“I know I been gone long time,” he said, looking at his boots. “And I gotta go again. I just—”

  “Waywhat?” I yelped. “You gotta go? You just got here! No way you go again. Not for a longwhile at least. Where you gotta go, anyroad? What so spicy it make you turn around and run back Outwall before you even been here a day? You ain’t been home half a day. No.” I crossed my arms and locked my knees. I wouldn’t allow it. I wouldn’t move from this spot until he agreed to stay. “You can’t go.”

  “I have to, Meg,” he started, but he didn’t even try to start explaining. He just bent down, wrapped one arm around my thighs, and straightened up. I flailed my arms through the air, but flopped forward, letting out my breath in a huff as my belly slammed into Tim’s meaty shoulder. He carried me two blocks from my quarters, straight down the middle of the street, then turned right into the Market, and kept right on going.

  I watched the town retreat as I jounced and bounced along on Timbo’s back. Every once in a while I waved to a fat baby in a carriage or made a rude hand gesture to a friend of mine who pointed and laughed. I couldn’t see where we were going, but I kenned a bit from where we been. We passed all the clothiers, the cobbler, and then Timbo stopped and bent forward, dropping me onto my feet on the dirt street. I wobbled a little, but he grabbed my elbow for balance.

  “There’s no talking to you, so I figured I’d just bring you here. Quicker and easier on my ears.” He put a hand on each shoulder and turned me to look at the store he stopped in front of.

  “Why am I here, Timbo?” I asked, looking at the front of the Armory. “I got a knife.”

  “But you don’t have spikes, or a staff, or a bow,” he said. “Can you still shoot?”

  “I can skewer a cherry at fifty meters,” I bragged, only exaggerating a tetch.

  “Good,” he said, putting a giant hand on my back. His palm covered the entire space between my shoulder blades and my waist. Timbo gave me a little shove and said, “Because we’re down a ranger for this run since Jera came up pregs on the way back from Mapolis.”

  I heard his words, then my legs turned to water as they made it through my skull. Ranger? Me? I wasn’t sure if I was more excited or terrified as my big brother shoved me through the doors of the Armory.

  I should have picked terrified. If I’d picked terrified, I would have dealt with my fear back in SooCity, on the safe side of the Wall. And if I’d dealt with it there and then, I wouldn’t be dealing with it here and now, running barehand through strange woods in the middle of the night all alone with a pack of zeds closing on me every minute. I hate fast zeds. Just ain’t natural.

  A branch across my cheek brings tears to my eyes and my focus back to my feet. I can barely see where I’m putting my feet, counting on the thin trees not to trip me up too bad and hoping I don’t hit any holes. I don’t. Good me. I don’t hit a hole, anyroad.

  I hit a branch, but instead of tripping over it like a normie girl, I step on it, it rolls under my foot, and I launch myself into the air like a pigeon what’s been drinking out of Henro’s beer barrel, all squawking and flapping useless as I slam into the ground. The air rushes out of my lungs and I lay on my belly for a terrifying second while I try to remember how lungs work. I can’t breathe and I slammed my chin into the ground when I went down and I’m seeing stars and I don’t know if I see stars because my head hurts or because I don’t have any air and I see the lights dancing in the edges of my vision and I feel like I’m about to pass out when my breath slams back in with a WHOOSH and a gasp and suddenly the sparkles recede and I’m back to normal levels of panicfright.

  I can’t lay there, though. I’ve already been still too long and I hear the zeds crashing and crackling branches all around me and I think that I really should have stayed up that tree, but I know that isn’t right, so I get my hands underneath me and shove myself up to a crouch, take a look around to make sure the way ahead of me is still clear and he way back, not like I know where “back” even is at this dot, and I shove myself to my feet and I take off again.

  “Crew, this is Meg,” Timbo said as we walked up to the half-dozen folx gathered by the western gate. They were dressed mostly alike, in the same kind of brown and green camo as my scratchy new pants and jacket. A couple of them looked me up and down, like they were trying to decide if they needed to just ice me now and dump me over the Wall instead of waiting for zeds to do it later and them have to dig me a grave out in the Wild.

