The Girl in Red

Red shook her head. She didn’t need to get off onto one of her worrying-about-all-the-permutations rants inside her head, because she needed to be present for Sam and Riley and because stressing about every possible negative outcome would paralyze her into doing nothing at all. So she decided she wouldn’t worry unless she had to, and the only thing she was worried about were those three slow-moving guys.

“Oh my Christ, when will they fucking leave already?” Red said under her breath.

Apparently she hadn’t said it low enough under her breath, because Sam gave her a shocked look and Riley clapped his hands over his mouth to hide his giggle.

“You said a bad word,” Sam said. Her scandalized expression was something akin to a Victorian spinster spotting a bare ankle on an unmarried maiden.

“You’ve never heard that word before?” Red said, disconcerted. She thought all kids knew every dirty word in existence. There were a few young children in her own hometown who knew words that she’d never heard of before.

“I’ve heard it. I just know you’re not supposed to say it,” Sam said. “There is an impressionable child here.”

She jerked a thumb at Riley, who stopped giggling.

“Hey, I’m not impressionable,” Riley said. “I’m only two years younger than you. And Red can say whatever she wants, because she’s a grown-up. Daddy always said that.”

“And Mama always told him to watch his language in front of us,” Sam said loftily.

“My mama used to tell all of us—me and my brother and my dad—to watch our language,” Red said. “It didn’t take, though.”

“What does that mean?” Riley asked.

“It means nobody listened to her mama,” Sam said.

“Anyway,” Red said, because she really didn’t want to get into a protracted conversation about cursing with an unusually prim ten-year-old. “Once these slowpokes get out of town we can start checking the closest houses, okay?”

“It’s getting late, though,” Sam said, squinting up at the sun. “We thought we’d be able to check the houses and then get back into the woods to set up camp, remember? I don’t know if we’ll be able to do that. Maybe we should go back and try again tomorrow.”

Red could see the wisdom of this plan. She really could. The trouble was that she didn’t want to go backward at all—only forward. The long walk was hard enough without going in circles.

The woods that they wanted to be in were about three miles or so beyond the point where they currently stood. They had left the trail early in the morning before sunrise and picked their way carefully along the road, ducking into the shallow culverts if they heard anything suspicious.

“Suspicious” had turned out to be several white-tailed deer who’d given them bland stares as they passed by, and a very fat raccoon carrying a large dead frog in its mouth. Sam had made a puking noise at this.

“Honestly, the frog is probably better for him than people’s garbage,” Red had said.

Sam shook her head. “Frogs are gross, and eating them is even grosser.”

“What, you don’t like Kermit?” Red asked.

“The raccoon is eating Kermit?” Riley said, and his eyes welled up.

Oops, Red thought. Not the right audience for that kind of joke.

The crossing from the forest to the town had been Red’s biggest concern, because they were completely exposed to any passing vehicle. Having made it to the town unscathed she really hadn’t expected to find anyone in it. Practically every town she and Adam had been in had been completely free of people—because it had been scoured either by Regan’s men or by the Locust Militia.

Maybe we’re out of Regan’s sector now.

Red wished she’d taken the time to find out just how big the sector was, because that would be useful information to have right now. It would help her avoid Regan’s group, at least. Too bad there hadn’t been a handy map hanging around for her to steal before she escaped.

Well, the circumstances were fairly urgent. There wasn’t time for data collection.

“Red?”

Sam was looking at her expectantly, and Red realized she’d gone off on a tangent in her brain (again) and never acknowledged what the girl had said.

“I think,” Red said slowly, thinking it through as she spoke. It would be okay. It would probably be safe. “I think that we might try sleeping in one of the houses. Just for tonight.”

Riley’s eyes lit up. “We could sleep in a real bed. With warm blankets.”

It made Red’s heart break just a little to hear him say that, to hear him speak so hopefully about a bed and warm blankets—basic things a kid should not have to worry about.

“What if there are dead bodies in the houses?” Sam asked, her voice just above a whisper.