TWENTY-NINE

As Ed and I sat on the floor and shoveled canned chicken into our mouths (oh how heavenly it tasted), Anthony explained the layout of the DC.

The entire campus, he said, totaled a million square feet, though three hundred thousand of that had been sealed off by the time we arrived. The restricted area was the Perishables building, which stood three stories high and was the first building we’d seen from the road. On Friday, when the first families arrived, they harvested as much fresh fruit and vegetables as they could and then locked the doors. No one had been over there since. Anthony spoke of the place in hushed tones, as if the building were haunted, but his fear was well-founded. Before the power went out, the Perishables building had functioned as a giant refrigerator, its interior held at a constant 37 degrees Fahrenheit. A hundred thousand pounds of rotting meat, ill-contained, was an ecological disaster waiting to happen. No one was allowed near the doors.

Paige’s shift on the roof ended when it was too dark to see, and in her place a couple of men were assigned to ground-level positions. When Anthony asked one of us to volunteer, Ed and I glared at each other until he finally relented. A little while later, Paige offered to give me a tour of the dry goods warehouse, which was my new home.

She led us by Tiki torch into the darkness, turning first right and then left. She was wearing a purple TCU T-shirt and a snug pair of jeans. In the flickering light I could see she was very fit but curvy at the hips, which is the most important place to be curvy.

Paige explained the DC’s design, how much of the building ran on automation, but that wasn’t why I had asked for the tour.

“Is there somewhere we could sit down? I could use time to digest all that chicken.”

We were walking between two rows of giant shelving units whose gridlike skeletons disappeared into the darkness above us. When we reached the end of one, Paige balanced the torch inside a corner support column. Then we sat down on the concrete floor, our knees mere inches apart.

“So your name is Aiden?”

“Yes,” I said and extended my hand to her.

“I should thank you for before,” she said as we shook. “For being friendly after what I did.”

“They were pals of Jimmy’s. I didn’t really know them.”

“Still,” she said. “I killed three men and I feel awful. It’s hard to believe this is the world now.”

I liked the intense way she looked at me.

“Do you regret shooting them?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course I regret it.”

She stared at me and I stared back at her.

“Because I wouldn’t.”

She looked away from me, at something in the darkness, and the flickering torch lit her face in amber hues.

“It’s true I had no choice. Our defense couldn’t match those weapons.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“I’m talking about how it felt.”

“It felt like my life was in danger,” she barked. “That’s how it felt. I couldn’t let your guy set up the grenade launcher and take shots at us.”

The conversation did not proceed the way I expected. Others had probably heard us.

But I was convinced Paige was hiding her real feelings about the matter from me.

And maybe from herself.

* * *

That first night I slept on a couple of cheap, fuzzy blankets that barely cushioned me from the concrete floor. At some unknown hour I woke with an emergency need to have a bowel movement and was directed to an employee bathroom so far away from our campsite that I nearly didn’t make it. Imagine sitting on a cheap commercial toilet in a tiny stall while holding a bug torch to keep the darkness at bay. Certainly the experience was a far cry from what I was accustomed to in my own home, where I had installed a heated toilet seat and could use my phone to browse Tinder profiles to my heart’s content. At least someone had thought to grab a case of wet wipes from the warehouse floor. The wipes were individually wrapped, and printed on the label of each were these instructions: TEAR, UNFOLD AND WIPE, DUDE. ALSO SWEET FOR FACE, HANDS, PITS & DUDE REGIONS. Leaving aside the missing Oxford commas, which already was a crime against humanity, I wondered how the losers behind Dude Wipes felt about their super hip labeling now that flushing the toilet meant pouring a gallon of water into the tank. Because the world would no longer tolerate bad taste and frivolous marketing. It was a serious, deadly place where only the strongest were meant to survive.

