The Girl in Red

She didn’t add that all of her arguments were still valid for the same reasons she’d made them in the first place, or that just because they hadn’t seen a blockade didn’t mean they didn’t exist. They hadn’t encountered one because Red and Adam had been keeping to the woods.

Adam made some barely distinct grumbling noises that definitely included the words “fuck this,” but he put on his pack.

The hill was very steep, and Red found she didn’t have time to fret over what might happen when they reached the bottom of it. Hills were the bane of her existence—they forcibly reminded her that her balance was not the same as everyone else’s. Steep hills required a lot of concentration and careful stepping, because one root, hole, or rock could equal a Jack-and-Jill-type disaster.

“Why haven’t we seen any cars, though?” Adam said.

“We have,” Red said.

Adam waved his hand. “I’m not talking about those military guys. I’m talking about regular people, people like us.”

Red puffed out a breath. It was hard to think about what Adam was saying and focus on not falling flat on her face at the same time.

“Well, we’ve seen a few other people,” Red said, thinking of the one awkward evening spent at a campground about a week before.

There had been another party there, an older couple with a very small boy, and the woman (the grandmother, Red assumed) had given them such a suspicious glare that Red and Adam hadn’t even tried to do more than say hello. Red didn’t know if that suspicion was because they were black (possible) or just because the old woman was cautious (likely). Red and Adam had chosen a site that was as far from the other group as possible, and in the morning they were gone.

“We’ve seen other people on foot, like us. But I can’t believe your average American would choose to walk rather than get in a car. Our whole lives are organized around our cars,” Adam said. “Drive-ins, drive-throughs, parking lots, highways, freeways, pay at the pump—everything is designed to get us in our car and keep us there.”

Whenever he said stuff like that, Red felt she didn’t give Adam enough credit for being perceptive. Mostly she felt his intelligence was unequal to her own because he was lazy, not stupid, but occasionally he came out with a gem like this one.

“And most people don’t like to walk, or exercise. So when the shit rolled down the hill they would have put all their stuff in their car and driven away,” Adam said.

“Yeah, but to where? To a camp? To their country estate? I mean, where do you think people out here would go?” Red said, gesturing toward the little village nestled in the valley below. It was a postcard waiting to happen, all snug and slightly antique and surrounded by green hills and sunshine. “People in a city fleeing—that would make sense. They might think that getting away from a large population would help keep them from getting sick. And then you’d see all those car pileups and people just abandoning their vehicles and deciding to walk because of the gridlock. But out here there is no gridlock, so if folks decided to drive away they probably didn’t have any trouble doing so.”

“So tell me again why we didn’t?” Adam asked.

“Because at some point we would have come to a bigger town, or city, and then we would have encountered that gridlock,” Red said. “Or those blockades. It’s safer this way.”

“It’s slow as hell, is what it is,” Adam said. “And I’m tired of lugging this shit around and eating nothing but canned soup and peanut butter sandwiches.”

Red felt the retort on her tongue and swallowed it. Adam was in a combative mood and she didn’t need to roll in the weeds with him just because he felt like arguing.

When they reached the village, Red saw that a close-up view made it a lot less picturesque. Every building had peeling paint or stood at the slightly crooked angle that indicated subsidence or had shingles falling from the roof. The houses were clustered tight together, like cattle fearful of wolves.

The main street had the required secondhand store, bursting at the seams with spindle-leg chairs and creepy porcelain dolls. Red had never been much of a doll girl. She didn’t see the appeal of a plastic figure with strange-smelling hair and dead eyes, and even as a child her interest in clothes (and therefore doll dress-up) was nil.

There was a cobbler next to the secondhand store. Red peered with interest into the windows of the cobbler’s shop.

“Do people really go to cobblers anymore?” she asked. “I mean, most shoes don’t even have the kind of soles that can be replaced.”

“We’re looking for food, Cordelia,” Adam said. “The cobbler shop isn’t going to help us.”

Out of curiosity Red tried the door. It was locked up tight. Both the cobbler shop and the secondhand store were completely untouched, windows intact.

“Like the owners closed one day and just never came back the next day,” Red murmured. She suspected at least some of the owners were rotting inside the houses. Not everyone would have survived long enough to leave.