Respect God:

Pray working. Pray learning, planning, doing.

Pray creating, teaching, reaching.

Pray working.

Pray to focus your thoughts, still your fears,

strengthen your purpose. Respect God.

Shape God. Pray working.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2027

WE READ SOME VERSES and talked about Earthseed for a while this morning. It was a calming thing to do—almost like church. We needed something calming and reassuring. Even the new people joined in, asking questions, thinking aloud, applying the verses to their experiences.

God is Change, and in the end, God does prevail. But we have something to say about the whens and the whys of that end.

Yeah.

It’s been a horrible week.

We’ve taken both today and yesterday as rest days. We might take tomorrow as well. I need it whether the others do or not. We’re all sore and sick, in mourning and exhausted—yet triumphant. Odd to be triumphant. I

think it’s because most of us are still alive. We are a harvest of survivors. But then, that’s what we’ve always been.

This is what happened.

At our noon stop on Tuesday, Tori and Doe, the two little girls, went away from the group to urinate. Emery went with them. She had kind of taken charge of Doe as well as her own daughter. The night before, she and Grayson Mora had slipped away from the group and stayed away for over an hour. Harry and I were on watch, and we saw them go. Now they were a couple—all over each other, but at arm’s length from everyone else. Strange people.

So Emery took the girls off to pee—not far away. Just across the hill face and out of sight behind a patch of dead bushes and tall, dry grass. The rest of us sat eating, drinking, and sweating in what shade we could get from a copse of oak trees that looked only half dead. The trees had been robbed of a great number of branches, no doubt by people needing firewood. I was looking at their many jagged wounds when the screaming began.

First there were the high, needle thin, needle sharp shrieks of the little girls, then we heard Emery shouting for help. Then we heard a man’s voice, cursing.

Most of us jumped up without thinking and ran toward the noise. In midstride, I grabbed Harry and Zahra by the arms to get their attention. Then I gestured them back to guard our packs and Natividad and Allie who had stayed with the babies. Harry had the rifle and Zahra had one of the Berettas, and in that moment, they both resented the hell out of me. No matter. For the moment, I was just glad to see them go back. They could cover us if necessary, and keep us from being overwhelmed.

We found Emery fighting with a big bald man who had grabbed Tori. Doe was already running back to us, screaming. She ran straight into her father’s arms. He swept her up and ran off toward the highway, then he veered back toward the oaks and our people. There were other bald people coming up from the highway. Like us, they ran toward the screams. I saw metal gleaming among them—perhaps only knives. Perhaps guns. Travis spotted the group, too, and yelled a warning before I could.

I fell back, dropped to one knee, aimed my .45 two-handed, and waited for a clear shot at Emery’s attacker. The man was much taller than Emery, and his head and shoulders were exposed except where he held Tori against him. The little girl looked like a doll that he was clutching in one arm. Emery was the problem. She, small and quick, was darting at the man, tearing at his face, trying to reach his eyes. He was trying to protect his eyes and to knock or throw her away from him. With both hands free, he might have been quick

enough to bat her aside, but he wouldn’t let go of the struggling Tori, and Emery wouldn’t be beaten off.

For an instant, he did knock Emery back from him. In that brief window of time, my own ears ringing from his blow, I shot him.

I knew at once that I’d hit him. He didn’t fall, but I felt his pain, and I wasn’t good for anything else for a while. Then he toppled, and I collapsed with him. But I could still see and hear, and I still had the gun.

I heard shouting. The bald gang from the highway was almost on us—six, seven, eight people. I couldn’t do anything while I was dealing with the pain, but I saw them. Instants later when the man I had shot lost consciousness or died, I was free—and needed.

Bankole had our only other gun away from camp.

I got up before I should have, almost fell down again, then shot a second attacker off Travis who was carrying Emery.

I went down again, but didn’t lose consciousness. I saw Bankole grab Tori and all but throw her to Jill. Jill caught her, turned, and ran back toward camp with her.

Bankole reached me, and I was able to get up and help him cover our retreat.

We had only the scarred trees to retreat to, but they had thick, solid- looking trunks. An attacker fired several bullets into them as we reached them.

It took me several seconds to understand that someone was shooting at us. Once I did, I dropped behind the trees with the others and looked for the opposing gun.

Our rifle thundered behind me before I could spot anything. Harry, on the job. He fired twice more. I fired twice myself, barely aiming, barely in control. I believe Bankole fired. Then I was lost, no more good for anything. I died with someone. The shooting stopped.

