I shrugged. "Got me. We ate most of his trout last night."

As if on cue, our gazes landed on the cabin. There was no hint of activity. No smoke from the chimney. After the coil of rope I'd found in the barn, I wondered if one of us should go knock on the door.

"I was thinking we could catch some fish before we leave," Twitch said, letting an arrow sail. It impaled itself into damp earth. Ffft. "Assuming we can."

We had never proven ourselves the most adept fishermen. Nor hunters. Nor the most adept at anything. Now I understood why: if the Brown Shirts trained us too well, we'd put up too much of a fight against the Hunters.

"You'd think we could catch something," Flush said, nocking an arrow. It wobbled drunkenly in the air before falling harmlessly to the ground.

"What's going on out here?" a voice demanded. It was the old man. He was alive. Awake. And angry. He came charging down the porch steps, moving at a far faster clip than the night before.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asked, ripping the bow from Flush's fingers.

I stumbled for words. "Just some target practice. So we're able to get food. Maybe even bring you back a buck before we go."

"You expect me to believe that?"

"Yes, sir, because it's true."

"Not shooting like that, it's not."

"Huh?"

"I've been watching from the window and you all couldn't hit the ocean from the shore."

Our mouths were agape. What bothered the old guy wasn't the fact that we were shooting his arrows, but that we were doing it so poorly. He was the first adult we'd ever met who was bothered by our incompetence.

He drew an arrow from Twitch's quiver, nocked it, and pulled the string back until his thumb grazed his jaw. He inhaled and held his breath, as still as a statue. His face was so relaxed he looked decades younger.

When he released the string, the arrow zipped through air, landing in the very center of the target with a resounding thwack.

"That's how you use a bow and arrow," he said. "Not all twisting and yanking and prying and pulling and hoping it'll somehow hit somewhere near the target. You gotta hold the draw."

We all shared a look of astonishment. It was as if we were talking to a different man altogether. His temper was still intact, but there was suddenly a spring in his step that hadn't been there when we'd first met him.

"So will you teach us?" I ventured to ask.

The old man rubbed his jaw. "'Spect I'll have to, if you aim to actually kill something. You all haven't got the skills God gave a toad. But don't be expectin' no free meal. I barely got stores enough for me."

"We're not asking for more food," I said. "Last night's fish was enough."

Flush sent an elbow in my ribs, but I meant it. If the old man could teach us how to use a bow and arrow, we'd be in better shape than ever.

The old man's gaze drifted toward the barn. "I thought there were a couple dozen of you."

"The rest are still asleep."

"Well, wake 'em up. If I'm teaching you, I aim to do it a single time. No point repeating myself."

"Yes, sir," I said, and Twitch went loping off to get the others.

We stood there awkwardly, no one quite knowing what to say. Finally, I mustered up the courage and said, "My name's Book. What's yours?"

The old man studied me suspiciously. "Why do you want to know?"

"If you're going to be our teacher, it only seems right we know your name."

The man regarded the request a moment longer. "Frank," he said at last, as though he'd not had reason to say his name aloud for many years. He cleared his throat and said it again. "It's Frank."

"Hello, Mr. Frank."

"Not Mr. Frank," he snapped. "Just Frank. Got it?"

"Yes, sir . . . Frank." I'd never called an adult by his first name before.

When the Sisters and other LTs arrived, he began teaching us the finer points of nocking arrows and releasing bowstrings. He raised his voice and wasn't afraid to yell. Taught Dozer how to compensate for his one bad arm, and Four Fingers for his lack of digits. Showed Helen how to use a smaller bow and Scylla a bigger one. Even Cat didn't escape Frank's badgering. Frank told him he was relying too much on strength and not enough on form. Craft. Technique.

"You've gotta think of it as an extension of yourself, not just a weapon. Do it your way and you'll be wildly successful some of the time. Do it mine and you'll be very successful all of the time."

Cat didn't seem to mind the advice one bit.

As for the rest of us, we could barely suppress our smiles. Although we didn't know it earlier, it was the kind of instruction we'd been craving all our lives.

There wasn't a moment in those next two days when we weren't busy. Archery, fishing, tracking prey-we did it all. Making weapons, too. Bows and arrows. Slingshots. Hope took a branch from an ash tree and whittled it into a spear-with an ease that made me think she'd done it a hundred other times.

In the late afternoon of the third day, Frank invited us into his cabin. It was like entering another world. There was a tidy kitchen. A small dining room table with placemats. Even a couple of reclining chairs angled in front of a fireplace. There was something else as well: books. Thousands of them, jammed onto shelves and in towering piles.

"Take a breath," June Bug whispered to me.

Frank saw me ogling them. "You a reader?" he asked. I nodded dumbly. "Help yourself then. A book's no good unless it's being read. Just takin' up space otherwise."

In no time we were cooking up the fruits of our labors: rabbit pie, raccoon stew, fried squirrel. Added to that were mounds of potatoes, countless jars of green beans, and stewed tomatoes from Gloria's garden.

