6
FRIENDS IN NEED
Darwin and Teresa stared down the hole. Three bodies lay in the pile of rubble. It was obvious from the angle of their limbs and necks that he had underestimated the damage the fall would do. Instead of broken bones, Paul and his cronies lay in a mangled heap. Part of the rubble pile had collapsed when they’d hit and the heavy beams had fallen back in on them. Despite the rot, there had been enough weight and pieces of metal to do serious damage. A part of Darwin felt remorse. The taking of a life was never something to be done easily, even if it was an accident. He thought the war with Ada and Salem, and his fight with Rebecca before that, had hardened him, but the sight below still filled him with sorrow. Teresa moved around the soft floor and joined him before they both turned their backs on the hole and walked into the dark interior of the store.
They spent a few minutes scrounging through the clothes racks, looking for something to replace the ones they had basically lived in since leaving San Francisco. The weather had gotten to almost everything that was left, leaving the fabric faded and weak and unusable. They didn’t have time to do a more thorough search, remembering Paul saying more of his people were on the way. Behind that thought was the shadow of Ada’s touch when his Source momentarily had flickered to life. He didn’t know if what he felt was real, and if it was, if she would be able to detect their location from the brief contact. Either way, they didn’t want to be here.
In the end, they both found a few things that would help keep them warm on the cooler nights. It was all too large, but it was better than nothing. They stuffed what they could into their backpacks and wore the extra, leaving the store looking more like beggars than anything else.
Darwin sent Teresa out the back door while he went out the front. If Paul really had people coming, the back entrance would probably be the safest, and since he had come in that way, his bike would be there. Both were good reasons for the brief separation. Darwin found a second bike—Teresa’s—leaning against the building next door—an old electronics shop that no one had bothered to ransack—and rode south. Teresa joined him on the next street and they swapped bikes, going back to their own.
The ride out of the valley was harder than it should have been; the smoke had thickened and each breath felt like they were leaning over a campfire. They ended up walking most of the way, the clothes they had worn wrapped into a tight ball and tied around the handlebars of the bikes. As they left the valley, they both turned and looked back. Smoke sat in a thick layer as far as they could see. A flickering orange light shone through it in a straight line. From where they stood, it looked like the fire had started in the market and reached into downtown. There wouldn’t be a trace of city by the time the fire had consumed its fill.
Darwin told Teresa about feeling Ada, though the farther they got from the store with the hole in the floor, the less he believed it had actually happened. Dancing created its own set of emotions and feelings, and in his time of stress, maybe it had all been a figment of his imagination.
But what if it was real? What if Ada knew he was still alive? She wouldn’t stop at anything to find him, and he had no way to defend himself or protect Teresa.
Despite his misgivings, Teresa forced them to pick up their pace. They took the next major road heading back to the coast, and the sky darkened as afternoon stretched into evening.
Darwin and Teresa rode half the night, reaching Highway 1 heading south before stopping and pushing the bikes off the fractured road and into the ditch. Only one of them slept at a time, bundled in their extra clothing against the fine mist and cold of the night. Teresa took the first shift, waking Darwin a couple of hours later.
By the time they’d both had some sleep, the moon had set and the sun still wouldn’t be seen for another hour. Instead of riding, they walked the bikes along the dark ribbon, maneuvering between patches of vegetation and chunks of concrete left undamaged by the salty air of the ocean. When the first morning rays of light reached the old highway, they mounted up again and continued south.
The road here was in worse condition than what they had been traveling. What used to be large pieces of concrete were now pebbles that they had a hard time controlling the bikes in. For every two feet they went forward, the tires slipped six inches back or sideways. Their pace had slowed to a crawl and both of them stood on the pedals to put their full body weight into moving forward. After half an hour of the punishing work, they decided once again to walk.
Partway through the day the sky clouded over. It didn’t look like rain yet, but if the clouds got much thicker they would need to find shelter. Darwin was happy for the break from the pounding heat. Their clothes had dried stiff and though they’d removed the layers, they still sweat into what was left. He hoped a little bit of shade would give them more energy and help them conserve the water that they carried with them. They walked side by side, each in a track made from carts or wagons that traveled here, making their footing a little surer.