In the morning, Ed and the others returned from overnight guard duty and found themselves a place to sleep. I spoke to Anthony about how much fresh water was being wasted in the toilets, so he asked Deion and Mike to dig a latrine on the back lawn. Then he took me outside, where we walked in the direction of Perishables. Layers of sunrise smoke hovered near the ground like fog. The murmuring of the crowd floated above us, disembodied and restless, mixing with the screech in my ears to produce a vivid sense of being observed. As if I had stepped onto the stage in front of a studio audience.

Even though the Perishables building was locked, there was an entrance road nearby that had drawn a crowd on the other side of the chain link fence. The lookout point, instead of a fuel tank, was the check-in station for arriving tractor-trailers. People in the crowd began to shout as we approached.

“Come on, now. Some of us have been waiting here for two days. Have some mercy, man!”

“My baby hasn’t eaten since Friday and we have nowhere else to go!”

“This is America. We don’t turn our backs on the needy!”

Anthony looked at the ground and spoke to me in a low voice.

“Don’t acknowledge them. We engaged a few yesterday and it went poorly.”

“What did you say?”

“That our duty was to Walmart. That we can’t hand out inventory without a directive from Bentonville.”

“Bet that went over like a load of bricks.”

When we reached the check-in station, a tired-looking man met us at the bottom of the steps. He eyed my gun and extended his hand to shake.

“I’m Emmitt,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Aiden. So what’s it like out here at night? Do the people go home?”

“Some do, some don’t. But there’s more coming all the time. Yesterday they was all down at the east end, but now we got people over here, too. I keep telling them Perishables is locked down, but it’s like they don’t believe me. Like we got magic cooling units that run on fairy dust.”

“That building wasn’t refrigerated!” someone at the fence line yelled.

I looked over and spotted the man, who was wearing jean shorts, penny loafers, and a button-down shirt meant to look like the U.S. flag. Perched upon his head was a red cap with the words MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN embroidered in white. His fingers were hooked through the fence and his face hovered between his hands.

“You don’t refrigerate a warehouse three stories tall!” he crowed. “Think about the power bill. It don’t make no sense!”

“Say,” Emmitt said to me. “That’s a nice weapon you have. Think I could use it at night? Beats the hell out of this hunting rifle.”

I’d resented my semi-automatic weapon since it had been assigned to me, but suddenly I was possessive of it. Still, being able to loan the rifle to someone else made me feel important.

“Sure,” I said. “No problem.”

After Emmitt left, Anthony and I climbed into the check-in station. It was about the size of a kid’s tree house and windowed on three sides. Since we could talk without being heard, I asked Anthony how he planned to control the crowd as it grew larger.

“Would you ever hand out food, at least to the especially needy?”

“Aren’t all of them especially needy?”

Maybe they were. I couldn’t have cared less. The only reason to give them anything was as a defense strategy.

“What about children only? Or some kind of lottery?”

“All that would do,” Anthony said, “is create a situation of Haves and Have Nots. Where that discrepancy lives, violence follows.”

“But this whole scenario is one giant Have versus a thousand Have Nots.”

“Sure, but the DC represents order. The old way of things. They won’t attack until they’ve lost hope the world will go back to the way it was.”

Anthony was an intelligent man. You could see it in his fastidious manner and the careful way he considered his words. But he was also a hopeful man. A dreamer. Despite reality staring him in the face, he wanted to believe order would return.

“Yesterday,” he said, “I heard a helicopter in the distance. I believe it may have been a Black Hawk, the type of chopper used by the U.S. Army. Hearing this machine gave me hope the government has a plan to restore order. That they will come here to gather supplies and distribute them in a fair manner.”

“But what if that doesn’t happen?”

“Did you know Walmart owns over twenty-five percent of the entire U.S. grocery market? We run nearly 5,000 retail locations serviced by 44 grocery distribution centers. If you want to feed hungry people right away, wouldn’t this be a great place to start?”

“Or maybe if Walmart and factory farms hadn’t devoured local grocers and growers, the food supply would live closer to the people who consume it.”

“Anyway,” Anthony finally said, “Good luck. Someone will relieve you at lunchtime.”

Do you ever get the feeling you don’t exist? That the words you speak aren’t heard by others?

