We figured it wasn’t practical for every single person to weigh in on everything our little village did, so we elected a thirteen-person council, with Tabitha Pierce as our chair. Sweeney and Cal got it into their heads that I should be on this council, and even though I told them I’d knock them out if I got picked, they still campaigned for me. I won, and I got stuck going to boring-ass meetings.

There were a lot of arguments through the summer like we had during Operation Exodus and during that first meeting in the library, but we worked it out. The council set up food rationing and duty and shower rotations. People mostly worked and ate the same shift as their families, but we had a couple complicated ex-spouse situations, so that wasn’t always the case. The council spent hours figuring out rotations for kids so that they could have time with this parent or that parent when they worked other schedules.

The work schedules themselves were a whole other challenge. In the end, the council made a huge list of duties and asked everyone to apply for their top three choices. Then the thirteen of us spent days working out the assignments. Of course, it wasn’t always possible to give everyone a job from their top three, and even people who were given one of their first choices bitched, but we set it up so that people who did good work for a month could apply for a duty change. The system even allowed people to cycle through a period of days off. At first, the idea floated around that we might build some sort of punishment cell, a solitary confinement box to penalize people who refused to work. After all, there was so much to do, and we needed everyone’s help. But Mrs. Pierce crushed that idea at once. “We’re not going to build trust and community, we won’t have peace, if we start out with threats. We need to work together because we want to help one another and to honor the sacrifice of those who didn’t make it here with us.”

“Some gave all,” I said, remembering something I’d read online once.

“And so all must give some,” said Mrs. Pierce.

It took forever, but eventually we had a workable system going. We had enough people willing to work guard duty that our “soldiers” only had to work six hours on/six hours off guard shifts for four days at a time. So, I would work the zero one hundred to zero seven hundred and thirteen hundred to nineteen hundred shifts. Then I’d have four days of other work. After that, I pulled guard duty from zero seven to thirteen hundred and from nineteen hundred to zero one followed by four more days of work details and then four days off. People who didn’t cover guard duty simply worked different jobs. Kids mostly went to school, which was taught by Mr. Morgan, Mrs. Van Buren, and Mrs. Stewart.

Mr. Cretis offered to teach, but we needed his shop skills for other stuff. I helped him take the big solar assist power units off the buses. We used one to provide power for the kitchen. They actually had a working refrigerator, freezer, and microwave in there. Mr. Cretis custom-built wood-fired water heaters for two latrines and the kitchen. The other solar unit powered the radios that Sergeant Crocker set up in the room right outside the library. We tried to use our comms, but we gave up after we figured out the deep Idaho mountains weren’t really the best place for Internet. Crocker directed me and my friends in setting up a huge, powerful antenna rigged with wires in these giant pines next to the guest dorm building, which we were calling the Council Building. The radio setup let us finally get some news from the outside.

It was strange for all of us who had grown up streaming music, shows, and movies online to now gather around the radio like old times, but plenty of people pulled up metal folding chairs for the Sergeant Crocker radio show. Once in a while, we were lucky enough to tune in to music, but most of the time, all we got was news, most of it bad. World War III had begun, and most signs indicated it was likely to be far worse than the previous world wars. When we heard the reports that I was dead, Sweeney and Cal made a big thing of it, patting my back and making jokes like “You look pretty good for a dead guy” and “Hey, Wright, if you’re dead and JoBell’s single —” I cut them off with a quick punch to the arm. I’m not gonna lie. I was happy to hear the world thought I was dead. It was the best way to drop out of it.

JoBell and some of the others got all excited about this Cliffhanger pirate radio guy. I had to admit he had serious balls, traveling all around and sneaking his way on the radio like that. He was a nice change of pace from the regular propaganda that the other radio stations put out. He didn’t care which government he pissed off, but just talked about what was really happening. Better yet, he was the only one on the air with any good news. Although the war grew worse and worse, the Pan American Peace Movement was also growing in cities everywhere. The Cliffhanger reminded us that there were still good people, that some folks still worked together to help one another. That kind of news, and the peace we’d found together at Alice Marshall, made good comfort for our aching bodies at the end of long work days.

