“We’ve had to detain a fair number of people here since the cannibal attacks started,” says Obi. “You’re the only ones who managed to make it out. There could be a place for the two of you here. A place with meals and friends, a life with meaning and purpose. Right now, we’re fractured. They have us eating each other, for God’s sake. We can’t make a stand if we’re bashing each other over the head and killing each other for cans of dog food.”

He leans toward us in earnest. “This camp is just the start, and we need everyone to pitch in if we’re going to have a chance in hell of taking back our world from the angels. We could use people like you. People with the skills and determination to be humanity’s greatest heroes.”

Boden snorts. “They can’t be that good. They stumbled in a big semi-circle around the compound like a couple of dildos. How skilled can they be?”

What dildos have to do with it, I have no idea. But he did have a point in that we did get caught by an idiot.

~

It turns out I don’t really get latrine duty. Only Raffe gets that honor. I end up with laundry duty. I’m not sure that’s much better. I’ve never worked so hard in my life. You know the world has ended when manual labor in America is cheaper and easier than using machines. Men can seriously grime up jeans and other heavy clothes when they’re out in the forest. Not to mention unmentionables.

I have more than a few “eww” moments during the day. But I do learn a few things from the other laundry women.

After a long stretch of wary silence, the women begin to talk. A couple of them have only been at the camp for a few days. They seem surprised and still mistrustful of finding themselves unharmed and unmolested. There’s a wariness about them in the way they keep their voices low and their eyes scanning their surroundings that keeps me from relaxing even when they begin to gossip.

While working our butts off—or more accurately, our arms and backs—I learn that Obi is an absolute favorite among the women. And that Boden and his buddies should be avoided. Obi is in charge of the camp, but not of the entire resistance movement. There’s apparently talk, at least among the women, that Obi would be a great worldwide leader of the freedom fighters.

I love the idea of a leader destined to lead us out of our dark times. Love the romance of being part of something good, and right, led by a group of people fated to be heroes.

Only, it isn’t my fight. My fight is getting my sister back safe and sound. My fight is keeping my mother out of trouble and shepherding her to a safe place. My fight is feeding and sheltering what remains of my family. Until those fights are permanently won, I don’t have the luxury of looking beyond them to the grander picture of wars with gods and romantic heroes.

My fight at the moment is struggling to get stains out of sheets that are taller and wider than me by yards. Nothing takes the romance and grandeur out of life than scrubbing stains out of sheets.

One of the women worries over her husband, who she says is “playing soldier” even though he’s barely moved out of his computer programmer’s chair in twenty years. She also frets over her golden retriever, which is in the kennel with the rest of the dogs.

It turns out that most of the guard dogs are actually just pets of the people in the camp. They’re trying to train them into the mean, vicious guard dogs that chased Raffe, but in reality, they haven’t had enough time to train most of them. Besides, they’ve spent their whole lives being pampered and played with, and it’s apparently not easy to turn them into vicious killers when they’d rather lick you to death or chase squirrels.

Dolores assures me that her dog, Checkers, is of the lick-you-to-death variety, and that most of the dogs are in doggie paradise out here in the forest. I nod in more understanding than she realizes. This is the reason the guards are dog-free. It’s hard to patrol when your K9 partner keeps running off to chase after rodents and barks all night long. Thank goodness for small favors.

I casually try to turn the conversation toward what might be gnawing on the refugees on the road. All I get are wary glances and frightened expressions. One woman crosses herself. Talk about a conversation killer.

I pick up a grimy pair of pants to dunk in the dingy water, and we go back to working in silence.

Although Raffe and I are prisoners here, no one is really guarding us. That is to say, no one is assigned to guard us. Everyone knows we’re the newbies, and as such, everyone keeps an eye on us. To avoid notice to his head injury healing too fast, we managed to put two adhesive bandages at his hairline first thing this morning. We were prepared to say that head injuries bleed a lot so the injury itself was smaller than it looked last night, but no one asked.

Raffe digs a ditch by the porta-potties along with other men. He’s one of the few still wearing his shirt. There’s a dry band around his chest outlining his bandages but no one seems to notice. I note the filth on his shirt with a professional eye and hope that someone else ends up having to wash it for him.

The sun glints off something shiny on the privacy wall the men are building around the latrine. I’m pondering the perfect regularity of the rectangular boxes they’re using to build the wall when I recognize them. Desktop computers. The men are stacking desktop computers and cementing them into a privacy wall.

“Yup,” says Dolores as she sees what I’m looking at. “My husband always did call his electronic gadgets ‘bricks’ when they got phased out.”

They got phased out all right. Computers were the height of our technological prowess, and now, we’re using them as latrine walls, thanks to the angels.