Eventually, I turned toward the crowd. The new star had just emerged from the horizon of trees in the east. It was no longer a discrete point of light but smeared by striated layers of smoke. Also, I noticed a light dusting of ash on the ground, as if snow had fallen the night before.

I opened the front window of my perch to let in air, and so I could point my rifle through it if needed. It wasn’t long before people began to approach the fence and lob questions in my direction.

“Sir,” a woman said. She was young and thin and disordered. Her two weepy children were under the age of five. “It’s my fault I let the grocery shopping slide. My husband and I had been fighting for three days, and after he left for Phoenix I fed my kids out of the freezer. Now I’ve got nothing, and the stores are empty, and we walked three miles to get here. My two-year-old daughter just walked three miles, and this is not even her fault. It’s my fault! Won’t you please help us?”

And it wasn’t just these two kids who were upset. Sporadic crying and yelling were common across the crowd. A few groups had put down blankets on the grass, as if digging in for the long haul. Someone opened a case I hadn’t noticed before and began to strum a guitar. All this noise was awful. My mind reeled with the chaos of it.

To focus myself, I picked out obese humans in the crowd and imagined how it would feel to point my rifle at their fat bellies.

For once in your life you deserve to be hungry! I might yell at the enormous middle-aged woman wearing a bright red T-shirt that read I’M A LUCKY DEVIL! How wonderful it would feel to shoulder my rifle and fire rounds into her sickening, bloated carcass of a body. The mewling sound of her pleas would be like musical harmonies I could punctuate with the thundering drum of my weapons fire. I imagined pumping breakbeats into her shapeless figure until she was nothing but a cooling blob of fat and meat.

Eventually, Deion came along to replace me while I went inside to get a snack. Eating in front of the crowd, as you might imagine, was strictly prohibited.

By then two of the dock doors were partially open, and visibility inside the DC was much better. I could see, in addition to the shelving units, a network of miniature elevated highways, which someone explained were conveyors that had been used to move merchandise across the warehouse. When I asked about the open dock door, and the risk of attack from someone in the trees, Mike said this:

“When Paige is on the roof, no one is worried.”

That made me think of Aaron’s stricken face, how she had killed him with a single shot from three hundred yards. With trees in the way.

“Why don’t you take her some lunch?” Mike said.

In the common area I found a jar of crunchy peanut butter and a loaf of wheat bread. I prepared sandwiches, grabbed two cans of soda, and found my way to the ladder again. It was no easy feat to climb while carrying the box of food.

“Coming up,” I yelled. “Don’t shoot.”

“I listened to you struggle the whole way,” said Paige. “You must be part turtle.”

“Good thing I brought two sandwiches because this turtle is hungry.”

Paige smirked and grabbed at her food.

“I hope this isn’t crunchy,” she said, taking a huge bite. “I hate all that gravel in my peanut butter.”

“You know that’s what it’s made from, right? Peanuts?”

“So? Coffee is made of beans, but I don’t want them rattling around my cup.”

The flirty banter was a good start, but I wanted more from her.

“Sorry about yesterday,” I said. “I was just curious—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay. But I want you to know that I would never tell anyone if—”

“You should probably head back down,” she said. “Mike could use help with that latrine.”

Paige finished the sandwich and resumed her position behind the rifle. In the distance we heard a couple of gunshots, followed by a few more.

“Imagine having to hunt for food,” she said, “after being able to buy it under cellophane your entire life. Most people have no chance. They can’t shoot well enough.”

“How did you become such a good shot?”

Paige sipped on her soda and didn’t look at me. Her father would be at the center of any answer, I guessed, and his death was still a fresh wound. But I hoped it was a wound she wished to dress.

“I was an only child,” she finally said. “And my dad obviously wanted a son. He taught me to play golf and throw a football and how to shoot. For some reason I happened to be good with a gun. In competition, I beat the shit out of dudes all over the country, so at eighteen I decided to join the Army. Being a paper puncher gets old because the targets don’t shoot back.”