Despite the miles between them and Paul, Darwin couldn’t get the image of their twisted bodies out of his mind. Though they were trying to kill him and Teresa, he’d had no intention of doing the same to them. A few broken bones or twisted ankles from the fall would have slowed them down more than enough for him and Teresa to get away and keep on their journey without the worry of being followed. He was pretty sure that the other people who were in charge in San Francisco knew nothing about Paul’s lack of belief. But had they all known about his imprisonment? The answer to that was definitely yes. Were they the same kind of people that Paul was? Would they have preferred him dead to being free? He hoped not. None of it really made sense to him.
Teresa had barely spoken a word to him since the incident, as lost in her thoughts as he was in his.
Only a few hours had gone by when another small town came into view. This one was inhabited. They could see smoke rising into the air from morning fires, and the tracks they followed led straight into it. Teresa glanced at him, still not saying a word. He shrugged, nodding his head. Trying to bypass the town could easily add hours onto their trip. In the scheme of things, considering how far they had to travel, it really wasn’t that much. But they needed some more food and water. Still, Darwin didn’t look forward to it. They continued down the highway.
The smoke thickened as they got near and the sweet smell of wood smoke was replaced by the odor of burning plastic and insulation. Teresa asked the question he was afraid to.
“Skends?”
Darwin shrugged again. For all they knew, someone could have just accidentally started a fire. Still, with proof of Skends in the previous towns, it wasn’t worth taking a chance. The feeling—the sense—of Ada came back to him. It was only a memory of what he’d felt earlier, but it was enough to send his heart racing. Even if it was a normal fire, the people of the town would soon have things under control. Two more arriving wouldn’t help the situation.
They turned left, leaving the highway, and pushed the bikes through the tall grass and bushes that grew at the side of the road. Anybody coming this way would be able to see their trail with ease. There was nothing that could be done about that.
The bush changed into tightly packed trees and they wove the bikes around the trunks before the woods opened into a clearing and a small field. Young corn grew in almost straight rows, only around a foot tall. It would be a while before this crop was ready. That the field was hidden from view by anyone on the road came as no surprise. Even Darwin and Teresa had raided a field or two on their journey. One or two people taking a small piece of the crop wouldn’t hurt anyone, but if you added all the people that traveled the road, there would be nothing left for the farmer or townsfolk to harvest. They followed the edge of the field, skirting the thin line of grass at the edge of it, when Darwin heard a child’s cry, quickly muffled. Both he and Teresa froze and looked into the trees. Though he couldn’t see anything, he thought he could still hear the muffled crying.
“We’re friends,” Teresa called out in a low voice.
No one replied. Darwin took a step forward. Whoever was hiding probably had a good enough reason in their own mind, and he would leave them to it. They barely got two steps when a voice called out.
“Stop.”
They twirled to look over their shoulders, ready to get on the bikes and ride as fast as they could through the corn field. A man stood just behind them, dressed in dirty jeans and a shirt that had seen better days. A layer of stubble darkened his chin.
“You can’t go that way,” the man said. “That will lead you right back into town.”
Still wary, Darwin stood his ground, eying the stranger, thinking before he spoke. “The fires weren’t man-made, then?” Darwin asked. He already knew the answer.
The man shook his head, looking as tense as they were, examining Darwin’s face. “A group of Skends came with their handlers. They holed right into the middle of town and grabbed the first person they saw. I didn’t hear what they said, but they seemed to be searching for something, asking questions. It certainly wasn’t one of their regular raids.” He paused, eying both of them before finally speaking again. “Why don’t you hide your bikes over there?” he said, pointing to a thick copse of gnarled oaks. “You can stay with us until the bastards leave.”
Darwin hesitated, paranoia creeping along the edge of his brain like a cold wind. Teresa laid a warm hand on his shoulder, making him jump.
“We might as well wait it out,” she said. “It doesn’t sound like moving on is that good of an idea unless we get even further away from the road.”
She lifted her bike onto her shoulder without waiting for a response and walked toward where the man had pointed, knowing that a single person going through grass and bush would leave less of a noticeable trail than a bike being pushed. Darwin watched until she was back before doing the same. Once the bikes were hidden, they followed the man back into the trees.
“I’m Teresa, by the way. And this is Lloyd.”
“I’m George. There’s about twenty of us in here.”
He bent over and lifted a mat made of twined branches and leaves and old pieces of sod, stepping into the hole underneath that. Darwin hadn’t seen it even though they were almost on top of it.
“We built these when Salem and the Skends started coming by asking for their monthly tithes. No matter how much they asked for or how much we gave them, it never seemed to be enough. They almost always grabbed one or two of us to be slaves in their fields or to be converted into more Skends. There’s about fifteen of these holes all around the town. We hide in these until they’re gone.”
