The Girl in Red

The next day they packed up their gear and continued on. Adam hadn’t objected to Red’s plan of trying to reach the campground. She didn’t know if this was because he agreed with her or he just didn’t care anymore. Whatever the answer Red was always happy to have her own way, so they moved quietly through the last bit of the trail before they came upon the road.

All night Red had slept lightly, imagining she heard noises (usually trucks with large engines filled with armed men) that weren’t there.

The trail ended at a small dirt turnout—a place for hikers to park their cars before they set off into the woods. The path picked up again across the road with a matching turnout on that side. Down the street to their left was the gas station and the little village.

She’d half expected to find a roadblock, or that the one-road town would be bustling with soldiers and people on their way to quarantine camps. But of course there was nothing.

“We’d better go to the gas station and see if we can find some more food,” Adam said.

Red knew they would have to do this, but she felt the same strong sense of reluctance that she had before their family had gone on their ill-fated quest to Hawk’s Sporting Goods.

“They won’t have anything nutritious,” Red said. “We’d be better off waiting until we can find a bigger town. It seems like a big risk for little reward.”

“Bigger town means more people,” Adam said. “And there’s nobody around here, just like at home.”

He started walking along the side of the road without consulting her again.

“Adam, wait!” Red said. “At least stay in the trees.”

“Why?” he said. “Red, you’ll be able to hear the sound of an engine long before it gets here, and when you do you can scurry into the forest like a little mouse and hide.”

She could tell he wasn’t going to listen, that he’d decided and that was that. So she didn’t argue anymore though it was so hard not to say anything, not to tug him into the safe cover of the trees that lined either side of the road.

Red felt the back of her neck prickling, felt like someone was watching her from afar, someone who would swoop in and scoop them up and throw them in the back of a van.

She found herself holding her breath so she could hear better, hear any silent enemies that might try to sneak up on them, and then she gave herself a little shake because it made absolutely no sense to deprive herself of oxygen.

The gas station was empty, as expected, and the few shops that lined the road all had their CLOSED signs turned out. There was no evidence of the damage that had occurred in their hometown—no rampaging destruction, no broken windows.

This little village never seemed populated at the best of times and the postapocalyptic look wasn’t that much different, Red reflected. It was like everyone was still inside having breakfast and none of the stores had opened up yet.

The gas station door was locked. Red and Adam peered inside the windows, an untouched array of chips and snack cakes and cigarettes and lottery tickets on display.

“We’ll have to break the door glass,” Adam said.

Red wrinkled her nose. She was reluctant to do that for a number of reasons—chief among them that breaking the glass seemed too much like theft. Of course it was ridiculous to think that way—the owner was unlikely to come back, and even if he did, would he really begrudge some hungry kids the food they needed?

She also didn’t want to break the front door glass because it faced the road, and Red couldn’t shake that prickly someone’s-watching-me feeling. How could they hear someone coming along if they were making a bunch of noise breaking the glass? And there was nowhere to hide.

“Why don’t we see if there’s a back entrance?” Red said. She tried to make her suggestion sound casual, like it wasn’t fueled by vague suspicions of lurking enemies.

And right after she did that she got annoyed with herself, because she was tiptoeing around Adam’s feelings and it pissed her off that she had to do that. It wasn’t natural. He didn’t seem especially concerned about her feelings.

Mama said you should stay together.

Red knew that underneath that excuse (yes, it was an excuse, really) was a lurking fear that Adam might leave her. She wasn’t usually afraid of being alone—she was a fairly solitary person by nature—but she was afraid of her brother unknotting that last family tie, of loosing her into the world to drift without anyone else who would remember the last moment their mother said good-bye.

But it was hard, really damned hard, not to speak her mind when she wanted to tell him that it was stupid as hell to stand out in front of the gas station, visible to anyone who might look out from a window or drive by.