"There's been no contact yet from Captain Harden," he continued. "I know that there are those of you that are still here that want to think the best of Captain Harden, but I think the facts are obvious at this point in time: Captain Harden abandoned us. I'm not sure why, but we haven't heard from him or his comrade, this Captain Tomlin guy. But you know what?" Jerry smiled kindly. Bravely. "We don't need them. We've got a tough road ahead of us. But it's a road that's safer than the one we were on before, I can tell you that much. It's safer than the road that Captain Harden and Bus put us on, that's for d.a.m.n sure. We're no longer forcing people to go outside our fortifications to find other groups of survivors, and then force you folks already living here to share your food and water and living s.p.a.ce! We're no longer cramming ourselves into this place like sardines!" He smiled. "And speaking of fortifications, over the last few days we've managed to build up over half of the fence-a job that should have been completed a long time ago."

More applause. Enthusiastic this time.

"So you folks are more secure at Camp Ryder now than you've been for the past four months. But all that security doesn't do us a lot of good if we leave the gates open, so to speak. If we constantly have people coming and going, we not only draw attention from G.o.d knows what beyond those fences, but we expose ourselves to attack." He paused for a moment, found Angela and stared at her, the slightest of smirks on his lips. "I know this might not be a popular decision, but I believe it's a necessary one. Necessary to keep us safe, and to keep our children safe."

You don't have any f.u.c.king children, Angela thought.

Jerry motioned to Greg, who stood beside him. "You all know Greg. You know the good work he does, and I know that most of you have trusted him to get you whatever you need out there. He's a good scavenger, and he's always looked out for us. I know that none of you will have a problem trusting him. And that's why I've decided that Greg and his team are going to take over all scavenging operations for Camp Ryder."

There was a rumble through the crowd, not negative, not positive, just confused.

"I know there are a lot of you that like to take care of yourself, and that's good. That's a good thing. But in these trying times, we have to be so careful how we act as individuals, because of the harm it might bring to the group. And I think we all agree, that none of us would've made it very long without the group. We're strong together. But we need to be safer.

"So, for those of you that like to do your own scavenging, just talk to the others. The guards, the people that work in the medical trailer, and the people that work to mend our clothes. All of these folks put in their hours here at Camp Ryder, and don't normally venture out there. They know that it's just as easy to tell Greg what they want, and let him go out and find it. He's got the experience, and him and a team of two other men are a lot less noticeable than all of us going out, every time we need something."

Someone raised their hand. "What about hunting?"

"I have a separate group of individuals-experienced hunters-that will go out and hunt when we need them to."

"What about crops?" Some called. "Since we're not dealing with any of the other groups of survivors, we're gonna run out of produce since we can't trade with them."

Jerry nodded. "That's a great question. But I a.s.sure you, I'm on it. I'm not gonna let us go hungry. As we speak, I'm arranging for a small group that will help us select certain fields come spring where we will set up special work parties to go and cultivate these areas. We've just gotta make sure they're close by. I don't want the work party to have to go too far from safety."

Angela seethed. She burned to raise her hand and demand some answers from Jerry, to put him on the spot and make him explain this asinine decision of his that was made, ostensibly, with the best of intentions. Perhaps it was the cynic in Angela, but she saw something very different than the interests of Camp Ryder's safety and security. She saw control.

Keep your mouth shut.

But she didn't need to voice her opinion, because someone else did it for her.

Marie shoved her way to the front of the crowd. Put one hand on her hip, and enumerated with the fingers of the other. "So, let's see. You've got a special scavenging party, a special hunting party, and a special cultivation party. And if the special scavenging party is any indication, I'd have to believe that the hunting party and the cultivation party will be mainly comprised of your close personal friends." She folded her arms across her chest. "Is there any reason you don't trust the rest of us to leave? Do you feel like you have to have an eye on us at all times?"

Jerry's face looked set in stone. His lips pulled together sternly.