Paige looked at me as if she expected judgment, but this is exactly what I wanted to hear.

“Then my dad wouldn’t let me enlist. He was an officer during the Iraq war, and what he saw over there soured him on government. We’re talking about the most conservative, grounded man I’ve ever met who came home calling George Bush a puppet and Dick Cheney a traitor. He said going to war was like pouring gasoline on a fire America was pretending to put out. That it was never about liberation or fighting terror. It was a money grab. It was a video game the Pentagon had been waiting years to play.”

“What did you think?”

“I thought he was nuts. Why did I train ten years if not to help us win a war?”

“So what happened?”

“He cried and told me about the families we wrecked, about the innocent children we murdered. He made me watch Dwight Eisenhower’s speech on the military-industrial complex. He was convinced the biggest threats to America weren’t external, that rich special interests were devouring our Republic from the inside. And all this was before Trump. When Trump was elected, he got drunk and said ‘They finally did it! The serfs picked their new king.’”

“Sounds like he watched a lot of fake news.”

“Maybe so. But I loved him and agreed not to join the Army.”

“What did you do instead?”

“Became a teacher. I picked first grade so I could reach students while they were still young enough to believe what I said.”

“But you kept shooting?”

Paige’s eyes narrowed and she didn’t answer right away.

“Obviously, I kept shooting. You train to do something your whole life, you can’t just quit.”

“You said you were bored with paper targets, so I just wondered what you shot at instead.”

It took me a moment to realize I’d gone too far, but before I could retract the question, her eyes went blank and she looked away.

“I’m starting to think we shouldn’t bother trying to hold the DC,” Paige eventually said. “The south wind is getting stronger and pretty soon either fire or smoke will drive us away. Maybe it’s better if we leave the place on our terms.”

The image of wandering from town to town, the two of us against the world, imbued me with such confidence that I ignored good sense and leaped. “I don’t care where I end up,” I said. “As long as it’s with you.”

She looked at me like a bug, like a pest that needed swatting. Her lips arranged themselves into a pitiful smile.

“You’ve lost your mind.”

“Maybe I have.”

* * *

It was no surprise when Jimmy didn’t come back on Monday. As tired as we all were, the motivation to return for longer-term supplies had surely diminished. But by Tuesday, Ed and I were convinced something had gone wrong at Marie’s house.

“Maybe I should walk back there,” said Ed in the evening after Paige had come down from the roof.

“That would be brave,” she said, “but also pointless.”

“Because they aren’t worth saving?” I asked.

“Because Jimmy and Bart were well-armed. If they ran into trouble, it didn’t end well.”

“If we stay here much longer,” said Ed, “it’s not going to end well for us, either.”

Anthony had been standing at the open dock door and walked over when he heard us talking.

“We may face another battle soon,” he said. “I have seen some heavily-armed civilians in the crowd. They seem to be scouting our defense.”

“I haven’t seen anyone out back,” said Paige.

“Still, we should be careful. I don’t think anyone should leave the campus until we’re all prepared to go.”

“Just so we’re clear,” I said, “our weapons are part of the reason you’re able to adequately defend this place. If me and Ed decide to leave, that’s our business.”

Anthony’s eyes narrowed and he stared at me while silent seconds elapsed. This was the moment of truth: Either I had earned enough respect for him to take my challenge seriously, or I hadn’t.

“Very well,” Anthony said. “You should be in control of your fate. But if you choose to leave, I don’t think you should approach the DC again. The situation outside is too volatile.”

“Fair enough.”

When I looked at Paige, she rolled her eyes. She underestimated me. Just like they always do.

Just like you always do.

* * *

For days, the weight upon my mind had been building, the noise in my mind swelling, and after the failure with Paige I knew my time at the DC was coming to an end. There was nothing left for me there except food and water, which would have been good reasons to stay if not for the constant chatter of the crowd, which had begun to sound almost like a ticking clock. Like a bomb waiting to explode.

So I developed a plan. A big, beautiful plan. A plan that began with Ed, whose effortless, casual charm made me feel stupid and unaware. He was a grifter. A liar.

