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Chloe and Addison offered a weak smile while Zack simply rolled his head to the side, away from Wren’s view. “Where are we going, Mom?” It was Chloe who spoke, her blue eyes flashing in the passing light between the trees on the side of the road.

  “Your dad needs some help. And Uncle Nate is taking us to a place where we can get some.” And hopefully for me as well. Wren forced Nathan to keep her infection from them, even Zack. The kids had enough on their plate as it was.

  The van squeaked to a stop, beckoning attention. “We’re here.” Nathan thrust the car into park, and the engine hummed irritably, as if the very prospect of having to start moving again was too much to bear. “I’ll be right back.”

  The structure in front of them was impressive, especially considering the surrounding area. The front gate was at least ten feet high and twenty feet wide and made of reinforced steel. A catwalk stood on top of the entrance, where two guards were stationed, armed with rifles. But after the twenty feet of steel, either side of the fence transformed from metal to wood and stretched farther than she could see, blending into the forest.

  At the gate, voices were raised and tempers flared. Nathan thrust his arms angrily at the two men with guns on the top walkway. Once the exchange was complete, Nathan stomped back to the van, and the gate opened, making a gap in the middle as the two doors swung outward. The flustered look on Nathan’s face matched his tone as he shifted the vehicle back into drive. “You’ll have to meet with the council before they’ll administer any medicine to Doug.”

  The van lurched forward, and Wren shook her head, wondering if the fever had affected her hearing as they passed through the gate. “The council?”

  “They’re in charge. It’s protocol for any member bringing someone from the outside.” Nathan kept the van at a slow pace on the way through the camp, which so far was nothing more than trees and a dirt road. “I wasn’t supposed to bring anyone that wasn’t on my list.”

  The trees inside the camp were thick, the terrain rockier than she’d expected. The dirt road dipped and wound through the forest, and Wren caught herself looking upward. She wasn’t sure if it was the fever or the fact that the last time she was in the wilderness she was with her father as a young girl, but there was something comforting about the canopies above. The rays of sunlight passed between the leaves and branches and into the dirtied windows of the van, and while she was already burning up, it was a different type of warmth from the hellish fever engulfing her. She closed her eyes, and for a moment she could almost hear the sound of her children laughing on a spring day in the park. The car jerked to a stop, along with the brief glimpse of a past Wren wasn’t sure would ever be in her future again.

  Much of the forest in this area had been cleared and replaced with buildings and open fields. Most were built from the same wood as the trees that once stood in their lots, but one particular building on the back side of the camp held the distinct glare of concrete in the sun. Nathan pounded on the van’s hood and motioned for her to get out.

  Wren turned back to her children and reached for Zack’s hand, which felt oddly cool compared to her blazing-hot ones. “If anything happens, you get your sisters out of here.” He offered a light nod, and Wren gave his hand a squeeze, which he didn’t reciprocate.

  Nathan helped her to one of the larger buildings, and every step forward, she felt the pain from her leg weaken the rest of her body. She examined the eyes staring back at her and the hands that carried logs, crates, cases, and weapons. Despite the heat, everyone dressed in thick, layered clothing, and their expressions looked as heavy as the woven fabric on their backs. A foul stench graced her nostrils, and she wrinkled her face in revulsion.

  “They’ll ask you questions,” Nathan said. “Who you are, how you know me, your family, but the only thing that matters is your job.”

  “Am I on trial?”

  The words were meant in jest, but Nathan stopped the two of them just before the steps to the building. “Yes. And if the council votes to kick you out…” Nathan gripped her shoulders tight. “Everyone was invited and chosen to be in this community. You can too. Your skills as an architect are valuable, and you’re a gifted engineer.”

  “Structural engineer,” Wren said, correcting him. “Nathan, what happens if they don’t want me and my kids here? We came here because you said we could get help.”

  “And help doesn’t come free,” Nathan answered. “Let’s go.”