“They don’t come looking for you?” Teresa asked.
“They did for the first few months, but nothing since then. We make sure we leave behind what they want. They take it and leave. It seems to have worked so far.”
The child cried out in the dark again, and a soft voice hushed it.
“She doesn’t sound very good to me,” Teresa said.
“He. That’s my boy. He twisted his ankle running here.”
“I’m a healer. I could take a look at it.”
“Skends can sense when Threads are being used,” Darwin said.
“I’ll use just enough to numb the pain. We’re underground, so it shouldn’t be that bad.” She left Darwin’s side and followed George into the hole’s dark interior.
Darwin’s eyes adjusted to the near darkness of their hiding spot as he sat in an empty place near the covered entry. In the little light coming from the covered hole, he could make out the white ghostly faces of almost everyone. They all seemed to be looking at him, trying to figure out who the stranger was and why he was here. A figure emerged from further in, shuffling their feet so as to not step on anybody’s toes. The figure was only a few feet from him before he recognized it as Teresa.
She sat down beside him, searching for his hand and squeezing it tight once she found it. “He’ll be quiet now for a while,” she whispered. “I didn’t fix it. But I did take away some of the pain.”
Darwin nodded, noticing the faces now turned slightly in her direction.
They sat in the almost complete darkness for hours, the only sound the breathing of everyone in there. By the time George reopened the mat covering the entryway, the air had become stifling and the light coming in through the gaps had dimmed considerably. They followed him out with the rest of the group behind them, each person taking a different path from the hole to the corn field so there wouldn’t be a single track to their hiding place. Once there, they stood in a loose circle, careful not to step on the corn, and waited till everyone had come out. Each of them watched the dark smoke in the sky above their homes.
“How do you know they’re gone?” Darwin asked.
George tore his eyes away from the smoke. “We don’t,” he replied. “That’s why we stay down there so long. All we can do is take our best guess.” As the last of the people joined them, he turned and started moving in the direction of the smoke while Darwin and Teresa collected their bikes.
The town was already occupied by the time they got there, the majority of them in multiple bucket lines moving water from individual wells to the homes and businesses that the Skends had set on fire.
“Is it always this bad?” Darwin asked.
“No. Like I said, they usually leave us alone.” George grabbed a bucket from the person behind him and hoisted it to Darwin, water splashing over the edges. Darwin repeated the movement and turned back for the next one, becoming part of the assembly line. Once he had joined the brigade, he’d lost track of Teresa. She’d either joined another line or, more likely, was moving through the group looking for any injuries that she could heal.
Darwin didn’t know what the place had looked like before today, but from where he stood, most of the town had been destroyed by fire, and his hatred of Salem went up. Charred embers lay like broken soldiers in any nook and cranny they could find, and blackened stubs of timbers poked from the ground like sentinels watching over the dead. He couldn’t tell in the fading light if all of the damage was new, but he could see the structure in front of him and knew it could have been saved if the townspeople hadn’t spent so much time hiding. Though the faces of the people around him were filled grief, he also saw a grim determination. This was their town, and even if the Skends burned everything down to the ground and razed what was left, they would do whatever it took to rebuild.
The bucket brigade went on for hours. Occasionally, Teresa or an older man would walk down the line, pulling people out one at a time and healing the raw blisters on their hands before putting them back in line and attending to the next one. The relief from the pain was only temporary . . . at least for Darwin. Only a few buckets after being healed, and his hands felt the blisters rise and burst all over again. Even healed skin needed time to toughen, and no one here had that time. In between the healers, the kids struggled with buckets of their own, offering a sloppy ladle of water to those working.
Smoke still obscured the rising moon by the time they all decided to stop. Darwin found an empty spot on the ground and collapsed, lying there to stare at the dull smudge that had become the sky. Another group of children came by with fresh buckets of cold water and a handful of ladles, offering everyone that wanted it all the water they could drink. Darwin rose into a sitting position and guzzled until he wasn’t sure he could keep any more down, washing away the taste of smoke that coated his tongue. George found him a few minutes later, pulling him to his feet and putting an arm over his shoulders.
“Come on,” he said. “Food has been made and I have a room you two can stay in tonight. Tomorrow we’ll see what damage has been done.”
Darwin stumbled beside George. His arms felt like lead and his feet must have weighed two hundred pounds each. Somewhere along the way Teresa found him and they walked together, their arms looped around each other. She looked as exhausted as he felt.
