The moment the topic of drifters came up, Maggie turned visibly smug.
“I’m not the one who should be worried about that—you all should be.
Anyone going out to scavenge, gather up outside in a bit.”
Humming a tune, she pulled a backpack out from under her bunk and started stuffing her things into it.
“There’s a hunting party going with us this time.
Everyone who comes gets a share of the meat!”
Those two words—”share meat”—jolted the dead-silent room back to life.
Even the people who’d been ignoring Maggie sat up.
“Meat, seriously?”
“How much?”
“How do we cook it?”
Maggie slung her packed bag over her shoulder.
“If you’re coming, follow me.”
Seven or eight people immediately stood up to go with her.
Someone with more sense spoke up: “Didn’t you say they only needed five more?”
The tempted ones hesitated.
Seeing this, Maggie raised her voice.
“I’m tight with Uncle Gordon.
I’ll get her to add a few more spots.”
“Everyone in the hunting party lives pretty well.
If one of them’s willing to marry you, that’s you off the drifter track for good, isn’t it?”
With her pack on her back, she left, dragging along the seven or eight who’d taken the bait.
The room emptied out even more.
Mandy Donovan lay back down.
There’s no reasoning with a fool bent on dying.
This was the wasteland—where did anyone get the idea that good fortune came in an endless string like that?
When did pies ever fall from the sky?
She pitied the girls who’d caved to temptation and followed Maggie out.
She could picture what would happen to them with her eyes shut.
She didn’t dare picture it—she was afraid she’d start feeling sorry for them.
Pity was the one thing you could never afford to have out here.
The room was deathly quiet.
A long while later, someone finally spoke.
“But hardly anyone ever comes back from Gordon Gomez’s runs.
Can’t they see that?”
Another smart one?
Mandy Donovan couldn’t help turning to look.
It was a very small girl.
If she remembered right, this girl had gone out with Gordon Gomez’s team once.
After she came back, she never said a word about that scavenging trip.
Now she was talking, though.
Guess her cleverness had limits.
After a long silence, a hoarse voice rasped from another set of bunks.
“Everyone shut up.
You can’t even keep yourselves alive—now you’ve got the energy to worry about other people?
If I remember correctly, all of you turned sixteen this year.”
“You’re leaving first,” someone mumbled.
“Tomorrow.
I’ll be a drifter.”
The room fell silent again.
That hoarse-voiced girl had had her face burned by the venom of some Mutant Beast during a scavenging run.
Marriage was out of the question for her now.
Her future was plain to see.
For a moment no one brought up Gordon Gomez’s team.
When a sister you’d grown up with was about to become a drifter, nobody had any good advice to offer.
Without a marriage, you couldn’t buy housing, couldn’t get legal work.
Working under the table was illegal.
The only road left in front of her was drifting.
Actually, it wasn’t the only road—there were other options.
A lone girl going out as a drifter wouldn’t last more than a few days.
Mandy Donovan spoke up: “Rhonda, there’s a boy on the men’s side named Adam Larson.
His situation’s a lot like yours.
If you two got married and worked hard scavenging for points, you wouldn’t starve.”
Rhonda blinked, taken aback.
She and Mandy had never even spoken before.
When she didn’t react, a girl on the lower bunk banged hard on the bedframe.
“What are you sitting there for?
Go check it out, at least.
What have you got to lose?
Anything’s better than being a drifter.”
Rhonda stared at Mandy Donovan.
Mandy Donovan gave her an encouraging look.
“Give it a shot.
Worst case, down the line you each get your own place—you marry a man, he marries a woman.”
A messy marriage still beat drifting by a mile.
She absolutely wasn’t doing this out of pity.
That’s all it was.
Rhonda went to find Adam Larson and was gone a long time.
Just before lights out, an ugly-faced boy showed up, asked which bunk was Rhonda’s, and took her things away.
Rhonda never came back.
Everyone understood: Rhonda and Adam Larson had worked it out.
Marriage got you buying rights on the spot.
If a couple pooled their points, they could buy a ten-square-meter room—still counted as owning a place.
One more gone.
She’d be next.
Mandy Donovan was genuinely curious about tomorrow’s meeting, and with that anticipation, she got up early the next morning.
Early as she was, everyone else in the room had already left to scavenge.
She was the only one left.
“You’re up?” Archie Young walked in and pressed a damp cloth into Mandy Donovan’s hand.
“Wipe your face, your hands, all of it.
The boy I’m setting you up with is a distant relative on my side—sixteen, both parents still living.
He’s honest, hardworking, gets things done.
Now wipe up, hurry.”
Mandy Donovan gave her face and hands a quick, sloppy wipe.
There was no washing off her sallow complexion—to hide skin that was fairer than everyone else’s, she rubbed juice pressed from green walnut husks into her skin.
Ten years of it.
Her green walnut stash was almost gone.
Seeing that the wipe-down hadn’t changed a thing, Archie Young paused, then sighed.
“Well, get going.
The boy’s name is Rocky, same age as you.
Have a proper talk with him.”
“I’ll definitely have a proper talk with him.” A matchmaking meetup she’d never experienced in her last life—she was getting to do it in the wasteland.
Mandy Donovan caught the words Archie Young was swallowing back and knew she wasn’t optimistic about her and this Rocky.
What a coincidence.
She wasn’t optimistic either.
She’d been the one to ask Archie Young to arrange it.
Even knowing how it would end, she still had to go through with it herself.
The meeting spot was at the cafeteria entrance.
Mandy Donovan collected her breakfast and spotted a boy crouched by the kitchen door wolfing down food.
She called out tentatively, “Rocky?”
“Eat first, talk later.” Rocky polished off his breakfast in two or three bites, his eyes drifting involuntarily to the food in Mandy Donovan’s hands.
Mandy Donovan didn’t like the breakfast, but there was no reason she’d hand it over.
She sat down and started eating, pretending not to notice Rocky’s stare.
“You gonna finish all that?” Rocky licked his lips and couldn’t help asking.
“Of course I am.” Mandy Donovan finished every bite, then finally gave Rocky a proper look.
He was a little fairer than the kids at The Orphanage, and even a bit taller.
While the other kids averaged around five foot one or so, Rocky was closing in on five foot seven.
As for his face—decent features, evenly set.
Watching Mandy Donovan finish her food, Rocky gave her a slightly regretful glance.
“Both my parents are alive, and they both work.
I plan to marry a wife.”
“That’s too bad.
I’m planning to marry a husband.” Mandy Donovan spread her hands.
“You’re marrying a husband?” Rocky looked her up and down with a strange expression.
“If anyone will actually have you, you’d better lock it down fast.
I can tell—getting married’s gonna be an uphill battle for you too.”
The guy was thoroughly unlikable.
Mandy Donovan couldn’t be bothered to humor him.
“Well, thanks for that.”
“Don’t mention it.” Rocky actually took it as a compliment.
When he saw Mandy Donovan walk off without so much as a backward glance, his face fell a bit, and he went back to complain to Archie Young, who was waiting in the kitchen for news.
“She eats way too much.
No way I could afford to feed her…”