“Makes sense. Kill two birds with one stone type thing. Plus, this trainee can feed you information when he gets back.”
“Well, there is that, but additional intel is just a bonus. The most important aspect here is to keep her safe and on task, which ultimately keeps everyone else safe in the process.”
“She’ll hate the idea.”
“No doubt. But I’m hoping she’ll take to it, eventually, once she learns that it’s only temporary. I’m sure you can get her to see why this is important. For the greater good. She listens to you.”
“I suppose I might be able to. Maybe if we put her in charge of this new program, she’ll want to help. Like you, her heart is in the right place. All she needs is a little push and I think she’ll start taking her role a little more seriously.”
“That would be nice. For all of us.”
“Do you have someone in mind?”
“Yes. There is one young man. He seems eager to contribute. Been hanging around my guys during mess hall, trying to ingratiate himself.”
“Do you think she’ll connect with him? That’ll be important for this to work.”
“I think so.”
“But can he keep her on task?”
“Not sure yet. But my gut tells me yes.”
“You’ll need to watch over them to make sure this doesn’t go sideways. Without them knowing, of course. If Summer feels you hovering, she’ll revolt.”
“I can keep my distance. In fact, I might even use one of my guys as a go-between.”
“Like a handler.”
“Exactly. Another degree of separation. Effective leaders do that.”
Edison nodded. “They do. It’s important to empower the people below you. It’s how loyalty is cultivated. They must become vested in the success of the project. And to do that, they must be given more responsibility.”
“Exactly,” Krista said, figuring the man was talking about Summer, not just the new trainee.
Edison let out a short laugh after the tension in his face disappeared. “It’s kind of funny you bring this to me now. I’ve been noodling on our morale problem for a while. More specifically, I’ve been trying to figure out how to reach Summer. She’s had it rough over the years and I’m afraid I’ve been coddling her too much. Maybe if we give her more responsibility, as we are discussing, she’ll grow into the young woman I know she can be. There’s a lot there; we just have to get her to see it. And believe in herself.”
“We can only hope, sir.”
Horton winced from the ankle pain as he stepped over a smattering of bricks along the road. They were part of a toppled wall that used to belong to an old transmission shop. He couldn’t make out the lettering on the red and blue sign hanging sideways on the building. It had been washed out from a decade of weather abuse.
The Scab girl ahead of him had suffered her share of abuse as well—years of it if he had to guess, her body a roadmap of the damned. So many scars. So many cuts. So much pain.
If she could only talk, he was sure her story would make a compelling science fiction novel, The Last Scab Girl, or something along those lines.
Horton wasn’t doing much better than her, with one eye blurry and the other one swollen. Every inch of his face seemed to hurt, having taken so many punches that he’d lost count.
Then there were his ribs. Each was a bruised mess. A few may have been cracked, meaning every breath was a chore to take in and release.
His ankle had stopped bleeding about a mile ago, but the open wound was taking on the cold directly. Every step stung like a red-hot poker, but he’d been able to push through it.
He’d decided from the start to let the Scab Girl take the lead on this trek to wherever they were headed. She seemed to know where she was going, her route specific and calculated, using that strange stop, hunch, and hold maneuver as she went, as if her senses were in charge.
Thus far they’d been zigzagging mostly through a residential area of city, passing neighborhood after neighborhood, stopping occasionally to take shelter in a burned-out building or some other makeshift cave.
She seemed to prefer abandoned strip malls for some reason, taking refuge inside various commercial establishments that girls her age would have never visited back in the day.
First it was a pawn shop with bars on its windows, but no glass. Then it was a tool repair shop—lawnmowers mostly, based on the remnants of engines and other equipment inside.
The last had been a spy shop, the kind that jealous husbands would frequent when they needed to eavesdrop on their slutty wives.
None of those establishments were of much use anymore. Back then, the world was filled with drama, everyone busy with their tech-filled lives, ignoring each other on the street as if they were the only person still alive on the planet. Little did they know that reality would soon come to pass.
The only clothing that Scab Girl had on was the windbreaker Frost had left for him, yet she didn’t appear to be as cold as Horton was, despite his pants, boots, socks, and a muscle shirt.
It must have been just like Doc Lipton said, Life finds a way.
She’d evolved, somehow, appearing to have developed a resistance to the cold. It didn’t make sense, but neither did the world in general.
Perhaps it was a mental thing, her choosing to ignore the gusts of wind sending chills across her skin. There hadn’t been any snow flurries for a while, but they’d return soon enough, he figured.
The Earth had started its recovery, though it was a slow process. At least the sun had broken through the endless freeze, giving the planet a chance to come back to life after the volcanic ash covered the globe.
There were plenty of rumors floating around a decade ago about who caused it and why. Now the culprits were probably dead, along with most everyone else, so the reason behind it mattered not.
One thing was for sure, ninety-one volcanos don’t go off by accident. Not all of them at the same time. Someone wanted to end the world. Yet Horton couldn’t help but wonder if the perpetrators thought anyone would survive. The chances were slim, so they had to assume their actions would bring about an extinction-level event.
He figured history would judge the guilty long after he was gone. It wasn’t up to him to decide. He was busy with the here and now, feeling the sense of renewal everywhere.
Every week or two more survivors would arrive. Hungry survivors. Many of them finding their way to town, hoping to find a new life at the Trading Post. The girl in front of him was one of those hopefuls, except for the Trading Post part.
“Hey, where are we going?” he asked her, following her path through the debris.
She turned her head and peered back, giving him a penetrating stare. Her eyes told him to be quiet.
“All right, all right,” he said in a whisper, unable to stop his tongue. “Just wanted to know, that’s all.”
Maybe it was his nervousness turning him into a chatty Cathy. It wasn’t every day you found yourself wandering around the middle of the night, wounded and weak, following the lead of a naked cannibal who’d been tortured and didn’t speak.
He wondered if he should give her a name. Her blonde, frizzy hair reminded him of pictures he’d seen of his grandmother when she was in her twenties.
Grandma’s hair was the same as Scab Girl’s, stretching down to her waist as it fanned out, almost as if she’d spent hours crimping it with a curling iron, then rubbed the strands across a balloon for static.
His grandmother’s name was Helena. Maybe he should call Scab Girl the same name; then they wouldn’t feel like such strangers. It’s harder to trust someone when you don’t know their name. If he gave her one, perhaps it would calm the tension in his chest.