"Afraid you won't find much there anymore. DMZ. I won't say that the area's depopulated, but
a lot of the area is. On both sides of the river. It's the only way to keep the peace, I'm afraid."
Joe smoked his cigarette and absorbed what he was being told. I know what you're thinking,
Carter was saying, You want to go look for your people. You need to wait. You need me to guide you.
And Joe understood that it was true. But he read that Carter was telling it to him all the same.
Something about spending years watching for the bulls and the Director, reading their faces, listening
for what wasn't being said, made him read Carter in the same way. He wasn't suspicious, quite. But he
was watching.
They finished smoking in the sunlight, standing on a gravel path among new growth on old
trees. Then Joe said "Why me? There's a whole slew of prisoners in there. Why just me."
"Because we have a name for you," Carter said. "Because we had someone to trade for you,
and someone in the Commonwealth wants you."
"Who?"
Carter shook his head. "This isn't the time or place. When we're far away from this shithole,
you'll know what you need to. Let's go." They walked up the gravel path and when it spanned out to
meet an actual road, he saw an old school bus painted green. The doors opened and he saw a man
sitting at the driver's seat, looking out the front windshield. Joe looked at Carter, but Carter was
already heading towards a large black SUV.
"You getting on the bus?" said the driver.
Joe got on the bus.
About half the seats were empty, so Joe took one midway through, paying no mind to the men
around him. He sat down on the worn naugahyde seat and the bus rattled like its engine had large
metallic wasps inside and then it moved. He looked out the window at the blue sky and a strange
feeling came over him, a feeling of terrible wrong, like the world as he observed it was out of place and