Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [776]

Today a group of us, all armed, rode bicycles from home to River Street and down River Street to the college. Five miles in all. We checked side streets, alleys, vacant buildings, every place we could think of. I went. I took Marcus with me because if I hadn’t, he would have gone out alone. I had the Smith & Wesson. Marcus had only his knife. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 776

Note

The search is reported as logistics — distance, routes, inventory of weapons — and the catalogue of places is followed by the flat admission “I went,” which carries more weight than any sentence of dread could. The two-gun asymmetry (Smith & Wesson versus a knife) quietly states the whole economy of who protects whom.