But he did happen to carry an automatic weapon, along with two 30-round clips. Combined with my own clip, that meant 90 total shots, minus the one I planned to use on Ed.

With an automatic weapon and 89 rounds, I could put on a show. Not total carnage but entertaining nonetheless.

If you’re wondering how I lured Ed away from the building, that’s the most brilliant part of the entire story. He did it to himself! On Wednesday night, I agreed to guard the rear perimeter with him, and after a couple of hours of mindless pacing, Ed remembered something I’d totally forgotten.

“You know what?” he said, gesturing toward the looming shadow of the forest. “The rifles Mack and Nick and Aaron dropped are probably still out there. We could use more good weapons if an attack comes.”

“I’m sure Jimmy and Bart grabbed the guns.”

“Maybe. But they were carrying a lot of food. And it was almost dark. I think we should walk over there and check.”

So we did, each of us armed with a rifle and a canvas bag to carry back any guns and ammo we found. The wind blew steadily. An odor of smoke swirled around us. Ed crept across the parking lot and into the grass beyond it, carefully ascending a knoll beyond the pavement. I followed. The silhouette of the tree line loomed like a many-limbed organism ready to absorb any creature that grew too close.

When we reached the trees, Ed slung his rifle over his shoulder and pulled the flashlight from his pants. A moving circle of dirt and fallen leaves and root systems appeared. I watched, transfixed, as Ed voluntarily offered his life. Why wasn’t he more cautious? Why would he trust me?

I could barely hear Ed when he finally spoke, so loud was the shrieking of my skull.

“Let’s see,” he said, pointing. “I think we were more that way. Don’t you? Aiden?”

When he turned around, Ed discovered the barrel of a rifle pointed at his nose from a distance of two yards. The night was so dark he was nothing more than a silhouette.

“Hey, man. What are you doing?”

“I’m killing you.”

“Hey, man. Don’t do that. Not after all this. Please?”

Ever notice how even the biggest jerk turns friendly when bargaining for his life?

“You think you’re so fucking slick. First you tried to move in on Keri, and now you’re doing it again with Paige. Is that your thing? Steal a guy’s girl to make yourself feel like a big shot?”

“What do you mean? Keri adores you, man.”

“The hell she does.”

“And Paige, I mean, she’s not—”

“She’s not what? Good enough for me?”

“She’s not into dudes, man. She likes girls.”

“Bullshit. How would you know that?”

“She told me. We were talking the other night, and I don’t know, it just came out.”

I’m no dummy. I know some women really are gay. But the ones like Paige, they’re too lovely to be that way. It’s like they do it on purpose to deprive men of the chance to be intimate with them.

“Have you been asleep the past few years? We don’t think about women that way anymore.”

I jerked my rifle forward until it was mere inches from Ed’s nose.

“You talk an awfully big game for someone with a gun pointed at him.”

“Aiden,” he answered. “I didn’t say anything. I’m at your mercy. Please don’t kill me.”

I couldn’t tell if he was serious or trying to make me feel unstable. When someone replies to your interior thoughts, it’s hard to know what to believe.

But by then it didn’t matter anymore.

I fired. A single shot. Ed’s silhouette toppled over and his flashlight fell in an arc toward the ground, where it came to rest pointed straight at its owner. The body made awful, screechy, liquid sounds, and I would have abandoned the flashlight if not for the weapons and ammunition that theoretically were nearby.

After a few minutes of searching, I discovered the swollen bodies of Mack and Nick and Aaron. Mack’s rifle was threaded between thick fingers, and when I tried to wrench it free, the wooden sounds of skin tearing and bones splintering dropped me to my knees. From here I could see pink foam leaking from his nose and I wondered if I was dreaming. Because in a way none of it seemed real. Would anyone believe I had murdered three people since the EMP? What if it had all been some kind of grand hallucination? Why did I need Mack’s gun when there were two other rifles nearby that had been thrown free of their owners?

