"Interesting how the tables turn, huh?" Marie remarked. "I guess there's not much paying it forward in this world. More of just looking out for number one, right?"

Greg just shook his head and edged pa.s.sed her on the stairs. "Jerry's in the office. Feel free to go up."

Marie's mind raced. In the span of a second she pictured an entire, imagined conversation that would occur later between Greg and Jerry: Greg would ask Jerry, "What did Marie want?" and Jerry would respond, "What are you talking about?" and Greg would say, "Marie didn't come talk to you?" and Jerry would say, "No. Why?" and Greg would get angry and curse and say, "That b.i.t.c.h was sneaking around outside the office. I knew she was up to no good!"

And it would all go downhill from there.

"Actually," she said just as he reached the bottom of the stairs. "I was coming to talk to you."

Greg stopped. Looked over his shoulder in her direction but avoided eye contact. "And what can I do for you, Marie?"

Marie pulled something out of thin air. "You going scavenging any time soon?"

"Tomorrow."

"We need...uh...Gatorade. If you can find it. Or any kind of sports drink, really. For the sick people. Some of them can't keep down food, but they need calories or their chances go way down. Calories and electrolytes."

"Yeah," he turned away from her again. "Already on it."

Marie watched him leave. She stood on the stairs for a long moment, wondering if she was indeed that lucky, that Greg had actually bought it and would walk away, leaving her to her own devices. Wondering if he was going to come back around the corner and tell her to get lost and stop snooping.

He didn't.

She faced back upstairs, realizing her next problem was getting up there without Jerry noticing her, and knowing that he would be a lot less forgiving, and a lot more suspicious. She ascended quietly, hoping that the conversation hadn't been loud enough for Jerry to hear, and that he wasn't on the other side of the door at that moment, listening to her.

The door remained closed. She could see nothing through the frosted gla.s.s.

She reached the landing, halted to listen, but her nerves wouldn't let her stay. She started down the catwalk, going a little faster than was probably prudent, but unable to control herself. She felt like breaking into a sprint. Like walking through the woods at night and hearing something rustle in the bushes behind you.

Her eyes were down, looking at the people below her through the slats in the catwalk, feeling like her footsteps were like crashing gongs. But the people below her just kept sitting around. Cigarette smoke, sharp and fragrant, lifted up into the air. Cards were slapped down. Mumbled conversation lulled and rose rhythmically. No one looked up.

She reached the ladder. Realized she hadn't breathed the entire time. Her chest ached, but she only allowed herself to breathe in slowly, rather than gulp the air like she wanted.

Up the ladder.

She climbed. Her eyes went across to the office door.

It remained closed.

No one on the main floor noticed her.

She cleared the top and rolled onto the roof. Gulped air. Heaved it out. All that hot carbon dioxide stinging her lung tissue, being purged and replaced with the cold winter air. She lay there listening for a long moment, but nothing seemed to change down inside the Camp Ryder building. No one had noticed her.

She stood up cautiously, looking in all directions to see what was visible to her. There was a trickle of firelight coming up over the lip of the roof, but no people. From her position on the roof she couldn't see Shantytown.

She took a deep breath, let it out slow.

There was nothing else but to do it.

Hope and fear, making her teeth clamp together. Hope that, against all odds, this idea of hers would pan out. And of course there was the fear-always the fear. Fear of being caught. Fear of having her hopes destroyed. Fear that there were indeed people watching her, but that they were the wrong ones.

She edged towards the side of the roof, just close enough to see the trees beyond the fence, and not much farther. She pulled a flashlight from her back pocket and held it up, facing north. Then she clicked it on and clicked it off, slowly and steadily, in the pattern of the only Morse code she knew.

Dot-dot-dot...dash-dash-dash...dot-dot-dot.

SOS.

She couldn't even remember how she knew it. Some scene came to mind, her and her father back in the times when she was three feet tall with pigtails, sitting on the couch and watching some old, black-and-white movie about naval warfare in the South Pacific. Some ruggedly handsome characters with their sailors hats standing about some sort of spotlight contraption and signaling to neighboring ships.

Maybe that's where she knew it from.

She repeated the sequence five times, very deliberately.

And then she waited.

Breathlessly.

