Positive by David Wellington Page A

up straight inside. “Permanent residents,” Adare said with a sneer. “Mechanics. Car washers. Middlemen. Retailers.” He made the last word sound like a curse. ­“People too scared or crippled to go out and find their own fortune, so they park themselves here and live off our scraps.” The structures looked especially pathetic with the giant round tanks looming over them, the tanks that made up the horizon like a geometric mountain range. “Don’t worry—­our ­people don’t live like this,” he assured me.
    I turned to stare at him with sudden anger, but I couldn’t find the words to articulate what I was thinking. “Our ­people,” he’d said. Including me. It was no slip of the tongue, I’m sure of that now. He was sending me a deliberate message. I was a looter now, whatever I’d thought I was before.
    I couldn’t deny what I’d done that day. Consciously I believed it was just a temporary thing, an arrangement as makeshift as the tin shacks and tire igloos we were driving by. Just a way to stay alive until I could find my way to Ohio. Subconsciously I felt a great undertow pulling at me, a current of fate that was drawing me into ever darker water, and I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to resist.

 
    CHAPTER 23
    J ust a little farther on was a massive parking lot, a broad expanse of asphalt that had rippled and buckled under the constant onslaught of weeds but that was still flat enough to host a whole fleet of cars. A ­couple dozen of them were gathered there, and these were clearly the vehicles of other looters.
    Some were SUVs, pickup trucks, or military vehicles repainted black or red, with flames on their hoods and laughing skulls on their doors. A few were more outlandish contraptions, wildly curved and tail-­finned cruisers, jalopies with exposed engines and bright upholstery. A whole row of the lot was taken up with motorcycles, which Adare told me only the insane would ride through the wilderness.
    â€œThere’s a lot of them, though,” I pointed out.
    â€œI didn’t say insanity was rare among looters,” he replied, with a hearty laugh.
    Most of the vehicles were what Adare called “uparmored,” though the modifications were meant to be equally offensive as defensive. Like Adare’s SUV, many of them had barbed wire strung around their windows or doors, to keep zombies from trying to crawl inside. Some sported hubcaps with welded-­on spikes to slash an enemy’s tires, or thick steel snowplow blades bolted to their front bumpers so they could ram their way through obstacles. Some of the pickups had machine guns mounted in their beds. I saw one SUV with a full turret mounted on its roof, with a little seat where a child-­sized gunner could sit and fire in any direction.
    â€œMost of that shit’s for show,” Adare told me. “In a real fight, look at that—­you see those wheel spikes? Who’d be stupid enough to let that guy get close enough to slash your tires? And all the time they waste on those paint jobs, just to look scary.” He spat in the gravel. “Like zombies get scared.”
    The owners of these vehicles were milling about the cars, some repairing damage or tuning engines that roared and belched exhaust, some just standing close to oil drum fires and sharing bottles. They were as varied and as bizarre in appearance as their cars. The men wore either tactical vests and black baseball caps over mirrored sunglasses or expensive suits with immaculate ties and pocket squares. The women were decked out in furs and evening gowns or military uniforms with the insignia ripped off. Both sexes wore piles of flashy if broken jewelry—­wristwatches that had stopped working years before, rings that had lost half their stones, diamond earrings, cloisonné brooches, ruby tie studs. It occurred to me that I knew exactly where they’d