The solar assist units weren’t the only parts we took off the buses. We completely cannibalized bus one. We didn’t have enough bunks, so I helped remove its seat cushions. Me and Mr. Cretis took a cutting torch to that sucker to salvage the metal so we could make more wood stoves. We converted its engine into a generator that could provide limited electricity to the whole school. I was kind of proud of that. Hell, we even used the tires to make a bunch of swings for the kids, and after we found golf balls and a set of clubs in the rec lodge, we used the tailpipe and some scrap metal to build a mini golf course. Someone had brought an old portable DVD player with some cartoons for the little kids, and with that, the swings, the mini golf, the canoes and other sports equipment, the books in the library, and the growing band, we didn’t do so bad for entertainment.

I’m not gonna lie. The band was pretty good. They called themselves the Deadbeats after Crystal Bean’s uncle, who played guitar and said he’d never had a real job. Mr. Morgan’s wife played flute. Their daughter was good on the violin. And Chase Draper had built his own drum set out of old coffee cans and whatever other materials he could find. His drumsticks were whittled from sticks he’d found.

Jaclyn had it rough. She pulled guard duty with us a few times, but she seemed to be sinking into such a deep depression that we seriously thought of taking her gun. She stopped showering, and even when we brought her clean clothes, she wouldn’t always change. She barely ate.

One night after Jaclyn had skipped chow again, I explained to the people in the kitchen that I would be taking an extra helping of vegetable deer soup for her. With a couple spoons, bowls, and a full thermos, I went to her room and found her slumped in a chair, staring at the wall.

I was no shrink. I had no idea what I should say. Finally, I went for the practical. I poured her soup into her bowl and set it down in front of her. “The council’s been talking. If you don’t eat, they’re going to try force-feeding you.” That got her to look at me, at least. I ate a spoonful. “It’s actually pretty good.” I didn’t know what else to do, so I kept talking. “I got some jobs I need help with. You any good with tools?”

She didn’t answer, but she did pick up her spoon and start eating. We ate the rest of our little meal in silence. The next day she showed up at the shop. She’d cleaned herself up and changed clothes. She didn’t say anything, but she and I went to work.

I worked with Jaclyn a lot through the summer. Sometimes she’d join me in the shop, helping me with welding or with fixing something. For a while the two of us spent time improving the trails around the school. I think she liked jobs with me because I didn’t try to make her talk much. We had a nice rhythm. She told me one time that she kept working to keep her mind off how she lost her family. I could understand that.

Winter was coming, so one of our biggest tasks was getting ready for the cold. That meant wood. We created an old-time pioneer lumber camp a slight distance away from the school. Alice Marshall had a chain saw, which ran out of gasoline fast. We’d have been set if the thing ran on diesel. We had a lot of that left. But without the chain saw, we had six axes and a bunch of handsaws. Guys worked out a rhythm, with two men trading chops to a tree trunk. It took a long time, but eventually they’d bring the tree down. Then the rest of the crew would go to work with handsaws, cutting the trees into more manageable chunks of firewood. Lumber duty ran every day from sunrise to sunset, because not only did we need a lot of wood for heating water and our cabins, but we wanted a fire break and dead space around the school to spot and shoot any invaders.

We sent hunting parties deep into the woods so they wouldn’t shoot close to the school and give away our position to anyone who might be in the area. These were groups of ten, half of them out there to bring in game, the other half to take down any dangerous people they might encounter. They never spotted any humans, but they brought in three deer and a giant moose. Since we had power in the refrigerator and freezer, we were able to store most of the meat, but we also smoked a lot of it in case our homemade generator failed. With that and everything the fishing team was bringing in, our biggest challenge was finding enough vegetables. JoBell, Becca, and Sweeney often joined the gardening team, trying to grow potatoes, carrots, lettuce, and tomatoes. We worried that the growing season would be too short on the mountain, but the team worked constantly in their giant garden near the classrooms, and they swore we’d have plenty of vegetables come harvest time.

