“Grub time,” Tony explained. “If civilians want to go out to eat, they get their food between six and seven.”
Food trucks. Real food? I could smell something meaty, though my nostrils could not entirely discern what it might be, and my mouth started watering in spite of itself. Tony counted the trucks and directed us toward one in the middle. “Our neighborhood is fed by truck seven,” he said.
I grasped Dax’s upper arm. “Food,” I whispered. “Fucking real food.”
“I want sweet potato fries,” he said.
We strode up to a black food truck with orange flames emblazoned across the side, along with a sign declaring it Korean Barbecue. A white printout with the number seven printed on it had been taped next to the window.
Korean barbecue! I loved Korean barbecue. My hopes soared, only to immediately crash and burn when I saw people leaving its side clutching not delicious cuts of meat, but MREs.
MR-fucking-Es.
So Keller had requisitioned the trucks, but not the actual food they contained. Dax and I stared morosely at the trucks, all visions of Korean barbecue and sweet potato fries fleeing our minds.
I tried to be pragmatic about it. At least I was eating.
“He really thinks I’m a devil worshipper?” Dax asked.
We reached the front of the line quickly, probably because no actual cooking was going on. The soldier handing out the grub looked at Tony, then at us, then back to Tony. “Picked up some friends?”
“Yeah, these are the folks I came in with. Vibeke and Dax.”
The soldier’s brow furrowed. “Vi-beck?”
“Close,” I said, pleasantly surprised. “Most people have trouble.”
“Move it along,” one of the patrolling soldiers barked at us from a few feet away. “You can catch up on the chit-chat after eating.”
The soldier manning the food truck set three MREs on the counter. “Good luck, newbies,” he said. “These things are hell on the digestive tract.”
“Move along,” the other soldier snapped. He came toward us, a hand on the butt of his sidearm. “You’re holding up the line.”
Damn, these guys were touchy.
“Do I look like a devil worshipper to you?” Dax asked Food Truck Guy.
The server sized him up. “You look like a goddamn cherub, kid. Now take your pastrami and get out of here before Sergeant Buzzkill does something we’ll all regret.”
Dax pulled his MRE off the counter, bowed in thanks, and stepped away. I took one as well, and Tony picked up his.
“All is well?” Tony asked.
Food Truck Guy barely cracked a grin. “More noise downtown. We’ll talk, though.”
There was no communal eating area. Instead, we went straight home, or at least the house currently acting as our home. “What are you going to talk about?” I asked Tony, if only to fill in the silence on our ten-minute walk through what looked very much like a dead city. “With that soldier.”
“Keller doesn’t trust me with a lot of facts, but Specialist Andrews likes to chat about his duties with a cigarette or two.”
Evie greeted us with her usual aplomb, then danced around the kitchen table as we sat down with our MREs and bottled water that Tony produced from the fridge. Apparently you could purchase a beverage of some sort at the trucks, but that cost extra, or earned you dirty looks or something, none of which we wanted to deal with..
“How was work?” he asked as we sat down with our pastrami MREs, which, in case you were wondering, were apparently some sort of ill-fated military experiment that should never, ever have been attempted, but some asshole commander decided to order enough to feed an entire state for ten years, and they wound up stockpiled in Hastings for whatever reason. Once the perishables and canned goods ran low, those MREs fed the entire city in those dark days after the dead walked.
I was of the opinion that the dead themselves probably tasted better.
“Lots of blood,” I said. “Lots of blood.”
“Bedpans,” Dax said. “Bedpans everywhere.”
“So a successful day at the hospital.” Tony took a bite of his pastrami, made a face, and forced himself to swallow it. “Some things just aren’t meant to be freeze-dried, I guess. But you’ll get used to it. It’s the only thing we have a ton of.”
“Have you found out what’s happening to Gloria and Vijay?” I asked.
Tony shook his head. “I’m sure they’re fine.”
I stopped picking at my own pastrami. “How can you be so cool about this? Our friends are in God knows what kind of—”
“They aren’t our friends,” Tony snapped, his voice rising. I sat back in surprise, and he quickly softened his tone. “We ran into them. And don’t think they wouldn’t have ditched us if they knew what would happen here.” He glared at me over his water bottle. “Keller’s not going to do anything awful to them. He needs information.”
“What information can she possibly give him? I thought half the time she was spitting back shit she got from his own broadcasts.”