“Come on. Let’s get out of here before someone comes to investigate the gunshots.”

***

I walked over to the three slave girls and spoke to them softly. I was worried they’d think they’d fallen out of the frying pan and into the fire with us. Winky had even freaked me out a little, so I could hardly blame them if they thought we were bad news.

“Hey,” I said walking up slowly. “My name’s Bryn. I’m sorry this got so violent. We planned to come in here and sneak you away … but as you can see, our plan kind of went straight to hell when we got caught ourselves.”

Bodo came walked over from the edge of the road, joining me at my side. “You okay?” he asked, putting his arm on my shoulder. The sun was peaking through the clouds now and the rain had lessened to a bare drizzle. He looked gorgeous in the fresh, new sunlight.

I nodded, turning my attention back to the girls. “This is Bodo. Those guys are Ronald and Jamal, they’re twin brothers. That wild woman over there is Winky, and she’s not usually that out of control, I promise. Back at our camp is Peter with our little dog, Buster. I assume he’s staying there with our stuff,” I said, looking at Bodo.

He nodded. “He’s got hiss gun.”

I looked back at the girls. “So, if you want, you can come with us.”

“Where are you going?” said one of them, the taller one with dirty blonde hair.

“We’re headed to the Everglades prison.”

“Why?” asked another, this one with light brown skin and dark hair.

“We want to set up a new community. A city kind of. So we just thought that’d be a good place.”

The three girls looked at each other and nodded silently.

The blonde answered me again. “We’ve really got no other options at this point. So we’ll go until we decide we don’t want to be with you anymore.”

The dark-haired girl spoke next. “We appreciate the offer, though. Don’t think we don’t.”

“Yeah,” agreed the blonde. “You didn’t have to come in here after us, and we know that. And you took care of those monsters, so we owe you big time.”

“We’d better get going,” said Jamal. “I’m afraid of who else might have heard the ruckus.”

I nodded my agreement. “Let’s go.” I looked at the girls. “You should probably wait on the road. We have to get our bikes and crap. We’ll bring them up here and then we’ll go.”

“We’re not going to wait until it’s safer to travel?” asked Ronald.

“No. Like Jamal said, we caused a ruckus here. I just want to get the heck out of this area. Maybe we’ll find a place we can stop farther down.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said, taking off at a jog.

“You girls okay?” I asked.

The blonde nodded. “We’re good. Hurry back, though.” She cast nervous glances at her friend, the one who’d been sleeping. Her sudden burst of energy seemed to have faded significantly in the last few minutes. She looked like she was going to go to sleep again.

“Back in a few minutes,” I said.

Bodo put his hand in mine, and we walked together quickly through the weeds to the road, where we stopped to look north and south. No one was there that we could see, but it didn’t really make me feel better since I had the sense there were people there, hiding.

“Have you tried to reach Nina lately?” I asked.

“I haven’t seen her. I will keep blowing my harmonica, but I’m afraid she iss gone.” He pulled it out of his pocket and blew it three times, waiting between each attempt. We didn’t see anything.

“Maybe she’s just pouting. Once we settle down at our final spot you can work on getting her to come down.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t want to do it too much because den maybe canners will hear us.”

I nodded. “Probably better that you don’t.” I felt bad telling him that, but we really couldn’t risk it. I hoped he’d be able to find some new hawks to train near the prison.

We walked back to Peter who was standing behind a tree with his gun ready and Buster on his leash.

“Oh, thank God you’re back,” he said, shoving the gun in his backpack that was at his feet. “I heard those gunshots and thought for sure you were dead.” He rushed over to hug me, throwing his twiggy arms around my neck.

I hugged him back hard. “Winky got grazed, but she seems okay.”

Peter left me to go examine her back. “Oooh, that looks painful,” he said, lifting up her shirt. “It’s like a cut and a burn at the same time.”

“Yeah. That’s exactly what it feels like,” said Winky, looking over her shoulder at him.

“Let me just clean it real quick and then we can go.” Peter looked up at the sky. “It’s stopped raining. Do you think you could walk without a shirt on?”

Winky raised an eyebrow at him.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said gently slapping her arm before going to one of the backpacks. “I just think it would be better to save our supplies, so if you can just let your wound hang out in the air instead of having me cover it, it might be better.”

Winky shrugged. “I have a bra on. I don’t care if you guys see it.”

I walked over and helped her out of her shirt. Peter made short work of cleaning her up and putting salve of some sort over the injury.

“Okay. That about does it,” he said, patting her on the shoulder. “Better?”

“No.”

“Good. Let’s go,” he said, ignoring her frown.

We pushed our bikes out onto the road, all of us struggling a bit under the heavier loads we now had on our backs, thanks to Peter having emptied the trailer. The only thing left in it was the suitcase of grenades. Winky had to wear hers too, and I didn’t envy her the scraping on her injury. She winced every time she moved.

