Max nodded. “Hence my huh.” He squinted up at the sun, which was making its way skyward. “The flare effects must be wearing off. Maybe the sun has settled back down to normal.”
And maybe my small miracles had turned large. Still, Steve’s initial comment hung in the air. “That’s great, but please go back to the lying bit. What makes you think he was lying?”
“Not think,” he replied. “Know.”
“Know how?” I asked.
He sat down on the step in front of the store. We joined him there, all of us breathing in the air that was merely hot and not the recently standard sweltering. “He said that the dead humans were theirs, military.”
“And?” Max asked.
“There were a couple of battery-powered lanterns in that tent Kit and I were in,” he replied. “It was dark, but we could see the bodies, the faces u