I died with someone else. Someone laid hands on me and I came within a fingers twitch of squeezing the trigger once more.

Bankole.

“You stupid asshole!” I whimpered. “I almost killed you.” “You’re bleeding,” he said.

I was surprised. I tried to remember whether I’d been shot. Maybe I had just come down on a sharp piece of wood. I had no sense of my own body. I hurt, but I couldn’t have said where—or even whether the pain was mine or someone else’s. The pain was intense, yet defuse somehow. I felt… disembodied.

“Is everyone else all right?” I asked.

“Be still,” he said.

“Is it over, Bankole?”

“Yes. The survivors have run away.”

“Take my gun, then, and give it to Natividad—in case they decide to come back.”

I think I felt him take the gun from my hand. I heard muffled talk that I didn’t quite understand. That was when I realized I was losing consciousness. All right then. At least I had held on long enough to do some good.

Jill Gilchrist is dead.

She was shot in the back as she ran toward the trees carrying Tori. Bankole didn’t tell me, didn’t want me to know before I had to because, as it turned out, I was wounded myself. I was lucky. My wound was minor. It hurt, but other than that, it didn’t matter much. Jill was unlucky. I found out about her death when I came to and heard Allie’s hoarse screaming grief.

Jill had gotten Tori back to the trees, put her down, then, without a sound, folded to the ground as though taking cover. Emery had grabbed Tori and huddled, crying with her in terror and relief. Everyone else had been busy, first taking cover, then firing or directing fire. Travis was the first to see the blood pooling around Jill. He shouted for Bankole, then turned Jill onto her back and saw blood welling from what turned out to be an exit wound in her chest. Bankole says she died before he reached her. No last words, no last sight of her sister, not even the assurance that she had saved the little girl. She had. Tori was bruised, but fine. Everyone was fine except Jill.

My own wound, to be honest, was a big scratch. A bullet had plowed a furrow straight through the flesh of my left side, leaving little damage, a lot of blood, a couple of holes in my shirt, and a lot of pain. The wound throbbed worse than a burn, but it wasn’t disabling.

“Cowboy wound,” Harry said when he and Zahra came to look me over. They looked dirty and miserable, but Harry tried to be upbeat for me. They had just helped to bury Jill. The group had, with hands, sticks, and our hatchet, dug a shallow grave for her while I was unconscious. They put her among the trees’ roots, covered her, and rolled big rocks atop her grave. The trees were to have her, but the dogs and the cannibals were not.

The group had decided to bed down for the night where we were, even though our oak copse should have been rejected as an overnight camp because it was too close to the highway.

“You’re a goddamn fool and too big to carry” Zahra told me. “So just rest there and let Bankole take care of you. Not that anyone could stop him.”

“You’ve just got a cowboy wound,” Harry repeated. “In that book I

bought, people are always getting shot in the side or the arm or the shoulder, and it’s nothing—although Bankole says a good percentage of them would have died of tetanus or some other infection.”

“Thanks for the encouragement,” I said.

Zahra gave him a look, then patted my arm. “Don’t worry,” she said. “No germ will get past that old man. He’s mad as hell at you for getting yourself shot. Says if you had any sense, you would have stayed back here with the babies.”

“What?”

“Hey, he’s old,” Harry said. “What do you expect.” I sighed. “How’s Allie?”

“Crying.” He shook his head. “She won’t let anyone near her except Justin. Even he keeps trying to comfort her. It upsets him that she’s crying.”

“Emery and Tori are kind of beaten up, too,” Zahra said. “They’re the other reason we’re not moving.” She paused. “Hey, Lauren, you ever notice anything funny about those two—Emery and Tori, I mean? And about that guy Mora, too.”

Something clicked into place for me, and I sighed again. “They’re sharers, aren’t they?”

“Yes, all of them—both adults and both kids. You knew?”

“Not until now. I did notice something odd: that tentativeness and touchiness—not wanting to be touched, I mean. And they were all slaves. My brother Marcus once said what good slaves sharers would make.”

“That Mora guy wants to leave,” Harry said.

“So let him go,” I answered. “He tried to run out on us just before the shooting.”

“He came back. He even helped dig Jill’s grave. I mean he wants us all to leave. He says that gang we beat will come back when it’s dark.”

“He’s sure?”

