116 Essential Killing

"No, no, no," said Harper. "That bag is used to heat your meal. Open it, and put the bag with the food inside and pour in some water. See those lines on the bag? That's how much water you put in."

"I think I'm going to eat mine cold," said Olga.

"Don't be stupid."

"I don't want chemicals in my food."

"There won't be any chemicals in your food! You put the unopened bag with your food into the bag with the powder and - "

"No," said Olga.

"Leave her be," said Bobby.

Li Yang thought that was a very good plan. Olga was proving to be a major pain in the ass. 'No' seemed to be her favorite word. They all sat and waited for their MREs to heat, trying not to look at her eat. She opened the package with the crackers and crumbled them into the bag containing chicken with noodles and vegetables and began spooning the mixture into her mouth.

"It's good," she said.

"It would have been better warm," Harper said. "Say, Bobby. What has she been eating in the meantime?"

Bobby shrugged.

"MREs, just like everyone else," he said. "She would put everything into a saucepan and add stuff and heat it the traditional way."

"Add what stuff?"

"Salt and pepper and shit."

"Shit?" laughed Harper.

"Drop it, man," Bobby said.

They had been on the road for over eight hours, but had traveled no more than fifty kilometers. Soon after exiting the city, they found out why the patrol commander had told them to take the side roads. The highway running south was full of abandoned vehicles. Most of them had been broken into, and the road was covered in trash that included plenty of small, sharp objects. Before long, both Harper and Charlene caught punctures and they wasted over an hour patching the tubes with one of the repair kits they had brought along.

They switched to the side roads as recommended by the commander, but it made little difference to their speed. There were frequent stops and map consultations and a lot of bitching from Charlene. The tube on her front wheel was leaking air, and she had to use her bicycle's hand pump every fifteen-twenty minutes.

"I told you there was another puncture somewhere, Harper Lee," she kept saying. "I TOLD you!"

Harper and the others stayed silent, and let her rant.

Around ten thirty, they stopped to rest and eat. They were on something called Applegarth Road; it ran along the highway, maybe half a kilometer away. They'd just crossed a bridge over a small creek; the bridge afforded a view of a nearby golf course, with roofs of a township on its other side. Someone had abandoned a pickup truck right after the bridge, and its platform served them as their table.

"There are no birds because they all dead," Olga said with gloomy satisfaction. She'd already finished eating, and was looking pleased with herself. She added:

"I seen that happen in Russia. People kill every living thing for food. And birds especially bad because they eat grain people sow around that time of the year."

"I don't see any crop fields anywhere," said Harper.

"Don't you worry. All those people living over there, everyone has a small field in their own back yard. If they have any sense."

Li Yang turned to look at Jake Donato, and winked. It was pretty clear Olga regarded herself as the smartest person alive. Then he returned to his chicken with noodles and vegetables. They were all eating the same MRE; the carton they'd opened contained only chicken with noodles and vegetables.

There was the crack of a gunshot just as Li Yang was scraping out the meal bag with his spoon, hunting down every last little scrap.

They all froze. The shot seemed to come from the trees bordering the golf course to one side, maybe two hundred meters away.

"You see?" Olga said triumphantly. "I told you. They shoot anything that moves, and eat it."

"We'd better get going," Harper Lee said nervously.

"Don't you worry, Harper," said Charlene. "No one would want to eat you. You're not tasty enough. Now me, that's a different story."

No one laughed. They quickly concluded their meal and got on the bikes and rode away.

They passed through a couple of little towns where nothing stirred and the only noise was the noise they made on their bikes. They passed by silent storefronts, decorated with big TO LET and FOR RENT signs; they passed roadside restaurants whose parking lots falsely suggested there might be someone inside. Li Yang was increasingly feeling as if he was in some sort of a horror movie. And when they finally did come across someone, he briefly thought he was hallucinating.

They'd just switched to different local road, and after rounding a clump of trees they saw several small fields spread out to one side. A man was attempting to plow the field closest to them with a horse. It was evident that the horse didn't like it, even from a distance. As they drew closer, the horse looked at them, snorted, and jumped forward, tearing the small metal plow from the man's hands.

"Oh Jesus," they heard the man say. Harper raised a hand, and they all stopped near the aspiring farmer.

"Good morning," Harper said.

"Don't know if it's that good," said the man wearily. He was wearing a baseball cap and a short sheepskin jacket and jeans. He took the cap off, revealing greasy black hair, and wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Harper said. "Just one quick question and we'll stop bugging you and be gone. Is there any chance of finding a store that's open anywhere near here?"

The man laughed.

"You must be fucking kidding," he said. "A store that's open? You from another planet? Jesus."

"We're from New York," Harper said.

"Yeah," the man said, as if their being from New York explained everything, including the dumbest of questions. The horse had been observing them suspiciously, and now it snorted again. The man turned to it and said:

"You're so fucking clever, aren't you? Why can't you pull a fucking plow?"

"It's a fine horse," Harper said. "It's obviously a riding horse. It wasn't trained to pull a plow."

"Why don't you all just fuck off and die," the man said tiredly. He took a step towards the horse. The horse moved a couple of steps away, and looked at the man triumphantly.

"Oh Jesus," the man said.

They rode away, but barely an hour passed before Charlene threw a major tantrum. She was fucking tired of having to stop every few kilometers to pump more air into the damaged tube on her front wheel. It turned out Bobby was fucking tired of it too, and they spent over an hour repairing the tube. It took so long because Charlene discovered the tube had been damaged while getting the tire back on the wheel after the first patching and had a major fight with Harper, who told her to fix the bike all by herself from now on.