The girls were waiting for us, leaning on the car. The tired one was sleeping, curled up on the crumpled hood.

“Do you think she can ride in the trailer?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said the blonde.

“What are your names, anyway?” Winky asked.

“Oh, sorry. I’m Gretchen,” said the blonde. “This is Bianca, and that’s Jenny.”

Everyone gave a little wave or a nod of the head in greeting.

“Nice to meet you,” I said. “Can you wake Jenny up and help her in the trailer?”

The two girls gently shook her awake and coaxed her down off the hood. She moved slowly over to the trailer and curled up in a ball in the bottom, immediately going back to sleep.

“She doesn’t look good,” said Winky, staring down at her tiny form. Jenny’s freckles stood out in stark contrast to her vey pale face and reddish-brown hair.

“She’s been sick for a few days,” said Gretchen. “We haven’t eaten much in the last month since they took us from our house. I’m not sure if her problem is lack of food or something else.” She frowned, looking at her.

“You live nearby?” I asked.

“We used to live in Miami, near downtown,” said Bianca. “We were neighbors before everything happened. Then we lived together in my house. It wasn’t much, but it was home. Then the sweepers came and started taking kids out, one by one.”

“Sweepers?” I asked.

“Yeah. Sweepers. Like those guys,” she said, jerking her thumb to the other side of the road where the bodies lay.

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” I said.

Gretchen spoke up. “They come in and sweep kids up and then sell them.”

“To who?”

“Anyone with food or other stuff they want.”

“I’m not sure I get it. I mean, who buys other kids? The canners just eat kids, so why would they trade food for food?”

“Some kids don’t like to eat people, so they trade with kids who do, for other kinds of food. Stuff in cans and boxes, basically,” said Bianca.

“That’s just sick,” said Jamal. “What is wrong with people?”

“We’ve been asking ourselves the same question for months,” said Gretchen. “And I can’t tell you how relieved we are that you are saying it too.”

“Alright, enough of the chit chat,” said Peter. “We really need to get moving. I’m getting a bad feeling about this place.”

“You’re just getting a bad feeling now?” I asked, giving him a hard time.

“Save it, Bryn. And get on your bike. You are the mule today.”

I looked back at the load that was making me the designated beast of burden. She didn’t look all that heavy. “If one of you wants to get in there with her, you can. I think I can handle it.”

“We can walk,” said Gretchen, straightening her shoulders.

“No. No one walks. We share bikes,” said Peter. “Jamal and Ronald, you guys each need to put a girl on the handlebars or something. Walking will slow us down.”

“Wait!” said Bianca, running back over to the dead guys.

“What’s she doing?” Winky asked.

“I’m not sure I want to know,” said Jamal, under his breath.

She rummaged around in their clothes and came out with knives and guns. She grabbed a backpack off the ground and stuffed everything inside, before taking the other bag sitting under the tree and rejoining us.

“Sorry. Didn’t want to leave that stuff lying around.”

I nodded my head. “Good move. You can’t have too many weapons around here.”

She slung one backpack over her shoulder and handed the other one to Gretchen, who took it reluctantly, a frown on her face.

“I really don’t even want to touch this thing.”

“Get over it. It’s a backpack with food and ammo in it. We need it. Consider it a parting gift from the monsters.”

Gretchen put it on, distaste written all over her face.

“Okay, no more messing around. Everyone on a bike, pronto,” said Peter, snapping his fingers before depositing Buster in my basket and getting on his own bike.

No one argued with him or complained about his bossiness. It actually was a relief for me to have someone else calling the shots and organizing things. For once I just wanted to follow someone’s orders and do what I was told; that way I could live with the illusion that everything was going to be just fine, because someone other than me was in charge.

Ronald had Bianca ride on the bike seat and hold onto his waist while he pedaled standing up. Gretchen rode on Jamal’s handlebars, resting her feet on the strut that was over the tire and gripping the handlebars on either side of her butt.

“This will work for about a half hour,” said Gretchen, laughing a little at her awkward position. “Then I can’t promise I won’t fall off.”

“We can take breaks,” said Peter. “But only short ones. I want to get to the prison by nightfall.”

“Are you crazy?” asked Jamal. “It’s too far. And what happened to avoiding canners while they’re partying?”

“We’re going to just shoot anyone who gets in our way. No more messing around,” said Peter, not even looking at us as he pedaled off.

“Boy’s gone bloodthirsty on us,” said Jamal, shaking his head as he pushed off to join him.

“Boy’s gone realistic I think is more like it,” said Winky.

“Boy is da boss,” said Bodo, straining with the effort of moving his bike with the extra weight on his back.

I didn’t share my opinion with anyone. My thoughts on wrong and right, good and evil, and all the other moral issues I had always assumed would never change, could never change, were in flux right now. I didn’t know which way was up anymore.