I go back to scrubbing a pair of pants on my washboard.

Lunch takes several lifetimes to come. I’m about to get Raffe for lunch when a honey-haired woman saunters over to him on her long legs. Everything about her walk, her voice and the tilt of her head invites a man to get a little closer. I change direction and head for the mess hall, pretending not to notice them walking to lunch together.

I grab a bowl of venison stew and a heel of bread and scarf them down as fast as I can. Some people grumble around me about having to eat the same old stuff each time, but I’ve had enough dried noodles and cat food to truly appreciate the taste of fresh meat and canned vegetables.

I know from my morning’s gossip session that some of the food comes from foraging in the nearby houses, but most of it comes from a warehouse the resistance keeps hidden. By the looks of things, the resistance does a good job of providing for their people.

As soon as I finish my lunch, I look for Obi. I’ve been wanting to plead with him all day to let us go. These people don’t seem that bad now that it’s daylight, and maybe they’ll sympathize with my urgent need to rescue my sister. Of course, I can’t keep Raffe from telling the enemy about this camp, but there’s no reason he’ll want to tell anyone until we reach the aerie, and maybe by then, the camp will have moved. It’s a lame justification, but it’ll have to do.

I find Obi surrounded by men who are gingerly moving crates from the storage closets I almost peeked into last night. There are two men carefully loading each crate onto a truck.

When one loses his grip on a corner, everyone freezes.

For a few heartbeats, they all stare at the man who lost his grip. I can almost smell their fear.

They all exchange glances as if confirming that they’re all still here. Then they continue their sideways crab-walking toward the truck.

I guess the things stored in that room had more bang than venison and guns.

I try to go talk to Obi, but a camouflaged chest blocks my way. When I look up, the guard who caught us last night, Boden, glares down at me.

“Get back to your washing, woman.”

“Are you kidding me? What century are you from?”

“This century. This is the new reality, sweet cheeks. Accept it before I cram it down your throat.” His eyes drop meaningfully to my mouth. “Deep and hard.”

I can practically smell the lust and violence on him.

A needle of fear spikes in my chest. “I need to talk to Obi.”

“Yeah, you and every other chick in camp. I got your Obi right here.” He grabs himself between his legs and sort of shakes it up and down like he is shaking hands with his dick. Then he leans his face down close to mine and wiggles his tongue in an obscene gesture so close to me that that I can feel his spittle.

That needle of fear punctures my lungs and all the air seems to go out of me. But the anger that swamps it is a tsunami taking over every cell in my body.

Here is the embodiment of the very thing that had me crawling from car to car, hiding and freezing at the slightest sound, scampering in the shadows like an animal, desperate with worry that someone like him will catch me, my sister, my mother. Here is the bigger, stronger attitude that had the nerve to steal my sister, a helpless, sweet little girl. Here is the thing literally blocking me from rescuing her.

“What did you just say to me?” The girl who used to be civilized and polite just had to give him a second chance.

“I said—.”

I slam the heel of my hand into his nose. I don’t just do it with my arm. The force comes all the way from my hips as I launch my whole body into the strike.

I feel the nose smash under my onslaught. Even better, he’d started to do that obscene gesture with his tongue again and it smashes between his teeth as his head whiplashes back, spraying blood from his bit tongue.

Sure, I’m pissed off. But my actions are not entirely without thought. I might regularly open my mouth without thinking, but I never start a fight without consulting my brain. For this one, I figured I’d won as soon as I made the first move. Intimidation tactics like his are common among bullies. The smaller, weaker opponent is supposed to cringe and back off.

My quick calculation went something like this: he’s a foot taller and wider than me, a trained soldier, and I’m a girl. If I had been a man, people might let us fight it out. But people tend to believe that when a girl hits a big guy with a gun looming over her, it must be in self-defense. With all these macho men milling about, I give it about ten seconds before someone breaks up our fight.

So without much harm, I’d win the battle because: one, I’d get Obi’s attention, which was what I was trying to do in the first place; two, I’d humiliate Knuckle Brain by showing everybody what kind of a girl-intimidating bully he is; and three, I’d make my point that I’m not easy pickin’s.

What I don’t count on is how much damage Boden can do in ten seconds.

He spends a few seconds staring at me in shock and gathering his fury.

Then he slams an SUV of a punch across my jaw.

Then he hurls his body into me.

I land on my back, trying desperately to catch my breath through the talons of pain gripping my lungs and face. By the time he sits on top of me, I figure I have about two seconds left. Maybe a really fast, chivalrous soldier out there would beat my estimate. Maybe Raffe is already leaping to get this gorilla off me.