by Chloe Neill
He pulled the truck off into the edge of the grass near the circular Popp Fountain, which had become the formal entrance to the camp. It didn’t run anymore, and someone had stuck a hand-drawn WELCOME TO CAMP COUTURIE sign into the dry pipe in the middle.
We got out of the truck, walked around to the tailgate. I waited while Liam untied the rope to lower it. I pulled a pencil out of the cigar box I’d brought to make change, wound my hair through it.
“Hot,” I said as Liam’s glance skittered from my hair back to the truck.
“Very.” He pulled the boxes toward us. “You know where we’re going?”
“I do. And it’s my store, so I’m in charge.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, with a drawl.
I just rolled my eyes. “There’s a different attitude here. Follow my lead.”
“Don’t take ridiculous chances.”
“We live in a war zone by choice,” I pointed out, hefting a box. “We take chances every day.”
The market was held at the fountain, between the columns that surrounded it. Tables filled the gaps where some of the columns had been, which make it look a little like Stonehenge. We walked around to look for an empty table, passing collections of old clothes, electronics, vetiver leaves and roots, plastic junk, and pretty much everything else.
On the other side of the fountain, where the lines of tents began, the curious and suspicious watched us from doorways and plastic patio furniture. Not unlike Devil’s Isle, but I doubted they’d appreciate the comparison.
I nodded at those we passed, but I didn’t smile. I hadn’t been here often enough for them to recognize me, and smiling strangers walking through the compound would look suspicious. I tried to look uninterested in the tents and focused on finding a spot.
We found a table with a few inches of shade, at least for a little while. I put my box on the table, gestured Liam to do the same.
“Afternoon,” said the woman at the next table, suspicion narrowing her dark eyes. She sat on a folding stool, a ball of purple yarn in her lap and two busy knitting needles in her pale hands. She wore jeans and a faded LSU T-shirt—definitely not the tunics worn by Reveillon.
I almost dismissed the knitting, but the bright gleam of metal had me looking again. They weren’t needles—they were arrows, long and golden. She’d turned Para weapons into craft tools. I’d read Dickens in high school before the war, and there was something very Madame Defarge about that.
I took two Royal Mercantile aprons out of the box, passed one to Liam. I pulled the top canvas loop over my head and doubled the long straps around my waist.
“Good afternoon,” I said, then glanced around. “Rule used to be tables were first come, first served, but it’s been a few months since I’ve been here. Do I need to check in with someone?”
“You find an empty table, it’s yours.”
“Good,” I said, and began taking beets and bundles of greens, the stems tied with twine, from the box and spreading them across the table.
She took in the Royal Merc logo, put down her knitting. “I’m Lonnie. Lonnie Dear.”
“Claire and Liam,” I said. “We came up from the Quarter.” I put my hands on my hips and looked down at the spread of vegetables. “I haven’t been able to convince the Containment types that collards are good for them.”
“Collards are good eating,” she said, nodding with approval that I’d been trying to spread the gospel.
I glanced at her table, which was loaded with rows of cassette and video tapes. “Hey, Liam,” I said, and gestured. “You can find something different for the ride home.”
“You criticizing my taste in music?” he asked, smiling at Lonnie and walking around her table to get a look at the merchandise.
Lonnie watched him, her expression slightly awed, like she was viewing a fine piece of sculpture for the first time.
Been there, sister, I thought.
Liam picked up a tape. “What’s an Ace of Bass?”
“It means you should stick with CCR,” I said, and smiled as a girl emerged from the tents, crossed the twenty or so yards between us to look over the vegetables. She was thin but well toned, her body in that not-quite stage between woman and child, her hair in braids across her dark shoulders. No tunic for her, either. She wore cutoff jeans and a worn tank top.
“How much for the beets?”
“Two for a dollar,” I said with a smile.
She nodded soberly, pulled a dollar from her front pocket, offered it to me.
“You need a bag?” I asked.
She shook her head, picked up two beets, and scampered back to the tents.
First purchase a success. Now we just needed some information.
“The Eagles,” Liam said proudly, putting his new purchase carefully in the box.
I couldn’t help laughing. “If it survived the war, I think it could survive a trip home from the market.”
“No harm in being careful,” he said, coming to stand beside me again, hands behind his back. “I’m ready for the retail onslaught.”
“Good to know,” I said with a smile.
“You hear about that trouble in the Quarter yesterday?”
I glanced at Lonnie, heart tripping. That was the kind of question that opened doors. “We were there,” I said, and let her see the truth of it—the horror of it—in my eyes.
“Folks are talking about it,” she said. “Everyone’s got an opinion.”
A leading question, but an understandable one.
“That’s New Orleans,” Liam said noncommittally.
“What kinds of opinions do folks have?” I asked. “Seems like what happened was pretty cut-and-dried. Lot of folks died.”
Her arrow needles clacked together. “Well, but none would be dead if it weren’t for the Paranormals.”
“You mean if they hadn’t attacked us? Sure. That was the catalyst.”
She seemed satisfied by my answer.