Marie just smiled at him. "Oh...pardon me...we used to be able to voice our opinions at these town meetings. I forgot you were in charge." She bowed her head dramatically, her dark curls tousling. "Please forgive me for speaking out of turn, mein fuhrer."

Jerry's face turned red for a moment, but then he smiled, the wrinkles in his face oddly bloodless amidst all that angry blush. "I obviously don't agree with your stance, Marie, and I don't appreciate the insult. However, I completely understand the position that you're coming from. This is the way we've done things for hundreds of years." He smiled at the group. "We're Americans. We like to be independent. We like to be in control of our own destinies, no matter what. And that was all fine and good when we had a government to look after us, armies to protect us. We could afford to be that way in the old world, because the old world wasn't so d.a.m.ned dangerous-pardon my language."

Jerry looked at the ground and shook his head, the sage leader. "Believe me, I wish that's the way things still were. I wish we could all just worry about ourselves. But we're neighbors now, and that means more today than it meant in the past. It used to mean that your mailbox was next to mine, and that sometimes we'd bicker about whose property the fence was on." He looked up. "Today, it means something else. It means that I've got your back, and I know you've got mine. It means that we protect each other from what's out there. It means that if anything ever happened to you, you'd know that we'd step in and take care of your family. It means that we're a community. And most importantly, it means that we know..." His face was earnest, almost to the point of tears. "...We know...that the group...the community...it's more important than our personal wants and desires."

The crowd backed their leader with a rush of affirmative voices.

"That's right!"

"You tell 'em, Jerry!"

"We got your back, Jerry!"

Marie raised her hands, her mouth set in a thin, bitter line. "Again, I beg your forgiveness. You tell me what you need from me, Jerry. We're here for you."

Jerry took it seriously, though it was obviously meant as a jab. "Thank you, Marie." He turned back to the crowd. "Folks, I know that there are those among us that are not on board with what we're trying to do here. And that's fine. They've been doing things a certain way for a while, and it's hard to change. Give them time. They'll come around. The proof is in the pudding, and when we stop burying bodies out back behind the building..." he pointed past the big cement structure. "...then they'll realize we were right all along."

The crowd cheered.

Marie just turned in disgust and left.

It was not long before Angela followed.

A hard kick sent the soccer ball bouncing over bits of gravel and clumps of weeds, then rolled to a stop at the back corner of the big gray Camp Ryder building. Sam watched it roll, then looked back at the other kids, six of them in all, and realized he was the closest.

"I'll get it," he called.

He jogged to the back of the building. From where they played soccer, they were a ways away from The Square, but he could still hear the adults talking about things, particularly the guy named Jerry. The guy that Angela and Lee didn't like. Jerry seemed like an okay guy to Sam, always smiling and shaking people's hands, but he'd also seen the man with a strange look on his face when he didn't think anyone was looking, and it made Sam feel like maybe he should stay away from him.

The adults clapped and yelled about something, and Sam looked back in that direction, curious. But he couldn't see The Square past the Camp Ryder building. Couldn't tell what all the excitement was about. He wished he could have gone with Angela to see what was going on, rather than playing soccer with the little kids-there was only one other kid his age, and he wasn't playing soccer right now. But Angela was scared lately. Something to do with Abby, and so he understood that Angela wanted him to watch out for her.

It gave him a sense of purpose. It was nice to be important.

He reached the ball at the edge of the building and bent over to pick it up.

In The Square, people began cheering. It wasn't overly loud, but it almost drowned out another noise. It was a noise that, when Sam heard it, his gut instinctively tightened and his arms and legs felt shivery. It was the sound of some sort of altercation, something more than just words being exchanged. This was what people sounded like when they were about to hurt each other.

He held the ball in his arms, standing still as stone and staring at the corner of the wall in front of him, as though he might see through it and discover what was occurring just on the other side. There were two men talking...no...three men. Two of them were young, and very angry. The kind of angry where Sam just knew that something bad was about to happen. The third voice was older...and...

Mr. Keith?

