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“Should I give him back his weapons?”
“He’ll be staying for lunch,” I said.
THAIS
This surprised me—and made me highly suspicious. Atticus was not the one of us likely to share our food with a stranger.
“Did you invite him?” I hardly believed that was true.
“I did,” he answered.
I narrowed my eyes on him, believing there was much more to this than there appeared. There had to be.
“He has some things in his pack I’d like to have,” Atticus said, and then it all made sense. “And I’d like to find out if he knows anything about the Lexington City raiders. Or about anyone, for that matter.”
I was nervous about how Atticus intended to obtain the man’s belongings. “But…how do you expect to—”
“Barter,” he answered, already knowing what I was about to say. “We’ll work something out.”
41
ATTICUS & (THAIS)
“Nah, I don’t know anything about the raiders in the East,” Mark said with his mouth full; he sat on the bottom step of the back porch, eating fish and salad with his dirty fingers.
“This is the first time I’ve left Colorado since The Fever”—he stopped, held up his finger and backtracked—“No, I take that back; I mean technically I’ve been to Wyoming a few times on supply runs, but this here”—he chewed, swallowed, pointed at the ground—“traveling all the way over into these parts, it’s my first time.”
I listened meticulously.
One lie. One tiny lie. The more you talk, the more you explain, the easier it becomes to forget everything you said. A string of lies is weak like a brittle thread, Mr. Mark Porter.
Thais sat close to me on the top step, spearing a plastic fork with a missing tooth into her salad; our thighs were touching. I made sure she stayed close. And while I listened to Mark go on and on, scarfing down his food, I also watched Mark with the eyes of a stalking predator. Look at her once in a way I don’t like, and you’re dead.
“I’m surprised you made it as far as you did,” I pointed out. I took a bite, chewed slowly, swallowed slowly. “Did you go through Topeka? Jefferson City?”
Mark shook his head. “No way. I’ve stayed away from the bigger cities—like I said, I stay off the roads. My father told me not to worry about Abner, that I was crazy to make the trip.”
“Your father sounds like a wise man,” I said, and took another bite.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Mark agreed, and his face grew dark. “I’ve seen some messed up shit out there.” He shook his head again, more pronounced.
“What have you seen?” Thais spoke up.
I instantly disliked her talking to the stranger—it might’ve given Mark ideas—but I said nothing. I was still testing him, and what better way was there than with her?
“Well, I passed through one town, just outside of Hill City, Kansas, and the smell”—Mark visibly shuddered—“it was really bad. Everybody was dead in the street, scattered around like toys in a front yard—they’d been shot.”
“That doesn’t sound so unusual,” I said.
Mark looked at me sidelong—apparently, he wasn’t finished.
“They were all missing their hands,” he said. “Men, women, children, every single one of them—sixty or so people—gunned down in the street and relieved of their hands.” He dug his fingers into his salad. “Ain’t never seen no shit like that—heard it was the work of some fanatical religious cult.”
(I looked down nervously into my food. These were the types of stories I’d heard all my life about the Outside world. Were they true, after all?)
“How have you managed to stay alive so long in Colorado?” I asked.
“Denver is thriving,” Mark answered. “We get attacked every now and then—mostly by crazies. But it’s not easy getting into Denver. There’s a process”—he laughed softly—“Kind of like joining one of those fancy resorts, only you don’t have to be rich to get in, you just have to possess some kind of skill”—he pointed at Thais, and then me—“skills are as good as alcohol and cigarettes and—.” He stopped.