“Yeah. He’s going crazy, wanting to get his kid out of here.” “Can Emery and Tori make it?”

“I’ll carry Tori,” a new voice said. “Emery can make it.” Grayson Mora, of course. Last seen abandoning ship.

I got up slowly. My side hurt. Bankole had cleaned and bandaged the wound while I was unconscious, and that was a piece of luck. Now, though, I felt half-conscious, half-detached from my body. I felt everything except pain as though through a thick layer of cotton. Only the pain was sharp and real. I was almost grateful for it.

“I can walk,” I said after trying a few steps. “But I feel like I’m walking on stilts. I don’t know if I can keep the usual pace.”

Grayson Mora stepped close to me. He glanced at Harry as though he wished Harry would go away. Harry just stared back at him.

“How many times did you die?” Mora asked me.

“Three at least,” I answered, as though this were a sane conversation. “Maybe four. I never did it like that before—over and over. Insane. But you look well enough.”

His expression hardened as though I’d slapped him. Of course, I had insulted him. I’d said, Where were you, man and fellow sharer, while your woman and your group were in danger. Funny. There I was, speaking a language I hadn’t realized I knew.

“I had to get Doe out of danger,” he said. “I had no gun, anyway.” “Can you shoot?”

He hesitated. “Never shot before,” he admitted, dropping his voice to a mumble. Again I’d shamed him—this time without meaning to.

“When we teach you to shoot, will you, to protect the group?”

“Yeah!” Though at that moment, I think he would have preferred to shoot

me.

“It hurts like hell,” I warned. He shrugged. “Most things do.”

I looked into his thin, angry face. Were all slaves so thin—underfed,

overworked, and taught that most things hurt? “Are you from this area?” “Born in Sacramento.”

“Then we need all the information you can give us. Even without a gun, we need you to help us survive here.”

“My information is to get out of here before those things up the hill throw paint on themselves and start shooting people and setting fires.”

“Oh, shit,” I said. “So that’s what they are.” “What’d you think they were?”

“I didn’t have a chance to think about them. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Harry, did you guys strip the dead?”

“Yeah.” He gave me a thin smile. “We got another gun—a .38. I put some stuff in your pack from the ones you killed.”

“Thank you. I don’t know that I can carry my pack yet. Maybe Bankole

—”

“He’s already got it on his cart. Let’s go.” We headed out toward the road.

“Is that how you do it?” Grayson Mora asked, walking next to me.

“Whoever kills takes?”

“Yes, but we don’t kill unless someone threatens us,” I said. “We don’t hunt people. We don’t eat human flesh. We fight together against enemies. If

one of us is in need, the rest help out. And we don’t steal from one another,

ever.”

“Emery said that. I didn’t believe her at first.” “Will you live as we do?”

“…yeah. I guess so.”

I hesitated. “So what else is wrong? I can see that you don’t trust us, even now.”

He walked closer to me, but did not touch me. “Where’d that white man come from?” he demanded.

“I’ve known him all my life,” I said. “He and I and the others have kept one another alive for a long time, now.”

“But…him and those others, they don’t feel anything. You’re the only one who feels.”

“We call it sharing. I’m the only one.” “But they… You…”

“We help each other. A group is strong. One or two people are easier to rob and kill.”

“Yeah.” He looked around at the others. There was no great trust or liking in his expression, but he looked more relaxed, more satisfied. He looked as though he had solved a troubling puzzle.

Testing him, I let myself stumble. It was easy. I still had little feeling in my feet and legs.

Mora stepped aside. He didn’t touch me or offer help. Sweet guy.

I left Mora, went over to Allie, and walked with her for a while. Her grief and resentment were like a wall against me—against everyone, I suppose, but I was the one bothering her at the moment. And I was alive and her sister was dead, and her sister was the only family she had left, and why didn’t I just get the hell out of her face?

She never said anything. She just pretended I wasn’t there. She pushed Justin along in his carriage and wiped tears from her stony face now and then with a swift, whiplike motion. She was hurting herself, doing that. She was rubbing her face too hard, too fast, rubbing it raw. She was hurting me, too, and I didn’t need any more pain. I stayed with her, though, until her defenses began to crumble under a new wave of crippling grief. She stopped hurting herself and just let the tears run down her face, let them fall to her chest or to the broken blacktop. She seemed to sag under a sudden weight.

