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The man nodded then looked at Cameron. “Did you drive?”
 

“Just me,” said Piper. “Me and my family.”
 

The man looked at Cameron, seeming to decide not to ask how they were traveling together if they hadn’t started off that way. Cameron didn’t answer or volunteer his place of origin. His body language was closed and stiff. Piper did most of the talking. Cameron, it seemed, wanted to keep moving.
 

“Anyway,” the man said, “we came up here. It wasn’t a bad trip. Problem was, everyone else in Denver had the same idea.”
 

Piper looked at Cameron. She and Meyer hadn’t noticed many people headed into the mountains from Denver unless she counted the roadblock that had freed them of the car they, in turn, had stolen from the man bunkered in the dealership. Again:
easy come, easy go
.
 

The man shrugged again. “I was able to hold down the homestead for a while, but we were finally ‘evicted’ three days ago. We heard there’s a community up this way.”
 

“A ‘community’?” said Piper.
 

“Almost like a commune. A wanderer — one of the few who didn’t want to attack us and take the supplies we managed to get away with — told us he heard about it on the radio. And I know how that sounds, but — ”

“There are still broadcasts on some frequencies.”
 

Piper noticed the way Cameron actively hid the radio on his belt when he said it, and that he didn’t volunteer the obvious: that the “commune” he and this wanderer had heard about was almost certainly her home.
 

The man seemed to realize something then wiped his hand on his pants. He stuck it out toward Cameron. “I’m Mike. Mike Nelson.”

Cameron shook it. “Cameron.”
 

The hand jabbed at Piper. She shook it. “Piper.”
 

“This is my wife, Rachel.” He smiled a kindergarten smile, as if they were meeting casually and he hadn’t been robbed and beaten nearly to death. “And this is Charlie. Say hi, Charlie.”
 

“Hi,” the boy squeaked, hiding his face against his mother’s side.
 

“Well,” Cameron said, nodding. “Good luck, Mike.”
 

Piper shot him a look.
 

Cameron pointed. “The place you’re looking for is that way.”

Piper grabbed his arm and whispered, “We can’t just leave them.”
 

Cameron looked at the family. Their faces had fallen.
 

“They don’t have any supplies.”
 

“It’s only a few hours. They’ll make it.”
 

“They don’t have any guns.”
 

“Excuse me?” said Mike.
 

They turned.
 

“I don’t mean to impose, but I was kind of hoping we could stay with you. At least until we figure out where we’re going.”
 

Cameron pointed again. “Follow the setting sun.”
 

“But I’m not exactly an outdoorsman,” Mike protested. “I figured I could get us there, but we’re kind of … ” He looked helplessly at his wife.
 

Rachel came forward, Charlie hiding behind her legs. “They took everything we had. Food, water … ”
 

“It’s not far,” Cameron said.
 

“ … and if they come back … ”
 

“I don’t think they’ll come back.”

Piper’s eyes stayed on the boy. She kept seeing the way they’d found him, on one knee as if knocked down or fallen, crying, branded with the image of his family’s beating, probably minutes from enduring the sight of his father’s murder and his mother’s rape.

“We have to help them,” Piper said.
 

“We can’t spare the supplies.”

“We’ll find a way to get our own. There’s a stream back there.” Mike pointed. “And if we don’t have far to go, we won’t need food just yet.”

“Then how are we supposed to help y — ”
 

“Please. You have guns.” Rachel looked toward where the bandits had fled, giving a shiver. “At least let us walk with you for a bit.”
 

“We’re going in the opposite direction.”
 

“We’ll go that way, then,” Mike said. “Maybe those people left my mom’s place. Probably did, actually; I heard them say they were headed somewhere else, somewhere east. There will be stores left. Mom was a hoarder.”
 

“I’m sorry,” said Cameron.
 

“We won’t slow you down,” Mike said.
 

“They won’t slow us down,” Piper echoed, holding Cameron’s sleeve.
 

“They will,” he whispered. “A family with a kid? We’ll be a huge target. What’s the first rule of survival, Piper?”
 

“Please?” Rachel said.
 

“Please … Cameron,” Mike said.
 

“
Pweese
,” said Charlie, the kid.

Piper put her hand on Cameron’s shoulder. “Just a day or two. Same course. We go where we were going anyway, and they follow or find another way.”

Cameron took a long, slow inhale then exhaled. “Fine. They can follow us along Route 24, but we lose them when we start following 70 West. I want to see if we can get a car at some point, and we aren’t getting one with a baby seat.” He glanced back at the family then at Piper. “Agreed?”
 

Piper nodded.
 

“But I don’t like this at all.
At all.
”
 

“Noted.” Piper tried to bat her eyes at Cameron to smooth his edges, but her battered sunglasses muffled her charms.
 

“If they get us killed, it’s on you.”
 

But Piper didn’t think that would happen.
 

Almost certainly not.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“Kid,” said Vincent, still laughing and clapping Trevor on the back. “You’ve got a lot to learn about playing cards. He stood, and Trevor could’ve sworn he heard the chair breathe a sigh of relief. They’d been playing cards for three hours, and Trevor felt like he knew less than when he started.
 

“Sorry,” Trevor said.
 

Christopher shook his head. “You fucker.”
 