Wondering if she remembered the sequence wrong. Then realizing that it really didn't matter. If there was anyone from Old Man Hughes' group that had eyes on Camp Ryder, she didn't think he would need a solid understanding of Morse code to know that someone was on the roof, trying to send a signal. And you don't send signals like that unless s.h.i.t has gone bad.

She got antsy, staring out into the dark woods and wondering if she was going to get a response. She didn't want to miss it by turning away too soon. She desperately wanted to try the other two sides-the only other two that faced woods where an observer might possibly be. Because she was so sure that Old Man Hughes would have sent someone to recon Camp Ryder, to see what was happening. And he would do it cautiously, not wanting to rush into a bad situation. And a good observer would sit there a while, and get a solid idea of what was going on before he reported back.

Maybe he didn't send someone.

Maybe he did, but they've already left.

Maybe they haven't got here yet.

Maybe they died on the way.

What if the infected got them?

What if Jerry got them?

She forced herself to turn to the next side. She tried to calm herself, but it wasn't easy. The thoughts were pressing, obsessive, the taste of something so near, but so unattainable. It made her want to curse out loud. Bury her head in the blankets. Forget the whole thing. Give in.

At the western facing edge, she repeated the sequence.

Waited. Heart sinking slowly. Gut feeling sludgy.

This time a full minute went by, staring into the darkness that surrounded Camp Ryder. Huddled around it. The concrete building and the fires like a tiny island of humanity in a sea of wild.

"Come on," she whispered to no one in particular.

She turned to the last roof edge-south-and once again repeated her little light signal.

Dot-dot-dot...dash-dash-dash...dot-dot-dot.

Three times. Slow and deliberate.

Waited like someone at a slot-machine. Waiting for the wheels to stop spinning. Disappointment every time. Always expecting that this time will be the time. It had to be this time. She'd signaled into the woods in every direction that anyone could be watching them from. If she didn't get an answer, then no one was watching them-or at least no one that she wanted to be watching her.

Maybe some bandits are watching me right now.

"What the f.u.c.k is this b.i.t.c.h doing?"

"What an idiot."

"Who gives a s.h.i.t? I call dibs on her a.s.s."

She breathed heavy. Stood for a while longer. For a moment, the cold breeze hit her and she forgot about the bandits and Jerry and Greg and the plan to try to get in contact with Old Man Hughes that was quickly circling the drain. For a moment the wind seemed strong enough to lift her up off the roof and she thought about flying off that edge and felt a sense of peace.

The feeling crashed, just like she would if she stepped off the edge.

Crash and die.

She stepped back towards the center of the roof. Flashlight hanging in her hands. A useless prop. She thought about Lee, tried to bolster herself up by taking inspiration from the memory of him coming through those gates after Smithfield, and every big fight he'd been in since then. The hitch in his leg from where he'd fallen down that elevator shaft, covering the retreat of her sister and her patients. The missing tooth. The scars that kept on collecting on him from every wound that had been delivered to him but hadn't been able to stop him.

He never stopped.

What would he do in this situation?

And then the thought occurred to her, sneakily, like it was whispered to her from someone else to undermine her. Like a weed poking up in the middle of a flower bed-obstinate, divisive.

He's dead.

Lee was dead.

They'd stopped him.

He'd finally lost a battle, and now he wasn't coming back. All that "never surrender" bulls.h.i.t hadn't gotten him anywhere. He ended up the same as everyone else in this world: dead. f.u.c.king dead. Missing and unaccounted for, actually, but nowadays it was the same d.a.m.n difference.

She turned her mind away from him, like you turn away from a gravestone.

Her thoughts went to the new worry: how to get down from the roof without being caught. Although now, she supposed she could just say "I was just trying to get some fresh air and be alone for a bit," and she supposed that would be fairly close to the truth, since that was pretty much all she had accomplished.

She stepped to the square opening in the roof with the ladder rungs curving up and out of it and looked down. The coast looked clear below her. She put a hand on the ladder, and just by chance, she glanced up, towards the northern woodline. And there in the darkness between the trees a light flashed.

Angela stood near the cookfire, sharing it with another family that lived on her same row of shanties-a middle-aged couple with a ten year old boy. They were reserved, and Angela knew that they were two of Jerry's supporters. They didn't speak, but instead offered a quiet nod when Angela had approached with her little pot with rice and water in it.

