“Something like that, I guess. She was kind of freaking me out.”
“She has issues,” he said. “She’s crazy. She and her husband both. They’re gun rights activists. Survivalists. Didn’t you hear them talking at boot camp? Listen, if Andy and these people were going to do something to us, they’d have done it by now. You’re with me. They know I have money. I have a public platform. We have value.”
“OK,” Edie said, tired.
“We have value.”
There was something ahead, at the side of the road. A sign, large, close to the ground.
“Can you read it from here?” Jesse asked.
Edie peered ahead. “Not quite yet.”
Another ten steps and the vague shapes of words fixed themselves into something faded but legible: “Ruby City Mine and Campgrounds.” A half dozen meters more and she could also make out the words below that, in smaller typeface:
MINE FOR RUBY’S, SAPPHIRE’S, & MORE!!!!!
GEM CUTTING AND GIFT SHOP.
“A TREASURE IN EVERY BUCKET GUARANTEED.”
CLEAN RESTROOMS & SHOWERS, LEASHED PETS WELCOME.
TURN R ? MILE AHEAD!
“Clean restrooms and showers.” Jesse sighed. “I have a feeling that’s out-of-date.”
“You’re probably right,” Edie said.
But she was sure they’d take the turn when it arrived, and they did, onto a gravel road curving steeply downhill and around a bend, its destination out of sight. The events of the last day had taught her not to anticipate—not to hope that the next thing would be better. But she hoped anyway. She fantasized, even. Her feet, numb with fatigue, trundled forward, and she imagined being welcomed by a grandmotherly type with flour handprints on her thighs, and she’s telling them that they each have rooms, and there’s hot tea and warm bread just as soon as you’re settled in. This was a terrible misunderstanding of some kind, unfortunate, but they’d be put on buses tomorrow and shipped straight to Quarantine.
A radio on Andy’s hip crackled, making them all jump, and some unintelligible string of words issued forth. Andy unhooked the radio, depressed a button, and spoke into it: “Yeah, it’s us.”
They finished circling the bend and approached a break in the trees. As they advanced, the edge of a building came into view, and Edie started noticing a sound—steady, familiar, coalescing after a moment into something identifiable: moving water. By then the building, too, had revealed itself fully. It was small, one story. The siding looked freshly painted, and flowers—daisies—were blooming in clumps on each side of a bright yellow door. A sign above the door, in faded lettering, announced, “Welcome Prospectors!”
The door opened. A man moved his considerable bulk from inside to out, stooping to clear the lintel, and Edie saw that he was coarsened with age, skin the color and texture of old saddle leather, the hair atop his head and his brows and covering the lower half of his face a frizzy cloud of steely gray. He stood, she guessed, six foot five or six foot six, and he had a tall older man’s hunch, broad shoulders, soft belly. He, like the guards, didn’t wear a microsuit. Edie couldn’t imagine him in one. Instead, his shirt and trousers were cut from the same heavy dark gray weave, softened with wear and washing, and leather suspenders framed the row of mismatched buttons marching down his front. This must be the man in charge, Edie thought—the man who would decide their fate.
When he spoke, his voice was unexpectedly soft. “Y’all be needing to go see June then, I guess,” he said.
Eight
The camp stretched along both sides of a river that the tall man told them—mildly, as if he were leading a tour group rather than a collection of hostages—was the Little Tennessee. Marta noticed, as they followed the bank for a stretch, that the river was traversed by two footbridges. The first, a suspension bridge, was walled off with what appeared to be scavenged chain-link fencing, and it swayed alarmingly as a woman crossed with a large duffel bag hoisted over her shoulder. The second bridge, perhaps half a kilometer ahead, appeared newer and sturdier, engineered from something other than scrap metal and desperation.
Their guide waved to the woman with the duffel. “Morning,” he said.
The woman looked at the group with undisguised curiosity. She, like their guide, wore what seemed to be the local uniform: colorless button-down shirt and trousers, suspenders. The cuffs of her pants were tight-rolled over thick, bright red socks and old-looking leather work boots. No microsuit. No tell-tale bulge of a Stamp. “Heavens to Murgatroyd, Curtis. This is them, then?”
“Seems so,” said their guide.
“Huh,” she said. Thoughtful, swinging her gaze from face to face, pausing, it seemed to Marta, longest on Wes’s. Her own face was sun-spotted and lined, but she might have only been in her thirties—hard to tell. Rare that a person in Marta’s circles made it past twenty-nine without some kind of tweak or polish. Her frizzy hair was tucked back in a ponytail, revealing a bare circle of scar tissue at her right temple. But it was an old scar, pale as milk, and Marta didn’t see any others. “Well, then,” she said. She dropped the duffel at her feet and dipped in a sarcastic little curtsy. “Welcome to Ruby City.” The bag shifted, slumped, and a small dead animal slipped out. Squirrel or rabbit, something fluffy and brown. “Enjoy your stay.”
“You know,” boomed Lee from the back of the pack, the first time Marta had heard him speak since Mickey was shot, a moment that seemed distant but hadn’t even been half a day ago, “that this one”—he pointed a shaky finger at the disfigured woman they called Violet—“murdered a man this morning. One of our group. No reason at all. Murdered him.” Marta, along with everyone else, held her breath, aghast and impressed at his nerve. Violet’s cratered face flushed dark, and her hand went up to the stock of her gun.
“Really,” the woman said tonelessly. Her expression, unlike Violet’s, lacked malice—but it was somehow worse than Violet’s. This was a disregard that couldn’t even muster passion. “Then I’d not piss her off, if I were you.”
Violet laughed hoarsely.
“That’s enough lollygagging,” said their guide—Curtis. “See you later, Vic.”