That was his wife's name: Gloria. That's who we'd buried several nights before.

When it came time to actually eat, we gobbled down what was easily the most delicious meal we'd ever had. As I was licking my fingers for the tenth or fifteenth time, a spring storm blew in, thunder rattling the walls, rain clawing at the windows. To be inside and sheltered-and now full-seemed the most luxurious feeling ever.

"So tell me," Frank said, sitting in a reclining chair and scratching Argos's ears. "Who are you, anyway?"

We looked at each other.

"Just some teenagers," I answered, as casually as possible.

"Uh-huh. Who just happened to be riding horses that don't belong to them. Or didn't you think I'd notice the brands?"

I felt the stares of the others. My cheeks warmed.

"I'm listening," he said.

Something about the look on his face made me feel ashamed. Here he'd taught us all these things, made us dinner, invited us into his home, and I couldn't even give him a straight answer.

"We're on the run," I admitted. Dozer shot me a venomous look.

"I figured that. From where?"

"We're from Camp Freedom," Hope said.

"And we're from Camp Liberty," I added.

He nodded briskly. "Those the camps at the base of the mountain?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you escaped from there?"

"That's right," Hope said.

He nodded briskly and my stomach tightened as I waited for his response.

"Good for you," he said at last, giving his thigh a playful slap.

I wasn't sure I'd heard correctly.

"It's about time someone had sense enough to get away from them Brown Shirts, what with their badges and their inverted triangles." He let loose a laugh that was more cackle than anything else.

"But the other night you cursed us for being Less Thans," Twitch pointed out.

His gaze fell downward. "That was wrong of me. I'm sorry."

It occurred to me I'd never heard an adult apologize before.

"For years, the government's fed us all this nonsense and after a while it starts to seep in. I don't give a whit about a person's skin color or their radiation sores or whatever else the government's against. Guess I was thinkin' more about your parents than you." We looked at him blankly. "You know-them being terrorists and all."

"But we never knew our parents," I said.

He opened his mouth to say something and then let it close. "No, I guess you didn't," he said, like he was just piecing something together for the first time. "More lies from the Republic," he muttered.

"Have you ever run into them?" Hope asked. "The Brown Shirts?"

"Twenty years ago. Just after Omega. No desire to see 'em again."

"You don't trust them?"

"About as far as I can throw 'em." He went on to explain how he and his wife had been at the cabin the day the bombs fell-watching the first reports on TV, then switching to radio when the TV went out. "That's when we heard," he said.

"About what?"

"Our new country. The United States was no more, replaced with the Republic of the True America." He said this last with a touch of scorn. "The few politicians who survived started up a new government. Made everyone sign loyalty oaths. Got rid of the Constitution and replaced it with a Compact."

"What's that?" Helen asked.

"Like an agreement-a promise."

"A promise to do what?"

"Rebuild. Become better than ever. And the government said the only way to achieve that was through the purity of its citizens."

"What's that mean?" June Bug asked.

"Nothing good." Then he added, "Beware the Less Thans is what it means."

A chill ran up my spine.

"Why do they consider us Less Thans?" Flush asked.

He rubbed his whiskered chin before he spoke. "Because you're different-different body shapes, different belief systems, different skin color, you name it-and people don't like different. They like what they recognize. And we all know there're two ways to feel good about yourself in this world. Either make yourself better . . . or put others down." He paused. "I did it, too."

I felt bad for him. Truth was, if it weren't for him we probably would've starved to death or frozen to death or who knows what.

He went on to say how, in the days following Omega, he and his wife tried to reach their kids and grandkids in Oklahoma.

"But there weren't nothin' to find. The cities were just smoldering craters, and the towns that did remain were run by gun-toting Crazies who had as much sense as a lynch mob. And then there were the Brown Shirts, instructed to shoot first and ask questions later. Just seemed safer to come back up here." Then, in a whisper: "Even if it meant not seeing our children again."

I didn't know about the Sisters, but we Less Thans had never known our families. He had a family but lost it to Omega. I wondered which was worse.

His rheumy eyes settled on Hope. "It's your camp I don't understand. Why were you all there?"

Hope hesitated before answering. "Because we were twins," she said. The other Sisters dropped their eyes.

"Yes, and?"

"You don't want to know."

Something about her tone gave me goose bumps, and it was like I suspected all along: they had experienced things the rest of us couldn't imagine.

"Was the whole country hit by bombs?" June Bug asked.

"All except Iowa," Frank said, nodding.

"Why not Iowa?"

"Nothing there worth bombing."

When he smiled, it occurred to us we were meant to smile too, even though we didn't really get the joke. Then he tousled Red's hair until it was standing straight up and that made us laugh out loud-a sound we'd nearly forgotten how to make. Argos got in on the act and barked and howled and that made us laugh harder still.

We were still laughing when Four Fingers came bursting through the door. He'd been assigned to the watch, and he bent over at the waist, trying to catch his breath.

"What is it, son?" Frank asked. "Seen a ghost?"