Sam and Abby huddled near the fire, warming themselves by it. They were quiet as well, as though they understood that the people they shared their fire with were neither friends nor enemies. Or perhaps a little of both.

Angela looked at them by firelight. The way it glowed on their faces, and the way the shadows accented every crease in their young faces. There were far too many creases for children their age. In Abby's face, it was all around the eyes. A darkness and a brooding that she'd been harboring since the death of her father. Since this all began, really.

With Sam, the wear of all those negative emotions began to bleed through to other parts of his face. His mouth. The wrinkles around his nose. His lips were constantly compressed, as though trying to keep something in. The dark line of them always in a slight downward curve. A permanent frown.

Angela knelt in front of her pot of rice, elbows resting on her knees, chin resting on her hands. She regarded those two young people and felt a sorrow so overwhelming she thought she might break down right there in public, with the other family watching. It hurt so bad, she almost didn't care. Everything hurt.

Losing Bus.

Losing Keith.

Losing Lee...

And her two children-one blood, one adopted-watching their innocence bled out of them day by day, like a thousand tiny cuts opening them up, when all she wanted to do was st.i.tch them back together. Show them safety and love. Give them some semblance of a childhood. And knowing full well that those days were gone. Knowing that whether or not they survived with their souls intact wasn't up to her, but to some predetermined chemical makeup of their brain. Could they filter out all the bad, and glean what good was possible from this life? Or would it all overwhelm and destroy them?

She closed her eyes against the burning sensation in them.

Heat from the fire. Or the sting of salt tears.

"Hey."

She opened her eyes, blinked rapidly.

The woman from the other family knelt next to her. Short. Pet.i.t, like Angela had always wished to be. Elfish little hands and feet. Very delicate in appearance, like something not meant for this world. Like the one piece of china still intact after the bull had run through the shop.

Angela saw the swirling blur at the bottom of her vision and swiped quickly at her eyes. "Hey."

The woman nodded to the pot, which was beginning to boil. "Here." She produced a little white bottle. A salt shaker-the disposable kind you get in a two-pack with a pepper shaker at the grocery store. "Got it on our last scavenging trip. Right before they told us we couldn't leave the gates."

She leaned over the pot, shaking it generously into the boiling mixture of rice and water.

Angela watched the salt granules fall in, highlighted by the fire. She wanted to stop the tiny woman, didn't know if she could receive their kindness gracefully. But the lump in her throat had grown too large to get words around.

The woman turned to Angela and touched her on the shoulder the way a friend would. She smiled and it was sad, like a child learning about cruelty. Then from her pocket she retrieved a small, brightly colored box and put it in Angela's hands. It was an unopened package of Fruit Rollups.

"For the kids," the woman said. "Maybe it will cheer them up."

Before Angela could protest, the woman stood and retreated to the opposite side of the fire, rejoining her family. Angela watched her rejoin them, and then couldn't. She looked down at the little package in her hands, finding it difficult to accept kindness, and it almost broke her down.

She pulled the boiling rice away from the fire. Inside the rice had grown, soaked up most of the water. She wrapped her hands with a few cloths, double and triple-folded, then picked the pot up by its handles, the whole side of it black from being so near the fire.

"Abby. Sam." Angela spoke with a tone absent of thought. "Come on."

She turned away from the fire, feeling the cold night pressing up against her face. The two kids fell in beside her, walking so closely abreast that their shoulders touched. Angela remained facing straight ahead, like the steam rising from the pot was putting her into a trance. She walked down the narrow little corridor that separated this row of shanties from that one, so many of them vacant with everyone gone away with LaRouche and Harper.

She heard quick footsteps behind her. Heavy. Like an adult.

She turned quickly, almost quickened her pace, but found that it was only Marie.

The other woman drew up beside her, hands stuffed into the pockets of her jacket that seemed too big on her. Immediately Angela could sense the tension coming off of her like an electrical field. Everything about her was tightened, thin cords standing out on her neck as she looked this way and that.

"You okay?" Angela asked, lowering her voice simply because of how Marie acted.

Marie nodded. "You need help with that?"

"No, I got it," Angela quirked an eyebrow. "What happened?"