  One of the scouts, a Wing named Calvin that I remembered seeing with Timbo once or twice, came over and held out his hand. “Heya youngun. I’m Cal. Stick close and I’ll have you tree-running legit before we come back from this gooser.” A white smile split his dark face, and a dimple appeared on his cheek. I felt my knees go a little watery at the glimmer in his brown eyes, but then Tim stuck his big sniffer in.

  “She’s my kidsis. This is her first run. Let’s make sure it’s not her last.”

  The dimple vanished from Cal’s cheek, and he held out a fist. “Good to meet you, sisling.”

  I bumped knuckles with him, looking over his uniform. “Wings don’t dress like everybody else?”

  He waved a hand over his uniform, which was the same colors as most of the crew, but that’s where the lookalikes ended. My camo was thick, heavy stuff, with strips of leather sewn on the broad parts and reinforced canvas patches over the joints. My jacket would stop a bite, at least for a few secs, and my pants would keep all but the worst snakebites off my skin. It was all stiff, and it made anything but regular walking a job all its own, but it would help keep me alive.

  Not Cal’s. His pants were tight and stretchy, like a green and brown skin, with lumps at the knees and guards strapped around his lower legs for gripping the trees. His shirt was the same way, except for the extra flap of fabric tied under each arm that stretched out like a big sail when he spread his arms.

  His hands were covered in thick gloves with curved talons sticking out of the fingertips, and tiny versions of the same jutting out from his palms to help him climb and grip better. Everything about his uniform was made to get him high in the trees and let him swoop down on ravagers or zeds from above. His minicross, the pistol-shaped bow that every Wing built themselves and carried until their last flight, hung from one side while a small quiver rode the opposite hip. It was flashy, like Cal himself, with a gleaming silver pistol grip and a bright red bow polished to a high shine.

  In short, he looked spectac, tip to toenails. When he pulled the hood up over his smooth bald noggin and pulled the goggles over his eyes, he looked like a giant deathbird standing in front of me ready to kill anything that threatened harm.

  “This is Natlee,” Cal said, waving a lithe woman with short-cropped blond hair over to where we stood. “She’s the other Wing for this run.”

  “Heya,” I said, holding out my hand.

  Natlee shook her head and stuck her fist out in my direction. “Wings don’t shake. Bad idea with the gloves.” I nodded and bumped fists with her.

  “The big guy with a face like an ox and shoulders to match is Garn. He’s our lockpicker and asskicker,” Timbo said from my shoulder. “Soo and Syl are rear guard,” he said, pointing to a pair of identical twins with bows and a row of thick tubes strapped across their chests. “Anything tries to sneak up on us, S-Two will make a lot of light and noise with their boomsticks.”

  I heard that back in the Before, people used to just fire off boomsticks whenever they were happy about something, or mad about something, or wanted to remember something. I even saw a pic once of a ton of boomers popping off in the sky around a building bigger than anything I’d ever seen. Timbo said it was some kind of YearDay celebration, but I figured he was just yanking me. No way was that thing real. It had to be something made up.

  “You’ll be scouting or guarding flank with Garn, Maxie, and Petro,” Tim said, pointing to two other people in camo. They each had knives strapped to their belts, machetes hanging off the opposite sides, and the light packs that I was used to seeing Timbo bring home. “Get over with them and gear up. They’ll help you strap in and make sure there’s nothing reflective or noisy where it shouldn’t be.”

  I did as I was told, fastening the bracelet thing Tim gave me around my left wrist. Maxie, a trim woman with skin even darker than mine and hair shaved down to a tight mohawk, held out a gear belt for me. I wrapped it around my waist and pulled it tight, letting it rest above my regular belt, like the others did. A black knife hung from the left side, with a canteen centered in back. I took the offered machete from Garn and strapped it onto the belt in front of the knife.

  “Right-handed?” Maxie asked.

  “Yeah. Figure this lets me pull knife with my left and chopper with the right.”

  “That works. Put this on your right hip.” She handed me a small cylinder wrapped in black fabric with a belt loop on the back.