The meal wasn’t much but it tasted like a piece of heaven. It was simply two slices of plain bread smeared with some kind of animal fat and a bit of salt sprinkled on top. He wolfed down the first half of the sandwich before his body finally gave in. He slumped to the ground between Teresa and George and stared at the bread in his hand. Teresa nudged him.
“Finish it,” she said. “You need it.”
Darwin continued to stare at the bread, his thoughts slowly coalescing into words. “I can’t lift my arm.”
George seemed to be in the same boat, using both of his hands to lift the last bite of his meal to his mouth. Darwin tried the same, his hands shaking like quivering leaves on a tree. He only made it halfway before he let them drop again. It didn’t seem worth the effort. Teresa caught the sandwich as it slipped from his grip and lifted it to his mouth. He took another bite and chewed out of reflex. Even his jaw was exhausted. The kids came around with the bucket of water again, and Teresa held the ladle to his lips as he drank. He nodded when he was done, and she put the last piece of the sandwich in his mouth.
George stood unsteadily to his feet, using the wall for support. “Come on. If I don’t get into my own bed, I’ll be sleeping in the middle of the street.”
By the time Darwin and Teresa stood, George had already turned the first corner. When they finally caught up with him, they found him leaning against a useless street light, waiting for them. He continued on without saying a word. It only took them a few minutes to reach his house, but to Darwin it felt like forever. It had escaped any damage, much like most of the buildings in this part of town. As they were led through the living room and up the stairs to the second story, they wove between people lying on the floor.
Darwin knew without being told that these were some of the people who had lost their homes today.
Darwin woke to a bang on the door, and pulled the blanket they had been given over his head. A groan escaped his lips when he moved his arms. Disgruntled mumbles rose all around him and he pushed himself into a sitting position, his arms and shoulders screaming in denial. The room had filled during the night, but he was so out of it he hadn’t heard a thing. Teresa was already gone. How she’d managed to walk through the people lying on the floor without waking them up was lost on him. Another bang on the door brought most of the people who had shared the room last night to full wakefulness.
He waited until the room was almost empty before standing. His body ached in places he didn’t even know existed, and each step forward was an exercise in diligence. He stopped at the door, breathing deeply, following some of the old exercises Bill had taught him when he’d first come over.
Just the thought of Bill made him stop again. He hadn’t thought of his old teacher for a long time, and he was surprised that in place of the anger he had once felt, there was now a sense of loss and nostalgia. Bill had been his first teacher back when the Qabal thought they could use him to travel between worlds. They were wrong. He’d had no idea how he’d come across or even that the Threads existed at all. As far as he was concerned, he was going insane.
A long time had passed since then.
Realizing he’d stopped the breathing exercises, Darwin started them up again, mixing them with some of the meditation exercises Baila had taught him. He’d stopped meditating when she’d died; the simple act had become too painful a memory. Maybe it was time to start things back up. He shook his head. Apparently it was a morning for memories. He took a step toward the stairs down to the main level and the breathing went away as the aches and pains returned.
The stairs were a new kind of hell. As his muscles stretched and then took the weight of his body, the pain increased, until he was almost in tears by the time he reached the bottom. Even using the railing didn’t help. All it did was extend the pain to his arms until they trembled.
What did help was the aroma of breakfast reaching out like tendrils from past the living room. The smell of porridge, something that had once twisted his gut into a giant knot, welcomed him. The living room floor—which had been packed with people the night before—was empty now, blankets and sheets folded neatly in a corner. The people had gone. In the sun-warmed kitchen, he found Teresa and George. A young boy no more than five years old was running circles around the kitchen table, his ankle obviously no longer bothering him. A woman came in from a side room, carrying a small bag. She smiled at Darwin as she passed the bag to George.
“You made it down, I see. With the shape you were in last night, I thought maybe we’d have to carry you down,” George said, grinning. “This is Rose, my wife.” He grabbed the running boy into a hug as the circle brought him back around. “And this is Joshua.” The boy pulled free and continued his circuits around the table.
“Good morning. Thanks for letting us stay the night.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Rose said. “Now sit. Breakfast is ready. It’s only some wheat porridge, but George has the bag of brown sugar. It makes everything taste better.”
At the words brown sugar, Joshua stopped his running and plunked himself down in the closest chair, grabbing a spoon and waiting.
