Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [10]
Trades were how they all lived, each bringing something to the bargaining that the others needed. The Cats had a source for apples and plums. Fresh food of any sort was rare, and the demand for all of it high. Where the Cats found such food was a mystery, although Owl said she thought they must have discovered a small rooftop garden with the apple and plum trees already in place and had simply taken advantage.
Whatever the case, you needed fresh fruit to stay healthy. Owl had studied up on it and told them so. Much of what had once been the diet of their civilization was gone—nearly everything that had been grown on the farms. The compounds still grew their own food, but they were having only mixed success, given the soil and water they had to work with. Most of what the street kids ate was prepackaged and made edible by adding water and heating. There were certain canned foods you could still eat and bottled liquids you could drink, but these were fast disappearing. Stores of all kinds had long since been raided and cleaned out, and only a few useful ones remained, their locations carefully guarded secrets. The Ghosts had discovered one a couple of years back, and still carried out and stockpiled what they needed from time to time.
What they had brought to trade at this meeting was as precious and as hard to come by as fresh food and was the sole reason the Cats might be willing to give up a portion of their own stash.
“You’re late, Hawk,” called out Tiger, the Cats’ big, muscular leader.
They weren’t, of course, but Hawk didn’t argue. This was just Tiger’s way of marking his territory. “Ready to deal?”
Tiger was wearing his trademark orange-and-black-striped T-shirt beneath his slicker. All of the Cats wore some piece of clothing that was meant to suggest the kind of cat from which they had taken their names, although some of them were hard to decipher. One kid wore pants with vertical blue and red stripes. What was he supposed to be? Panther liked to make made fun of them for working so hard at being something they clearly weren’t. Real cats were small and sleek and stealthy. The Cats were a jumble of sizes and shapes and might as well be called Elephants or Camels. He was a better cat than they were, he was fond of saying. They didn’t even have a “Panther” in their tribe. Besides, they had only started calling themselves Cats and taking cat names after they found out about the Ghosts.
“Ain’t nothin’ but a bunch of copycats,” he would declare, sneering at the idea.
Hawk met Tiger alone in the center of the intersection while the others on both sides stayed where they were. Trades were rituals, marked by protocol and tradition. The leaders met first, alone, talked through the details of the trade, came to an arrangement, and settled on a time and place to make the trade if it wasn’t to be done that day. This time both sides had come prepared to trade immediately, having done so often enough before for each to know what the other needed. The Cats would bring their apples and plums and the Ghosts would bring a valuable store to offer in exchange.
“What have you got for us?” Tiger asked, anxious to get to the point of this meeting.
Hawk didn’t like being rushed. He brushed back his ragged, short-cropped black hair and looked back down toward the water and the Hammering Man, thinking again of the dead Lizard. “Depends. How much you got for us?”
“Two boxes. One of each. Ripe and ready to eat. Store them in a cool place and they’ll keep. You’ve done it before.” Tiger hunched his shoulders. “So?”
“Four flashlights and solar cells to power them. The cells have a shelf life of thirty years. These are dated less than twenty years back.” He smiled.
“Wasn’t easy finding them.”
“They still make them twenty years ago?” the other asked suspiciously.
Hawk shrugged. “It says what it says. They work. I tested them myself.”
Tiger looked around, maybe searching,