I hugged her then. I put my hands on her shoulders and stopped her half- blind plodding. When she swung around to face me, hostile and hurting, I hugged her. She could have broken free. I was feeling far from strong just

then, but after a first angry pulling away, she hung on to me and moaned. I’ve never heard anyone moan like that. She cried and moaned there at the roadside, and the others stopped and waited for us. No one spoke. Justin began to whimper and Natividad came back to comfort him. The wordless message was the same for both child and woman: In spite of your loss and pain, you aren’t alone. You still have people who care about you and want you to be all right. You still have family.

After a while, Allie and I let each other go. She isn’t a chatty woman, especially not in her pain. She took Justin from Natividad, smoothed his hair, and held him. When we began walking again, she carried him for a while, and I pushed the carriage. We walked together, and there didn’t seem to be any need to say anything.

On the road, there was a fair amount of foot traffic in both directions. Still, I worried that a big group like ours would be noticeable and locatable, no matter what. I worried because I didn’t understand the ways of our attackers.

Sometime later when Allie put Justin back into the carriage and took the carriage from me, I moved to walk with Bankole and Emery. Emery was the one who explained things to me, and she was the one who spotted the smoke from the first fire—no doubt because she was looking for it. We couldn’t tell for sure, but the fire looked as though it might have begun back as far as where we had stopped at the oak copse.

“They’ll burn everything,” Emery whispered to Bankole and me. “They won’t stop until they’ve used up all the ’ro they have. All night, they’ll be burning things. Things and people.”

’Ro, pyro, pyromania. That damned fire drug again. “Will they follow us?” I asked.

She shrugged. “There are a lot of us, and you killed some of them. I think they’ll take their revenge on other, weaker travelers.” Another shrug. “To them we’re all the same. A traveler is a traveler.”

“So unless we get caught in one of their fires…”

“We’ll be okay, yeah. They hate everybody who isn’t them. They would have sold my Tori to get some more ’ro.”

I looked at her bruised, swollen face. Bankole had given her something for her pain. I was grateful for that, and half-angry at him for refusing to give me anything. He didn’t understand my numbness and grogginess back at the copse, and it disturbed him. Well at least that had faded away. Let him die three or four times and see how he feels. No, I’m glad he’ll never know how it feels. It makes no sense. That brief, endless agony, over and over. It makes

no sense at all. I keep catching myself wondering how it is that I’m still alive. “Emery?” I said, keeping my voice low.

She looked at me.

“You know I’m a sharer.”

She nodded, then glanced sidelong at Bankole.

“He knows,” I assured her. “But…look, you and Grayson are the first sharers I’ve known who had children.” There was no reason to tell her she and Grayson and their children were the first sharers I’d known period. “I hope to have kids myself someday, so I need to know…do they always inherit the sharing?”

“One of my boys didn’t have it,” she said. “Some feelers—sharers—can’t have any kids. I don’t know why. And I knew some who had two or three kids who didn’t have it at all. Bosses, though, they like you to have it.”

“I’ll bet they do.”

“Sometimes,” she continued, “sometimes they pay more for people who have it. Especially kids.”

Her kids. Yet they had taken a boy who wasn’t a sharer and left a girl who was. How long would it have been before they came back for the girl? Perhaps they had a lucrative offer for the boys as a pair, so they sold them first.

“My god,” Bankole said. “This country has slipped back two hundred years.”

“Things were better when I was little,” Emery said. “My mother always said they would get better again. Good times would come back. She said they always did. My father would shake his head and not say anything.” She looked around to see where Tori was and spotted her on Grayson Mora’s shoulders. Then she caught sight of something else, and she gasped.

We followed her gaze and saw fire creeping over the hills behind us—far behind us, but not far enough. This was some new fire, whipping along in the dry evening breeze. Either the people who attacked us had followed us, setting fires, or someone was imitating them, echoing them.

We went on, moving faster, trying to see where we could go to be safe. On either side of the highway, there was dry grass, there were trees, living and dead. So far, the fire was only on the north side.

We kept to the south side, hoping it would be safe. There was a lake ahead, according to my map of the area—Clear Lake, it was called. The map showed it to be large, and the highway followed its northern shore for a few miles. We would reach it soon. How soon?

I calculated as we walked. Tomorrow. We should be able to camp near it tomorrow evening. Not soon enough.

I could smell the smoke now. Did that mean the wind was blowing the fire toward us?

