The Girl in Red

So she nodded and stood up and tried not to fall over as she did, because her thighs had stiffened while she was semicrouched on the ground and it was never easy to get up and down to begin with.

“Go down the path a little!” Sam said. “I don’t want you to listen.”

Red clomped off noisily so that Sam and Riley could have their conference. She didn’t need to eavesdrop to know what it was about—whether she was trustworthy, and if the promise of a spaghetti dinner was worth risking their freedom. She’d have had the same conversation with Adam if the two of them had been alone in the woods at that age. Hell, she’d had multiple conversations with herself along the same lines in the last few weeks.

It was always the same debate—absolute safety or some degree of comfort. How long could a person go without eating warm food or having shelter over their head? How long before they decided to risk going into an empty house, a depopulated town, a looted store, an abandoned car? How long before they couldn’t bear to be alone anymore and thought it might be safer to join a group of friendly strangers?

And what if that house wasn’t empty, or that town was the base for some militia? What if that group of friendly strangers only showed their teeth because they were sharks?

Yes, Red could understand Sam’s caution. Red wished she could show the younger girl some proof that she was as safe as she claimed to be.

If they came along with her, that would be a start. That would at least be enough to show Sam and Riley that she didn’t mean them any harm. And eventually she could convince them to continue on to Grandma’s house with her. Maybe showing up with these two would help Grandma forget that Red didn’t have Mama or Dad or Adam with her.

Or maybe it wouldn’t, because you couldn’t just replace a person you loved with someone new.

Maybe Sam and Riley could help Red in that department, too. Because the longer she walked on her own in the forest, the more she felt set adrift from the real world, the human world. Without people to help her remember, it would be easy to stop being civilized altogether.

She was already in the habit of viewing every person she met as a potential enemy, and even though it had probably saved her several times over, it was hard not to feel a little ashamed of that. People were supposed to give a shit about each other, especially in times of need.

Trouble was, most people were all too willing to bulldoze anyone who got in their way when they wanted something. Just look at that story Riley told about their mom, Red thought. She worked at the Walmart and she got killed because the store ran out of something through no fault of her own. That was the kind of world they lived in now. There would be no heartwarming stories of communities coming together to assist the elderly or take care of orphans or anything like that. Everyone was out for their own damn self, and Red, too. She didn’t want to die, so she was willing to do what she had to do to make sure that didn’t happen.

But she didn’t want these kids to die either, if she could help it. Though taking them on, even temporarily, presented its own set of difficulties. Starting with the fact that she had a one-person backpacking tent and one sleeping bag and as far as she could tell Sam and Riley only had a bundle of smelly blankets.

Well, she would deal with that when it came time to deal with it. She wasn’t that tall and the kids were skinny, so maybe they could all squeeze in to the tent and Red could use a space blanket while the kids got in the sleeping bag. It would at least be warm with three bodies inside the tent, even if two of those bodies were small.

Red was so lost in the potential logistics that she didn’t even hear the two of them come up behind her. She didn’t jump when Sam spoke, but it was a near thing and she had to school her face before she turned around.

“All right, we’ll go with you,” Sam announced. She carried the backpack of granola bars and had put on a gray sweatshirt with a Gap logo across the front that was much too large for her. Red bet she’d scavenged the sweatshirt somewhere along their walk.

Riley also had a sweatshirt that was too big for his thin frame, although it at least looked like a kids’ size. Sam’s was something that had once belonged to an adult.

Jackets, Red thought. They needed jackets and sleeping bags and she would have to try to find a larger tent. And of course they would have to find more food and the kids would have to carry some of it.

Yes, there would be problems, but Red liked solving problems. Besides, she’d spent so much time fine-tuning her own pack that she knew exactly what Sam and Riley would need.

But they would have to go into a town, or a house. And that would mean danger.

You know what Dad would say about crossing bridges before you get to them, Red.