Awakenings

            God, what a mess.  Jacqueline suppressed another wince as she passed the curved needle through the flame of a borrowed lighter, sterilizing it for the task she meant it for—stitching Matt’s face back together.  She glanced at Leah, who’d already started on the meaty part of his palm, where the cut on his hand was the deepest.
            Why did I volunteer for this part?  She checked her knot and leaned in to have another look at the long cut across Matt’s face, peeling back bloody gauze.  Sucking in a breath, she set her jaw and got to work, aware that Matt was trying to watch her stitch his face up.  Having an audience was more than a little disconcerting.
            Just keep them straight and small, Jac.  That’s all you need to do.  Keep them straight and small.  Her fingers tightened around the scrap of gauze in her other hand and she used it to clean the field she was working in.
            “How bad is it?”  Marin asked.  Thom’s arms were wrapped around her, keeping her from getting too close and interfering in their work.  Jacqueline was silently grateful for that.  She and Leah were under enough pressure as it was.
            “It’ll leave a mark,” Jacqueline admitted, trying not to wince, “but he’ll be okay.”
            “Good to know,” Matt mumbled, holding onto the heavy blanket they’d tossed over him.  At least he’d stopped shivering and calmed down a little more.
            “Don’t move, Matt,” Jacqueline snapped, cursing inwardly.  Just hold still so I can do this!  “The last thing I need is to slip on this.  I don’t want you to have a bigger mark because I screwed something up.”  And it’d be my fault, not his.
            He eyed her like he was about to say something, but kept his mouth shut.
            Leah sat back against her heels after a few minutes more, snipping the threads and grabbing the tube of antiseptic and antimicrobial gel so she could smear it along the stitches.  Jacqueline watched her for a moment, then refocused on her own task.  A scene from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves kept running through her brain, when Alan Rickman looked at whoever was about to put stitches in his face and snarled, ‘And keep the stitches small.’
            If she hadn’t been in such a serious situation, she’d have laughed out loud.
            Matt hissed a little as she had to give the needle an extra hard tug to get it through his flesh.
            “Sorry,” she whispered.
            He smiled with the side of his mouth furthest from where she was working and she gave him another reassuring smile.  He’s a trooper.  I’m glad.
            It took another few long minutes for her to finish with the stitches, by which time Leah was bandaging up Matt’s hand.  Jacqueline snagged the antibiotic gel and an alcohol swab, cleaning the stitches before smearing the line with the gel.  Matt hissed as she swabbed the stitches, grimacing.
            “Sorry,” Jacqueline said again, wincing sympathetically.  “I know.  It stings.”
            “A lot,” he said, slowly sitting fully upright  from the propped-up but semi-reclined position he’d been in.  He swayed a little, then steadied and adjusted his blanket, pulling it around his shoulders.  “Thanks,” he muttered, both to her and to Leah.  Jacqueline smiled.
            “You’re welcome.  You should try to eat something soon.”
            Matt nodded a little as Thom let go of Marin, who moved to her brother’s side almost immediately, brushing stray hair from his face.  He waved a hand, trying to fend her off, then slumped slightly with a sigh.  He looked at Thom, who was grinning at him.  “You are suddenly happy she’s got someone else to fuss over.”
            “Damn straight,” Thom said, though the smile shrank a little.
            Jacqueline smothered her own smile.  Something tells me that he likes the attention a little bit.
            Matt smiled tightly at him, wrapping an arm around his sister, being careful of his bandaged hand.  Jacqueline started rifling through her kit for some gauze to tape over the stitches in his face.
            “What happened?”  Marin asked quietly.
            Matt shook his head.  “I don’t know.  It happened too damn fast.”
            Jacqueline found the gauze and the tape and nudged Leah, dropping her voice low.  “Can you go make him some oatmeal or something?  And get him some water or juice?”
            Leah nodded, gathering up most of the first aid supplies before she trotted off toward the fire.
            Marin was frowning.  “What did?  I mean…what happened to the radio?”
            “It just…it popped, Marin.  It didn’t explode so much as it just popped, almost like a balloon.  I sat down when I thought I was starting to hear something coming through across the static.  Started fiddling with the dial so I could maybe get a stronger signal and focus in on the voices I thought I was hearing, but the static just kept getting louder and louder and then it just…it just went.  Flying parts, burning wires.  I don’t know, I guess it overloaded or something.  We did kind of jury-rig those batteries to it.  I’m lucky those didn’t go up.”
            “Hold your head still, Matt,” Jacqueline said, gently starting to tape the pad over his stitches.  If it went up in his face, where’re the burns?  He’s just got the two cuts, and some soot.  That’s really strange.
            Matt nodded slightly, then held his head still, eyes going to Thom.  “I was probably lucky you weren’t far away, Thom.  I was panicking.  Still don’t’ think my heart’s slowed back down all the way yet.”
            Thom shook his head.  “You’d have held it together long enough for someone to make it to you.  I just happened to be the nearest.”