Trevor looked across the table. He liked the casual way the guys swore around him. Nobody would think a man Trevor’s age didn’t know those words, but it was different when others assumed he did and treated him like an equal instead of a kid. He’d been getting annoyed looks from his mother and sister for what felt like months, and those looks clearly painted him as a moody teenager with delusions of persecution. Well, the shoe was on the other foot now. No longer was he a lone man around a bunch of girls (Raj didn’t count). Trevor finally had guys to treat him like one of their own.
 

He could accept Christopher’s jab as genuine, or he could be a man and say something pointlessly vulgar. Because that’s how this crew worked. Insults were good. They bonded people.
 

Instead of demurring or apologizing again for losing his team the card game, Trevor said the wisest thing he could think of: “Fucked your mom.”
 

Christopher threw a dish towel.

Trevor, smiling, gathered the cards.
 

Christopher said, “Hey,” and Trevor looked up.
 

Christopher tossed his chin toward Raj, reading on the couch.
 

“He doesn’t like me, I don’t think.”
 

Trevor shrugged. “He doesn’t like any of you.”
 

“And?”
 

“Whatever,” said Trevor. “That’s his problem.”
 

Christopher looked from Raj to Lila sitting on the overstuffed chair at the far side of the living room. Trevor followed his gaze. Lila looked tired.
Very
tired. Her eyes were dark circles. She’d been staying in the room later and later in the mornings. But judging by the movements he heard through the door in the mornings, he didn’t think she was sleeping any more during the day than at night.
 

Lila was quieter, too. She’d stopped talking to Trevor almost entirely, and a small part of him felt positive it was because she knew he’d watched Piper changing her clothes and was disgusted with him. That seemed impossible, but no other explanation made sense. She’d vanished into the bedroom for several hours just this morning, this time with their mother. Trevor hadn’t liked that. He’d made eye contact with Lila as she’d been pulling Mom aside, and he’d made eye contact with them both when they’d emerged from the bedroom much later. Nobody said anything, but Trevor knew accusation when he saw it. They were probably deciding what to do with him.
 

Was ogling your stepmother grounds for being kicked out of the bunker? Probably not, but Trevor’s gut clenched at the thought that Lila might know and doubly at the notion that she’d spent the morning discussing his deviance with their mother. Was Mom working up the courage to confront him? She wasn’t in the living room now. Was that even something Heather was capable of doing — talking to her son about inappropriate, incestuous boobs? What would that conversation be like? It would either be hard because she’d be disappointed and chiding … or it’d be even harder because she’d be inappropriate and flip about the whole thing. She might joke about whether or not he’d want to see
her
naked, his biological mother. Or she might draw comparisons and gross analogies suitable for her crass standup act. For instance:
Just because you didn’t come out of a pussy doesn
’
t mean it
’
s okay to want to enter it now.

But Christopher knew none of this. And honestly, maybe
Lila and Mom
didn’t know about it either. In fact, they
probably
didn’t. How could they know he’d peeped that night, with the door having been closed? How could they know that he thought about what he’d seen all the time, when he spent a bit too long in the bathroom and came out relaxed?

“I’m not sure I understand them as a couple,” said Christopher.
 

Trevor shrugged.
 

“I mean, he’s … I guess he’s fine, when he’ll talk to me. Seems like a nice enough guy. And smart. Maybe as smart as Terrence. If he’d stop being so … ” Christopher trailed off. “Sorry.”
 

“What?” Trevor asked.
 

“We’re guests here.”
 

“Well, so is Raj.”
 

“But I mean, he was here before us.”
 

“It’s cool, Chris. You can say Raj is kind of an ass sometimes.” Trevor smiled.
 

“I don’t mean it like that. Your sister just seems … well, it’s hard for me to see them together.”
 

Trevor looked back. They really were an odd couple. Before the world had gone to shit, he’d wondered at things Lila said about Raj. She couched everything and played like nothing was a big deal, but she was Trevor’s sister, and they’d once been close enough for Lila to shamefully admit to having made a buck or two pirating her own father’s films in advance of their release. Trevor could read her and knew she was a bit gaga over Raj — or had been, at least, before they’d all been locked in the madhouse together. And Trevor, accordingly, had tried to imagine them married, with Raj as a brother-in-law. It was okay, he supposed. But there were way cooler brothers-in-law than Raj.
 

“It’s hard,” Trevor agreed.
 

Christopher chewed the inside of his cheek.

“Do you think think he misses them?”
 

Trevor didn’t understand. But when he followed Christopher’s gaze, he saw Raj fiddling with his watch phone thing. He seemed to think that if he fiddled enough, he’d be able to call home. If home still existed.

“His family?” Trevor asked.
 

“Yeah.”
 

“Dunno.”
 

“You’re lucky to have yours.”
 

Trevor shrugged. He supposed so.
 

“I lost mine. I guess that’s why I ended up with Morgan for a bit. Not that I was ever really
in
with him. You know. Just … kind of … needed someone. Or whatever.” Christopher seemed embarrassed. But it was true that he was tight with Vincent and Terrence and Dan. He’d seemed tight with Cameron, too. Like a brother.
 

Maybe there was some hurt there, but he didn’t ask Christopher for more. His family might have been killed, or he might have literally
lost
them, like Raj had lost track of his. He might have a mother and father still out there somewhere. Maybe a wife. He was young to be married and didn’t wear a ring, but stranger things had happened. Trevor didn’t want to know. This was all kind of a bummer.
 

“You like her, don’t you?” Trevor asked.