By two in the afternoon, after a full twelve hours on the road, everyone was tired and nerves were beginning to fray. They stopped again, and ate another meal of chicken with noodles and vegetables. Everyone took their time about it. They all needed to rest.

After a while, the sun began to slide behind the treetops to the west. Harper became upset. He had a friend in Philadelphia, a friend who could find all of them a place to stay: he worked in a hotel.

"I want to get there before it gets completely dark," he said. "Let's get going, people. We can get there in an hour if we step on it."

But night fell quickly, very quickly. And they were still a long way from Philadelphia when they saw a fire burning at the crossroads in front of them.

Harper stopped them and they all looked at the fire in the distance. There was a small supermarket right next to the intersection, but it appeared deserted.

"Hey, bro," Bobby said to Harper. "I'm gonna get my gun and put it in my pocket. I strongly advise you to do the same."

"I don't know if it's a good move," Harper said.

"I think it is," Bobby said. Li Yang thought so, too. He glanced at Jake and they both got off their bikes to get the guns from their backpacks.

Jake had brought along a revolver very similar to Li Yang's, just slightly bigger and holding six shots in its drum instead of five. But it was the same caliber, a thirty-eight, and Jake gave Li Yang a handful of cartridges. Li Yang loaded up his gun, and put the remaining ammo in his pocket.

He retrieved the small snub-nosed revolver from his backpack, and after due consideration put it in the side pocket of his jacket, leaving its flap unbuttoned. The pocket was deep enough to ensure the gun wouldn't fall out by accident.

"Just take it easy, guys," Harper said, looking at them. "We don't want any shooting."

No one said anything to that and Harper pushed off and everyone pushed off after him, one by one.

They were less than fifty meters away when several figures stepped out of the murk and into the light cast by the fire. Li Yang quickly counted five guys - two blacks and three whites. They all held long-barreled guns, shotguns and rifles, but they were pointed at the ground and one of the white guys raised his hand and waved in a manner that seemed friendly. He shouted:

"Hey there! Don't be afraid, come closer. We're just keeping an eye on who goes through."

They approached them slowly, and Harper stopped a good ten steps away. Li Yang broke rank and drew up alongside Bobby and looked at him. Bobby looked back and his eyes were full of bad news.

"We're from New York," Harper was saying. "We're on our way to stay with a friend out in the country. It's hard to survive in the city."

"What do you say," said the white guy who had called out earlier. He was wearing a beanie and a black leather biking jacket and black leather pants. The gun in his hands was a pump-action shotgun.

He turned around to his companions and said:

"Did you hear that, guys? The man says it's hard to survive in the city."

They all grinned or cackled. They seemed to find it really funny. The leather-clad leader turned to Harper and said:

"You seem to have a lot of stuff for guys who are finding it hard to survive."

"It's everything we own," Harper told him. The leader nodded.

"That's fine," he said. "We'll let you through, don't worry. But you'll have to pay a toll."

"A toll?"

"A toll. Payment for using this road, which is kept safe for travelers like you by guys like us. Don't you think that deserves payment?"

"It does. Absolutely," Harper said quickly. "How much do you want us to pay?"

"Well," said the leader, "That depends on how much your stuff is worth. If it's everything you own it must be worth a lot, right, guys?"

His crew agreed. All of them also moved a few steps closer. Most of them were using both hands to hold their guns.

Li Yang had received some rudimentary gun training from Jake before they'd left. Jake had told him how to hold the gun. He'd said:

"Don't aim the gun, just point it at the target as if you were trying to touch it with the muzzle. And hold it in both hands, cup the butt with your left hand before pulling the trigger. Remember: both hands on the gun."

Li Yang looked at the self-appointed guardians of the crossroads and knew, just knew they were ready to shoot him and the others with no hesitation. He glanced at Bobby and saw that Bobby's right hand was already inside his jacket. He let his right hand drop down to his pocket.

"Just tell us how much you want, and we'll pay you," Harper said.

"Okay. But we'll have to look through what you've got before we can tell you. We gotta check things out for ourselves. You understand?"

"You want to search us?"

"Correct. In some cases, that will mean a body search. Like that sweet doll you have here. From what I can see she's carrying something nice on her chest."

The guardians of the crossroads really enjoyed that. When they stopped laughing, one of them said:

"I want to search that sweet Chinese boy. I never had a Chinese boy."

The leader looked at Li Yang and grinned and said:

"Sylvester here likes boys more than girls. Don't worry, he's very nice and gentle."

He turned to Harper and said:

"All right, get off that fucking bike and tell them to do it too. Otherwise - "

He didn't get the chance to finish. Li Yang did one of the two things Jake had told him to do. He pointed his gun at the leader in black leather, and pulled the trigger.

The bang was so loud it deafened him, and the gun almost jumped out of his hand, hurting his wrist. He was stunned, and it was all over before he could recover.

Bobby began shooting almost at the same moment, so fast that the shots merged into one. So was Jake. And Olga was shooting too, shooting like a pro, with both hands clasped on a small black automatic spitting white flames.

It lasted no more than two seconds.

Four of the crossroads guardians were lying on the road around the fire. One - the leader - had fallen backwards into the fire. He wasn't moving or complaining.

"God almighty," Harper said hoarsely. "Oh God."

"Let's go," growled Bobby.

"Oh God."

"Move your stupid ass, Harper!" shouted Charlene.

He did. So did all of them. Pedaling like mad, they raced to then next intersection, turned right, then turned left after a while. No one said a word, everyone saved their breath and kept going. They went on like this for the next half an hour, newly grateful for the darkness, the empty road, the silent buildings, the lack of any human presence.

A faint glow appeared over the horizon in front, as if there was another fire burning just out of sight. But Harper let out a short, happy laugh and called out:

"That's Philadelphia! We made it!"

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