A half-hour later the cars cast no shadow worth sitting in, and it was still a couple of hours to noon yet. The playa was completely still. We had parked the cars parallel to each other, about ten feet apart, and had spread a tarp between them. It was a flimsy enough shelter and wouldn't withstand even a moderate gust of wind, but we hadn't yet settled where we'd be when the afternoon winds picked up. Kittyboo had produced a large rug from inside her RAV and we sat in a circle in it underneath the tarp, spooning peaches and their sweet, cool syrup out of a Costco-sized can placed in the middle of the circle. Salina had eyed Artful and Kittyboo warily until she'd had a chance to sidle over to the RAV and see for herself what I already knew was there - boxes and boxes of food, piles of gear. After that, she was cordial enough, especially after we started putting the shade up. Now she sat with her back against the Passport, cross-legged, smoking an American Spirit, apparently lost in her own thoughts.

Rayanne and I sat across from each other, her on the north side, me on the south. Occasionally one or the other of us would turn away from the circle, lift the binoculars, and scan for other dust trails.

I slurped a peach down noisily and said, to no one in particular, "OK - it seems to me that the three main questions are: What do we have? Who are we expecting? Where are we going? Right? Have I missed anything?" For the moment, I was the de facto leader; soon enough, Kittyboo would take over from me and we'd swap back and forth after that. We'd been planning camping trips together for several years and were quite comfortable with this dynamic.

Artful, having come into his relationship with Kittyboo comparatively recently, was comfortable with it too. Rayanne was new to our nucleus and, being the strong willful girl she was, I expected some jousting for position between her and Kittyboo sooner or later. She'd need to learn a few things about desert survival first, though.

Salina, I grumbled to myself, had damn well better do as she was told until she learned a thing or two about taking care of herself. I wasn't the most patient person with people whose first instinct upon waking was to reach for their makeup mirror. In fact, I wasn't the most patient person, period. I would have made a lousy Scout Troopmaster, as Kittyboo had teased me more than once. Like she was one to talk.

Artful responded to my general query with, "Not that I can think of. We're topped off on gas. Bill's station was open when we came through this morning, so we filled up there."

I said, "It sure as hell looked closed this morning. Closed for good. We just kept on going."

Artful said, "We expected it to be closed too. But there he was, out by the pumps. Old bastard had an MP5 slung under his shoulder and he was watching the gallon-counter like a hawk. I was way glad I'd gotten to know him last year. This morning I saw him turn away some city refugees just because they were sunburned."

I said, "That's Bill. Out here, it's who you know and fuck the rest." Rayanne asked, "What's he charging for a gallon? Maybe we should go back in and fill up too."

Kittyboo said, "Good old Bill isn't taking cash, which is probably pretty smart."

I said, "Well, then, what's good old Bill taking?"

"He's taking ammo," Artful answered. "At least, that's what he took from us. 10 gallons cost us 100 12-gauge shells."

"Shit," I said. "If he's still open in 2 weeks, that'll probably seem cheap." I shook my head admiringly at Bill's practicality. "Did you ask him how long he expected to be open?" This could tell us a lot about the state of the lines of supply in the area.

"We did. He just shrugged and grinned. Bastard," Kittyboo said without rancor.

"It's OK," I said to everyone, Rayanne in particular. "We're pretty set for gas at the moment," and I nodded at the row of 5-gallon cans lashed to the Passport's roof. "They're all full."

"You vent those cans?" Artful asked, and I said, "Duh-uh, dude. But thanks," I added quickly. We watched out for one another pretty well.

"What guns do you have?" Kittyboo asked next. "We've got my PPK and the AR-15 and the Remington pump."

"Don't forget the .38 snubnose in the glove," Artful added.

"Oh yeah. We've only got the five rounds in the cylinder for that," Kittyboo said, and went on, "I've got six boxes of 9mm cartridges and about a thousand rounds for the AR. But Bill took half of our Remington shells."

