“You’re late, Walker.”
Kira didn’t speed up, watching Jayden’s face as she walked casually to the wagon. He looked so much like Madison.
“What?” she asked. “Don’t soldiers have to attend mandatory town hall meetings anymore?”
“And thank you very much for the attitude,” said Jayden, leaning his rifle against his shoulder. “It is a pleasure to have both you and your delightful wit with us on this run.”
Kira mimed a gun with her forefinger, silently shooting him in the face. “Where are we going this time?”
“A little town called Asharoken.” He helped her up into the back of the metal wagon, already full of ten more soldiers and two portable generators; that meant she was probably going to field-test some old equipment to see if it was worth bringing back. There were two other civilians as well, a man and a woman, probably here to use the second generator on some equipment of their own.
Jayden leaned on the edge of the wagon. “I swear, this island has the weirdest town names I’ve ever heard.”
“You guys are loaded for bear,” said Kira, looking at the soldiers’ heavy rifles. They were always armed when they left the city—even Kira had an assault rifle slung over her shoulder—but today they looked like a war party. One of the soldiers was even carrying a long tube she recognized as a rocket launcher. Kira found an empty seat and tucked her bag and medical kit behind her feet. “Expecting bandits?”
“North Shore,” said Jayden, and Kira blanched. The North Shore was essentially unsettled, and thus prime Voice territory.
“Valencio, you’re late!” shouted Jayden, and Kira looked up with a smile.
“Hey, Marcus.”
“Long time no see.” Marcus grinned broadly and vaulted into the wagon. “Sorry I’m late, Jayden. I had a meeting that got a little heavier than I planned. Very hot and sweaty by the end. You were a major topic of conversation, though, in between bouts of passionate—”
“Just skip to the part where it’s my mother,” said Jayden, “and then I’ll do the part where I tell you to go to hell, and then we can maybe get on with our jobs like we’re supposed to.”
“Your mother died of RM eleven years ago,” said Marcus, his face a mask of pretend shock. “You were, what, six? That would be incredibly crass of me.”
“And your mother’s already in hell,” said Jayden, “so I’m sure you’ll be seeing her soon. We should probably just drop the whole thing. Bastard.”
Kira frowned at the insult, but Marcus only smirked, looking at the other people in the wagon. “Ten soldiers, huh? What’s the run?”
“North Shore,” said Kira.
Marcus whistled. “And here I was worried we wouldn’t get to do anything fun. I guess we’ve pretty much picked everything else clean by now, though, huh?” He looked across the truck to the two other civilians. “You’ll have to forgive me, I don’t recognize either of you.”
“Andrew Turner,” said the man, reaching out his hand. He was older, late forties, with the beginning of a sunburn through his thinning hair. “Electrician.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Marcus, shaking his hand.
The woman smiled and waved. “Gianna Cantrell. I’m in computer science.” She was older as well, but younger than Turner. Kira guessed maybe thirty-five—old enough to have been in computer science well before the Break. Kira glanced at her stomach, a reflex she wasn’t even aware of until she’d done it, but of course the woman wasn’t pregnant. Salvage runs were too dangerous to risk a child; she must have been between cycles.
“Interesting mix,” said Marcus. He looked at Jayden. “What’s the deal with this place?”
“Grunt salvage went through a few days ago,” said Jayden. “They logged a clinic, a pharmacy, and a ‘weather station,’ whatever that means. So now I get to go all the way back out there on a bunny run. You can imagine my joy.” He walked to the front of the wagon and climbed up beside the driver, a young woman Kira had seen a few times before—still a year or two below the pregnancy age, which made her fit for active duty. “All right, Yoon, giddyup.”
The girl flicked the reins and clucked at the four-horse team—the Defense Grid had a few electric cars, but none strong enough to haul a load this heavy with any degree of efficiency. Energy was precious, and horses were cheap, so all the best electric motors had been commandeered for other purposes. The wagon lurched into motion, and Kira put her arm behind Marcus to grip the side of the wagon. Marcus pressed in closer.
“Hey, babe.”
“Hey.”
Andrew Turner looked at them. “Bunny run?”
“That’s just slang for a salvage run, with specialists like you guys instead of the normal grunts.” Kira glanced at the man’s growing sunburn. “You’ve never been on one?”
“I did a lot of salvage in the early days, like everyone, but after a year or so I was assigned to solar panels full-time.”
“Bunny runs are easy,” said Marcus. “North Shore’s kind of spooky, but we’ll be fine.” He glanced around and smiled. “Road conditions aren’t great outside of the settlement, though, so enjoy the smooth ride while you can.”
They drove for a while in silence, the wind whipping through the open wagon and tossing Kira’s ponytail straight toward Marcus. She leaned forward, aiming the frenzied hair squarely at his face and laughing as he spluttered and brushed it away. He started to tickle her and she backed away in a rush, slamming into the soldier beside her. He smiled at her awkwardly—a boy about her age, obviously pleased to have a girl practically sitting in his lap, but he didn’t say anything about it. She scooted back into place, trying not to laugh.
The soldier next to Kira barked an order. “Last marker. Eyes up!” The soldiers in the truck bed straightened a little, held their weapons a little closer, and watched the passing buildings with hawk-like intensity.
Kira turned, watching the vast, empty city roll past—it looked empty, and it probably was, but you could never be too careful. The markers showed the edge of the East Meadow settlement, and the edge of the region their military could reasonably patrol, but it was hardly the edge of the actual urban area. The old-world city stretched out for miles in every direction, almost coast to coast on the island. Most of the survivors lived in East Meadow, or in the military base to the west, but there were looters, drifters, bandits, and worse sprinkled all around the island. The Voice had become the biggest fear, but they were far from the only one.
Even outside of East Meadow, the road here was well traveled and fairly open; there was garbage, of course, and dirt and leaves and the random debris of nature, but regular traffic kept the asphalt relatively clear of plants, and only rarely did the wagon bump over a major rut or pothole. The realm beyond the curbs was another story: Eleven years of disuse had left the city derelict, the houses crumbling, the sidewalks cracked and buckled by burgeoning tree roots, rampant weeds, and vast masses of kudzu that coated everything like a carpet. There were no lawns anymore, no yards, no glass in any of the windows. Even most of the side streets, less traveled than the main roadway, were crisscrossed with lines of green, Mother Nature slowly reclaiming everything the old world had stolen.
Kira liked it, in a way. Nobody told nature what to do.
They rode in silence a while longer; then one of the soldiers pointed to the north and hollered.
“Pack rat!”
Kira twisted in her seat, scanning the city, then caught a flash of movement in the corner of her eye—a school bus, the sides hung heavy with odds and ends and the top piled high with boxes and crates and sacks and furniture, all precariously strapped down with hundreds of yards of rope. A man stood beside it, siphoning