except a few dotted here and there on the landscape. And once she was out of the town there would be no cover at all until she reached the forest again, and that was a few miles away.
It sounded like there was a war going on outside. Somehow she’d have to cross this war zone by herself and reach the woods. Somehow. First she had to find a rear exit to this building, because the explosion had occurred at the front and she didn’t think it was a great idea to go out through all of that black smoke again.
“Wh-what happened here?”
Red turned around, furious and scared, and her hand went to the axe at her belt. Sirois stood there, his face white as chalk, staring at the blood at Red’s feet.
He could have snuck up on you and shot you, Red. If you want to remain the last surviving member of your family, then you need to start using your ears as well as your eyes.
She wasn’t going to cut herself a break just because she was standing over her brother’s corpse, either. Adam was dead, but she was alive and she needed to stay that way or else Grandma would be alone forever.
“One of your ‘tapeworms’ got my brother, and probably Regan, too,” Red said.
She felt her anger building, and wanted to take it out on this man who represented everything she hated—lies, opacity, pointless bureaucracy, men with guns.
Men with guns killed my parents. And a man with a gun couldn’t save my brother.
Red gestured at the thing that used to be Adam on the floor.
“Still going to tell me that information is classified?”
“Where’s the lieutenant?” Sirois said.
He seemed unsteady on his feet, although Red didn’t know if that was because of his head wound or the blood around Adam or the smoke that he’d surely inhaled while staggering after her.
“I have no idea and I really don’t care because my brother is dead,” Red said. “And he’s dead because your lieutenant dragged him back here to look at a hole in the ground, and whatever was in that hole probably killed him.”
“I have to find the lieutenant,” Sirois said. “I need to find him now. Outside . . .”
“You do what you like,” Red said. “I’m leaving.”
Sooner or later Sirois was going to look for Regan behind the door that Adam guarded and when he did Red was not going to be present.
“You can’t leave,” Sirois said.
Red pulled the axe off her belt. She’d never used it on a person, or anything alive. She’d always wondered if she could. She was angry enough to use it now, because the man before her was not going to stop her.
“I am not going to your little quarantine camp,” Red said, and held the axe up. “I am going to my grandma’s house, and if you try to stop me I will slice off whatever I can reach and leave you here to bleed to death.”
Sirois shook his head. “No. I believe you. I believe you’ll do it, and I’m not trying to stop you so I can take you away. That’s not it. You can’t get out right now. That militia has got us pinned in here and they’re covering the road in both directions.”
Red blinked. “The militia? The fakey soldiers that Adam and I saw?”
The Locusts had returned for the rest of the goods in the store. That was the thing that had twanged her antennae earlier—when Adam said they didn’t have enough room in their trucks for the food in the back room. Of course, they would return with empty trucks. And when they returned they’d discovered the army, or whatever branch of the military Regan and Sirois were supposed to represent.
“Yes,” Sirois said. He ran his hand over his close-cropped hair. The wound on his head had clotted up, just as Red thought it would.
“Why would they do that?” Red asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Because they see us as the enemy,” Sirois said. “They’ve been getting bigger, collecting stragglers to their cause.