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Gone?
    Cavalo shook his head. Bad Dog didn’t respond.
    A moment of silence. Then the woman, “You really think it’s the town?”
    The deep voice: “I don’t know. Merchants, maybe. One of the trade caravans.”
    “All the way out here? They don’t follow the broken road. Especially not through our country. But….”
    “Spit it out.”
    “What if it’s the government? Like Patrick warned us?”
    The deep-voiced man snorted. “Too soon for them. They’re still crawling on their hands and knees back east. It’ll be years before they find their way out here. By then, it won’t matter. We’ll control all of this.”
    “We?”
    “You know what I mean. Patrick will provide.”
    “May he walk forever,” the woman said reverently.
    “He will,” the deep-voiced man said, and Cavalo felt ice in his heart. “We’ve—”
    “Quiet,” the woman said. “Listen.”
    They fell silent. Sweat dripped from Cavalo’s brow. Government , he thought dizzily. Patrick. Cottonwood. Reminder. It was like a storm.
    Footsteps approached. “Where the hell have you been?” the deep-voiced man asked.
    Nothing was said in response. Cavalo could see movement, barely visible, as if hands were waving. Motioning.
    Deep-voice wasn’t moved. “I don’t care what the fuck you were doing. You’re supposed to be checking lines.”
    More motion.
    “Stupid retard,” the woman muttered. She sounded unsure. “Why does Patrick keep him around?”
    “Because he’s a goddamn psycho. You’re new, so you don’t know shit. Found him in the woods sucking on his dead momma’s titties when he was nothing but a babe. Raised him since. Pet. Fucking bulldog.”
    “You ain’t scared of him?”
    “Nah,” he said, but it sounded like a lie. “He don’t do nothing till Patrick tells him to. He learned the hard way when he tried to think on his own. Didn’t ya, boy?”
    No motion, no movement.
    “Ah, go fuck ya’self.”
    The woman: “You see that?”
    “What?”
    She crouched near the entrance of the thicket. Cavalo could see her more clearly now through the darkening gloom. Bright red hair spiked up one side, head shaved down other. Skin smudged with dirt. A bruise on her lower jaw, days old. Black gloves, spikes on the end. Tight black fabric across small breasts. Exposed skin. Cargo pants. Camo. Greens and browns and blacks.
    Cavalo hadn’t seen camo in years, not since he’d stumbled across an abandoned military compound, deserted except for razor-thin coyotes with engorged tumors growing along their bodies. He was twenty-three then. A coyote had almost taken his head off. There must have been power somewhere in that old place because he’d stumbled into a wall, pressing a button, and a panel lit up and a voice began to screech “—IS NOT A DRILL. REPEAT: WE ARE AT DEFCON 1. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. WE—” He’d run then, from that haunted place where the radiated coyotes nested, the mechanical voice shrieking after him that they were at DEFCON 1. That was right before he found her and—
    “What is it?” the deep-voiced man asked, and he too came into view. Massive, muscles bunched and bulging. Black man, dark. Growth on his neck from too much time spent in the Deadlands. It would have to be excised soon. Most likely it would grow back, Cavalo knew, but it would take time. His head was shaved, and there were pit scars like burns across his scalp, pink along with the dark of his skin. Cavalo couldn’t see his eyes but knew they’d be narrowed.
    Blood. They’d seen the blood trail.
    “Looks dried,” the woman said. “Been here a while.”
    “Don’t mean it didn’t come from whoever tripped that wire,” the black man muttered. He raised his head to look into the thicket, and Cavalo closed his eyes, knowing the man would see the whites. Bad Dog’s skin rippled, but otherwise he was still. For a moment nothing happened.
    Then: “Well, well, well. Look what we have here.”
    Fight , Cavalo thought. Pull down on hand,