“Shit,” I say. I move behind Andrew and he puts a hand on the Kid’s back to hurry him along to the road. Cal nods and unbuttons the holster clipped to his belt. The horses are trotting over to us. Ireach back and grab the baseball bat I took from the Dick’s in South Carolina out of a side pocket of my pack.
Cara, Andrew, and the adults stand in a short line in front of the kids, waiting to see what the people on horseback are going to do. I step forward with Cal and the Nomads, but none of them have guns at the ready.
“What do we do?” I ask Cal.
“Just wait. See what they want. There’s more of us than there are of them, so I’m not worried, but we don’t want anyone to get hurt if we can help it.”
I nod. “I never did thank you for not pulling your guns on us.”
He looks at me. “We did have guns on you, you just couldn’t see them.”
The idea chills me to the bone. They must have been focused on us in the RV. If we made one wrong move, they could have killed us. And the same might be true right now. Everyone on our side is standing here in the road. But whoever these people on horseback are, they could have more people watching us.
My eyes scan the trees around the field, looking for movement.
As the horses get closer, I notice that if the riders are armed, their guns aren’t in their hands. The taller one raises one hand in a hello, while the other holds the reins.
As they reach the other side of the highway, I see it’s a middle-aged East Asian woman wearing a blue baseball hat, her hair pulled back in a long ponytail. The boy next to her is Asian, too, and probably around Jamar and Taylor’s age, maybe a little younger.
The woman turns the horse around in a wide circle and I see that she does have a gun—it’s holstered on her right. But when she stopsher horse next to the other, she seems to give us a friendly enough smile. I see Cal take his hand off his gun. He steps forward and the rest of us follow a few paces behind.
“Hi,” she says. “I’m Hannah.” She nods to the boy next to her. “This is my son, Alex.” Alex gives us a friendly wave and Cal introduces himself.
“And everyone else.” He waves behind him. “The rest of our group is up the road waiting.” It sounds innocuous, but I know it’s a warning—that we have people waiting for us, and if we don’t show up they’ll come looking—and I think Hannah takes it that way.
“Where you all from?” she asks.
Cal laughs and makes a big sweeping gesture. “All over.”
Hannah smiles. “Yeah, us too. We’re from Cleveland originally. Lots of folks in our settlement are from all over, too.”
Lots of folks.I wonder how many.
I don’t know what else to say—none of us seem to—so Hannah speaks again.
“Well, our settlement is up the road here. If you’re all interested in spending the night, we’d like to extend the invitation.”
Cal glances back to me, then his people. I look back to Andrew, Rocky Horror, Amy, Cara. It looks like none of us know exactly what to say. I don’t want to speak for the group, but strangers offering hospitality these days is not always the best sign.
Hannah holds up her hands. “No pressure. You can talk it over. But if you do decide to join us for the night...” She points up the road. “Take the second exit, make a left. Head on down the road for a mile and a half and then make a right at the coffee shop shaped like a boot.”
But something isn’t sitting right with me. “Why are you inviting us?” I ask. Cal turns, surprised that I said something, and maybe I am, too. But I want to see what Hannah’s answer is. We told her there were others waiting for us, and she has no idea how many. For all she knows, we could number several hundred, and her settlement might be only twenty.
Or her settlement could be several hundred, and ours is seventy-one.
Still, I’m not willing to trust her so easily. And judging by what I’ve learned about Cal and the Nomads, maybe they aren’t either.
Hannah looks at me, then her eyes drift to the kids, who have gathered to look around the adults in front of them. She shrugs. “It’s Christmas Eve. Think of it as goodwill toward... survivors.”
Shit. I had totally forgotten. Holidays are hard to remember without the constant barrage of consumerism and nostalgia. Our minds have been more focused on finding food for survival than gifts. Andrew and Kelly look surprised, too. Amy and Cara either remembered and didn’t tell us, or they have great poker faces. Well, Cara absolutely does.
“Think about it,” Hannah says. “We do hope to see you, though.”
She and her son bid us goodbye and head back the way they came. Hannah stays facing forward, but Alex turns back to look at us, like he’s not sure we’re trustworthy.
We wait until Hannah and Alex are far enough away before we gather in a big circle to talk about it, weighing the pros and cons. The pros are food, safety, shelter, companionship. The only con is, they could be trying to kill us. It’s Rocky Horror who comes in with the logic.
“What’s the point? I mean, we don’t know how many there are, but they have to know we aren’t carrying that much on us. And ‘come join us for Christmas dinner, but also no pressure’ isn’t the most enticing way to lure in a buncha rubes.”