"We've got plenty," I said. "We've got the Mossberg" - right then lying at my right side - "and about three hundred shells for it. Rayanne's got her Glock with two boxes of ammo, and I've got my Colt and a couple of boxes for that too. Plus there's this," I said as I stood up and pulled a rifle out of the Passport. It was an AK-47 that looked like it had taken a few hits on the breech; the stock was half broken off. "I've got seven clips for this but the firing mechanism's fucked up. I was hoping you could fix it," I said to Artful.

"Where'd you get that?" Artful and Kittyboo asked at almost the same instant, eyeing the AK's battle-worn condition.

I said, "In a minute. What about food, besides canned peaches?"

"We're doing pretty good," Kittyboo said, and Artful nodded his head in agreement. "We grabbed everything left at my house - "

"Including this rug, I'm very impressed dear," I teased Kittyboo.

"Never come out here without a rug to spread out," she replied, "if you're going to live like a nomad in the desert you need a rug for your tent. Now - OK, we had some stuff from home -"

"Uh, can I ask something?" Salina said faintly from her corner of the rug. She looked scared. "I mean, it's kinda creepy, you guys carrying all these guns and talking about how many cartridges you have. It's like you want to start a war or something."

There was a few seconds' silence as the rest of us all looked at each other, unsure whether she'd just actually said what she had. Finally, Rayanne said gently, "Salina, how much have you been out of the compound in the last few weeks?"

Salina answered, "You know. Not much. I stayed home and kept the cats fed and kept the place clean and everyone else went out and got stuff and brought it back just like usual and then one day everyone was gone. I freaked. I would have lost it totally if Jack hadn't come by like two days later."

I asked Salina, "Didn't you hear all the gunfire outside?"

She rolled her eyes and said, "Dude, the compound's in West Oakland, there's always gunfire at night, you should hear it on New Year's -"

And I cut in and said, "Salina, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but things are really really fucked up these days. Didn't you notice anything on our trip out here?"

"I didn't see anything," she said. "I slept most of the time. I hate road trips." And it was true, she did sleep most of the time - or acted like it, anyway. At least twice, when the road through the Sierra was blocked by a wreck or a downed tree, she'd stayed in her backseat while either Rayanne or I worked to winch the shit out the way, the other watching carefully in case it was an ambush. I thought to myself, Salina is in for a big fucking surprise when she finally takes a good look around. And then I cursed myself and my lack of patience at the Goddam Tenderfoot voice in which I had mentally said this. I was going to need a lot of patience in the next few days.

But I said anyway, not bothering to disguise the edge in my voice, "And what did you think of those bodies in the K-Mart lot? Did you think Steven Fucking Spielberg was shooting Private Ryan II on location?" Salina cowered slightly against the Passport at my sarcasm, but Kittyboo said, "Bodies in the K-Mart lot? When was that?"

I said, "In a minute. Kitty, tonight would you take Snow White here out and check her out on a 9mm? Salina, you definitely need to learn how to use a gun."

Salina started, tremblingly, "I don't wanna -"

I cut in again, "Learn it if you want to stay with us. All of our lives might depend on you. Otherwise, we'll just drop you off back in town the next time we go in for gas. Understand?" And I looked around at the other three and found agreement in their faces. Salina looked sullenly at the carpet but nodded her head.

I turned to Kittyboo and said, "We stopped in Reno last night to see if anything was still open. The Super K-Mart off McCarran was. It'd been opened by force. There were a bunch of people dead in the parking lot in K-Mart uniforms. I took that AK from the one who was lying in the doorway. The sliding doors kept trying to shut on him. It would have been kind of funny if it'd been in a movie. There were also some other bodies in the parking lot, so I guess the K-Mart army wasn't totally asleep. One of them was in a National Guard uniform." I paused to let that sink in. If the Guard was joining in the looting, things were more fucked than we'd thought. I went on after a second, "Most of the big windows were smashed but there was still a lot of stuff on the shelves. Even some propane and bottle water left. We figured it couldn't have happened too long ago - if we'd gotten there a little earlier we'd have been able to see the firefight from the freeway. People were coming just as we were leaving with shopping carts and wheelbarrows. But we got most everything on our shopping list - batteries too, and enough canned mandarin oranges for a year." I grinned at Kittyboo - those oranges were her favorite desert food.

