So they walked, tried to conserve energy, looked for places that might have fresh water. There were a couple emergency stations set up by the highway, men and women with medical armbands and generators to run the lights. It never got more than low twilight, even at noon. The clouds kept some of the heat from radiating out into space, but they blocked the sun too. It felt like early winter, and it should have been summer hot. Every now and then, they came across some new ruin: a gutted building, the walls blown off the steel and ceramic girders, a high-speed train on its side like a dead caterpillar. The bodies they found on the roadside looked like they’d gone in the initial blast.
Most of the dead-eyed, shell-shocked refugees on the roads seemed to be heading for the stations, but Amos tried to steer away from them. For one thing, Peaches was pretty clearly not supposed to be walking free among the law-abiding citizens of Earth, and Amos didn’t really feel like having any long conversations about what laws still applied, post-apocalypse. And anyway, the stuff they really needed they couldn’t get there. So he kept his eyes open and headed northeast.
Still, it was three days before he found what he was looking for.
The tent was back off the road about seven meters. It wasn’t a real tent so much as a tarp strung over a line between a power station pole and a pale sapling. There was a fire outside it though, with a man hunched over it feeding twigs and sticks into the smoky flames. An electric motorcycle leaned against the power station pole, its display dark either because it was conserving power or it was dead. Amos walked over, making sure his hands were always where the other guy could see them, and stopped about four meters away. Peaches stumbled along at his side. He figured that to anyone who didn’t know her or who she was, she probably didn’t look real threatening.
“Hey there,” Amos said.
After a long moment, the other guy nodded. “Hey.”
“Which way you heading?” Amos asked.
“West,” the guy said. “Everything’s fucked east from here to the coast. Maybe south too. See if I can get someplace warm.”
“Yeah, things are shit all over,” Amos said like they were at a coffee kiosk and chatting about the weather. “We’re heading northeast. Baltimore area.”
“Whatever’s left of it,” the guy said. “No offense, but I think your plan sucks.”
“That’s okay. I was thinking the same about yours.”
The man smiled and didn’t go for a gun. If he had one. Not so many guns among the law-abiding Earth populace as there were in the Belt. And if the guy was willing to just shoot the shit this long without anyone escalating or making a play, probably he wasn’t a predator. Just another accountant or medical technician still figuring out how little his degree was worth now.
“I’d offer to share,” Amos said, “but we ain’t got shit.”
“I’d help, but the tent’s only big enough for one.”
“I’m small,” Peaches joked, but only sort of. Skinny as she was, she had to be feeling the cold worse, and when he paid attention to it, Amos had to agree it was getting pretty damn brisk.
“Word of warning? Head north a few klicks before you cut any farther east,” the man said.
“Why?” Amos asked.
“Militia motherfucker. NO TRESPASSING signs and everything. Took a potshot at me when I went to ask for some water. Kind of asshole that’s probably pissing himself with glee that the world went to shit and made his stashed guns and paranoia pay off.”
Amos felt something in his chest go loose and warm and thought it might have been relief. “Good to know. Take care then.”
“Peace be with you.”
“And also with you,” Peaches said. Amos nodded and turned north, trudging back along the road. About half a klick later, he stopped, squatting down by a tree, and watched the path they’d just walked down. Peaches huddled beside him, shivering.
“What are we doing?”
“Seeing if he follows us,” Amos said. “You know. In case.”
“You think he will?”
Amos shrugged. “Don’t know. Thing about civilization, it’s what keeps people civil. You get rid of one, you can’t count on the other.”
She smiled. She really wasn’t looking that good. He wondered in passing what he’d do if she died. Figure something else out, probably. “You sound like you’ve done this before,” she said.
“Shit, I grew up like this. All these folks are just playing catch-up. Thing is, we’re humans. We’re tribal. More settled things are, the bigger your tribe is. All the people in your gang, or all the people in your country. All the ones on your planet. Then the churn comes, and the tribe gets small again.”
He waved a hand at the dark gray landscape. This far out, the trees weren’t knocked over, but the weeds and bushes were starting to die from the dark and the cold.
“Right now,” he said, “I figure our tribe at about two.”
Either she shuddered at the idea or else the cold was getting to her worse. He stood up, squinting down the road. The tent guy wasn’t coming. That was good.
“All right, Peaches. Let’s get going. We’re going to have to head off the road for a bit.”
She looked north, up the road, confused. “Where are we going?”
“East.”
“You mean where we aren’t supposed to go because of some crazy asshole shooting at people?”
“Yup.”
The town had been a decent size last week. Cheap little houses on narrow streets, solar panels on all the roofs sucking in the sunlight, back when there had been some. There were still people here and there. Maybe one house in five or six where the tenants were waiting for help to come to them or so deep in denial that they thought staying put was an option. Or they’d just decided they’d rather die at home. As rational a decision as any other, things being what they were.
They walked on the sidewalks even though there weren’t many cars. A police van skidded by a few blocks ahead once. A sedan with an old woman hunched in the front seat who carefully ignored them as she passed. When the batteries ran dry there was no power grid to charge them back up, so all the trips were either short or one-way. One house had words painted across the front: EVERYTHING IN THIS HOUSE IS THE PROPERTY OF THE TRAVIS FAMILY. LOOTERS WILL BE HUNTED DOWN AND KILLED. That left him laughing for a couple of blocks. The supermarket at the center of town was dark, and stripped down to the shelves. So somebody in the place had understood the gravity of their situation.
The compound was on the eastern edge of town. He’d been worried they might walk by it without noticing, but it hugged the road and the signage was clear. PRIVATE PROPERTY. NO TRESPASSING. ARMED SECURITY ON SITE. His personal favorite was NO RELIEF SERVICES.
A wide, flat field of a yard led up to a white modular house. The transport parked in front of it looked like something manufactured to imitate military equipment. Amos had lived in an actual military design long enough to recognize the difference.
He put Peaches in place at the edge of the property first, then walked the perimeter once, taking it all in. The fence had barbed wire all the way around, but nothing electrified. He was about fifty-fifty that there was a sniper’s nest in the attic, but it might have just been a bird. Easy to forget that even with the massive burden of humanity, there was still wildlife on Earth. The house itself was prefabbed or else printed in place. Hard to say which. He also saw three tubes coming up out of the ground that looked like they could be ventilation. There were bullet holes in the bark of the trees at the property’s edge, and one place where it looked like there was blood on the leaves of the dying bushes.
This was where he wanted to be.