“I’m surprised word got out here so fast.” I wasn’t really surprised; Gavin had found out about it in the hinterlands, after all. I wanted to know how she’d found out. Had reports traveled, or had folks in Camp Couturie known what was going to happen?
“People talk,” Lonnie said, and this time, there was a hint of suspicion in her eyes. “I mean, it’s good you have a solid communication network. It just takes a while even in the Quarter to get news about anything.”
“Except Containment,” Liam added, his voice carrying a perfect, subtle edge of disgust. “With the Cabildo, barracks, Devil’s Isle, we always know what they’re about.”
“We hear things,” Lonnie said. “News gets here eventually. As for living in the Quarter, I certainly couldn’t do it.”
“Why’s that?” Liam asked.
“Being monitored all the time. It’s practically martial law being so close to the prison. To Containment.”
Weren’t there magic monitors in Camp Couturie? I glanced around, and didn’t see the familiar black boxes. But Containment had installed them even through rural areas, so maybe the Campers had taken them down. Or maybe the camp had simply been forgotten.
The woman executed what looked like a very complicated loop and twist of the yarn, then put it down again. “I’m a good Christian woman and I don’t take with magic. But humans weren’t to blame for what happened, for the war, and we aren’t children. We don’t need cameras on us twenty-four-seven. That’s fascism.”
She was saying the kinds of things someone who wanted to take up arms against Containment might say. But they weren’t the types of things Ezekiel had said, or the manifesto had discussed. Reveillon didn’t care about privacy. They didn’t care about the Constitution. They cared about annihilation.
“Can’t argue with that,” Liam said, stepping beside me and looking out over the camp. “It’s hard to live under t
he scrutiny. To feel normal. I guess you have more freedom out here. To live the way you want.”
“We don’t have much,” she agreed. “But we have our freedom, and we have our community. Don’t need much else than that.”
So Lonnie was content with her lot. Did everyone in Camp Couturie feel that way?
—
People milled around the table, probably as much to get a look at us as to inspect the things we’d brought to sell. I sold a few more beets and a few bunches of collards, and traded some for two Mason jars of cane syrup, a spool of handmade hemp twine, and a small paper bag of deer jerky. You never knew what you’d find in the country.
As they inspected me, I inspected them. None wore tunics, but maybe those had just been “special occasion” outfits for Reveillon. These people looked like they lived off the land, and that land was hard. Lean bodies and faces that worked hard for what they had, to make a life in a place that had only been meant for temporary living.
They whispered about the bombing as they moved from table to table, but no one confessed to knowing about it before the fact, or knowing anyone involved. On the other hand, no one spoke out against them, either.
Still . . . I had a feeling something was brimming here, something under the surface that we couldn’t see. Something had made the Campers tense. Maybe the attack had made people nervous, afraid war was coming again. I didn’t think that was the only issue—I had a sense emotions ran much deeper than that—but we’d given it three hours, and we hadn’t seen any hard evidence.
I got a brainstorm and dug my fingers into the center of a beet I’d cut open as a sample, coating my hands in dirt and juice. I made a show of wiping my hands on my apron, holding up stained fingers and dirty fingernails.
“Damn it,” I muttered, frowning as I looked at them. “I should have brought a scrubber.” I put my hands down again, looked apologetically at Lonnie. “I don’t suppose there’s a place I could wash up? Maybe a spigot where I could rinse off my hands before we head back?”
She looked at me for a minute, then pointed toward an alley between tents that led deeper into the camp. “Wash station’s down that road. Four lanes in, and take a right.”
“Thank you,” I said, showing plenty of relief. I looked down at my hands. “Looks like the first time I dyed towels. That was a big, bloody, beety mess.”
Lonnie chuckled lightly, and I turned back to Liam, so only he could see my face.
“I’ll be fine,” I mouthed. His face showed clearly that he didn’t like the idea of our separating. I understood the sentiment, but I had a purpose, which I was sure he’d figured out. A trip to the wash station would at least get us a look inside the camp—maybe the only one we’d get today. And we’d invested too much time to walk away with no information.
“I’ll go ahead and pack up what’s left,” Liam said.
“I appreciate you,” I said cheerfully, then headed for the labyrinth of canvas.
—
The “road” was about fifteen feet wide and lined with canvas tents that faced one another. The tents were the same—square canvas with a pitched roof and a roll-up door in the center. But most of them had been fixed up or customized. Many were “shingled” with pieces of plywood; a few had wind vanes. Plywood had also been propped upright between some of them, probably to add at least a little privacy. Tarps were thrown over a few tents that had been connected together, their side panels cut and sewn open into hallways to make bigger spaces. Tidy rows of bricks peeked beneath some of the tents, where people had paved over dirt floors.
I kept my eyes peeled for anything unusual, tried to stay alert to any suspicious sounds—anti-Para chants, bomb-making supplies, general plans for mayhem and chaos. Instead, I heard the sounds of normal life—babies crying, people laughing and arguing, music, snoring. People probably borrowed sugar or eggs, fought about noise and smells and space, worried together about heat and food and hurricanes.
It seemed impossible to be alone in Camp Couturie, while most of the Zone had the opposite problem. But no one seemed to take any notice of me.
