“T-T-Tommy,” he stammered.
She smiled at him, trying to put him at ease, taking a few more steps forward until she was directly in front of him. Crouching down on one knee so she and the boy were face to face, Rachael put on her best friendly this-is-not-the-apocalypse smile. “Where’s your family, Tommy?”
Sniffling, he glanced back at Alice and the other three before finally settling his gaze on Rachael. It suddenly occurred to her what a sight they must be—her in jeans, T-shirt, and Wonder Woman armor mixed and matched with Sif and Valkyrie and Asgardian armor pieces, and her fellow travelers wearing a mix of costumes, armor, and well-worn everyday clothes.
“Do you know the Apple Man?”
Not the answer she’d expected. Rachael glanced back over her shoulder at her friends. They looked at one another, confusion registering on their faces. Alice shrugged and Rachael turned back to the boy.
“I’m sorry, Tommy. My friends and I don’t know him. But maybe we can help you find him. Who is the Apple Man?”
“The Apple Man is my friend,” Tommy answered, “but he went out where the Bad Things are and hasn’t come back. The Apple Man used to work for my daddy but then he left. I wanted to go find him, but no one would let me. They said it was bad out there, and that the B-B-Bad Things would get me, but I was worried about him so I climbed the wall and went looking for him. But then there were s-s-scary sounds and I ran and now I can’t find my way home.” His sniffling, which had started to subside, threatened to turn into tears again. Hoping to forestall it, Rachael quickly pulled a bandana out of the side pouch of her backpack, offering it to the boy. He stared at it, lower lip quivering.
Alice stepped forward, setting her sword down as she knelt next to Rachael. Taking the bandana, she gently wiped Tommy’s face, mopping the tears away before pressing the cloth into his hand. “Where’s home, Tommy?” she prompted. “We can help you get home to your family and look for the Apple Man on our way there. Would you like that?”
Tommy looked from Rachael’s Wonder
Woman armor, to Alice’s Superman shirt, then up at their faces.
“Happytown,” he replied, wiping his nose on the bandana and rubbing his eyes on his shirt sleeve. “They’re in Happytown.”
— 3 —
DAHLIA AND THE PACK
“If he’s just some old guy,” said Trash, the second oldest of their pack, “why are you afraid of him?”
Neeko, the pack’s scout, looked up from the careful work he was doing wrapping bandages around the head of one of the other scouts. Neeko wore bandages, too. Both of them were covered with small bruises that were as intense as blueberries growing ripe on their skin.
Trash, who was one of the best fighters in the pack, recognized the bruises as the marks from single-knuckle punches. Full fists, edge-hands, Y-hands and palms left different kinds of marks. Trash had fought in semi-pro mixed martial arts for years before the outbreak. He’d taken and given enough injuries to be able to read them. Both Neeko and the other scout looked like they’d been worked over by club bouncers.
“You saying he did that?” he demanded.
Neeko tied the bandage, patted his friend’s shoulder and blew out his cheeks, nodding as he did so. “He kicked our asses and didn’t work up much of a sweat doing it, man.”
“One old guy?”
“Yeah.”
“How old?”
“I don’t know. Pretty old. Had white hair and a white beard and all.”
“You’re telling me you got your asses handed to you by Santa Claus?”
Neeko rose from the cinderblock he’d been using as a seat and came over to the card table where Trash was cleaning and loading pistols. He didn’t sit.
“He didn’t have elves, didn’t say ‘ho-fucking-ho,’ and the only thing he gave us was a beating,” he said. “Old fucker could have killed us, but he didn’t.”
“He chased you off?”
“He let us go.”
“Let you go? Meaning, what? He couldn’t beat you and chased you with his walker, so you ran off?”
“He could have killed us if he wanted,” said Neeko. “We snuck up on him, and you know how quiet I am. He was sitting in a beach chair, hat down over his face. Looked like he was sleeping. And even if he was awake I was ghosting my way past him and keeping like a hundred feet between us. Bushes and some stacked boxes and all. He had this pimped out motor home. Really sweet, and in great condition. Reinforced, too. And there was one of those storage pod trailers hooked up in back. It was open, though, and he had his stuff all around his campsite. I think he was doing some kind of inventory on his shit.”
Trash leaned his forearms on the table, interested now. “What kind of shit?”