“You good?” Cipher inspected me from head to toe.
“Yeah, I’m good.” He stared at me a moment longer, questioning me with his eyes. “I’m fine,” I assured him.
He turned his attention back to the bag, poking it with the rebar. “I’m going to unzip it. Why don’t you take a couple steps back, just in case?”
I seriously doubted they’d put a bomb inside the bag–the military wasn’t in the habit of blowing up civilians as far as I knew–but I did as he asked.
“Dumping it out now,” Cipher said to me as well as Macon via radio. Using the rebar he flipped over the bag and shook out its contents. Orange pill bottles came tumbling out along with cloth pads, rolls of bandages, a couple bars of soap, and a bottle of clear liquid that I hoped was rubbing alcohol. There were also several blue plastic tubes that I didn’t recognize.
“What are those? Some kind of straw?” I asked Cipher.
“Water filters,” Cipher said.
“Handy.”
“Looks like they packed us an epi-pen too. No inhalers though.” He poked at the stuff with the metal rod. I hadn’t told Cipher that mine was empty. I didn’t want him to worry or risk his life trying to find me a new one. I’d just deal with the occasional asthma attack.
“Can you see what’s in the pill bottles?” he asked, since kneeling and crouching were difficult for him.
I squatted down to read their labels. “Pretty sure this one’s an antibiotic, and this one I read about in my medical book, it’s to stop diarrhea. Ibuprofen, an antihistamine, oxy…” I trailed off, recognizing the name as a type of painkiller. I glanced up at him.
“Hide that one from me,” he said, and I tucked it into my pocket. I had a special place for pain meds that Cipher didn’t know about. He was doing so good at quitting the drugs. I didn’t want anything to cause him to relapse.
“Everything here looks safe to me,” I said as I rifled through the rest of the supplies. “No bombs, no booby traps, no hidden cameras.”
“Check the lining of the bag,” Cipher said.
Inside the canvas bag was an inner pocket that contained a length of paracord and some carabiners. There was also a pen flashlight with working batteries that I clicked on and off. I showed it to Cipher.
“Useful,” he said begrudgingly.
“Maybe they were telling the truth, and they want to be our friends.”
He gave me a dark look. “The military doesn’t have friends, Kitten, they have fodder.”
Fodder for the war against the Rabids, a war we were still losing. But there were worse things than becoming a soldier, weren’t there? Dying of starvation or from an operable condition like appendicitis, as my friend Lucas had. But maybe I was just being too hopeful.
Cipher surveyed the empty street as if expecting an ambush still. I followed his gaze, remembering a time when the neighborhood was filled with the sounds of children playing, neighbors mowing their lawns, kids riding their bikes up and down the street, parents calling out to their children to come inside for supper, like my own mother called for us. The Before.
But I couldn’t focus too much on the way things used to be. Like Artemis once said, we had to leave the past behind us and make new memories. Make do with what we have and keep moving forward.
“Can we bring it inside now?” I asked Cipher.
“Fine,” he said with reluctance, “but don’t get used to their bribes, Kitten. Nothing good can come of it.”
I knew how awful humans could be–I’d experienced cruelty firsthand with Jeremiah–but I had to hold out hope that noteveryone in this world was out to get us. People could still do nice things for each other without expecting anything in return, couldn’t they?
“Maybe it’s not a bribe. Maybe it’s just people helping each other out,” I said to him.
He looked at me then with something like tenderness, his mouth curving into a sad, rueful smile. “You might be right, Kitten. I hope you’re right.”
Later that afternoon,when we were all gathered around the dining room table for our afternoon meal which doubled as our daily meeting, the subject of the military’s visit came up. The contents of the duffle bag were now piled high like pirate’s treasure in the center of the table as Cipher recounted our run-in with the United Forces.
I glanced over to my brother’s spot where Teresa was now sitting. I hadn’t heard from Santiago since Cipher had found him for me in Atlanta, didn’t know if he’d survived the vaccine trials, whether he’d decided to stay in the city or come find me in Promised Land. But I prayed that wherever he was, he was safe and like me, surrounded by people who loved him.
“Nice haul,” Artemis said, scanning the objects in front of us. “You said their captain was a woman?”
“Yeah, middle aged, prosthetic right leg, scar down the side of her face. Why?” Cipher asked.