I counted down the lanes, turned when I reached the fourth. The tents should have had X-Code addresses, but they’d long ago faded.
A few yards down, the space between the tents had been widened into a square. A contraption of steel and pipes stood in the middle, with spigots of varying heights. A boardwalk kept the ground from getting too muddy.
I stepped onto the boardwalk, dunked hands into water that was ice-cold despite the heat. I washed my hands slowly, taking care to scrub under each fingernail, while I looked around, scanned the tents around me for any sign of Reveillon. Once again, I saw nothing. I turned off the water, dried my hands on the back of my apron.
A large rubber ball rolled past, and a boy of six or seven came running behind it, a grin on his cute, freckled face. He had brown hair and pale skin, and a gap between his two front teeth. He wore dirty jeans and a short-sleeved Saints T-shirt. He picked up the ball, smiled instinctively when he turned my way . . . and then froze.
I could practically see “stranger danger” written on his face.
“Hi,” I said, and waved a little.
The boy stared at me like I was a monster from a foreign land. If his world was limited to Camp Couturie, to familiar faces in close proximity, I might have been.
He turned, grabbed up the ball, and sprinted back in the direction he’d come from.
I was here with permission, but if he sounded the alarm, I might not have much time. I kept an innocent smile on my face, turned, and walked back in the direction I’d come—and “missed” the turn that would have led back to the fountain.
I passed one lane, then two, then three. If Reveillon had a presence in Camp Couturie, they weren’t advertising it. Maybe we’d been wrong about the tattoo’s meaning, or Ezekiel was smart enough to recruit and spread his gospel quietly. Loud enough to pull in members. Not so loud that he could be easily found by Containment.
And then I stopped short, glancing into the open flap of the tent I’d just passed. It was a rectangle of space with a wooden-plank floor, a big rug thrown over it. Ladder-back chair in one corner, simple bed in another. No blankets on the bed, nothing personal in the tent. It didn’t look like anyone lived here, but if that was the case, why hadn’t the neighboring tents taken the floorboards? The rug? The chair?
After ensuring that the coast was clear, I stepped closer, peering deeper into the shadowed darkness . . . and spotted blood on the floorboards. Large drops and long streaks, as if someone had been dragged across the floor. And on the opposite wall, smeared in blood or mud or both, was a single word: EDEN. Ezekiel had said Reveillon would bring about a new Eden. Was this supposed to be a reminder?
“You shouldn’t be here.”
I jerked back, turned to find a woman behind me. She was pale and thin, with delicate features and brown hair pulled into a topknot. Her bangs were long, and almost covered the bruise around her left eye.
And she wore the same homespun fabric as the Reveillon members.
I pasted on a clumsy grin. “I’m sorry—a lady at the market showed me where to wash up, and I am completely turned around. I’m trying to get back to the fountain?”
She watched me for a moment, fear and wariness in her eyes. I didn’t think I was the one she was afraid of, and I put money on the possibility Ezekiel—or those like him—might have been. But then she nodded.
“I’ll walk you back.”
“I’d appreciate it,” I said, and fell into step beside her. Her movements were swift, every step delicate, like she was used to being quiet, trying not to make a sound. Trying not to be noticed.
The road she’d picked, probably on purpose, faced the back sides of two rows of tents, so I couldn’t see into them.
“There are roads and lanes,” she said. “Roads run north-south. Lanes run e
ast-west.” That was undoubtedly a federal system created by someone who wasn’t from New Orleans. Otherwise they’d have been lakeside-riverside, and downtown-uptown.
“Right,” I said. “I think I came down a road, then turned right onto a lane? But I got turned around.”
“Yeah, you passed your turn.”
“How do you remember where you’re going?” I asked. “All the tents look the same.”
“They aren’t the same when you’ve been here long enough.”
I guessed the plywood and tarps became markers, signaling where you were.
“Why not move into empty houses around the city?” I wondered, thinking how little privacy they had, how unprotected they were from bad weather—or anything else.
“Houses belong to other people,” she said simply, turning again onto a wider road, this time faced by the fronts of several tents. “Camp C belongs to us.”
A thin man with dark, weathered skin and deep lines around his face looked out from the tent flap, nodded as we walked by. The woman nodded back.
I couldn’t really argue with that. What was Royal Mercantile but something—the one thing—that truly belonged to me? “I understand. Have you lived here long?”
“Since it opened. I was part of the First Wave.”
They were the first group of New Orleans evacuees. They’d lost their homes in Uptown in one of the first attacks of the war, when a flight of Valkyries burned a path through the neighborhood. The attack was only a couple of days into the war, which meant she’d been here since the beginning. I guessed her age at twenty-four, the same as mine. And I guessed our last seven years had been very, very different. Tadji had been right about that.
I blinked as we emerged into the space near the fountain. I was relieved to be in the open again. Community or not, there was something unsettling about being in that labyrinth. I wasn’t the only one who felt relief—it was clear in Liam’s expression.
“We made it!” I said cheerfully, and turned to the girl. “Thank you for the help. I was getting a little claustrophobic in there.”