*  *  *

“Ain’t these supposed to be our off days?” Cal walked into the shop one day in late August.

I looked up from the piece of metal from bus one that I was beating and grinding into the shape of a snow shovel. When it started to snow, we’d have to shovel trenches so people could move among the buildings, especially out to the latrines. Jaclyn was screwing the wooden handles we’d made from branches onto the shovel blades. “Winter is coming,” she reminded him.

I laughed. “Thanks, Ned Stark.”

Cal frowned. “Yeah, I saw that show too. That guy worked all the time. It didn’t turn out so great for him.” He shot a look at the door. Even after the whole summer, he could never quite relax around Jaclyn. “JoBell, Becca, and a bunch of the girls challenged us to mini golf.”

“Dudes.” Sweeney came rushing into the shop on his cane, bumping into a pile of shovel blades and knocking them to the floor. “Sorry.” He started picking them up. “The girls just dropped the big one. They figured out the kitchen’s making blackberry crisp for dessert next week. They just bet the crisp. If we don’t beat them, we’re out of luck for the dessert from all those million berries we helped pick.”

“Let me finish this shovel,” I said. “Then I’ll be right with you.”

“Come on, man,” Sweeney said. “We have to win this one. Just think, double blackberry crisp!”

“I said I’d be right there.” I spoke a little harsher than I’d meant to.

Cal looked at me for a moment. “Well, if you —”

“Why don’t you go with him?” Jaclyn said. “I can do this.”

“Cal,” Sweeney said. “Go tell the girls to wait a little. We’ll be out there in a minute to win their dessert from them.”

“Right.” Cal ran off.

Sweeney tapped the ground with his cane. “Listen, Wright,” he said. “It’s like the end of summer. So we need to take advantage of being outside while we can. The biggest enemy we’ve had to deal with up here is deer trying to get in our garden. You have to relax a little, buddy. What’s the point of finally finding peace if you can’t have a little fun?”

Jaclyn frowned. “After everything that’s happened, it’s hard to laugh it up playing mini golf, like blackberry crisp is the most important thing in the world.”

Sweeney fingered the shiny, twisted skin on his cheek. “Everybody’s been working all summer, but you two have hardly stopped. Danny, sometimes you take a canoe out on the lake by yourself, to do what? I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”

“It’s just good to be alone,” I said. “Peaceful. Quiet. Like the war never happened. Like the world is just me and the sky.”

“Well, we’re a part of your world too, buddy. I think we’ve earned that after everything we’ve been through.” Sweeney nodded at Jaclyn as he spoke. “People need some recreation once in a while. It’s good for them. Healthy. If you don’t think you can have a good time, at least try to have fun and fake it for your friends.” Sweeney offered me a concerned smile and then hobbled back to the others.

It was hard for me to think about having fun when I remembered all the terrible things I’d done. But maybe Sweeney was right about Jaclyn. Her pain was no fault of her own. Maybe taking a break would help her out. “Jackie,” I said. “He’s right. I think we need a break. Let’s go whack some golf balls.” I put down my hammer and forced a smile.

Jaclyn shook her head. “Fine.” She smiled a little. “Say goodbye to your crisp!”

*  *  *

“I know these scavenging missions are kind of a pain —” Becca started to say. It was a little over a week later, and we were moving through the woods.

“Kind of a pain?” TJ said from a few paces behind me. “I hate these missions. Pale Horse drops us off in the woods, miles from the school. We walk for days, and as soon as our packs lighten up after we eat some of our food, we find a cabin or a shed with some crap we need, and then the load on the way back is twice as heavy.”

“And I got to hump the radio and extra ammo the whole way,” Cal said.

Sergeant Kemp was leading our file through the forest. “If First Sergeant Herbokowitz was around to hear you all complaining so much, he’d drop us all and PT us until we went blind,” he said.

“That’s what I’m trying to say,” Becca said. “These missions aren’t easy, but I still kind of like them. It’s a chance to get out here with the whole original crew, just us. No council. No Craig Rankin telling stupid stories about his old Buick with the underglow lights.”

