It had felt odd for Angela to drift through Camp Ryder like a stranger, the eyes of pa.s.sersby regarding her with some suspicion, and sometimes pity. As though she were a poor refugee, filthy and harrowed by the dangers of the road. But an outsider nonetheless. Did none of them remember just a few days ago when she had helped to mend their clothes? Brought them food and water when they were sick?

She had found herself walking with her head down, skirting the edge of The Square. In the few days since she'd seen it last, The Square seemed to have been abandoned. There were no cars or trucks parked near the gate from neighboring settlements, no little shops set up to receive customers and to trade wares. Just the big fire pit, filled with nothing but ashes, and a few people gathered around it to talk quietly.

She'd been saved by a familiar voice, gravelly but kindly.

"Angie!"

She'd turned and found Keith Jenkins picking his way through a row of shanties. The old man was one of the few who had stood by Lee, loaning him his pickup truck to make the trip to Bunker #4 months ago. Since then he'd spent a lot of time with Sam, filling a sort of grand-fatherly role as he taught the kid how to hunt and trap small game. Keith Jenkins had become more a member of Angela's family than almost anyone else she'd met at Camp Ryder.

She tried to call back to him, but suddenly just broke down. Tears came hard, and she didn't know whether they were because of the jarring loneliness he'd just pulled her out of, or whether they were from the happiness of finally seeing a friendly face.

He put an arm around her as they met. "Come on, Angie. I got your kids at my place."

His breath was sharp and sour, but she took comfort in him being there. She walked with him, leaning into him and sobbing quietly into her hand, her eyes barely able to see what was in front of her, just a watercolor mash-up of graying plywood boards and blue tarpaulin. She'd never felt so simultaneously miserable and relieved in her life.

Keith had taken her to his shanty and inside she found Abby and Sam. The boy stood by reservedly, a small smile on his lips. Abby broke down and wept hysterically upon seeing her mother. Angela's tears seemed to dry up under her clenched eyes as she held her child fiercely and didn't move from the floor of Keith's shanty for a long time.

She hated it. She hated Abby seeing these things, experiencing these things. Abby was changing. Going colder on the inside, so slowly that Angela was the only one that could notice. A steadily growing stoniness to her demeanor, and when she wept it sounded more angry than sad.

She was losing her little girl, bit by bit.

Keith brought her a bottle of water, the plastic stained and scratched up from months of reuse. She drank it thirstily and he got her another, told her she was welcome to any of his food whenever she was up to it.

She made her way over to a plastic crate and sat on it, still holding Abby in her arms. She kissed her girl and pulled the hair out of her eyes. She looked up at the older man that sat across the small shanty from her. "How long was I gone for?"

A shadow pa.s.sed over Keith's eyes, as though he were dismayed that she didn't know, but he hid it quickly and took the question straight on. "You were out for two days, Hon."

Angela nodded. "Keith, what's happened?"

Keith looked around them with some obvious discomfort, then crossed the room and took a seat on his mattress, close to Angela. He made a circ.u.mferential motion with his finger. "Thin walls and unsympathetic ears, Angela," he said in low tones. "We have to be careful."

He looked pointedly down at Abby.

Angela understood quickly. She squeezed her daughter again, kissed her neck, then pulled her up off her lap. "Honey, why don't you go play with Sam?" She looked at the skinny, thirteen-year-old boy. "Sam, can you and Abby play outside for a minute? Just..." Her hands wavered. "...just right outside the door. Please. Don't go far."

Sam nodded. "We won't." He put his arm around the little blonde girl, big brother and little sister, and guided her out the blue tarpaulin flap.

Keith smiled, sadly. "He's a good kid, Angie."

"I know."

He looked back at her. "Been asking where Lee's at."

Angela's hand went to her face again. Her voice was barely a whisper. "I don't know, Keith. There was talk about someone that had been sent to kill him-I don't know all the details-but I think it was Eddie, that new guy."

Keith raised an eyebrow. "Vicky Ramirez's husband?"