  Nathan held out a hand to help her up the steps, but Wren shoved him aside. She gripped the railing and pulled herself up by her own steam. It was painful, but the rage and frustration over the situation displaced the symptoms of her fever. Panting by the time she made the ten short steps up, she pushed through the front doors with her head up.

  Inside, the building was more akin to a town hall. Backless benches lined either side of a narrow path that fed into an open floor and a raised platform with five seats arranged in an arc pattern. The floors were dusty, and the air inside smelled of the maple and oak that comprised the rafters. There were no windows, and when the door closed behind her, Wren found herself alone and cast into darkness. She stopped halfway down the narrow path to the front platform. “Hello?”

  The building’s acoustics that echoed back her words were the only answer she received. She shuffled a few steps forward but stopped at the creak of a door opening in the back of the building and saw the light it cast from outside. Footsteps followed, and the glow of candlelight moved behind the platform.

  One, two, three, four, then five people stepped onto the platform, each finding their seats, each with their own candle. Two women and three men from what Wren could tell, and while most of their features were masked in the candlelight, she noticed the distinct scarring on the man who sat in the middle. The candlelight that flickered across his face highlighted the disfigurement, and while he looked only slightly older than herself, the dark eyes that stared down upon her looked ancient.

  “Come forward,” the man with dark eyes said, his voice booming low and deep. The others kept silent, and despite the man’s commanding voice, she did not sway. He leaned forward, the shadows on his face shifting with him. “I do not have time for your cowardice. Step forward, or you will not be afforded an opportunity like this again.”

  Zack, Addison, Chloe. And Doug. For them. Wren forced herself forward. The faces on the platform grew taller the closer she moved. For the moment, her adrenaline had returned, vanquishing the symptoms of her leg, but the sweating only worsened. By the time she reached the front, she was drenched. All five of them looked down at her as though they were dissecting an insect, determining whether to let her scurry by or end her existence with the heels of their boots.

  “You were brought here by Nathan Heiss, yes?” The woman on the far left spoke softly, calmly, a far cry from the hellish looks her peers cast. From what Wren could tell, the woman was older, close to her fifties, but in the dim lighting, it was hard to tell if the strands of hair were silver grey or a vibrant blond.

  “Yes.” Wren forced her voice to steady despite the nerves running rampant through her body. “Along with my three children and their father.”

  “Your husband?” The man next to the older woman asked, raising his eyebrow. His lips remained motionless when he spoke, hidden under a thick mustache, which was as bushy as the caterpillars of his eyebrows that stretched over the shadows of his eyes.

  “I was told I needed to speak with you in order to secure my family’s acceptance into this community,” Wren said, ignoring the man’s question. “Tell me what you need of me, and I will do it.”

  “Need?” The man in the center drawled the word for a moment before he let it end. He tilted his head to the side. The dark eyes sucked up the dull light from the candle, and Wren found herself trying to look away, as if staring at the pools of black in his face for too long would suck the life from her. “We have no business for need here. This community was not established for the sole purpose of harboring those who need
help. Only those who earn their keep.” He thrust his finger at the doors behind her. “Your cities and your government have failed you, and now you come to us with your hands cupped like a beggar’s bowl!” He slammed his fist on the table, and the deafening crack wavered the flames of the candles that rested upon it.

  Two of the dark-eyed councilman’s colleagues curved a smile up the side of their hollowed cheeks, while the other two sank back in their seats. The woman to the dark-eyed councilman’s left leaned close to his arm, while the second man remained nothing more than a bystander in the proceedings. “I come with no bowl. I was an architect at a firm in Chicago, where I’ve been practicing my craft for the past six years. I’m an accomplished structural engineer, and there isn’t a building technique or material that I’m not familiar with. There is no one better at blending design and functionality when it comes to erecting a structure from this earth.” While her words ignited the interest of Dark Eyes, Wren felt a sudden emptiness at the thought of the city that was her home. The way she left it, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever get the chance to see it again.

