Though it does make me feel better about taking his food.
Under the flag is a wall-length built-in with drawers and cabinets. I go over to it, expecting to find Nazi memorabilia or the blueprints to the US Capitol, but instead it contains boxes and boxes of ammo for each of the guns on the wall. The cabinets in the center have more drawers, which house handguns in foam padding.
Cal joins me and takes a box of bullets for his handgun. There are a few boxes that have shells for the rifle I left back at the camp, so I take one of those, too.
Then Cal rips down the Nazi flag and tosses it into the corner.
“Come on,” he says. His voice has an icy edge to it now. “Let’s pack up some of the food. We can come back for more ammo and the guns.”
I nod, but even taking the rifle shells from that room feels weird. I try to push the thought away and go back to stocking the bags with canned food and freeze-dried MREs from the shelves.
Rocky Horror and Cara show up about fifteen minutes later, and by the time their bags are full like mine, they’re so heavy I have toleave one down by the steps while I carry the other two out front. Cal comes back with me to get the last bag.
“The settlement you left,” he says. “What made you leave them?”
I stop mid-reach for the bag at my feet. I don’t know how much I should tell him. Their group seems to have chosen him to be their leader—although he does discuss major decisions with the others. While we were in the mall, he listened to other people and took their thoughts into consideration. And when someone had better ideas, he stepped back and let them take over. Still, if the Nomads have a leader, it’s him.
And if we tell him the truth, that there’s a settlement out there that’s willing to pay for me, he might choose to turn me in. Or go back to his people and take a vote.
“The hurricane,” I say. “We were at a loss for supplies and thought the road would be better for us.”
“Why did the others follow you?” he asks. “Why hold you all at gunpoint and use up food and gas to come after you? And us when we drove past?”
It feels like he’s been waiting to ask this question since we met. I hate lying. Every time I do it, I feel awkward and stumble over my words. But this time when I do it, everything comes out easily. Because it’s not entirely a lie, it’s omission and avoidance.
“We’ve dealt with dangerous people like you have. Ours weren’t religious, but they wanted to control everyone anyway. They tried to kill me and my boyfriend, Andrew.”
“With the arm injury?”
“Yes.” I pull the bag up and shut the door.
“Why?”
I shrug. “Maybe they didn’t like who we are.” It feels like I should be telling Cal the truth, but that didn’t help us in the Keys. Still, there’s something trustworthy about him, like he wouldn’t turn against us if given the chance. I never thought that about the Keys, but I almost do about him.
Almost.
I stop as I reach for the door back into the market. “Can I ask you something?”
“Go for it.”
“What happened with your pastor? Is he still out there?”
His mood darkens more as he shakes his head. “No, he’s dead. His followers, the ones who didn’t fight us when we tried to take back the settlement, are probably out there somewhere. Or maybe not. Maybe they didn’t figure out how to survive without their pastor telling them how to live. And we were all starving by that point, so who knows if they found food and safety. But the rest of us stuck together.”
“How did he die?”
He looks at me like I should already know that, and I do, but I still want him to say it. “We killed him, Jamie. We knew how dangerous he was, so we took him out. Some people believe that makes him a martyr, but we knew we couldn’t survive as long as he was still around.”
“Did it make you feel bad? Killing him? Or do you feel better, I guess?”
And finally there’s something that crosses his face that I can’t read. Over the past few days of working with him and the other Nomads looking for supplies in the mall, I’ve learned how expressive Cal’s face is. The way his forehead wrinkles when he’s frustrated or thinkingabout something and the crow’s-feet around his eyes grow deeper, but this is something that I’ve never seen.
“There’s a lot in my life from the before times that sometimes keeps me up at night. Are you religious at all?”
“No.” My mom raised me with the most basic religious beliefs—mainly what she was raised with. But she was brought up Catholic and said she didn’t want to force me to think the same way. When I was seven, I asked why we didn’t go to church and her answer was simple: “Because I got sick of tithing my own money to a church that makes women take vows of poverty while the priest is driving around town in a brand-new Cadillac.” Through the years I’ve become more of a spiritual agnostic.
“How about some kind of higher power, everything happening for a reason?”