Angela shook her head. "He's not her husband, Keith. It was all just an act to get inside the d.a.m.n gates. Vicky didn't know what it was about, but I think Eddie killed..." She swallowed hard. "Lee and him left together just a few hours before all of this went down and then we couldn't get Lee on the radio." She hung her head, her dirty, bedraggled hair obscuring her face. "What happened, Keith? What the h.e.l.l happened?"

Keith sighed heavily. "Best I can tell, Jerry's been in cahoots with that little weasel f.u.c.k from Fuquay-Varina, Professor White. It looks like Jerry killed the radio antenna on the top of the Camp Ryder building, and his boys come hauling in here, opened up the gates for Professor White and his idiots, and they all got rifles."

The old man shook his head. "Most of the people that would have stood up to some s.h.i.t like that are gone with Harper and LaRouche now. There are a few good people left, but not enough to make a stand, and everybody else supports Jerry."

Angela raised her head. "You said Jerry took down the radio antenna?"

Keith nodded. "Unplugged it, I think. Not sure if he's plugged it in again or not."

Angela considered this. "Maybe that's why we couldn't get a signal out when we tried to reach Lee."

"That would make sense." Keith rubbed his thumbs together. "Bad timing, though."

"So, what's happened since I've been gone?"

"Marie's been pretty scarce." Keith looked at the ceiling of his shack. "Jerry has his boys distribute rations instead of having her cook community meals. Vicky disappeared-guess now I know why. Couple other families took off right when things went down. Jerry hasn't come out and said so much, but I think he's forcing out the families that just got here. The ones that haven't been able to contribute much."

"Oh my G.o.d." Angela's eyes widened. "He can't do that!"

Keith shrugged. "My opinion? He already has. You know how he's been about newcomers. Wants us to cloister ourselves off. n.o.body leaves, n.o.body comes. He thinks we can just isolate ourselves and h.o.a.rd our supplies and everything will pa.s.s in the end."

"What about the other settlements?"

"Haven't heard from any of them except Smithfield. I think he's keeping them in the loop because he wants to keep the hospital. From what I can gather through the grapevine, he's kept OP Benson staffed to keep the roads between here and Smithfield open, but everyone else is in the wind. Lillington, Broadway, Newton Grove...haven't heard from any of them. Pretty sure he's cut them off."

She leaned in. "We have to do something."

Keith looked at her sternly and spoke very slowly, as though each word was of paramount importance. "You best be very careful who you say that to. Not everybody thinks like you and me."

"Who can we trust?"

"Right now? n.o.body." Keith rubbed his weathered face. "Hon, you want everybody to be asking 'Hey, whatever happened to that Angela girl and her daughter?' you just keep asking questions like that. Get you and your girl thrown out of here in a heartbeat."

Angela's fist balled against her leg. "Keith..."

He looked at her. "What?"

"I'm gonna tell you something, but you can't tell anyone else about it. You can't tell them that I told you a secret. Nothing can get back to Jerry that I said a d.a.m.n word. Understand?"

"Well, maybe you just shouldn't say anything at all."

She shook her head vehemently. "No. I can't let this lie, Keith. Not this."

Keith avoided her eyes, found the dirt floor.

"Bus wasn't killed in a firefight with Jerry's men."

The older man's eyebrow twitched, but otherwise he gave no indication of even having heard her.

Angela continued. "I was in the room with Bus when all this went down. We surrendered, Keith. We threw down our weapons and we unlocked the door. And Jerry and his men come barging into the room, they surround us. And then Jerry and Bus are arguing about the infected and Jerry starts yelling for Bus to shut up. And the next thing I know, Jerry points that big, sawed-off shotgun right at Bus and shoots him in the chest."

Keith closed his eyes and grimaced as though he were being forced to eat something he wanted none of. "G.o.ddammit, Angela."

She reached out and grabbed the older man's shoulder. "Keith, listen to me."

Tired: "I'm listenin'."

"Bus didn't die right away. He was alive for a few more seconds, and I ran over to him, knelt down next to him. I was asking them to help, asking them to get something to stop the bleeding, but n.o.body moved." Angela realized that her throat was constricting again. "They all just stood around and watched him die. But he said something to me, Keith. He looked right at me and he said, 'Take it, Angela. You have to take it'."

