”
“Aaron, let’s see about taking an ambulance. It wouldn’t hurt to have one, and whatever we can load inside from the rest of the fleet.”
Poe pulled around the front. “They’re trying for an ambulance.”
“Smart.” Kim hopped in.
“Yeah. I’m feeling better about them.”
“Max trusts them, and that goes a long way. I want to hit that mall, Poe. It’s too good an opportunity to miss. How much room have we got back there?”
“Enough, especially if they can get … And here they come. Nice.” He shot Kim a smile, pulled out behind the ambulance.
* * *
Max stood in a room full of computers, switches, and monitors while the man and woman with him—armed with flashlights—talked about grids, junction boxes, amps, transformers, overhead and underground cables.
He understood them less, he thought, than they understood him. And for the most part that was not at all. They had tools, and obviously knew how to use them, and ignored him while they did.
Chuck, in his new version of a basement, sat muttering to himself while he performed surgery on the guts of a computer. The gist of the muttering, as far as Max could tell, involved getting the computer running on a jury-rigged battery long enough fo
r him to hack into the system.
Things were fried, compromised, undermined. A shutdown, as far as Max could discern, that had rolled like a wave, killing the power not only in the station but across that grid, burning out every transformer.
Max didn’t know about watts or amps or outdated cables, but he knew about power. About how power could be used to ignite.
He ignored the talk about going down to the bowels again, fusing something, clamping off something else, and studied the board in front of him.
He held out a hand, imagined transferring power. Flipping a switch, lighting a light. Too much, too big, he realized, and narrowed the point. A step, he thought, one candle in the dark.
He hesitated a moment, another moment. What if this push of power destroyed what progress skill and technology had managed so far? Knowing how to light a light was far from knowing how the light actually worked.
He narrowed a bit more. Starting an engine, he thought—he didn’t know how to build one, but he knew how to use what he had to bring one to life.
Faith, he thought. Believe. Accept. Open.
The monitor he faced blinked on.
The discussion—not an argument, but a tech-heavy discussion—rolled on. Max tapped Chuck’s shoulder, gestured to the monitor.
“Can you work with that?”
“What? Huh? Whoa, baby.”
Chuck shot his rolling chair down the counter. His fingers dived toward a keyboard, stopped an inch away. “Man, it’s the first time I’ve ever been nervous with tech. Hold on to your hats, boys. And girl.”
Drake Manning gave Chuck a punch in the arm. “How’d you get it on?”
“I didn’t.” Chuck took a hand off the board long enough to wag a thumb at Max.
“You wooed it on?”
“You could say that.”
“Son of a bitch.” Manning—his belt showing worn notches from steady weight loss, his graying hair in tufts under a Phillies ball cap—let out a cackle. “How long will it hold, Mr. Wizard?”
