People looked at us, but nobody came over. When some of them saw me watching, they lowered their eyes and continued on.
Sam sighed, crossing his arms on top of his cart. “Sorry, Steelslayer. They’re too afraid.”
“Afraid of hot dogs?” I said.
“Afraid to get comfortable with freedom,” Sam said, watching a woman rush past and head into the understreets, where most people still lived. Even with sunlight up here now, and no Epics to torment them … even with painted walls and colors … they still hid below.
“They think the Epics will return,” Abraham said with a nod. “They are waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak.”
“They’ll change,” I said, stubbornly stuffing more of my hot dog into my mouth. I talked around the bite. “They’ll see.”
That was what this had all been about, right? Killing Steelheart? It had been to show that we could fight back. Everyone else would understand, eventually. They had to. The Reckoners couldn’t fight every Epic in the country on our own.
I nodded to Sam. “Thanks. For what you do.”
He nodded. It might seem silly, but Sam opening his hot dog stand was one of the most important events this city had seen in ten years. Some of us fought back with guns and assassinations. Others fought back with a little hot dog stand on the corner.
“We’ll see,” Sam said, pushing away the coins I’d set down, all but two nickels to pay for our hot dogs. We’d gone back to using American money, though only the coins, and we valued them much higher. The city government backed them with food stores, at Tia’s suggestion.
“Keep it all,” I said. “Give free hot dogs to the first ten who come today. We’ll change them, Sam. One bite at a time.”
He smiled, but pocketed the money. As Abraham and I walked off, Tia’s voice, terse and distracted, came in over my earpiece. “Do you two have a report?”
“The dogs are awesome,” I said.
“Dogs?” she said. “Watchdogs? You’ve been checking on the city kennels?”
“Young David,” Abraham said around a mouthful, “has been instructing me on the local cuisine. They are called ‘hot dogs’ because they’re only good for feeding to animals, yes?”
“You took him to that hot dog stand?” Tia asked. “Weren’t you two supposed to be doing greetings?”
“Philistines, both of you,” I said, cramming the rest of my hot dog into my mouth.
“We are on our way, Tia,” Abraham said.
Abraham and I hiked toward the city gates. The new city government had decided to section off the downtown, and had done so by creating barricades out of steel furniture to block some of the streets. It created a decent perimeter of control that helped us keep tabs on who was entering our city.
We passed people scuttling about on their business, heads down. Sam was right. Most of the population seemed to think the Epics were going to descend upon the city any moment, exacting retribution. In fact, after we’d overthrown Steelheart, a shocking number of people had left the city.
That was unfortunate, as we now had a provisional government in place. We had farmers to work the fields outside, and Edmund using his Epic abilities to provide free power for the whole place. We even had a large number of former members of Steelheart’s Enforcement troops recruited to police the city.
Newcago was working as well now as it had under Steelheart. We’d tried to replicate his organization, only without that whole “indiscriminate murder of innocents” thing. Life was good here. Better than anything else in the remnants of the Fractured States, for certain.
Still, people hid, waited for a disaster. “They will see,” I muttered.
“Perhaps,” Abraham said, eyeing me.
“Just wait.”
He shrugged and chewed his last bit of hot dog. He grimaced. “I do not think I can forgive you for that, David. It was terrible. Tastes should complement one another, not hold all-out war with one another.”
“You finished it.”
“I did not wish to be impolite.” He grimaced again. “Truly awful.”
We walked in silence until we arrived at the first unbarricaded roadway. Here, members of Enforcement processed a line of people wanting to enter. People with Newcago passports—farmers or scavengers who worked outside of the downtown—went right through. Newcomers, however, were stopped and told to wait for orientation.
“Good crowd today,” I noted. Some forty or fifty people waited in the newcomer line. Abraham grunted. The two of us walked up to where a man in black Enforcement armor was explaining the city rules to a group in worn, dirty clothing. Most of these people would have spent the last years outside of civilization, dodging Epics, surviving as best they could in a land ruled by nested levels of tyrants, like Russian dolls with evil little faces painted on them.