She swiped at her eyes as though they had betrayed her. "I didn't know what he was talking about, Keith. I didn't realize it because I was too confused. I was thinking about Abby and getting back to her and that was the only thing I could grasp." She jabbed her index finger into her thigh to punctuate her next words. "But he was talking about this! He was talking about Camp Ryder. He was telling me not to let it die, not to give up on it."

Keith grimaced. "He was dying, Angela. You have no idea what was goin' through that man's head. For all you know, he could have been delirious."

She shook her head. "No. You weren't there, Keith. You didn't see his eyes. He looked right at me when he said it."

"Angela..."

"This is our home," she said abruptly, as though she had issued an argument that could not be refuted. "This is our life. And we've worked hard to make it safe, to make it a place that's worth living in. Jesus Christ, when I first got here I thought about killing myself every miserable day. The only reason I didn't was Abby. But you know what? We turned it around. We made our lives worth living again." She pointed outside. "Now that man has come along and is taking all of that away. He's taking it all away from us, Keith, and no one wants to do a d.a.m.n thing about it."

"Plenty of people want to do something about it." Keith leaned away from her. "I'm just not sure it's the right time."

"It's the only time we have." She put her hands on his knee. "You have to help me."

The old man heaved a sigh and looked at her for a long moment. "You know, when I was growin' up, just startin' to feel my oats and all, my pops told me that blonde women were nothin' but trouble."

Angela hung her head and cracked a long-suffering smile.

Keith patted her hand and gave it a squeeze. "I never did listen to my pops." He rose, his joints complaining with loud pops and cracks. He looked down at the woman sitting before him, her eyes just looking so cold despite the smile on her lips. Like they'd forgotten what it felt like to have hope. And it made what little mirth he'd been able to muster drift away like the last dregs of muddy water from a dammed riverbed.

He shoved his weathered hands into his pockets and his normally-kind face grew stern. "You can't afford to be runnin' around talking to folks about this stuff. You let me do that for you, okay?"

Angela considered it for a moment, then nodded. "Okay."

"We gotta keep this real quiet." He turned partially away from her, eyes on the dirt floor again. "I see a lot of folks dyin' if we don't keep it sh.o.r.ed up good and tight."

CHAPTER 4: SEPARATION.

LaRouche stepped out of the Humvee, followed by Father Jim. Their boots crunched on gravel half-buried beneath a layer of weeds. Jeriah Wilson remained in the driver's seat, the engine still running. His right hand rested on the wheel, the two stubs of his missing fingers twitching. He eyed the building in front of them. He seemed skeptical, as usual.

LaRouche rubbed his grimy fingers under his nose. "Kinda looks like home, doesn't it?"

The old warehouse looked like it had been abandoned long before the collapse. The parking lot leading up to it was cracked through, and tall, brown weeds struggled to exist in these narrow fissures. Windows took up one side of the building and appeared to belong to the offices of whoever had worked there. Mostly, the gla.s.s was broken out, but a few panes remained, dark with dirt and mildew, creeping vines twining their way through the window frames and rooting themselves in the soft, damp carpet inside.

It was buffered from the main road by a cl.u.s.ter of office suites, housing a range of businesses-an alarm company here, a catering company there. Behind those businesses, a hard-packed gravel road led back behind a fence with a rusted padlock and dead kudzu hanging on the barbed wire coils. Some quick use of the bolt cutters had opened up the fence for them and they now sat just inside the gate.

"Little overgrown." Wilson hung his elbow out the open window.

"It'll do for the night." LaRouche nodded towards a pair of bay doors large enough for a tractor-trailer to get through. "Me and Jim will clear it and see if we can't roll those doors open. Maybe we can get the trucks inside."

"Roger 'at."

"Hey..." LaRouche scratched at the overgrowth of his chin and looked at the young Air Force cadet in the driver's seat. "Give it another try."

Wilson sighed, the dark skin of his face twitching into a subtle grimace. "Alright," he said quietly. "I'll try again."

LaRouche tapped the hood of the Humvee, ending the conversation. Then he and Jim hefted their rifles and moved out. LaRouche led and Jim followed, just a few paces behind. They slipped in through a section of broken windows and found themselves in a s.p.a.cious office. The walls were ripped apart, completely gutted of copper pipes and wiring. Jagged sections of plate gla.s.s crunched and snapped underfoot like thin sheets of ice. A ragged bird's nest sat abandoned in the joist of a pair of two-by-fours.