“And the cherry bomb glasspack!” JoBell groaned. “I know what you mean. So dumb.”

“Are you kidding? Those things are awesome,” I said. “I don’t know that I’d want one on a little Buick Regal, but they’re still cool.” I stepped over a large rock on the trail. “Damn, I miss working on cars.”

“Becca, how are you and your parents getting along?” TJ said after we’d walked in silence for a while.

“It’s great to be able to be with them again.” Becca held up her M4 and pressed the barrel against her forehead. “But I’m not sure how long I can go on living with them. I’m eighteen now, and it’s September. In a normal world, I’d be moving out to go to college. Where am I going to move at Alice Marshall?”

“There’s room in my loft of love,” Sweeney said. We’d made a loft for his bus seat bed, with support poles from small pine trees and a loft floor from patched-together lumber and branches. He’d worked for weeks to gather every branch and small tree trunk he could find, walling off his loft all the way to the ceiling.

“Oh hell no!” Cal said. “My rack is right under there. I don’t want you two messing around up above me.”

“Hey, at least my love loft is closed in,” Sweeney said. “Danny and the kitten are just right out in the open.”

JoBell sighed. “The ‘kitten’ is going to rip your face off if you call her that one more time, Eric.”

“We have never messed around when you guys were in the room,” I said. JoBell tapped me on the back.

“Dude, are you kidding me?” Cal shouted. “Sometimes you two think we’re asleep, but we’re not asleep!”

“Oh my gosh,” JoBell whispered.

“See?” said TJ. “That’s why I’m glad I live next door. All dudes. It stinks and there’s loud snoring, but I’m okay with it.”

Kemp stopped up in front. “There’s a war going on and any number of psychos could be out in these woods. Can you act like you’re soldiers and not still in high school?”

We walked in silence for a moment before Sweeney spoke up. “Well, we never did make it to graduation.”

We all laughed.

*  *  *

A couple hours later, we found a small house with some outbuildings at the end of a dirt lane. The place was quiet. Nothing moved. But we still followed procedure and set up an overwatch position while Kemp radioed to Pale Horse to let the team know we’d found something. After watching the house for about an hour and detecting no movement or sound, we hid our packs in the woods and ran up on the place, rifles at the ready. We went in the back door and cleared every room on the main floor, the upstairs, and the basement. Then we checked out the small horse barn and the two old sheds. Yeah, it might have seemed a little overcautious, but even if we sometimes joked around on the trail, we were way past being stupid on ops like this.

After the security checks, we all gathered in the dining room. “Do you think it’s abandoned?” JoBell said.

“It looks like it’s in pretty good shape,” TJ said.

“We’ll look everything over more carefully now,” Kemp said. “Check for the usual signs.” We all nodded. We didn’t want to be like the Brotherhood, breaking into occupied houses and taking people’s stuff. But the war had messed up everything, and a lot of people had died or fled Idaho and left a lot of useful things behind, so we’d done this a bunch of times. If there was still food here, especially fresh food, then someone probably lived here. If we found weapons, they were probably coming back, because who would leave without their guns? But if the food and guns were gone, or if there was evidence of people packing up to leave, then we took what we needed.

“Okay, let’s shake it up,” Kemp said. “Rule number three. Becca and Sweeney, post a guard out front. And, um, Danny and JoBell, cover the back. Me and Cal and TJ will search the house. I don’t have to tell you the nights are getting cold, so keep a lookout for coats, hats, gloves, sweatshirts, and blankets and things.”

I sighed and my shoulders slumped. Guard duty sucked. And lots of times the guys searching had first dibs on cool things they found. Cal shot me a look like, Sucks to be you, loser!

JoBell took me by the hand and we went out to the little back porch. It was only about six feet square, but it was covered with a little aluminum roof and surrounded by a short brick wall. “At least we’ll have good cover,” JoBell said.

“I hope we don’t need it.” I sat down on the cement cap of the wall and leaned against one of the posts that held up the roof.

“How many places have we searched?” she asked. “Twenty, at least. And only once did anything happen.”

