While we ate in the kitchen, I laid out my sketchy idea. The tribe picked up the thread and ran with it, and we hashed out a plan. By the time we’d sucked the marrow out of the squirrel’s bones, it was dark, and we could barely see one another.
When we topped a ridge and saw the mass of buildings that used to comprise the University of Georgia, it was like seeing the Emerald City. After tramping through wilderness and abandoned buildings for so long, civilization looked shiny and magical.
Much of the bamboo had been cleared, although there were copses here and there worked into the landscape as if it were an ornamental plant. The town was ringed by a high wall that looked to be constructed of red clay blocks. Guard towers stood at strategic points along the wall, and each housed a big steel thing that resembled a satellite dish. Inside the city, the old brick and concrete buildings were interspersed with new buildings made of the same red clay. The clay buildings were rounded, and snaked crazily through the campus.
We circled the wall until we found a gate. It was open; people were going in and out. They were all so absurdly clean. By pre-collapse standards they weren’t that clean, but by current standards they were like walking moons.
Attempting to look like we knew what we were doing, we went right up to the check point.
“We’d like to speak to whoever’s in charge of trade,” Cortez said.
“Trade?” the guard asked, shaking his head. He had the inevitable shiny eyes and easy grin of a Doctor Happy carrier.
“Yes,” Cortez said. “We have goods we’d like to trade.”
“Hold on,” the guard said. He ducked inside a little round booth that was also made out of red clay bricks and got on a walkie-talkie.
The guard came back out. “Someone will be with you in a moment.”
“Can it possibly be this easy?” Phoebe asked, her voice low.
“Looks like we’re about to find out,” Jeannie said.
“Get a load of this,” Cortez interrupted, gesturing beyond the gates.
I followed his gaze. Sebastian was running toward us with open arms, laughing like a lunatic, eyes wide. “You made it, you made it.” He roped an elbow around my neck and leaped, wrapping his legs around my waist so that I had to catch him or fall over.
“We made it,” I said as I held him.
Sebastian dismounted, suddenly got serious. “I don’t see Ange.”
I’d forgotten that Sebastian hadn’t been there when we lost Ange. So much of the past was a hungry blur. I shook my head. “Ange didn’t make it.”
“Ah, fuck,” he said. He teared up, looked up at the rafters for a moment. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
He cheered up almost immediately and rubbed both of my shoulders. “But I was sure you were all dead by now, so this is a net gain.”
It was a sobering idea, that Sebastian had simply assumed we were all dead. It was a reasonable assumption, I guess. How many people who’d been living in Savannah (or any other city, for that matter) were still alive? Less than a quarter, easily. It could be as little as one in ten. Was it just luck that we were among the survivors? Cortez certainly had a lot to do with it, but maybe I wasn’t giving the rest of us enough credit. I’d never thought of myself as a survivor, but we had survived a lot, had defied the odds in staying alive.
“We haven’t made it yet, though,” I said. “We’ve made it to the gate. We need your help to make it the rest of the way.” He raised his eyebrows. “We have a plan for how to live on our own terms. Help us convince your people.”
I explained our plan to set up a camp nearby and establish a trade relationship with Athens. Sebastian moaned theatrically, rolled his eyes as I laid it out.
“You always have to do it the hard way,” he said. “One little pinprick!” He reached out and poked Cortez with his index finger. “One little pinprick and all will be vascular.” I couldn’t help but feel annoyed by his antics; we were tired, near-starving. This was no joke to us.
“That’s not the way we roll,” Cortez said. “Will you help us?”
Sebastian shook his head. “What you’re suggesting just isn’t possible.”
My heart sank. “Why not? Why isn’t it possible?”
“Because people have been planning this for five years,” Sebastian said. “They thought out these communities very carefully. One of the fundamental guidelines is that the community be homogenous. No exceptions.”
Communities? So there were others forming.
“I don’t have any more influence than anyone else here, until my turn comes up to be on the decision board,” Sebastian went on, “and that’s not likely to happen any time soon.”
“Can you get us a meeting with them?” Colin asked.
“They’re just going to tell me to tell you to join the community. And that’s not how you roll.” He waggled his head, gently mocking.
“Will you at least ask?” I said.
He shrugged.“Sure, I can ask. I can also ask them to form a human pyramid and sing Christmas carols.”
An hour later Sebastian returned. As he approached I tried to read his expression, hopeful that he had succeeded in convincing them to at least talk to us, but he was always smiling, so it was impossible to glean anything from his expression.
He shrugged. “They’re just not interested.”
I felt like crying. I was so tired, so hungry.
“They said that besides the homogeneity issue, we have teams who go out on salvage runs every day. We don’t need to trade.”
“How are you fixed for medicines?” I asked. I grabbed some of the samples I’d put together. Instead of being stuffed into pouches, each was in a separate pill container with a child safety cap. We’d found them in a medicine cabinet in Watkinsville, all empty. I opened one, tipped some of its contents into my palm. “Chamomile. For inflammation. It also works as a mild sedative.” I opened another, wiped a bit of the goo that oozed out onto my palm. “Aloe vera. For burns and—”
Sebastian shook his head. “We’ve got it all growing in our greenhouses, and herbalists to work with our doctors.”
I wiped the aloe on my pant leg.
“Look,” Sebastian said, “why don’t I show you around the town, and we can talk about what Athens has to offer.”
“No, thanks,” I said.
Sebastian shrugged, looking perplexed. “Okay. Suit yourself. I’d better get back to my work. I’ll check up on you when I can, see if you change your mind. I hope you will.”
We set up camp twenty yards from the gate, at the edge of where they’d set up their rhizome barrier. We had no tents, so we used sheets we’d salvaged from houses along the way. Once we were settled, we initiated plan B. Each of us chose a trade item and took up a position outside the gate.
“Tampons. Who needs tampons?” Colin shouted without embarrassment. He held a box of tampons in the air, two more under his arm.
“Soap. I’ve got soap,” Jeannie called, while a dozen steps away Cortez was hawking water filters. Actually we only had one spare water filter—a happy find in the basement of a house in a little town called Washington. It didn’t matter—the plan was to establish ourselves, then we could seek out more trade goods.
It didn’t work. No one even approached to see how much we were asking for our merchandise. We got plenty of attention, though. One smart aleck shouted, “Blood! I’ve got blood that will solve all your problems.” That got some hearty laughs from the residents.
The steady stream of residents passing in and out of the gate was supplemented by the occasional group of new recruits coming to join the community. Some of these groups were small, others consisted of forty or fifty starving people led by one Athens recruiter. I kept expecting to spot Rumor leading one of these groups. Cortez had scouted the entire perimeter of the city, and reported that they were expanding the city on the far side to make room for all of the new recruits. I imagined they were already planning for a day when their community wound through the bamboo for miles in every direction.