He made a slow tour of the perimeter, scoping out the merchandise. Certain vendors, he knew by sight: the Civil War reenactor with his muttonchop sideburns, the enormously fat man who sold nunchucks and ninja stars at suspiciously low prices, the young skinhead with his vast inventory of knives.
He stopped to look at some night-vision goggles and heard a noise behind him, a low electrical humming. He turned to see Luther Cross rolling up in his chair.
“Jesus God, Victor! What happened to your face?”
“I got a tooth that’s giving me trouble.”
Luther grinned broadly. “I can pull it for you, if you want. Wouldn’t take me a minute.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” Victor said.
They had known each other since high school. Luther, a few years older, had gone to Vietnam ahead of Victor and left his legs there. Since then he’d rolled around town in a motorized wheelchair, his hair tied up in a ponytail, his lap covered with a blanket to hide what was missing.
Luther looked him up and down. “How you been, man? Still driving?”
“Naw. I retired last fall.” Victor chose his words carefully. Luther Cross was a talker. Telling him anything was like writing it in the sky.
“Retired?” Luther looked astonished. “What the hell happened?”
“Nothing happened,” Victor said irritably. “Time to hang it up, is all.” On some level it was probably true, though failing the eye test had helped him along. His old boss might’ve let it slide, but the new manager was an uptight kid who played by the rules. You get pulled over with an expired license, and I’m in deep shit. Victor surrendered his rig and left quietly. He retreated to the log cabin in the valley and waited for the world to burn.
He said, “I hear you’ve got a generator to sell.”
“Yessir,” Luther said.
“My backup one crapped out. I might be interested.”
“All right, then. Come over to the house and take a look.”
Victor continued on his rounds. He wasn’t in the market for anything in particular. Already the subbasement contained more firepower than he needed, more ammo than he’d use in a lifetime in the pre-collapse world. Strictly speaking, he didn’t need a goddamn thing, which—in his experience—was when lightning struck. He found the exact right piece when he wasn’t even looking. He’d acquired most of his arsenal this way, a series of happy accidents.
Buying a weapon was like falling in love.
He passed a table of ladies’ guns, pistols and revolvers in shades of lavender and pink. A young lad with acne and a sad attempt at a mustache stood studying the merchandise, as though he were on intimate terms with a woman who’d appreciate this type of gift. Victor had been looking for such a woman his entire life, and had long ago concluded that they didn’t exist. If they did, it seemed unlikely that this kid would have acquired one.
He stopped to study a display of crossbows.
As always, the shoppers were ninety-nine percent men. The vendors too, unless you counted the handful of peroxide blondes who’d been hired to stand at certain booths, in a blatant attempt to drive horny male foot traffic. This tactic was effective. Victor himself had fallen for it, but only once. When he tried to make conversation about the merchandise, he was sorely disappointed. The girl knew nothing about guns.
He stopped at the table of a guy he knew, a dealer named Wayne Holtz.
“Victor, man. How you been?”
Victor let the question sit. He had never been good at small talk.
“You in the market for anything special?”
“Just looking,” he said. In fact, one piece in particular had caught his eye, a used Ruger Mini-14 in perfect condition. Well, why not? In the spirit of preparedness he wore, beneath his shirt, a ripstop nylon security pouch he’d ordered off the internet—filled, at that moment, with hundred-dollar bills.