One time we had scared the shit out of a family who was hiding from us in the basement. We apologized and left their house right away. “Yeah, we were damned lucky that old man didn’t shoot us.”

“Or that we didn’t shoot him.” JoBell nodded. “But most of the time, this goes smoothly.”

“First Sergeant Herbokowitz always warned us about being complacent.”

JoBell held up her M1A a little. “I’m never complacent.” She sat down on the wall on the other side of the porch so she could watch the opposite way.

“Oh, kick ass!” Cal yelled from inside. “Comic books! Spider-Man, Captain America. The … the New Warriors? Point is, comics!”

“Keep it down, Riccon!” Kemp yelled back.

“You know, I was talking to Becca the other day,” JoBell said after a long time. “She and Eric are getting serious.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” I said. “Sweeney spends a lot of time volunteering to help with the” — I made air quotes with my fingers — “ ‘gardening.’ ”

JoBell laughed. “He actually does a lot of good work in the garden. But I mean, they’re getting serious. They want to get married.”

I sat up. “Really?”

JoBell frowned. “Why do you look so surprised?”

Was I showing a hint of the old weirdness between me and Becca? If so, I had to cover it up fast. “Just, Sweeney always swore he’d never get married. How did he put it? That getting married was like going to a buffet, but only eating the salad. Every day of your life.”

JoBell shrugged. “He’s changed. We all have. My point is, they don’t want to upstage us. And you and I have been engaged for a while now.”

I smiled at her. “I’m glad.”

“I’m glad too, but I think it’s time we do this.” She smiled back at me, and then checked her sector again. “I don’t know, maybe I was holding out hope for a fancier wedding. But I have that wedding dress we found a couple missions ago. Becca could help me adjust the length. Maybe we could ask Chaplain Carmichael to make it happen? Daddy won’t be there, but if he stays deep in that bunker and we keep safe, we may both make it through the war to have family Thanksgivings and Christmases in the future.”

“You sure you don’t want to wait until after the war?” I asked. “Until we go home?”

“You don’t want to marry me?” She asked it playfully, but with a tiny note of concern.

I got up, walked over to her, and pulled her into a hot kiss. When we finally parted, our lips stayed only inches apart.

“Naughty boy,” she whispered.

“This isn’t close to naughty,” I said. “Wait until we get back to —”

“I meant, you’re not covering your sector, naughty boy.” She laughed and pushed me away, then got serious again. “We were waiting until we were out of the war, but I think we’re out of it now. The Alice Marshall School is our home. All our friends are with us.”

I thought about it. Most of my old dreams for our future together had burned to ashes, but at the school … The library would make a good room for the ceremony. Sweeney could be my best man. Cal would probably try to give a speech at the reception in the chow hall. Maybe I could shoot a couple turkeys for the meal. How lucky was I to have a girl like this? No matter how much bad stuff had happened, JoBell always kept me going.

“Okay.” I said. “You’re right. When we get back, you and Becca get that dress all fixed up, and then we’ll get married.” I opened the back door and called into the house. “Hey, you guys! Let me know if you find a tux in there.”

“Shut up and cover us,” Kemp called back.

I went back to my side of the porch and looked out at the edge of the property. “It will be great. We’ll finally be …” I spotted a flash of white a few feet back in the woods. “What the hell is that?” I said. There was something down along the ground. I brought my rifle stock up to my cheek and scanned the area.

“What is it?” JoBell asked.

“Don’t know. Cover me.” I jumped over the short wall and started walking out toward the woods, my eyes and rifle still on whatever was out there.

“Danny!” JoBell hissed. “Rule number one!”

“It’s not that far,” I said. JoBell could pick off any trouble with that rifle of hers. And if this thing was a person or an animal, it would have done something by now. “It’s probably nothing.”

I walked out past the first trees. The thing wasn’t moving, so I stopped aiming at it and swept the woods with my M4. That familiar jolt ran through me again — the boredom of standing guard replaced with faster breathing, a rapid heartbeat, and an intense awareness of everything around me.

I rounded one last tree to get a better look. That’s when I saw the white bones of the rotting bodies.