A little while later I trudged out of the trees and eased down the slope with an automatic rifle slung over each shoulder and the canvas bag in my hands, into which I had stowed all the new ammunition. The RPG would have been killer (haha), but it was awkward and I didn’t know how to fire it. Still, two rifles and 269 total rounds could inflict plenty of damage.

I approached the DC with care, in case any of the other guards had come around back, but none had. I stowed my newfound cache in an out-of-the-way spot near the door and resumed my position along the rear wall.

For hours I stood there, staring into darkness but not really seeing. Instead I pictured a beautiful sunrise marred by the chaos of a thousand displaced humans who might be sleeping or crying or praying. I realized how pointless that was, praying, asking for help from an imaginary guy in the sky. Why had I wasted so many years believing He cared about me? Where was the evidence? A loving God would not have allowed my old life to deteriorate into chaos. He wouldn’t have permitted His followers to suffer at the hands of the powerful, to fall prey to the lies of the rich, who pretended to care about our interests in order to get our votes. There was no God. There was only filthy, stinking humanity that had frittered away its chance at greatness. Who chose short term gains over long term prosperity. I was as guilty as the rest, of course I was, but in the morning I would use my new weapons to acknowledge the truth no one else was honest enough to admit.

The world was over. There was nothing left to live for. No more reason to struggle.

I was ready to go, and on my way out I would take a few with me.

Start the dominoes falling.

Hasten the departure.

* * *

Sometime before dawn, as patches of indigo appeared in the eastern sky, I became aware of a strange, new chemical odor. A little while later, ash began falling in clumps, like dirty snow, collecting on my head and in the fine hair of my arms. The sound of the crowd rose from a murmur to a low roar.

Eventually Paige walked out of the DC and ascended the ladder. She didn’t even bother to say hi or relieve me from duty. But I didn’t care anymore. All I wanted from Paige at that point was her position on the roof, because being up there was integral to my plan.

When I walked inside, Anthony was pacing near the open dock door. He could tell something was different. I wondered if he would ask where Ed was, if he would discover the truth in my reaction.

Instead he said, “Aiden, follow me.”

We marched out the dock door, toward the edge of the building. The air was so smoky I could taste it, and our footsteps stirred ash into a cloud that hovered near the ground. I wondered if I was being marched to a punishment of some kind, if I was being banished to the crowd. Imagine the irony of feeding me to the humans I had targeted for mass murder!

When we finally reached the corner, I could see the mob had swollen enormously, its restless energy barely contained by the illusion of our control.

“You gotta let us in, man!” someone yelled. “The fires have reached McKinney!”

“That smell is the tire plant! The smoke is toxic!”

Anthony pointed toward a tall, broad-shouldered man lumbering toward us. The weapon in his arms looked like mine. The bulk of his chest suggested body armor. I had no idea what was happening.

“We can’t breathe this air for long,” the fellow growled when he reached the fence. “Let us have some food or there will be hell to pay.”

Anthony was clearly concerned about this man and his intentions, rather than me. He approached the fence and spoke in a voice so low I could barely hear what he said.

“If we open our gates, the supplies inside will be wasted. Chaos will reign. People will get hurt.”

“What do you think is happening out here?” said the angry man.

“I understand people are desperate,” Anthony said. “But help is coming.”

“Help? From where?”

“From the U.S. Army. The other day I heard a helicopter, what I believe to be a Black Hawk—”

“Listen here, Professor Plum. I’ve seen two of those choppers myself. They aren’t landing. They aren’t helping anyone. They’re surveying the carnage so they can report back to whoever is in charge. We put binoculars on the closest one and saw a guy taking pictures. With a Polaroid.Help is not coming. You’re sitting on a mountain of food and you are going to let us in.”

Anthony was facing away from me and I couldn’t read his expression, but the disbelief in his answer was obvious.

“I—” he said. “I cannot—”

“You will or there will be hell to pay.”

