“Hell, we’re all bullet bait sooner or later. Doubt it makes much difference. You make it to sixteen, you’re a goddamn legend.”

“She’d survived the Drowned Cities because she wasn’t anything like Mouse. When the bullets started flying and warlords started making examples of peacekeeper collaborators, Mahlia had kept her head down, instead of standing up like Mouse. She’d looked out for herself, first. And because of that, she’d survived.”

“Knowing all and having the necessary tools are two different things. This is hardly a hospital. We make do with what we have, and none of that is Mahlia’s fault. Tani is the victim of many evils, but Mahlia is not the beginning of that chain, nor the end. I am responsible, if anyone is.”

“No one else noticed, or cared. It was just something they did. Taking other people’s livestock. Other people’s lives. She watched the soldiers, hating them. They were different in so many ways, white and black, yellow and brown, skinny, short, tall, small, but they were all the same. Didn’t matter if they wore finger-bone necklaces, or baby teeth on bracelets, or tattoos on their chests to ward off bullets. In the end, they were all mangled with battle scars and their eyes were all dead.”

“You will die.” “I guess. I don’t know.” She shook her head, trying to pick through her feelings. “I used to think I was alive just because I kept getting away. If someone didn’t put a bullet in my head, I was winning. I was still breathing, right?” She looked at the blackened land around her, feeling tired and sad and alone. “But now I’m thinking it ain’t like that. Now I’m thinking that once you got enough dead looking over your shoulder, you’re dead anyway. Don’t matter if you’re still walking and talking, they weigh you down.”

“Mouse took an idle whack at some kudzu as he passed, but his face was serious. “Hell, I don’t know. Why do you care? That was right after our farm burned. They got everyone. Mom and Dad. Simon. Shane got recruited. I saw that. They shot Simon because he was too little, but they took Shane.” He knocked aside more kudzu. “Maybe I was hoping they’d just shoot me and get it over with. I was so sick of hiding and scavenging. I think I wanted the bullet.”

“A gamble. Everything was a damn gamble. Betting against luck and the Fates, again and again, and again. She kept walking, waiting for the bullet.”