Other people began hurrying and keeping to the south side of the road and heading west. No one went east now. There were no trucks yet, but it was getting late. They would be barreling through soon. And we should be camping for the night soon. Did we dare?

The south side still seemed free of fire behind us, but on the north side the fire crawled after us, coming no closer, but refusing to be left behind.

We went on for a while, all of us looking back often, all of us tired, some of us hurting. I called a halt and gestured us off the road to the south at a place where there was room to sit and rest.

“We can’t stay here,” Mora said. “The fire could jump the road any time.” “We can rest here for a few moments,” I said. “We can see the fire, and it

will tell us when we’d better start walking again.”

“We’d better start now!” Mora said. “If that fire gets going good, it will move faster than we can run! Best to keep well ahead of it!”

“Best to have the strength to keep ahead of it,” I said, and I took a water bottle from my pack and drank. We were within sight of the road and we had made it a rule not to eat or drink in such exposed places, but today that rule had to be suspended. To go into the hills away from the road might mean being cut off from the road by fire. We couldn’t know when or where a windblown piece of burning debris might land.

Others followed my example and drank and ate a little dried fruit, meat, and bread. Bankole and I shared with Emery and Tori. Mora seemed to want to leave in spite of us, but his daughter Doe was sitting half asleep on the ground against Zahra. He stooped next to her and made her drink a little water and eat some fruit.

“We might have to keep moving all night,” Allie said, her voice almost too soft to hear. “This might be the only rest we get.” And to Travis, “You’d better put Dominic into the carriage with Justin when he’s finished eating.”

Travis nodded. He’d carried Dominic this far. Now he tucked him in with Justin. “I’ll push the carriage for a while,” he said.

Bankole looked at my wound, rebandaged it, and this time gave me something for the pain. He buried the bloody bandages he had removed, digging a shallow hole with a flat rock.

Emery, with Tori gone to sleep against her, looked to see what Bankole was doing with me, then jumped and looked away, her hand going to her own side.

“I didn’t know you were hurt so much,” she whispered.

“I’m not,” I said, and made myself smile. “It looks nastier than it is with

all the blood, but it isn’t bad. I’m damned lucky compared to Jill. And it doesn’t stop me from walking.”

“You didn’t give me any pain when we were walking,” she said.

I nodded, glad to know I could fake her out. “It’s ugly,” I said, “but not too painful.”

She settled down as though she felt better. No doubt she did. If I moaned and groaned, I’d have all four of them moaning and groaning. The kids might even bleed along with me. I would have to be careful and keep lying at least as long as the fire was a threat—or as long as I could.

The truth was, those blood-saturated bandages scared the hell out of me, and the wound hurt worse than ever. But I knew I had to keep going or burn. After a few minutes, Bankole’s pills began to take the edge off my pain, and that made the whole world easier to endure.

We had about an hour’s rest before the fire made us too nervous to stay where we were. Then we got up and walked. By then, at some point behind us, the fire had already jumped the road. Now, neither the north nor the south side looked safe. Until it was dark, all we could see in the hills behind us was smoke. It was a terrifying, looming, moving wall.

Later, after dark, we could see the fire eating its way toward us. There were dogs running along the road with us, but they paid no attention to us. Cats and deer ran past us, and a skunk scuttled by. It was live and let live. Neither humans nor animals were foolish enough to waste time attacking one another. Behind us and to the north, the fire began to roar.

We put Tori in the carriage and Justin and Dominic between her legs. The babies never even woke up while we were moving them. Tori herself was more than half asleep. I worried that the carriage might break down with the extra weight, but it held. Travis, Harry, and Allie traded off pushing it.

Doe, we put atop the load on Bankole’s cart. She couldn’t have been comfortable there, but she didn’t complain. She was more awake than Tori, and she had been walking on her own most of the time since our encounter with the would-be kidnappers. She was a strong little kid—her father’s daughter.

Grayson Mora helped push Bankole’s cart. In fact, once Doe was loaded aboard, Mora pushed the cart most of the time. The man wasn’t likeable, but in his love for his daughter, he was admirable.

At some point in the endless night, more smoke and ash than ever began to swirl around us, and I caught myself thinking that we might not make it. Without stopping, we wet shirts, scarves, whatever we had, and tied them around our noses and mouths.

The fire roared and thundered its way past us on the north, singeing our

hair and clothing, making breathing a terrible effort. The babies woke up and screamed in fear and pain, then choked and almost brought me down. Tori, crying herself with their pain and her own, held on to them and would not let them struggle out of the carriage.