The notion that the government, or some version of it, was unable or unwilling to help us seemed like the most obvious thing in the world. But Anthony was clearly shaken by the news. He walked backward a few feet and surveyed the crowd. He raised his hands into the air, and like magic, the roar of conversation grew quiet.

“Listen,” he said in a loud, deep voice. “I can bring food to you.”

The cheering that followed made it impossible for Anthony to go on. While he waited, I reviewed the details of my plan. The first and most important step was to get on the roof as soon as possible.

“My men can bring the supplies with carts and dollies,” Anthony eventually said.

“Just let us in, fella!” yelled someone. “We’ll come to you.”

“Please understand: The food inside will become useless if order breaks down. Anarchy will put your safety at risk. Think of the children.”

I assumed the man who threatened us would have been pleased by this announcement. Instead, he turned around and disappeared into the crowd, which to me seemed ominous.

Deion and Emmitt were ordered to remain at the west entrance, while Mike manned the east side with an older guy whose name I had forgotten. Anthony asked me to follow him back into the DC. His face was solemn, his eyes uncertain.

“You’re really going to bring them food?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “My speech bought us time, but minutes only.”

“That guy could be bluffing about the helicopters.”

“He did not seem to be bluffing. And if no one is coming, my strategy no longer makes sense. Maybe we should grab supplies and evacuate before the decision is no longer ours.”

The last thing I wanted was for Anthony to give up so easily. I needed more time. When we reached the building, I appealed to his sense of order.

“If we’re going to evacuate, let’s do it on our terms. I’ll go to the roof and help Paige watch the crowd while you and the others round up supplies.”

Anthony looked at me for a long time before he answered. Could he see through me? Could everyone?

Was this even happening?

“Yes, Aiden. Go join her. When I decide how to move forward, I may need your help again.”

As I climbed the ladder, the rifle slung over my back, I looked up at the sky and marveled at the amount of smoke and ash in the air. Its presence had been increasing gradually for days, but this was like someone had closed the flue of the world. As if the smoke, having nowhere to go, was rolling backward with an odor so sharp it burned my nose.

Eventually I reached the roof and saw Paige lying behind her rifle, eye pressed against the scope. I quietly shouldered my own weapon. The sound in my mind compressed itself to a lone, high whistle. A gunshot fired this close might ignite the crowd, but how else was I meant to get Paige off the roof?

There was a way to solve this riddle if only I had more time.

But time was suddenly more precious than I knew.

“We’ve got a problem,” she said, and coughed into her fist.

* * *

Like the rest of us, Paige had realized something was different that morning, and she’d been carefully scanning the northern and eastern trees for movement.

“Someone’s in there,” she said. “At least two groups.”

“Can’t you shoot at them the way you shot at us?”

“Maybe. But what if Jimmy and Bart decided to come back?”

This seemed unlikely, but what if she was right? What if the women had come, too? Was Keri out there, waiting for her chance to see Dead Ed again?

“So what do we do?”

“All we can do is wait,” she said and coughed again. “Even if I knew none of them were friendly, they’re too deep in the trees to get a clear shot.”

I looked where her scope was pointed but couldn’t make out a thing. Also, my throat was feeling ticklish, and I coughed a few times to clear it. The noise in my head became heavy and dense: a ragged membrane of dissonant wails. The window for maximum destruction was rapidly closing. If something didn’t happen soon, it never would.

“Anthony wants to cut and run,” I eventually said. “Maybe you should go down there and talk sense into him.”

“He’s right. We can’t stay here any longer. But I don’t want our escape cut short by whoever is in the trees. Shit, I’ve lost them.”

“Both groups?”

I shouldered my rifle and watched the tree line. I swept right and pointed my rifle at Paige. My finger slithered onto the trigger. Her skull would be beautiful in pieces.

“Oh, shit,” she said, her eye still pressed against the scope. “It is Jimmy.”

I swept back left again. Toward the trees. Violins between my ears, strings shrieking.

“They’re about to walk clear of the tree line,” said Paige. “They’ve got Jimmy out front. And a woman. Two women. Using them like shields, those fuckers. Like the women aren’t even human.”

