Page 71 of Ash Fall

"Give us a minute," I tell Clayton and the others. "We need to talk to our people. Then we'll see if we can come up with something that helps you."

Clayton nods, and his shoulders come down slightly. He turns back to his group and says something too low to carry, and the newcomers start to scatter. A lot of them head for the restrooms. Tanner's crew and a couple of the bus men walk around to the far side of the charter and light cigarettes. The smoke drifts up over the roof while they talk.

Our group closes in around us before I can call anyone over.

"Well?" Gigi asks.

"Well, what?"

"Don't play dense, gorgeous. It doesn't suit you. Are we taking them?"

I look around the circle. Luna has ended up at my elbow, close enough that her shoulder brushes my arm when she shifts her weight. Torrin is still frowning. Reid has his sunglasses pushed up and his eyes half closed, either listening to something none of us can hear or nursing the last of the chicken damage. Kara stands with her arms folded, and Jules is already shaking his head.

"No."

"Nobody asked you yet," Kara says.

"I'm saving time."

Gramps ignores both of them with an impatient sigh. "I'll say what I said at the farm. We need more people. There's a mine to make livable, we have so much work ahead of us and an ash cloud on the way, and there aren't enough hands for any of it."

"There's also our people to keep safe," Jules says. "From strangers who we don't know."

Luna sighs at him. "Jules."

"I'm serious. Look at them." He waves a hand toward the smokers behind the charter. "I bet they're assholes."

"You can't possibly know that."

Jules lifts his head to the sky, cups a hand beside his mouth, and yells, "Hey, asshole!"

Reid facing in their direction holds up two fingers. "Two looked."

"Point proven."

"That proves nothing," Luna hisses. "That proves people look when someone yells."

"It proves two of them answer to it."

Gigi is chuckling as she reaches out and smacks him in the arm. Kara is doing a poor job of pretending not to laugh with her. Even Torrin's frown cracks for a second before he pulls it back into place. I rub the bridge of my nose, because we are thirty feet from these people and the wind is blowing the wrong way for them not to hear this.

"Are you finished?" I ask him.

"For now."

"Then here's my vote. We take them." I keep my voice down. "They've got skilled people that will help. They've also got a man who spent twenty years keeping power systems running in the oil patch. That’s someone we want on our side to make sure the power stays on."

"We are also going to need to sleep," Jules spits. "Near them."

Kara unfolds her arms. "I hate agreeing with him, but he's not wrong about that. We don't know a single thing about these people except what they told us."

"We didn't know a single thing about Anders's neighbors an hour ago either," Luna says quietly.

She looks around the circle. "At some point we're going to have to trust somebody we didn't grow up with, or it's going to be the handful of us grinding ourselves down under the workload forever."

Elenor nods. "She’s right. We need more people to get everything done and to thrive…not just survive the future."

"And there's the other part," Gramps says. "They lost everything. Their homes, their families. If we've got room, and we do, then leaving them in a parking lot to die in the ash cloud isn't something I'm willing to do. Not if I want to look at myself after."