The Girl in Red

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 military as she did guns, but she was fairly certain that there were usually patches showing what group you belonged to—what unit, or some other kind of indicator.

So these were not Official Representatives of the U.S. Government. They were individuals who’d collected together and decided to act like they had authority. That scared Red more than any patrol of soldiers looking to take them to a camp. This group would not be answerable to anyone.

One thing Red had learned from years of reading and movie watching was that people were far scarier than any disease or zombie or alien or face-eating monster.

There was one scene in 28 Days Later when Jim and Selena and Hannah met up with Christopher Eccleston’s remnant-of-the-army group and the three survivors thought they were in a place where they would be safe and then Eccleston said, “I promised them women,” meaning he promised the men under his command.

Whenever Red watched that movie her whole body came over freezing because she knew what that meant, everyone knew what that meant for Selena and Hannah and their future, and the calm collected way he said it was far more frightening than the infected were in that film. Red thought it would be better to be bitten by a fast-moving zombie.

These men who were moving in and out of the station now, running about in their TV-copying formations with their camouflage hunting gear (because that was what it probably was, probably overpriced shirts and pants that they bought online at Cabela’s or Bean’s or Outdoor World so they could shoot deer without being spotted). They believed they had power because they had guns and the imprimatur of authority.

Red bet that most people who bumped into them gave them what they wanted. She also bet that there were more groups like them around, because this was America and the two things Americans liked to stockpile in case of emergency were canned foods and guns.

All the men had entered the building while Red spaced out thinking about movies and other things that she shouldn’t be thinking about when they might have to run for their lives. She really did not want it to come to that because running in a prosthetic not specifically made for that purpose would equal Red getting caught by whoever was chasing her. She just couldn’t move fast enough.

“Should we try to get away now while they’re inside?” Adam said. He whispered it, barely moving his mouth at all, but it sounded incredibly loud in the deep silence all around them and it made Red wince.

She scooted closer so she could talk directly into his ear. “There are probably still men in the front. And the ones inside could appear at any moment. We’d better wait.”

Adam’s mouth twisted. “The front of my shirt is all wet.”

“Better water than blood,” Red said darkly.

That shut him up.