Apocalypsis 04 - Haven

sparkling personality, that was for sure.
    “Why’d you tell her we’d take that idiot with us?” he asked. “And offer her one of our guns? We don’t have enough.”
    I stopped pushing on him and walked at his side, keeping my voice as low as possible. “We have a ton of guns at Haven. Hundreds. And enough bullets to kill every canner a hundred times over. And that Gail girl hates me, so she isn’t going to agree to walk into Haven. We’ll get her out of the Glades and send her on her way if that’s what she wants. No harm, no foul.”
    Trip stopped and faced me for a second. “Most of the time I look at you and I see a complete goofball. But then you go and do something like that and I see something else.”
    I put my hand on my hip. “Oh yeah, like what? A brilliant mastermind?”
    He smiled. “No. Someone not as goofy, but still a little goofy.” He walked over to the buggy, leaving me standing there.
    I couldn’t think of a sharp retort, so I just shut up, waiting for Trip to find the crappiest gun in his cache of weapons.
    Bodo came over as I waited.
    “What happened over dare? Are we going to cross?”
    “Yes. We had to do a trade, though. We take that Gail girl off their hands and give them a gun and we can go.”
    “Dat sounds like dey get all da good stuff.”
    I shrugged. “At least we get to go through. And like I told Trip, Gail won’t want to stay with us. She rejected us once already.”
    “Yes, but now she iss getting rejected again. Maybe she hass no place to go now.”
    “Maybe. But unless she wants to cooperate, that’s not my problem.”
    “Maybe she can grow tomatoes,” said Bodo, getting a far off look. “Maybe she will be especially smart with eggplants.”
    I couldn’t help but laugh. “Eggplants? Can’t we just outlaw those from Haven altogether?”
    He smiled back at me, the first time in what felt like a long time. “I make a fairy, fairy goodt ratatouille. You will like it.”
    “You keep your rat soup away from me, boy,” I said, walking away to join Winky at her horse.
    “It’s not of rats. It’s of vegetables.”
    I waved him away over my head. Things felt more normal now, or a least a tiny bit more normal. We were going to get through this grove and then we’d be almost home. Things were looking up, and for the first time in days, I felt my heart lighten just a little.
    ***
    “I don’t know why you traded for me. She would have kept me there. I was helping them.” Gail was still yammering on and on, two hours after we’d taken her through the grove. She’d decided to walk next to Winky’s and Bodo’s horse, so even though Paci held back on the reins a little, we still had to listen to her.
    “If you were such a big help, why’d they want to trade you?” asked Winky.
    “Great question. It’s that idiot Robson. All she does all day long is bark orders like a freakin’ drill sergeant.”
    “What are you goingk to do now?” Bodo asked her, finally getting to the part I was wondering about. I hadn’t pressed the issue because I didn’t want her to think she wasn’t welcome. She actually wasn’t welcome as far as I was concerned, but I knew it wouldn’t be fair to exclude kids who rubbed me the wrong way. Haven was not a dictatorship. It had to be a kind of democracy with more than one person making decisions. And even if everyone disliked her, it still wasn’t a reason to exclude her and send her out to starve, as long as she was willing to be loyal to all of us.
    “I guess I’m going with you guys. It’s not like I have a choice.” She obviously wasn’t happy about being trapped, and I could hardly blame her.
    “You have to swear an oath and mean it,” said Winky, “or you aren’t coming in. I don’t care how hungry you are.”
    “You’re a serious bitch, you know that?” Gail had stopped walking and was staring at Winky with her hands fisted at her sides.
    I stopped myself from mentioning out loud how much she looked like Robson when she did that.
    “No, I’m not. I just tell it like it is. And you rejected Haven once, so there’s no reason for us to think you won’t try to do it again. But we have rules and you should know that before you walk all that way.”
    “You mean she has rules.” Gail was glaring at me now.
    “Hey, don’t put me in the middle of this,” I said. “You know the deal, Gail. Winky was just reminding you how we operate. You left threatening us just the other day. Now you want to come in