Sam inched closer to the corner, pounding heart and adrenaline preventing any logical thought. He knew that each inch got him closer to trouble, but the consequences of that trouble seemed fuzzy. Was it "yelling and scolding" trouble? Or "you're gonna get hurt" trouble?

And what about Mr. Keith? Why were the other men so angry with him?

He found his face pressed against the cold concrete. Listening.

"We f.u.c.kin' trusted you, Keith! We thought to ourselves, 'what the f.u.c.k is an old man gonna do to us? There's no need to throw him out of the camp'." The voice was livid, the voice of someone betrayed. "But then you go and pull some s.h.i.t like this."

Keith's voice: "I don't know what you're talking about."

"We knew you were with Harden and Bus and all the other f.u.c.kers. We could've arranged for you to disappear a long time ago. But we didn't!"

"Jesus Christ..."

"We gave you the same chance we gave everyone else. And you f.u.c.kin' threw it in our faces."

"Would you explain to me what the f.u.c.k you're doing?" Keith's voice sounded tired, exasperated.

Sam leaned out from the corner, just slightly. His hand touched the wall, felt the cool grittiness of it. Sam leaned so that just one of his eyes could see around the corner. Behind the building, the three men were crowded close to the wall. Keith was on his knees, one of the men holding him there, the other man standing in front of him, moving his hands angrily as he spoke.

"What'd we tell you, Keith? What did we tell you?"

Keith hung his head. "d.a.m.n. I don't recall. Senior moment."

"We told you not to rock the boat. And what did you do?"

"I didn't do s.h.i.t, Arnie."

The other man shook his head, and for the first time Sam realized he held a pipe. "No. You rocked the boat. You f.u.c.ked us hard. You went behind our back, and you started spreading some f.u.c.king lies about us, and about Jerry. You tried to undermine what we're doing here, and that is f.u.c.king unacceptable."

Keith looked up at the man-one of the men that Sam had seen hanging around with Greg the scavenger-but didn't say anything. He just sighed. Shook his head. Looked off into the woods.

"Who did you talk to?" the man demanded.

"No idea what you're talking about."

"We need. To know. Who the f.u.c.k you talked to." The man bent down, the pipe working up and down in his grip. "You are going to tell us, or you are going to die. If you tell us, we will let you go with a good beating as a reminder. If you don't...then we'll make an example out of you."

Keith just laughed, a very old sound. "You gonna kill me, boy? You'd be doin' me a G.o.dd.a.m.ned favor. You think I wanna live in this s.h.i.thole anymore? In these conditions? I've only got a few years left anyways. And that's being generous. So why don't you go f.u.c.k yourself. Do whatever you want."

The younger man standing beside Keith looked distressed. "Come on, Mr. Keith. Don't be like this. You know we gotta do what we gotta do. Don't put us in a bad spot. No one wants to hurt you, especially not me and Arnie."

"Well," Keith spat into the dirt. "Maybe not you, Kyle. But Arnie here seems to like the idea."

Arnie-the one with the pipe in his hand-raised his hands in surrender. "Look...the man's right, Keith. We don't want to hurt you. You tell us who you were talking to and we'll just drop the whole thing, okay?"

"Yeah?" Keith sat back on his heels, wincing as though the position was painful. "I don't think you will. I think you'll hurt me anyways. And I think you'll hurt or kill whoever's name I give you. So where's it gonna end? You keep killin' everyone that don't agree with you, ain't gonna be many left by the end of the year." A wan smile. "Be a lonely Christmas for Jerry and the boys."

Arnie stood over the old man. "Well...if that's how it's gonna be, then that's how it's gonna be."

"Yeah, I s'pose so."

Arnie swung once, connected with the side of Keith's face. Blood and brain erupted out of ears and eye sockets. Keith slouched with a groan, one hand keeping him from falling over. One eye hung out, and with the other he stared up at Arnie, convulsing violently, his mouth working soundlessly.

Sam felt his bladder empty into his pants.