  The two closest to the dark-eyed councilman leaned in to whisper in his ear, and all the while he never took his gaze off Wren. There was something unnerving in his glare, and it wasn’t the darkness; she knew the light could play tricks. The councilman’s pupils took on a hard callus, as if he could leave his eyelids open in a sandstorm and walk away with his vision unscathed.

  Once the two on either side of Dark Eyes had spoken whatever thoughts they deemed necessary, the councilman rose from his seat, and the others followed suit. He made his way down from the platform and stopped only inches from Wren. The scars on his face were sharper, more defined up close, and his scowl only intensified the disfigurement. His height and broad shoulders further compounded his commanding presence. “Come with me.” The other council members brushed past quickly, and Wren struggled to keep up.

  Outside, she shielded her eyes from the sunlight. She looked for Nathan and the van, but neither was in sight. The lack of familiarity irritated the aches and pains in her body, but she forced herself to the front of the pack, ignoring the stares from those she passed on the way. She yanked the dark-eyed councilman’s arm and spun him around. “Where is my family?”

  If the man’s features were bad in the dark, then in the sunlight they were abhorrent. Four scars covered the majority of his cheeks and neck. One ran along his left jawline, the second from the corner of his lower lip to his chin, the third across the meaty part of his right cheek, and the last from under his chin down beneath his shirt to the collarbone. While the wounds had long since healed, they left canyons on his skin that would never afford him a normal complexion. He pointed behind him to the fence. “We have a wall around our entire encampment, with guards patrolling twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You tell me how you would get through, and I’ll let you stay.”

  “Tell you? Or the council?” Wren turned to eye the others; the man and woman that seemed cozier with Dark Eyes than the other two had their arms crossed.

  “You don’t have any bargaining chips on the table, so I suggest you tell me quickly before I change my mind.”

  Wren shouldered past the councilman, toward the far side of the compound. While the front gate had looked formidable, the same quality had not been replicated for the rest of the fence. She examined the wall, running her hand over the bumpy logs that rose from the earth like medieval spikes around a castle. “The wood’s dry.” She peeled off a few splinters and snapped them between her fingers. “A little bit of gas and a lighter, and you’d be engulfed in a ring of fire.” She walked farther down, noticing a lean in a large portion of the fence. “You didn’t reinforce the foundation. When winter comes around, that portion of the fence will cave after the first heavy snowfall.” She turned around to look him in the eye. “But that’s not your biggest problem.”

  “No? And what is?”

  “You think you’ve used the natural landscape to your advantage, sucking up the resources around you to help reinforce your buildings and walls, but you’ve built your compound on low ground.” Wren walked around him, taking in the infrastructure of the community. “If you’re planning to live here for the long haul, you’ll find you’ll have a problem with sewage and plumbing after the first hard rain. It’ll flood, and those crops will mix with waste you let build up and then wash away into your soil.” Wren limped forward one step. “That’s what I’m smelling, right? I’m guessing this is the first time all of these people have been here at the same time for this long. But you don’t have to take my word for it. The first outbreak of dysentery should speak for itself. Of course, by then, it’ll be too late to stop it from happening.”

  The councilman clenched his jaw and narrowed his eyes. Wren knew he understood that she was right, but whether or not it was enough to admit her entrance to the camp was a different story. After a pause, he turned back to confer with the rest of the council. They spoke in hushed tones, glancing back at Wren, pointing to the flaws she mentioned then pointing to one another. After a few minutes, Dark Eyes made his way back over to her. “Much of your family is in need of medical care?”

  “My husband needs antibiotics, and my girls need to be looked at by a doctor.” Wren palmed the side of her wounded thigh where the cut had worsened but kept it to herself, not knowing how much value her skillset would afford her.

  “Your family will be treated.” He thrust a finger in her face. “But I will tell you this. You try and double-cross me on this, and I promise you the last thing you’ll be worried about is your children seeing a doctor.” He stomped away, two of the council members following, while two stayed behind.