  “What is it?” I asked, sliding the belt through the fabric loop.

  “Baton. It’s spring-loaded, so you just give her a squeeze and it pops out long and hard, just like your boy’s Johnson.”

  I felt my cheeks warm. I knew what she meant. I’d gone round behind the supply shed with a couple of boys, but they never really did anything for me. Not curvy enough for my tastes. My mindpics flashed back to Starling, looking fair grumped at me when I told her I was on this run. Hoped she’d still be there when I got home in a couple weeks.

  “You loaded up?” Timbo’s voice popped in at my shoulder, and I started a little. He chuckled and put a heavy hand on my shoulder. Felt good. Solid. With my bigbro around, I’m good. I’m five-by.

  “Yeah, let’s get moving,” I said with a bravado I didn’t really feel.

  “Grab your bow and take a share of the rats,” Tim said, pointing over to the pile of rations on a nearby table. I watch Maxie take six packs, and I grab five. She grinned at me and slid two more packs over to me.

  “Take ‘em, kid. They always send extras for Garn, and he doesn’t need them. He eat everything they send him, he be too fat to run.”

  “I’m good to try, though,” Garn said, clapping the woman on her shoulder and nearly knocking her to the dirt.

  I stowed the rats in my pack and slung it across both shoulders. I tightened the straps and fastened the belly band across my front. My pack had food for a week, plus two full liters of water in metal bottles painted black to kill reflection. I let that fall off and there’s no getting back to town, whether we see zeds or not.

  “Okay,” Timbo called, and we all gathered round him at another table. He had a map spread out over the knobby wood surface, and he pointed to it as he talks. “Last trek we went northeast, to Mapolis. You remember how jacked it was—nothing to scav, nothing to barter, nothing for nothing.”

  I wondered for a second where my shiny came from if he didn’t come across any good barters on the run.

  “This time we’re heading south to Kaycee, and over to SaLoo if we’re good on food and water’s easy to find. I don’t expect a lot out of Kaycee, but there might be some good trades on the road, or somebody new in the city.”

  “South’s crawling,” Garn said, his voice like two boulders rolling over one another in an inexorable tumble out of his mouth.

  “I know,” Timbo said. “But we been everywhere else within a tenday walkabout, so we gotta start repeating. We need ammunition, and grease, and there’s a couple gears we need. Means we need a market, and Kaycee has a good one.”

  Garth just nodded.

  “Anybody else got questions?” Tim asked. Everybody mummed, so he nodded and said, “Then let’s get moving. Watch your six, and most importantly…” He paused, waiting for a response.

  He got it. “Watch mine!” the rest of the crew yelled, and we laughed and joked as we strode through the gates to see what we could trade for or scavenge between home and Kaycee.

  It’s getting lighter. At first I don’t even notice, but then I can see a little of where I’m putting my feet, and it’s easier to run. Then I start to be able to make out the forms of a couple of zeds in the trees, and I’m not just having to avoid them by ear. After a ways, the sun’s up, and I look around. No zeds. The only thing moving as far as I can see in all directions is me. I gave ‘em the shake. Another night. Another not dead. All I got; all I need.

  I find a tree with low branches. Oak, maybe. It’s up on a hill at the top of a gulley, so I’m all hope I can get high enough to see something. Maybe a town. Maybe Tim.

  I blink back more stupid tears. I won’t see Timbo. Not because he’s a deader, but because he’s smart. Only a zedhead would wear anything lets you be seen from a treetop, and Tim’s always been the smart one. So I wipe my nose on my sleeve, and my eyes pop at how much dirt and blood comes off on my arm.

  Giving my face a poke and a prod, I find a couple little cuts, but one on my forehead is still oozy a touch. Gonna need to find water to wash that and get it covered. Not just the zeds, but they’re bad enough. Bastards can smell a drop of fresh red from half a mile or more. But germs, too. Read about germs and infections in some old medbooks back in SooCity. They used to peel mold off bread and smack it on cuts to heal up infections. In The Before.

  That tells me tons. That right there says more about what The Before was like than any tech we can scav, any buildings we hole up in. Just them having so much bread they left it out to get moldy. What kind of paradise did they live in? And how did they jax it up so bad as to get us here?