“You shouldn’t be wasting it on us,” Teresa said.
“Just sit down and eat, and don’t be telling me when I can use my brown sugar.”
Darwin and Teresa took the chairs opposite Joshua as Rose placed bowls of steaming wheat in front of them. George passed the bag of brown sugar over without using it. Both Darwin and Teresa used less than a teaspoonful each to sweeten the porridge. The conversation was light, though it was clear that both George and Rose had questions. They had the patience to wait until after the meal to ask them. Darwin had dried the dishes Teresa insisted on washing and Joshua had disappeared to do whatever it was five-year-olds did when they were asked to go play somewhere else.
“So, what brought you to our town?” George asked.
“We’re on our way to San Diego,” Teresa responded. “We have friends there we haven’t seen in a long time.”
“Is it home?”
“It used to be.”
George nodded. “It’s got to be some pretty good friends for you to want to go there.”
“What do you mean?”
“We don’t get much news here. Most of the travel south is on the old interstate; taking the coast road is a lot slower. But we have heard that things aren’t doing too well down there. I figure you heard about the war last year, the one that brought back the Threads?”
Darwin and Teresa both nodded, making sure to not look at each other.
“Well, it seems things are heating up down there again. I don’t know what’s happening, but it can’t be good for anyone.”
“Do you think that’s why the Skends attacked your town last night?” Darwin asked.
“Nah. Something happened a bit north of here. Our Threaders said they felt something, like the Threads got directional or something. I can’t explain it. Said they’d never felt anything like it before. You’ll have to ask one of them if you want to know more.”
Darwin hid his surprise in a cough. It had to be when his Source had flickered to life, back in the department store when he’d hidden the hole in the floor from Paul. He’d felt the loss of control, the surge of power that had escaped from it, wild and unchecked. Even Teresa had said she’d felt something. And if it was true that Salem and the Skends had shown up because of it, then he had one more thing to pile onto his list of failures.
“When did this happen?” Teresa asked.
“A couple of days ago, sometime around noon, I think. Like I said, I can’t see Threads, so I had to wait until someone told me.”
“What makes you think it brought in the Skends?”
“Someone overheard the questions the Salem folk asked.”
Darwin pushed his chair back, suddenly uncomfortable with being there, and stood. “Thank you for the breakfast and the place to sleep last night, but I really think we should be going.”
George didn’t look surprised. “I’m guessing it had something to do with you, then?”
He hesitated before answering, giving Teresa a questioning look. She gave a small nod. “Yes, and we can’t stay. I don’t think they’ll be back looking for us, but we can’t put you, your family, or anyone else here at risk.”
“We choose the risks we take, not you—Darwin—or Teresa.”
Darwin leaned into the back of the chair. “How . . . how long have you known?”
“I figured it out over breakfast. There’s not too many healers traveling with a man with a burned face. Plus, there were rumors you were in San Francisco, and when you mentioned you were heading to San Diego, I put two and two together, despite the fact that you were supposed to be dead.”
“That doesn’t change that we still have to go.”
George sighed. “No, I guess not.” He stood and pushed his chair back in. “Rose moved your bikes to the back of the house while you were helping yesterday. Take as much time as you need. When you’re ready to leave, come find me. I’ll be examining the damage from yesterday.”
Darwin reached out his hand. “Thank you.”
George returned the handshake, his grip firm and strong, and Rose handed Teresa some pre-made sandwiches.
“Stay safe,” Rose said.
“Thank you.”
Darwin and Teresa grabbed their bikes shortly after George left the house. They hadn’t come in with much, and didn’t have much to take with them. The air outside was crisp, unusual for the time of year, and the smell of burned houses filled the air. The sky was grungy brown, still tainted by the smoke and fires of the previous day, and the sun hung low and sullen. They pushed the bikes to the front of the house and shouldered their backpacks.
Darwin’s sore muscles had stiffened even more during breakfast, and he groaned like an old man as he tried to lift his leg over the bike seat.
“I may have to walk for a bit.”
“If it was that bad, you should have said something. I can take some of the pain away. You know that.”
“I thought it would work itself out.”
“You can be pretty stupid for such a smart guy, you know that?” She grinned as she said the words.
Darwin muffled a laugh. It hurt too much when he did, which made him laugh more, increasing the pain. He felt it disappear from his body a piece at a time, starting with his abs, so he could at least stand straight. Teresa’s eyes were unfocused as she went over his body piece by piece. He knew she was sinking white Threads below his skin, numbing the pain as she went, and for just a second, he thought he saw them out of the corner of his eye. When he looked directly at them, they disappeared.