  “You’ll have to excuse Edric. He takes some getting used to.” In the sunlight, Wren could make out both of them more clearly. The woman had defined age lines carved across her face, and daylight revealed her hair to be grey, but her eyes and smile were a natural complement to the rest of her features. “My name is Iris. This is Ben.”

  The gentleman with the thick mustache and eyebrows extended a hand as thick as his facial hair. “Pleasure to have you on board, miss.”

  Iris gestured to where Edric and the other two councilmen exited. “The other two councilmen with Edric were Jan and Ted. You’ll rarely find that those three have any differences of opinion.”

  “My family, where—”

  “Nathan already has them with the doctor; he’s looking over them now,” Iris replied then smiled, adding, “You really didn’t think we’d turn you away in the condition you were in, did you? Edric just likes to play hard to get.”

  It looks as though he enjoys playing a lot more than that. The architecture world wasn’t one many women ventured into, and in her experience, she had noted that not all of her male counterparts shared her belief that she belonged. It was a trait she learned to recognize quickly, and it was one she saw in Edric.

  Chapter 4

  The bunk was small, but Wren was grateful to have a bed. It was a huge improvement over the van, and when she woke, she still felt tired and hot, but the dizziness from the previous day had ceased. There were four cots in the small room, with Doug and Zack each having their own, but Doug’s remained empty, as he was still under the doctor’s supervision. The girls shared one, and Wren had her own, although in the middle of the night, she felt Addison climb into bed with her.

  Wren planted two bare feet onto the worn wooden floor and tried applying pressure to her wounded leg. The pain was still there, but it had diminished some, although the same could not be said for her arm, which was furious with her after she had allowed Addison to fall asleep on it.

  She let Zack and the girls rest a while longer and hobbled from the bedroom into the living room, which was bare save for the necessities, and even that was stretching it. A few chairs surrounded a table, and a large cast-iron heater sat in the middle of the living room. Other than the main room and the bedroom where Wren’s family slept, there was only one oth
er room in the cabin, which belonged to Nathan.

  The community didn’t have any extra housing, and Nathan had offered to put them up until Wren could build their own place. She burst out laughing at the suggestion but soon realized that Nathan wasn’t joking. He, along with the rest of the community, believed that the effects of the EMP weren’t going to end. Everyone here was in it for the long haul.

  With no one awake, and dawn barely breaking over the horizon, Wren decided to have a look around. The morning was surprisingly cool, and the surrounding woods were quiet. The only noise that filled her ears was the soft crunch of earth underneath her feet.

  A mist floated through the air that was so fine she couldn’t feel it on her skin. She looked north, half expecting to still see the plumes of smoke and fire of Chicago, but they were too far from the city now. The only view on the horizon were a few clouds that floated above the trees.

  Since she was admitted into the camp based off of her career choice, she decided to get a better look at the camp to see where any improvements could be made, but kept a path toward the fence. Along the way, she passed a few people who had already woken, busy about their morning tasks. She watched people hoe their gardens, fill water buckets from a well in the center of the camp, inventory jars of food stacked in crates, and a few clean rifles and pistols.

  The reactions to her presence were as mixed as the council when she first arrived. Some offered a smile and a wave, others a grimace, and the rest ignored her completely. Not that she cared. She knew nothing of these people, and they knew nothing of her. All that mattered now was making sure Zack and the girls remained healthy, and that Doug stayed alive.

  The deeper Wren followed the fence, the thicker the forest around her became. She looked back a few times, making sure she could still see the majority of the compound from her position. From what she could tell, the community was centered specifically in the clearing behind her. The fence itself grew more decrepit the farther she walked, and more than once she stumbled upon portions of the wooden logs that had been splintered. When she dug her fingers into the cracked wood, her fingers grazed the smoothness of metal. At first she thought it was a nail, but the deeper she dug the more she recognized the thickness of the bullet.