Artful was nodding slowly. "We went by that K-Mart early this morning. It was completely gutted, nothing except a few pairs of baby socks strewn in the aisles. And there weren't any bodies that we could see either. I really don't like that about the National Guard uniform."

Kittyboo looked worried too. I waved my hand and said, "Later. Maybe someone will come who'll know more. How are you all fixed?"

Kittyboo nodded. I think she was relieved to change the subject. "We're good. The Costco in Reno was open -"

"You're kidding," I said."

"No, really," she said, "and they had their own army of Costco goons all over everywhere, even some guy behind an M-60 in a sandbagged emplacement by the front door. And we saw trucks unloading stuff in the back. If they're being resupplied it may be better in other places."

"Sounds like they've got their shit together better than K-Mart, anyway," I added ruefully. Looting the store the night in the company of only the dead had been nerve-wracking, a ghastly farce on the act of shopping that I'd used to know. "How were the shelves?"

"Pretty well-stocked," Artful said. "And a poke from a shotgun muzzle from a red-jacketed twirp with pimples if you took too long loading your basket."

"Sounds like fun," I said.

"Gawdddd," Salina spoke up. "You're making this all up."

"Hah," said Artful, a little scornfully. "How much have you got in your purse?"

"I don't know," Salina answered. "Maybe about fifty-five dollars."

"Better conserve your smokes," Artful said. "That'll buy you about a pack and a half at Costco."

"What the -" Salina said and trailed off. She looked like someone had whacked her with a two-by-four. Artful really knew how to illustrate a point.

"How much did your shopping spree cost you, then?" I asked.

"The total tab was - tell them what the total tab was, Annie," Artful said, using Kittyboo's real name.

"We spent over fifteen hundred dollars," Kittyboo said flatly. "It would have been a lot more if we'd gotten liquor and cigarettes too like we'd planned."

"Fuck," I said, while Rayanne just gasped. Now it was my turn to look like I'd been hit with a big piece of lumber. "Fuck," I repeated.

"'Fuck' is right," Artful said. "Someone's going to come out of this a lot richer when things stablilize."

"What I want to know," I said after a minute of wit-gathering silence, "is where you came up with that kind of cash. I haven't seen an open bank in weeks."

Artful looked gleeful as he said, "More where that came from. You know the Versateller near Kitten's house?"

"The one at 51st and Broadway that hasn't worked in months?" I asked.

"That one. Apparently it'd just been re-stocked with 20s when it malfunctioned. There was about fifty thousand in cash inside it."

Rayanne looked shocked, Salina like she was about to cry. Survival was one thing and looting could be justified if your stomach was empty or about to be; plain old robbery was apparently another. And it occurred to me right then that maybe I didn't know as much about Rayanne as I thought I had.

I wasn't particularly fazed - but then, I had known Artful for awhile. I started to ask, "How -" and then thought of something and laughed and said, "You pyro son of a bitch. You really did it, didn't you?"

Both Artful and Kittyboo joined me in laughter, looking like two kids who'd just pulled the best college prank yet. Artful said proudly, "I've been telling you for a long time now that it's amazing what sorts of explosives you can make by combining common household items, haven't I?"

Kittyboo added, almost choking, "I told him not to use too much or he'd kill the money, like in Butch Cassidy. But that ATM opened right up, just like a can of sardines. You should have been there."

I said, "I should've. But if you've got any of whatever it was left over, just keep it away from our gas cans, huh?"