The Girl in Red

D.J. laughed, but it was a sad laugh. Red felt somehow that their presence was making him regret his choices in a way he might not have otherwise.

“We should wash your clothing now,” D.J. said. “As I said, the washer is somewhat noisy. The next patrol will come through shortly, and though they largely stay on the road there’s no use attracting their attention. And we can’t use any of the electricity after dark. The patrols are . . . worse after dark.”

They hadn’t discussed it at all, but somehow a botched break-in had become a lunch invitation that became a staying-for-the-night invitation. Red wouldn’t have tried to move Riley and Sam in any case. She expected that they would sleep through dinner and into tomorrow.

D.J. showed Red how to use the washing machine and then left her to it. As she poured extra laundry detergent into the basket she wondered (in the random way that she sometimes did) what was going to happen to all the laundry detergent with no electric washers. It wouldn’t have the same currency as food, even if there were people like D.J. who could function off the grid.

Her own grandmother was one of those people—her cabin in the woods was just as self-sufficient as the house Red stood in. Red worried about her grandmother, even though most days it seemed she didn’t have a second to spare a worry for anyone but herself. And her grandmother was far more capable, far more prepared for the current circumstances than ninety-nine percent of the population.

And now I have Sam and Riley, too.

Red hoped they would stay with her. It was nice not to be alone anymore.

About forty minutes later Red was about to transfer the clothes from the washer to the dryer when D.J. stopped her. He’d gone into the front room for a while after their talk. Red hadn’t wanted to intrude so she sat on the bench in the laundry room with one of the two books she’d packed. The cover of The Blue Sword, which had been loved to death even before this trip, was hanging by a tattered edge.

For a little while she pretended she was at a Laundromat, reading while she waited for her clothes, and that when she was done she could go to a diner and have a greasy burger and more fries than she could eat and a chocolate milkshake.

Then D.J. came in and said, “Would you come up front, please?”

He led her into the front room, which was as neatly polished and organized as the kitchen. Three large bookshelves overflowed with books—some titles had been stacked on the floor in front of the shelves. The floor was hardwood, like the kitchen, and worn to a loving patina. A couch and two chairs were clean but used—no plastic furniture covers here, Red thought. It looked like a room where guests were welcome, where kids had jumped on the cushions, where life had been lived.

The windows were all boarded up except for one, as D.J. had told her. This one had curtains that hid the shutters from the inside. The shutters had narrow slats that made it possible to peek out onto the road below.

“Look,” he said.

The sun was going down outside—the days were getting shorter, after all—and the patrol was out again. This time there were six of them instead of three, and they moved with more purpose. Red watched them systematically checking each house, looking for signs of life. One of the men walked up on D.J.’s lawn and flashed a light toward the house.

Red flattened herself against the wall beside the window just in time. She didn’t know if her silhouette was visible through the shutters but she wasn’t taking any chances. Once the light moved away she went back to her viewpoint.

“Nobody ever goes in that one,” one of the other men called from the street. The group was moving down the road, inspecting the other homes.

The first man said, “Really?”

He was tall and very thin (which made Red mentally dub him Toothpick) and his hair was shaggy and he wore a denim jacket with his denim pants and had a bandanna tied around his neck like a robber’s kerchief.

He looked, Red thought, like a refugee from The Outsiders (which was not a film she would normally watch but her eleventh-grade English teacher had done a Book vs. Movie term and that was one of his selections).

His flashlight (which was really bright, bright like a policeman’s flashlight) was on the ground now, and he appeared to be peering at something there very intently.

Footprints, Red thought. Even though it hadn’t rained, there would still be signs that someone had disturbed the grass—especially if you knew what to look for.

Toothpick bent over and picked something up out of the grass. Red couldn’t see what it was—the slats of the shutters blocked her view of his hand. The object was small enough to go into his pocket, whatever it was.

He cast a thoughtful look at D.J.’s house.