“You mean you can’t take a shot?”

“Not yet,” she said. “Not unless I can make a clear kill. The sound of gunfire could start a riot out front.”

I finally saw movement at the tree line, and then Jimmy emerged, followed by two women. From this distance they were little more than shapes, but their shuffling gait suggested all three were either exhausted or in bad physical condition.

And behind each one of them was a man carrying a rifle. As the six of them grew closer, I realized one of the men was the fellow who confronted us at the fence. I didn’t recognize the other two.

“Watch the entire tree line,” Paige said. “They could be trying to distract us from an assault. Who the hell are those women?”

As the group continued its approach, I heard someone shouting.

“… deserve a right to eat the same as you! We are not here to fight, but we must protect our families! I repeat: We are not here to fight!”

“I could hit at least one of them,” said Paige. “Maybe two. But I can’t get all three before the other one starts shooting. They might kill Jimmy and those two women.”

Was she asking if I would let Jimmy and the unknown women die in exchange for killing the intruders? If so, my answer was a resounding yes! Only what then? There was still the matter of the 269 rounds. A herd of people I was meant to cull.

“Let’s go down and meet them,” said Paige. “You first and I’ll cover. We should be able to reach the ground before they make it around the corner.”

Did she know I had pointed my gun at her? Would she fire while my back was turned?

I walked toward the stairs and closed my eyes and waited for the blast. But none came.

The ladder didn’t face the tree line, which meant we could descend without fear of being shot. On the ground we hid behind a semi-trailer. Eventually the approaching group stopped at the corner of the building.

“We are not here to fight!” one of the men yelled. “We were in the woods behind the warehouse and discovered this man approaching from the east. He says he’s been here before. He says you supplied him with food and water. Why shouldn’t we be treated the same?”

“Where are your other men?” I yelled back.

“Watching from the trees. They have orders to attack if this doesn’t go well. We are well-armed. I advise you to help us.”

I looked at Paige. Her face was unreadable. With this automatic rifle I might overwhelm the group with a barrage of fire, but that meant killing Jimmy myself. And possibly inviting an attack from their other men.

“Approach slowly,” I said instead. “Make any sudden moves and my sharpshooter will be forced to take you down.”

“We are aware of your sniper. We are not here to fight.”

The first movement I saw was Jimmy rounding the corner. His face was bruised, and blood was crusted beneath his nose and one of his eyes. Then two women followed, and one of them, I noticed, looked familiar, even if I couldn’t place her.

Soon the six of them were standing before us. Anthony had apparently heard and emerged slowly from the open employee door. He stood beside Paige and faced the men.

None of this was turning out the way I had hoped. I was thwarted. Disillusioned. My mind was a universe of chaotic, screaming nonsense, and I swore I could taste, of all things, lemonade.

From this awful disorder Anthony’s composure emerged.

“I am Anthony Williams, manager of this facility. Paige and Aiden have been helping protect our interests.”

“Billy Pate,” said one of the men. He was the angry guy from before, the one at the fence. “This here is Thomas Phillips and Seth Black.”

Upon hearing this exchange, Jimmy appeared to come to life. He craned his neck to look backward.

“So your name is Seth Black?”

Seth was shorter and softer-looking than the two other men. He would have been more at home in a cubicle, I thought, than a battlefield.

“So what if it is?” Seth said.

“You here from Tulsa? Have a wife named Natalie?”

“I’m Natalie,” said the other woman, the one I didn’t recognize.

The defiant look on Seth’s face changed to one of confusion.

“How do you know us?”

Jimmy turned directly toward Seth and smiled. I could see blood in his teeth.

“I’m Jimmy Jameson. You owe me $213,000.”

The look on Seth’s face, upon hearing this news, was something close to horror. I couldn’t know the incredible circumstances that had directed the paths of these two men to cross, or that Seth had come all the way from Tulsa the previous Friday, after the EMP.

And I surely didn’t understand what role Thomas had played in our lives thus far, or in events that were still to come.

But I do now.