Page 16 of Chaos

That name reverberates in my ears, whining in my bones. Renata means Frankie. Renata has to mean Frankie.

Venus fills me in at the top of the gate, her pink hair fluttering in the wind. She’s almost as tall as me, thickly built. She fought in the Bulgarian army, has a German father, fled her homeland, and came here after the war.

“We searched him,” she says, her every word punctuated by my heart thudding in my ears. “Wood around him too. He’s alone.”

Puck, a slim, freckled guy with ears like an elf, who came from DC with us as well, nods his agreement. “No weapons. He’s clean.”

“Says he will speak only to you. This is good news, big man. Soon, we will get our girl back.” Venus drops the ladder for me and pulls it back up the second my boots hit the road.

I approach Duffy carefully, not wanting to scare him off before he says what he came to say.

A scar runs down the middle of his nose, making me think he got bit by a dog when he was a kid, bit badly. He walks in the shuffle of a heavyset guy who used to be spry and for whom moving gets harder every year. Not quite a waddle. Not quite a scurry. No coat or jacket despite the freezing temperature.

When I take his meaty hand in mine, it’s clammy.

“Name’s Yorke.”

A puff of nervous breath leaves his mouth. “I know.” He holds his hands up like he’s surrendering. “Don’t set me on fire.”

My reputation is spreading. “You asked for me?”

He wets his lips nervously. “I—I do trades, that’s how this started, yeah? I’ve been running along the Appalachians. Started down in Georgia. Figured I’d make my way up as far north as the mountains go, then head back down.”

Behind him, sits his truck, a big pickup with a covered bed, pulling a trailer, chains on the tires, electric, which feels like a gamble he won’t get stuck someplace without solar power to charge up.

“You’re heading north at the start of winter?” I ask.

He makes a hemming sound. “I got family in Pittsburg I’m hoping to reach in the next couple weeks. They’ll probably be dead, but … still. I plan to post up there ’til spring.”

We’ve got surveillance in the woods on either side of the road and down the stretch five miles in either direction. We’d know if he came with anyone, yet prickles of unease slither along the back of my neck. Not of him. Of whatever he’s about to tell me.

I shove my hands into my pockets to keep my hands from twitching.

Everyone is up on the perch over the gate watching. Colleen, Shane, Wendell, Church. More than just them. Everyone’s watching. I can feel them holding their breath.

“Keep going.” My voice comes out unnaturally even considering the impatience clawing at my throat.

“I started last year in Charlotte and went south from there.” He mirrors my stance, concealing his hands in his pockets, and I have to check the urge to tell him to get his hands back where I can see them. He’s been searched. “Made it as far west as Chattanooga in the summer, and then down south toward Tallahassee. Hotter’n balls. Ran the coast a ways, then decided to skirt around Charleston so headed back inland to Atlanta, back to Charlotte with some goods people there asked for.”

“Keep going.” My toes clench and unclench, jittery in my boots.

“In Charlotte, people started telling me about a couple of big groups in these mountains. I figured I’d come up and see if you all wanted to trade. Stopped in at Winston-Salem, spent time with a man named Augusto—”

“The Butcher?”

“Auggie, yeah, they call him that. He’s a nice guy.” He touches his head. “They wear Gray Caps, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“They told me you all were bad news.” He makes an apologetic face. “I was going to skip you, heading for Roanoke, when I got stopped on the highway by a man in a camo hat.”

“Sebi?”

He shrugs. “Fit guy. Had the look of the army on him, like you.”

Sebi means Renata, they always seem to stick together. “Go on.”

“He told me to come here and give you something, said I showed it to you, you’d be willing to trade with me.”

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