Helena and Buzzard shared a glance, then the two of them got to their feet. The other evacuees, the ones on the couch, must have understood what was happening. They filed out quickly and discretely. Tim didn’t move from where he sat.

When the others were gone he explained himself. “Everything you have here came from one of two places. Either the military gave it to you or you found it somewhere inside the boundaries of Camp Romeo.” He had seen the fence the soldiers had strung around the outside of the camp. It was supposed to keep the droolers out, and to that end it was ten feet high, just like the fence that ringed all of Olympia. This inner fence, however, was topped with barbed wire, which could only mean one thing. It was also meant to keep the evacuees in. “I’m willing to buy that you found a smoke shop here, and that’s where your cigars came from,” he told Buzzard. “But then there’s the coffee. People here drink what, two or three cups a day on average? That’s a lot of beans. Over a month’s time, that’s what?” he did a quick calculation in his head. “Five hundred people drinking two cups a day for a month is thirty thousand cups of coffee. A hell of a lot of beans, and nobody seems to worry about what happens when the supply runs out.”

“There are plenty of coffee shops and Starbuck’s stores inside the Camp,” Helena suggested, though he could see from her face she wasn’t telling the whole truth.

Tim shook his head. “Maybe the soldiers go out into the abandoned parts of the town and bring back coffee for you, I don’t know. But I do know the Army has a zero tolerance policy on marijuana.” He pointed at the joint in Helena’s hand. She stubbed it out hurriedly in a beanbag ashtray. “You can feed yourselves pretty well, on clams and old canned food. But the luxury items give you away. I played cards with Scott the chiropractor the other night and we drank single malt scotch. He had a whole cabinet full of the stuff. By all rights you guys should be barely making it. Instead you’re living the high life. There’s got to be some kind of channel of goods coming in from outside, which means you’re in contact with somebody other than Horne. So who’s supplying you?”

“It ain’t like that,” Buzzard spat, but Helena shook her head to stop him.

“Alright, you’ve caught us,” she said. “We know some people. Some kids who weren’t rounded up during the evacuation. They’re still living up north with nobody watching them. They find the things we want, and we trade for them.”

“Looters, you mean,” Tim said.

“Looters, scavengers, black marketers, whatever,” Buzzard agreed. “They ransack Seattle one house at a time, always staying clear of the droolers. You want to talk about bare survival, oh, man. That’s where they are. They’re a pretty sketchy bunch and they can’t help you, whatever you think. They wouldn’t, not without a damned good reason.”

“The trade has to go both ways,” Tim announced. “You must provide them something in exchange for the liquor and cigars.”

“Food that doesn’t come from a can,” Helena admitted. “Medical supplies, whatever the Army gives us that we don’t need. And advice. They’re just kids, like I said. They knew nothing about staying alive. They contacted us originally because they knew a lot of us were professors from the college and they needed information desperately. Information on how to avoid the infected, how to get clean drinking water. One of them broke a leg once and came here in the middle of the night so Scott could splint it. That was one scary night—we were all convinced Horne would know something was up and send soldiers to investigate.”

“He didn’t?” Tim asked.

Helena shook her head.

“So there’s a way for them to come here unnoticed and then get away again. That means I could go the same thing, follow that channel back to where they come from. I’m not saying they would do it out of the goodness of their hearts. I’m not that naïve. But they could get me into Seattle, if I could afford to pay them.”

Buzzard and Helena both just stared at him.

“You don’t want me to try, I know. You don’t want to get in trouble. You don’t want to ruin a good thing, I understand that,” Tim said. “But I can’t just stay here and wait to die. I can’t let my family go, not that easily.”

“If you know what’s good for you,” Buzzard said, “you will.”

Helena reached over and grabbed the reporter’s arm. “Please,” she said. “There’s no need for threats. Tim, even if we wanted to help you, we couldn’t. You’re forgetting something.” She squeezed Buzzard’s arm again and then grasped her own. “You’re forgetting we’re chipped.”

Tim frowned in incomprehension for a moment, then looked down at his own arm. There remained a red dot where Horne had him implanted with his RFID tag. He smiled then, broadly enough to make the evacuees lean back in their seats. “You mean this?” he said, brandishing his arm. “This thing? That’s not a problem.”