The Girl in Red

She thought the walking patrol should come along any minute, unless they’d passed by while she was in the kitchen. That would be unfortunate, because her plan was to let them get about fifteen minutes ahead of her and then continue on.

After that she thought she would find another good place to watch the road and hopefully follow them to their base. Sparrow Hill Road was not a good place for following because of all the exposed land.

She dug in the bag that D.J. had given her and found a small container packed with cold rice and egg, and another container with a peanut butter sandwich.

Red ate the cold rice and egg and watched the road. She wished she had a watch, but before the Crisis she’d only had one of those fancy smartwatches and those were useless bricks without electricity to charge them and cell grids to provide necessary information like time.

But the satellites were still out there, circling around sending back data, right? Red thought. She wondered if there were people who knew more about electronics than she did, out there still sending and receiving information. There were probably radio and Morse code people communicating all over the world.

It was only Red and those like her (which was, to be fair, probably most people) who were helpless without their smartphones and Internet connections. Hell, it was only because of her father’s insistence that she learn that Red could read a map. She knew that most adults around her age only knew how to follow Siri’s turn-by-turn directions.

She finished the rice and tried not to twitch the curtains. Where were they? D.J. had said the patrol came through every two hours, like clockwork. Red was certain it had been more than two hours since she got on the road, and even accounting for their different starting points she should have seen them by now.

Something Has Happened, she thought, and the back of her neck started itching again.

“But that something doesn’t have to mean that D.J. or the kids are in danger,” she said. Her voice sounded unnaturally loud in the silent room.

It could mean that Regan’s group had met up with the Kidnapping Militia and they were fighting it out, just like in the town where Adam had died. Or it could mean that the other militia, the crazy Locust Militia that took all the available resources, had encountered the Kidnapping Militia and they were fighting it out. Or the Kidnapping Militia had decided that it was pointless to stay in the area and had moved on to another one.

There were loads of possibilities. Those possibilities didn’t have to include Red’s friends in jeopardy.

And you are not a comic-book hero with some kind of special sense for danger. You are just an overly imaginative woman in a potentially life-threatening situation and the tension is getting to you.

“Yes,” Red said, agreeing with her internal monologue. “You’re just getting yourself Into a State for no damned reason.”

She saw movement from the direction she’d come from—a group of figures, made blurry by the distance. The patrol.

“See?” Red told herself. “There they are. Everything’s fine. You just didn’t calculate the time correctly, or they were delayed by something else.”

There was some satisfaction in seeing them, too, because it meant at least some of her assumptions about their patrol loop were correct.

Except that as the group approached she could see that there were four figures instead of three, and one of those figures was very small.

Small and wearing a pink hooded coat that looked a lot like the one Red had found for Sam in the house with the pink bedroom.

She stood up, ignoring the way her heart slammed in her chest and her breath came fast and frantic. Red squinted at the group—like that would make her see more clearly. The little figure had a shaggy brown haircut

(just like Sam)

and bright blue sneakers

(just like Sam)

and the larger figures were laughing and pushing her shoulder so that she stumbled. Every time she stumbled they would laugh harder.

The group got closer and closer, and when they passed the house with the blue siding Red clearly saw their faces and one of them was small and twisted with fear and wet with tears and of course it was Sam’s.

Red was seized by a sudden and urgent thought—I can’t let them take her to the camp.

If they took Sam to their base she would be gone forever, for Red didn’t have a band of freedom fighters to liberate a child from imprisonment in a camp full of armed men.