"Oh f.u.c.k!" Arnie jumped back.

"Jesus! f.u.c.king kill him already!" Kyle cried out.

Arnie hesitated. Keith mumbled something unintelligible, desperate, his un-socketed eye twitching about madly. Arnie got his guts up again and stepped into Keith, swinging again, this time a downward trajectory that cracked Keith in the middle of his skull, caused a spurt of blood from his nostrils, and all the life to flee from his body, as though a puppeteer had simply dropped the strings.

Sam stared at the dead body on the ground. The warmth on his legs turned suddenly cold. His heart burned like it pumped fire. A sob worked its way up his throat and he tried to stop it, tried to keep it down because he knew he had to be quiet, because this was not "yelling and scolding" trouble this was I'm going to die trouble.

But it came out anyways.

One short, sharp sound of grief and shock.

He ran. He knew he had to get out of there, knew that they would have heard him make that noise, so he ran. His legs were wobbly, rubbery, just weak muscles with no bones to support him. The other kids stood in the field, staring, wondering where the soccer ball was, but he'd dropped it somewhere back behind him. He ran, he fled, he had to get away. Some of the kids asked him what was wrong, but he didn't hear them, couldn't hear anything accept the sound of fear, which was like being caught in a windstorm, or strapped into a car with all of the windows down as it hurtled down the road at a hundred miles an hour.

He ran clear across the field where they played soccer and disappeared into the rows of shanties.

At the corner of the Camp Ryder building, Kyle stumbled around the corner, pale in the face, his eyes sickened and rushed with adrenaline. He looked around desperately, trying to find the kid that he had seen dip around the corner-the little Middle Eastern kid that hung around with Angela and Keith. He looked at each of the kids that stood in the soccer field, saw that some of them stared out towards the shanties, while some of the others looked straight at Kyle.

But none of them were the kid he was looking for.

He put a hand to his head. "s.h.i.t."

CHAPTER 16: WITNESSES.

Jerry opened the door to his office and found Arnie and Kyle standing there with looks on their faces that immediately made Jerry stop in his tracks, hand still on the doork.n.o.b. He looked behind him at Greg. The man in the Yankees ball cap stood outside the office, hands on his hips, regarding Arnie and Kyle with that special brand of disdain reserved for friends who've screwed up.

"G.o.ddammit, guys," Greg mumbled and edged past Jerry, closing the door behind him. "Tell me you didn't f.u.c.k this up."

Arnie wrung his hand. "Well..."

"Lemme guess," Jerry touched his fingers to his temples. "Something happened, you guys turned your back for a second, let your guard down, or maybe he asked you for a cigarette and it confused you because, s.h.i.t, no one has had a cigarette in two months, so it completely distracted you...and he got away."

Arnie shook his head, his fatless jowls swinging like empty bags. "No, no. We did the job."

Jerry glared at them. "So what's the problem?"

Kyle looked at Arnie.

Jerry and Greg looked at Arnie.

Arnie looked at the floor. "Kid saw us do it."

Jerry threw his hands up. "Oh, Jesus H. Christ!"

Greg stepped forward, his fingers stabbing the air. "Wait. Whose kid?"

More uncomfortable fidgeting. "The Hadji kid...the one that hangs around with Mr. Keith and Angela."

"What?" Jerry almost screamed. He glanced behind him, to see if the door was shut, then spun back to Arnie and Kyle. "The f.u.c.king kid...the one that hangs out with Keith and Angela...he's the one that saw you two mopes do this s.h.i.t? Un-f.u.c.king-believable!"

Greg closed his eyes. "What did the kid see?"

"Everything."

"Everything?" Jerry swore loudly again. Kicked a chair.

Arnie shrugged. "I guess so. I mean, I didn't notice him until he let out this weird little noise, and then I turned and saw him runnin' away from us. Not really sure how long he'd been watchin' us, but he saw Mr. Keith dead, that's for d.a.m.n sure."

"Did you hide the f.u.c.king body?" Greg steamed.