I thought we would die. I believed there was no way for us to survive this sea of fire, hot wind, smoke, and ash. I saw people—strangers—fall, and we left them lying on the highway, waiting to burn. I stopped looking back. In the roar of the fire, I could not hear whether they screamed. I could see the babies before Natividad threw wet rags over them. I knew they were screaming. Then I couldn’t see them, and it was a blessing.

We began to run out of water.

There was nothing to do except keep going or burn. The terrible, deafening noise of the fire increased, then lessened, and again, increased, then lessened. It seemed that the fire went north away from the road, then whipped back down toward us.

It teased like a living, malevolent thing, intent on causing pain and terror. It drove us before it like dogs chasing a rabbit. Yet it didn’t eat us. It could have, but it didn’t.

In the end, the worst of it roared off to the northwest. Firestorm, Bankole called it later. Yes. Like a tornado of fire, roaring around, just missing us, playing with us, then letting us live.

We could not rest. There was still fire. Little fires that could grow into big ones, smoke, blinding and choking smoke… No rest.

But we could slow down. We could emerge from the worst of the smoke and ash, and escape the lash of hot winds. We could pause by the side of the road for a moment, and gag in peace. There was a lot of gagging. Coughing and gagging and crying muddy tracks onto our faces. It was incredible. We were going to survive. We were still alive and together—scorched and miserable, in great need of water, but alive. We were going to make it.

Later, when we dared, we went off the road, unloaded my pack from Bankole’s cart, and dug out his extra water bottle. He dug it out. He’d told us he had it when he could have kept it for himself.

“We’ll reach Clear Lake sometime tomorrow,” I said. “Early tomorrow, I think. I don’t know how far we’ve come or where we are now, so I can only guess that we’ll get there early. But it is there waiting for us tomorrow.”

People grunted or coughed and downed swallows from Bankole’s extra bottle. The kids had to be prevented from guzzling too much water. As it was, Dominic choked and began to cry again.

We camped where we were, within sight of the road. Two of us had to stay awake on watch. I volunteered for first watch because I was in too much

pain to sleep. I got my gun back from Natividad, checked to see that she had reloaded it—she had—and looked around for a partner.

“I’ll watch with you,” Grayson Mora said.

That surprised me. I would have preferred someone who knew how to use a gun—someone I would trust with a gun.

“I’m not going to be able to sleep until you do,” he said. “It’s that simple.

So let’s both put our pain to good use.”

I looked at Emery and the two girls to see whether they’d heard, but they seemed to be already asleep. “All right,” I said. “We’ve got to watch for strangers and fire. Give me a yell if you see anything unusual.”

“Give me a gun,” he said. “If anybody comes close, I can at least use it to scare them.”

In the dark, sure. “No gun,” I said. “Not yet. You don’t know enough yet.”

He stared at me for several seconds, then went over to Bankole. He turned his back to me as he spoke to Bankole. “Look, you know I need a gun to do any guarding in a place like this. She doesn’t know how it is. She thinks she does, but she doesn’t.”

Bankole shrugged. “If you can’t do it, man, go to sleep. One of us will take the watch with her.”

“Shit.” Mora made the word long and nasty. “Shiiit. First time I saw her, I knew she was a man. Just didn’t know she was the only man here.”

Absolute silence.

Doe Mora saved the situation to the degree that it could be saved. At that moment she stepped up behind her father and tapped him on the back. He spun around, more than ready to fight, spun with such speed and fury that the little girl squealed and jumped back.

“What the hell are you doing up!” he shouted. “What do you want!”

Frightened, the little girl just stared at him. After a moment, she extended her hand, offering a pomegranate. “Zahra said we could have this,” she whispered. “Would you cut it?”

Good thinking, Zahra! I didn’t turn to look at her, but I was aware of her watching. By now, everyone still awake was watching.

“Everyone’s tired and everyone’s hurting,” I told him. “Everyone, not just you. But we’ve managed to keep ourselves alive by working together and by not doing or saying stupid things.”

“And if that’s not good enough for you,” Bankole added, in a voice low and ugly with anger, “tomorrow you can go out and find yourself a different kind of group to travel with—a group too goddamn macho to waste its time saving your child’s life twice in one day.”