They stuck together as they moved through the maze of offices, each adjoining the other, with a common break room in the middle of it all. The light sc.r.a.pe of their boots across tile and carpeting were the only noises in the building.

They exited the office area and entered a dark hallway. LaRouche stood there in the shadows for a moment, letting his eyes adjust and taking a deep whiff of the air. It smelled of a dank old building, and nothing more. No body odor and feces. No smell of recently-lit fires from other squatters.

When his eyes had adjusted, LaRouche moved down the hallway to where it opened into a cavernous s.p.a.ce, roughly twice as big as the interior of the Camp Ryder building. The tiny sounds of their feet on the ground and the brush of their pant legs together echoed back to them in the huge empty s.p.a.ce. A crack in the roof exposed a sliver of daylight. Water dripped through the ceiling. Big fat drops that landed loudly into a puddle. The sound was even and rhythmic, as if it were set to a metronome.

They worked around the entire inside of the area finding nothing to indicate that anyone or anything had taken up residence in the abandoned warehouse. When they were comfortable with the area, when every dark s.p.a.ce, every closet, every bathroom stall in the building had been cleared at the muzzle of a rifle, they moved quickly to the bay doors. The latching mechanism keeping them in place was simple enough, and had been left unlocked.

Nearly fifteen minutes had pa.s.sed by the time Jim rolled open one of the bay doors, cranking the chain while LaRouche stepped out into the dull light of the shrouded sun and waved their small convoy inside. The vehicles rolled into the warehouse-Wilson's Humvee, then the LMTV, the HEMTT tanker, and finally the second Humvee to bring up the rear. They cut a wide circle around the evenly-s.p.a.ced support beams and positioned themselves in order, oriented towards the door. So they could escape quickly.

LaRouche gave one last look around the exterior of the warehouse property, seeing nothing but a few piles of trash and some overgrown shrubs that threatened to consume the fence. He backed into the shadows, then turned and nodded to Jim, who let the chain slide noisily out of his hands and the rolling bay door rattled back down into its place.

As the echo of the rolling door bounced around the man-made cave of a building, the rumble of the four trucks rolled into a high idle and then died, one by one. Hydraulics hissed and engine components ticked, and then the s.p.a.ce became clamorous with the noise of opening doors and the babble of conversation as LaRouche's team climbed out of their vehicles and began pulling their packs and gear down.

LaRouche's eyes glided over them for a moment as the smell of diesel fumes rolled into him, hot and pungent. To anyone of his people he would seem to be focused in that moment, but in fact his mind jumped from topic to topic, asking questions but not staying long enough to receive an answer. First he thought of the Red Man in his cargo pocket and how long could he make it last, and then he thought about food and water and how long he could make that last, and finally he thought of bodies lashed to telephone poles, crucified and gutted where they hung...

"What's that look for?" Jim asked from beside him.

LaRouche snapped his head right, found the ex-priest regarding him with the half-curiosity of someone who already has a good idea of the answer to their question. LaRouche realized that he was baring his teeth, just slightly-his bottom lip quirked down to expose a row of teeth that were gradually yellowing with tobacco stains and lack of brushing.

He let the expression slide off of his face and pulled the sling of his M4 from around his shoulders, then touched the raw spot where the nylon had managed to get through his layers of clothing and rub at the bottom of his neck. He leaned the rifle against the wall, then dove into his cargo pocket and retrieved the chaw.

"They're out there," LaRouche said quietly as he worked.

Jim planted his hands in the pockets of his parka. "Yeah."

LaRouche rolled the wad of tobacco into his cheek, brushed a few stray pieces of tobacco off on his pants, and then replaced the pouch. "Just hope they stay the f.u.c.k out of our way."

Jim only nodded.

Wilson joined them, looking between the two older men with a taut expression.

LaRouche knew what it meant. "No luck, huh?"

"No." Wilson crossed his arms. "I tried four times while you guys were clearing the building. Still getting nothing."