  I stop thinking about mold and start climbing, wishing I had Cal’s Wing-gloves, with their spikes and talons. I don’t even have the thin cloth gloves I started out with. They went with my pack, left in the fight with the ravagers, or maybe I didn’t grab it when the zeds came on us. I can’t remember. Don’t make none, neither. I don’t have ‘em, so nothing for it but to scratch up my hands and think about more places I’ll be needing to spread mold on.

  I get lucky for the once. The oak tree is taller than the skinny little pine trees around it, and I can get a long way up before the branches start to bend too much under my feet. There’s nothing around me, no zeds in sight, and nothing even moving through the trees. I’m safe for a minute. Safe as I’m gonna get out here on my own with no food, no water, and only my knife for a weapon.

  I guess if things get really bad I can slap a zed to death with my empty machete sheath. I giggle at the image, then whip my head around at the unfamiliar sound. It takes me a secco to realize it’s me making it, and when I do, I laugh even more. Then I’m laughing out loud, big loud belly laughers that shake the whole tree and make me slide down and wrap my arms around the bark to hold me there. I laugh and laugh, and after a few minutes the laughs turn to crying, and I sit there, ten meters off the ground, my legs wrapped around a fat oak tree branch, my face pressed into the bark with tears pouring down my cheeks. Guess that’s one way to rinse the dirt off.

  I take my time pulling back together. I know I’m hysterical, and I just let it happen. Why shouldn’t I be a damn nutter? I’m all alone, days or weeks away from anything I know, my brother’s lost out there somewhere trying to find me, his whole crew but me is probably zeds, dead, or ravager-meat by now, and I don’t have any idea what to do next.

  Then I hear something like thunder off in the distance, and when I stand back up on the branch, I see a pack of ravagers coming from the northwest, a dozen or more, all on horses, and that makes up my mind. Don’t matter if I’m going to a sanctuary. Doesn’t matter what this shiny on my wrist says. I’m sure as shit stinks brown going away from those motherless bastards.

  “Ohey, wassat?” It was Cal, walking ahead on what used to be an interstate, back when there were states. Since we were out of the trees, the Wings covered front and rear. Cal was pacing front, fifty meters ahead of us, and he’d just topped a ridge when he called back. “Look like a trader. Can’t tell if it’s junker or richboy stuff.”

  “Any markings?” Tim called back. Maxie waved Natlee forward, and us flankers moved into a clump in the road. If we stopped, we didn’t want to be too spread out, and if it was an ambush, everybody wanted to be close in case we had to get back-to-back.

  “Nothing I can see…wait, hangonamin, there’s a chicken foot in a circle. It’s Jerry! I see the dancing bears!”

  “Sweet,” Maxie said to me. “Jerry’s a good barter. He’s fair, and nobody knows where he gets the stuff he gets. Tough old coot, too. Nobody messes with the Jer-bear. He eat you alive, that one.”

  This was the first person we’d seen since we left home, and I was nervous. Even though Maxie said he was nice, being stopped out in the open worried me. I’d heard Timbo’s stories for years about ravagers rolling up on groups that let their guard down to trade, and how he and his kept finding nothing but piles of naked bodies, and sometimes not all of them. Nobody ever outright named the ravagers cannibal, but nobody ever said they wasn’t, either.

  But it would be sweet to see these barters Timbo told me about. Maybe I could get a shiny for myself, or maybe take something back to Starling. She didn’t say nothing, but the look when I walked out the gate said she was worried. This was the first time we’d been apart for more than a day. I didn’t know I’d miss her ‘til I got the chance to. Maybe a necklace or bracelet. I didn’t have nothing to trade, really, but Tim’d help me out if I saw something that glimmered me.

  It took a while to get to the wagon, with Cal running ahead to tell him we were coming. By the time we got there, the fat graybeard had his wagon chocked and the sides down, showing off racks and racks of shinies and stuff I didn’t even know what.

  “Jerry!” Timbo said walking up. “How you be, grandpa?”

 

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