She handed four of them to Adam. “Put anything lightweight in these, and then double-bag them so we can tie them to the outside of your pack.”
He gave her a thumbs-up. “Good thinking.”
“Don’t think this means you won’t have to stick to the deal,” Red warned. “You still need to shed some weight from that pack. And replace it with food that has something resembling actual nutrients. But not from here. We’ll wait until we can find a grocery store or something.”
“You don’t think all the grocery stores will be trashed?” Adam asked.
Red gestured out at the empty village beyond the window glass. “It looks like most people either died quietly in their homes or they followed the instructions to go to a quarantine camp. I think we’ll find a grocery store somewhere along the way that’s not completely decimated.”
“All the stores in the cities probably are, though,” Adam said. “I bet there are bodies everywhere and everything not nailed down was looted.”
“Then we’re lucky that we don’t have to go near any cities,” Red said.
It was a marvel, really, the way they were both talking like everything was completely normal.
They quietly collected their supplies into the plastic bags, both of them pretending that there wasn’t a guy with his insides on the outside just a few feet away.
You kind of get used to the smell, Red thought. She supposed it was like someone who worked as a coroner, or in a funeral home. After a while the bouquet of rotting flesh faded into the background.
She wondered how many of the closed doors of this little village hid sights like the one they’d found, people frozen in their last agonies, their faces seized in a final portrait of terror and pain.
They were just tying the plastic bags to their backpacks when they heard the sound of an engine approaching. Red slung her pack over her shoulder and cautiously peered out the window behind the counter. A large black pickup was approaching, the back of the truck overloaded with men holding rifles.
She didn’t know if it was the same men who’d come to their house or another group of yahoos or even a government-sanctioned patrol, but she did know that no matter who it was she didn’t want them seeing her or Adam.
“Out!” Red said. “Now! Go!”
Adam didn’t have to be told twice. He scooped up his pack, the plastic bags full of snacks banging noisily against the outside, and sprinted through the back room. He didn’t wait for direction from his sister but ran into the thin weeds behind the gas station.
Red hurried behind as fast as she could. In theory, the fact of her prosthetic leg didn’t bother her but in practice it was not the greatest thing for trying to escape quickly.
She heard the truck engine turn off and men’s voices shouting and she did not want to get caught, she didn’t want to be seen, and half of her brain was worried about what was happening behind her and the other half wondered just what the hell had happened to Adam (again, it was just like the house all over again, when would he learn to wait for her she couldn’t go that fast for chrissakes) because it was like he’d just disappeared into a puff of smoke and the weeds really weren’t thick enough to hide in.
“Here!”
She felt something tug at her right pant leg and saw Adam lying belly-down in a little culvert maybe eight or ten feet from the edge of the parking lot. Red dropped to one knee and then shimmied down beside him, hoping like hell that no one discovered them there because the chance of her getting up quickly and running from this position was exactly zero.
Adam might get away, though.
Adam probably would leave me here. He’s already done it twice.
A second after Red managed to get into the channel (and about a millisecond after she realized there was a thin stream of water running through it that soaked the front of her clothes) three men came around the