There must be something worthwhile in Mora. He didn’t say anything. He took out his knife and cut the pomegranate into quarters for Doe, then kept half of it because she insisted that he was supposed to have half. They sat together and ate the juicy, seedy, red fruit, then Mora tucked Doe in again and found himself a perch where, gunless, he began his first watch.

He said nothing more about guns, and he never apologized. Of course he didn’t leave us. Where would he go? He was a runaway slave. We were the best thing he’d found so far—the best he was going to find as long as he had Doe with him.

We didn’t reach Clear Lake the next morning. To tell the truth it was already the next morning when we went to sleep. We were too tired and sore to get up at dawn—which came early in the second watch. Only the need for water made us move out when we did—at a hot, smoky 11 A.M.

We found the corpse of a young woman when we got back to the road.

There wasn’t a mark on her, but she was dead.

“I want her clothes,” Emery whispered. She was near me or I wouldn’t have heard her. The dead woman was about her size, and dressed in a cotton shirt and pants that looked almost new. They were dirty, but far less so than Emery’s clothes.

“Strip her, then,” I said. “I’d help you, but I’m not bending too well this morning.”

“I’ll give her a hand,” Allie whispered. Justin was asleep in his carriage with Dominic, so she was free to help with the ordinary, unspeakable things that we did now to live.

The dead woman had not even soiled herself in her dying. That made the job less disgusting than it could have been. Rigor mortis had set in, however, and stripping her was a job for two.

There was no one but us on this stretch of road, so Emery and Allie had all the time they needed. We had seen no other walkers yet this morning.

Emery and Allie took every scrap of clothing, including underwear, socks, and boots, though Emery thought the boots would be too big for her. No matter. If no one could wear them, she could sell them.

In fact, it was the boots that yielded Emery the first cash she had ever owned. On the farm where she had been a slave, she had been paid only in company scrip, worthless except on the farm, and almost worthless there.

Stitched into the tongue of each of the dead woman’s boots were five, folded one hundred-dollar bills—a thousand dollars in all. We had to tell her how little that was. If she were careful, and shopped only at the cheapest stores, and ate no meat, wheat, or dairy products, it might feed her for two

weeks. It might feed both her and Tori for a week and a half. Still, it seemed riches to Emery.

Late that day, when we reached Clear Lake—much smaller than I had expected—we came across a tiny, expensive store, being run from the back of an old truck near a cluster of half-burned, collapsed cabins. It sold fruit, vegetables, nuts, and smoked fish. We all had to buy a few things, but Emery squandered too much money on pears and walnuts for everyone. She delighted in passing these around, in being able to give us something for a change. She’s all right. We’ll have to teach her about shopping and the value of money, but she’s worth something, Emery is. And she’s decided she’s one of us.

Sunday, September 26, 2027

Somehow, we’ve reached our new home—Bankole’s land in the coastal hills of Humboldt County. The highway—U.S. 101—is to the east and north of us, and Cape Mendocino and the sea are to the west. A few miles south are state parks filled with huge redwood trees and hoards of squatters. The land surrounding us, however, is as empty and wild as any I’ve seen. It’s covered with dry brush, trees, and tree stumps, all far removed from any city, and a long, hilly walk from the little towns that line the highway. There’s farming around here, and logging, and just plain isolated living. According to Bankole, it’s best to mind your own business and not pay too much attention to how people on neighboring plots of land earn a living. If they hijack trucks on 101, grow marijuana, distill whisky, or brew up more complicated illegal substances… Well, live and let live.

Bankole guided us along a narrow blacktopped road that soon became a

narrow dirt road. We saw a few cultivated fields, some scars left by past fires or logging, and a lot of land that seemed unused. The road all but vanished before we came to the end of it. Good for isolation. Bad for getting things in or out. Bad for traveling back and forth to get work. Bankole had said his brother-in-law had to spend a lot of time in various towns, away from his family. That was easier to understand now. There’s no possibility here of coming home every day or two. So what did you have to do to save cash? Sleep in doorways or parks in town? Maybe it was worth the inconvenience to do just that if you could keep your family together and safe—far from the desperate, the crazy, and the vicious.

Or that’s what I thought until we reached the hillside where Bankole’s

sister’s house and outbuildings were supposed to be.

There was no house. There were no buildings. There was almost nothing:

A broad black smear on the hillside; a few charred planks sticking up from the rubble, some leaning against others; and a tall brick chimney, standing black and solitary like a tombstone in a picture of an old-style graveyard. A tombstone amid the bones and ashes.