His heart beat faster.
This was a pattern he knew. He’d gone through it before, back when he was first pulled into this world by the QPS. It was like he was new to Threads again, and could only see them if he didn’t try. What if Baila’s robbing of his abilities was like taking an overdose of the inhibitor that Rebecca had given him way back then? A Skend’s touch had always worn off after time—not as long as he’d been blocked by Baila—and then the Threader could work again.
So, if the Qabal, and now Salem, had created the Skends and the inhibitor, what was the chance that they had mutated the Skends to release the inhibitor when they touched you? They’d created the beasts for the sole purpose of fighting Threaders. What better way to neutralize your enemy than by robbing them of the ability to fight?
“Darwin?”
Teresa’s voice pulled him from the rabbit hole, but the thought wouldn’t leave his mind.
“Yeah.”
“Where’d you go? You were so lost in thought you didn’t hear me call your name.”
“Is there an antidote to the inhibitor?”
“To the what?”
“The inhibitor. The drug the Qabal used on me to stop me from Seeing.”
“I’ve never heard of it. Why?”
“Just an idea.” He swung his leg over his bike seat, feeling only a slight pulling of the muscles. “Come on, let’s get moving. We’ve got a long way to go.”
Teresa shook her head and got on her bike. They headed for the main road through the small town, riding past the edges of the burned-out area. The damage was substantial. Last night, he’d been so occupied with fighting the fires that he hadn’t paid attention to his surroundings, simply grabbing a bucket from the person behind him and passing it to one in front. The area had been residential, which explained the number of people in George’s house last night. Teresa zipped ahead and turned deeper into the fire zone. He followed her without question.
Darwin made out a group of people a little way in. They blended with the damaged houses and debris-covered street, their skin blackened by soot. Another group stepped out of the remains of a house, carrying whatever belongings they could salvage. It wasn’t much. Skend fire burned hot and bright. A single figure stepped away from the group to meet them.
“I’m glad you came to look for me.”
It was George. Darwin had forgotten that he’d wanted them to find him before they left.
“We got lucky yesterday.”
“Lucky?” Darwin asked, waving at the burned piles of rubble that used to be someone’s home.
“Yes, lucky. Besides Jamie, the first guy Salem questioned yesterday, we all made it out. No one got stuck in the fires, the Skends didn’t get anyone else. I’ve seen those things move, and if they’d wanted to, they could have caught up with us. It’s like all they wanted to do was destroy. They could have hit our crops.”
“What will you do?” Teresa asked.
“The town’s bigger than we need. The folk that lived here can move into another empty house. We can’t replace all of their belongings, but they’ll be okay. They’ll have a roof over their heads and a community that will stand behind them and help them get back on their feet again.”
“Is there anything more we can do?”
George shook his head. “No. You helped out last night. That was more than we could ask for from a couple of strangers.”
“You sheltered us yesterday when the Skends were here.”
George pulled his hand through his hair, leaving a darker streak of soot. His shoulders slumped and he took a step closer to Darwin, waving a hand toward the group he’d stepped away from. “I told them who you were, that it was you who had changed the Threads a couple of days ago.” He raised his hands as Darwin opened his mouth to speak. “Now, before you get all worried, these are good people. They won’t be telling anyone else. Anyway, we know how far you’re traveling, so we pulled together some supplies for you. It should all fit in your backpacks, but will last. We don’t leave our little part of the world much, but here’s a map. We’ve highlighted all the good places we know or have heard about. Now, I’m not saying if you see a town not on the map that it’s bad, just that these are the good ones we know about.”
Teresa eyed the small stash of food George had pointed at. It was as black and covered in soot as they were.
“You have families without a home, and crops in the fields that won’t be ready for months. I know you mean well, but really, you need the food more than we do.”
“Maybe. But we’re not the ones going off to fight Salem.”
“We’re not—”
“If we can figure that much out, then so can you,” George said. “We’re not Threaders, we can’t fight against Salem or the Skends, but we can help you guys along your way. Let us do this.”
Darwin moved to say something else and Teresa placed her hand on his shoulder, stopping him.
“Thank you.” She raised her voice. “Thank you, all.” She knelt down at the pile of food and opened her backpack, shoving the stinking, soot-covered cans and bags into her pack. Tears rolled down her cheeks.