The Girl in Red

“I’m not going to sleep in a house with a dead body, don’t worry,” Red said. “There might be some that have bodies in them, though. We can’t expect that everyone will have left the area before they got sick. But I bet that at least a few of them will be empty. Everyone was told to go to a quarantine camp, and most people are the law-abiding types and complied.”

“Why didn’t you?” Riley asked.

“I’m a rebel,” Red said, and Riley laughed, but Sam looked at her in a funny way, like she knew Red’s answer was no answer at all.

There was a little dip in the road about a mile away, and Red watched the three silhouettes of the men disappear and then reappear on the rise. She couldn’t hear their voices anymore, despite the silence that hung all around, and that meant they were far enough away for safety.

She couldn’t worry that they might be back later, or that they were only a patrol that was part of a large group. Or rather, she could worry about such things but knew that worrying wouldn’t stop anything that was going to happen. Several weeks on the road had convinced Red that Fate had her own plans and didn’t consult humans before she laid them.

“All right, let’s start checking houses,” Red said.

First they looked for houses that already had open doors or windows, for Red thought it better to enter houses that already looked derelict rather than signal to anyone who might be checking that someone had done some fresh breaking and entering.

After trying a few of these Red quickly realized the flaw in that plan. If someone had gone to the trouble of opening the house, then they’d also gone to the trouble of taking all the food they could carry. There wasn’t anything edible left in those first few residences—not even a stray Cheerio for a colony of ants to carry away.

There were some useful things to be found here and there, however.

In one home there was a pink bedroom with a dresser stuffed with underwear and shirts and jeans and leggings just Sam’s size. Sam was inclined to wrinkle her nose at these—“They’re all covered in hearts and glitter”—but Red convinced her that personal taste in fashion was less important than having clean clothes that fit.

In another house Red found a stash of camping equipment in the attached garage, and was able to cull out another backpacker’s tent for the kids and a good-sized pack for Sam to carry. They ditched the school backpack—there was nothing in it but the granola bars and a dirty blanket. There was also a two-person kayak in the garage, which Riley desperately wanted to take with them.

“There are no rivers nearby,” Red said, nonplussed by his sudden desire to paddle.

“But we might find some,” Riley said. “Look, it has wheels. We could pull it until we find a river to put it into.”

“Who’s going to pull it?” Red asked.

Riley gazed at her hopefully.

“Forget it, kid,” Red said, ruffling his hair. “Most days I can hardly pull myself along.”

The fourth house they entered stank of decomposing things, and they backed out of it without ever going past the foyer.

Finally Red decided that breaking a window was going to be necessary. She chose a low white bungalow-type house, only one story. It had black shutters on the front windows and the shutters were pulled closed. There was a short driveway but no garage and no car. Red assumed the owners had fled long before.

“Why that one?” Sam asked. “It looks poor compared to all the other houses.”

She gestured at all of the two-stories with their wooden decks and aboveground pools and play sets in the yards.

Red nodded. “Right, and because it looks poor no one has gone near it. People just assume there’s nothing inside.”

“Our great-aunt Livia has a house like this,” Riley offered. “But all she has inside is crocheted stuff and like, one million cats.”

“She has three cats,” Sam said. “That’s not even close to a million. Everything is covered in crochet, though. That’s pretty much all she does—watch TV and crochet.”

“And she only watches boring TV,” Riley said, rolling his eyes. “Like the most boring TV ever—people baking cakes or making pasta or whatever or shows where a bunch of people sit around a table and talk.”

“It would be so much better if there were explosions and stuff on every TV show,” Red said.

“Yeah!” Riley said. “I like shows with superheroes and villains, but I hate it when the heroes are always like, kissing girls or thinking about kissing girls or moping around because they can’t kiss the girl they want to kiss. That’s lame.”

“It’s not lame,” Sam said. “Lots of people like to kiss each other. It’s normal.”

“I don’t want to kiss anybody,” Riley said, sticking out his tongue in disgust. “It just looks messy.”

Red thought this was pretty rich from a kid who didn’t seem to care at all about his personal hygiene.

“People like it, and someday you might, too. Red, do you have a boyfriend?” Sam asked. She looked like she was hoping Red would back her up and say kissing was not lame.

“No,” Red said. “I used to have a girlfriend, though.”