corner of the gas station. They were talking loudly, carrying guns, and wearing camouflage clothing and military-style boots.
Red couldn’t gather too many details from her position on the ground, but she did note that one of the three men was black so that meant this wasn’t the same group that attacked their house. One small favor, she thought. At least they probably wouldn’t shoot Red and Adam on sight. Probably.
Despite their combat-ready clothing, however, she didn’t think this was a government patrol. Something about the men didn’t seem right, didn’t seem like they were military. They weren’t . . . Red couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but they didn’t seem cohesive. They didn’t appear to be one body moving in separate limbs, which was the way she thought of army platoons and whatnot. Not that she had so much experience of army platoons beyond what she saw in the movies.
Red had left the back door of the station open—she felt bad about this but she’d been in a rush and she was a little surprised that it hadn’t automatically swung shut behind her.
Once the three men realized there was an open door their attitude changed completely.
They went silent, communicating with each other through a series of hand gestures that were too fast to follow. They carefully clicked the safeties off their weapons (Red assumed this was what they were doing, anyway, because right after that they all put their fingers on the trigger—the one part of a gun Red could correctly identify) and then quickly assembled into a formation with two in front and the third with his back to them and his weapon up. All of a sudden the men had the look of people who would ask questions when it was too late to get answers.
Despite this they still didn’t seem like they were Army or National Guard or anything like that—more like men who’d seen that particular formation on TV and were copying it.
Good thing they didn’t see us, Red thought. They would definitely have shot Red and Adam just for being there.
The two men in front—Red thought of them as Number One and Number Two—had a quick signed conversation before entering the open door. Then one went high, one went low—again, just like in a cop show.
The third man—Number Three—stood outside with his back to the wall just next to the open door, moving his gun back and forth across the horizon like he was scanning everything in front of him. Red ducked her head a little lower and hoped that her curls blended in with the dirt and the weeds and everything else. Beside her Adam lay perfectly still, like he was afraid to breathe.
Number Two came out again and reported to Number Three in a low voice. Red couldn’t hear what he said but she had a pretty good idea that they’d discovered the man with the gutted torso inside the shop. Number Three lowered his weapon and ran around the front of the building. He was shouting something to the others, but Red wasn’t certain she heard it clearly. She thought it sounded like “crawler,” but that didn’t really make any sense.
Number Three returned with two other men, both of whom had the same anonymous pseudo-military look of the first three. Number Three pointed at the ground just outside the door. Red didn’t know what they might be looking at—it was pavement, after all, and wouldn’t show any kind of prints. Had Red and Adam left some sign of their passing inside the store?
No, she would never be so careless, even if she was in a hurry. Adam might be careless like that but not Red. Still, her heart seemed to beat a little faster in her chest as all three men turned to scan the field where she and Adam were just barely hidden.
Red could see now that none of them wore a matching uniform—rather, it looked like each man had collected any clothing that looked close enough to a real military uniform so that they would present a somewhat unified appearance.
None of them had name tags or badges that would indicate—well, she didn’t know exactly what they would indicate because Red knew about as much about the