the way down because of the way the prosthetic attached to her knee, but she was able to get low enough to see that there was a well-worn trench just under the bottom of the bush.
Red considered flattening herself to her stomach to look underneath, but then realized that was a recipe for getting stepped on if the kids decided to burst out of their hiding place. Instead she carefully parted the branches, hoping not to startle them.
“Whoa,” she said.
Behind the shell of the branches there was a huge open gap inside, almost like a natural tent or shelter. The kids were huddled up at the far end of the gap, about five feet away from her. There was a pile of filthy blankets coiled like a nest near their knees, and a small backpack that looked like a repurposed school bag. The pack was open and Red could see a few granola bars piled on top of some dirty clothes.
It was hard to gauge their age, especially with their dirty faces and no idea of their standing-up size, but they looked like they were maybe between eight and eleven. She didn’t want to make any assumptions about their gender, either, since they both had that shaggy-haired-haven’t-seen-a-barber-since-the-world-ended style.
The two of them had their arms wrapped around each other, and Red noticed those arms were very thin. They weren’t wearing jackets or hats, only thin T-shirts, and they must have been cold even with the blankets. She wondered how long they’d been out here, and what they’d been eating besides granola bars, if anything.
“I won’t hurt you,” Red said, and then winced. What a stupid frigging thing to say. It was the first thing the bad guys always said in the movies when they were about to hurt you.
The mystery kids seemed to think so too, for they inched farther away from her.
“Sorry, that was dumb. Let’s try again. My name is Red. Fancy meeting you out here in the middle of nowhere,” she said, and smiled, and hoped they thought her lame joke was funny and nonthreatening.
“Your name’s Red?” one of them asked, ignoring the lame joke altogether. “How can your name be Red? Nobody is named after a color.”
The other one shushed him/her.
“Don’t talk to her,” the second one whispered, trying not to move his/her mouth too much.
“Well, my name’s not really Red,” she said. “That’s the name that I go by. My real name is too awful to contemplate.”
“Contemplate?” asked the kid who’d spoken first. That one seemed chatty.
“Shush,” the second one said, again attempting to pitch his/her voice low enough so Red wouldn’t hear. Unfortunately, it was so quiet out in the middle of nowhere that any sound, however tiny, seemed like the clash of cymbals. “Don’t you remember that we agreed not to talk to strangers?”
“Contemplate means to think about something, or to look at it,” Red said, pretending she hadn’t heard that last bit.
“It’s a word that means two things? I know about those words. I learned some of them in Language Arts at school.”
“Riley!” the second child said, clearly fed up with the other child’s persistent chatter.
Well, that didn’t help narrow down whether it was a boy or a girl. Riley was one of those names that could go either way.
“Riley is a cool name,” Red said. “A lot cooler than mine.”
Riley had unclenched from the tight embrace of the other child and inched toward the opening where Red’s face peered into their shelter. This kid clearly had the friendly gene. Red bet the other kid had to stop Riley from telling their life story to any stranger they encountered. The second child hung back, gazing suspiciously at Red.
“What is your real name?” Riley asked.
“It’s . . . Cordelia,” Red said, with a dramatic pause between the two words.
Riley laughed, a high joyous sound that seemed like it didn’t belong in that terrible world. It cut through the oppressive air of the forest and hung there like a magic spell. “That’s not so bad. We have a great-aunt Hilda, and I think Hilda is much