            Marin squeezed Matt.  “I’m just glad you’re okay.  That’s all that really matters to me.”
            Matt snorted softly.  “So am I, Mar.”  His gaze slid over to Jacqueline.  “Guess I’m not going to be digging any more wells for a while, huh?”
            She laughed and shook her head.  “No, I don’t think so.  You need to keep the stitches clean, at least for a week or two until they start to heal.  Something tells me that using a shovel isn’t going to help that happen.”
            Thom smirked.  “Great, so now between him, me, and Greg, we make a person and a half.”
            “That math sounds about right,” Jacqueline said with a grin, though her mirth faded after a moment.  “We’ve got to start being more careful.”
            “No one could’ve predicted this happening, Jac,” Marin said quietly.
            Jacqueline nodded.  “I know.  That’s the part that’s got me worried.  There’s too much that’s out of our control…we need to control what we can, to minimize overall damage.”
            “She’s right,” Matt murmured.  Thom nodded silently in agreement.
            Marin sighed, then nodded as well.  “I know.  I know.  It’s just that there’s a lot outside of our control.  More than I think any of us realize.”
            Jacqueline stared at her for a moment, then nodded slowly.  More than any of us realize, Mar…or more than you and Kel and some of the others are telling?  She dismissed the thought.  Whatever the rest of them didn’t know, they were being left in the dark for a reason.  The only thing that was important was that she’d put her trust in Marin, and she was positive that she wasn’t going to be led astray.
            I trust you, Mar.  I’ve got to.  Jacqueline stood up.  “I’m going to see what’s taking Leah so long with that oatmeal.  You should go lay down, Matt.”
            Thom got up slowly.  “I can check on the oatmeal if you want to put your stuff away.”
            Jacqueline smiled, nodding.  “Thanks, Thom.”
            “No problem.”  He limped off, toward the fire.
            Matt started to get up, too.  Marin tucked herself under his arm to steady him.  “Oof,” he muttered, shaking his head slowly to clear it.  “Got a headache.”
            “I’ll get you something for the pain,” Jacqueline said as she gathered up her kit.  “But promise me one thing.”
            “What is it?”
            “That you’re not going to just pretend to take whatever I give you to make me happy.”
            Matt laughed and shook his head a little.  “I’m not Thom.  I’ll take it.”
            Jacqueline grinned.  “Good.  Go lay down.”
            He nodded and she watched as Marin helped him over toward his mattress.  Jacqueline chewed the inside of her lip.  He’s a nice guy.  Wonder why he’s so lonely all the time.  Wonder if I can change that…  He’s about as cute as Davon is, but…easier to talk to, almost.  And he’s really nice, and smart, and…and I wonder what his lips taste like.
            Her cheeks flamed and she turned quickly.  Drugs.  I need to get him drugs, and he needs to sleep, and I need to stop thinking these kind of thoughts.  It’s the end of the world.  Stay on task and don’t worry about anything else.
            She thought about him smiling at her and blushed some more.
            God.  I’m such a girl.  She kept walking.

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            A strange sound echoed off the ruined buildings, faint, and if it hadn’t been so odd—and if Carolyn’s head hadn’t come up so quickly—they might have ignored it.  J.T. saw her move out of the corner of his eye from where he’d been standing along the hedgerow, watching the play of light and shadows across the trench graves.  He could’ve sworn he saw a pale gray mist twist out of the corner of his eye as he turned toward Carolyn, who straightened slowly from gathering up the tiniest bits of debris in the garden, left behind by the friends no one else could actually see.
            “Did you hear that?”  She asked softly.
            “I heard it,” J.T. said.  “But I don’t know what it was.”  He glanced toward Drew, who shook his head.
            “Don’t know,” he admitted, arms crossed and brow furrowing.  He stood sentinel near the opening in the hedgerow, mostly watching Carolyn as she drifted here and there, finding more tiny teacups and hats made out of buttons, platters made of bottlecaps, and other, once-hidden signs that this had once been home to something soundly believed to be mythical.
            Carolyn glanced upward for a moment, then looked suddenly stricken, returning her gaze to the two men with her.  “We have to get back, now.  Someone’s hurt.”
            Shit.  And I’m out here watching grave gas in the sunshine while she picks up the last remnants of a fairy apocalypse.  J.T. headed toward Drew and the break in the hedges.  Not where I need to be.
            Carolyn jogged a few steps to catch up with him, touching his arm lightly.  It tingled all the way up, but he was too perturbed to enjoy it.  Her voice was quiet.  “Leah and Jac are still there.”
            “I know,” he muttered.  “And it’s not that I don’t trust them, it’s just…”  His voice trailed away and he grimaced.  They just don’t have the experience yet.  I don’t know how they’re going to react in the clutch.
            “Just that you don’t trust them,” Drew said with a wry smile, looking at both of them as he fell into step.  “Admit it, J.T.  I don’t quite blame you for it.  It’s the experience thing, right?”
            He nodded.  “That’s exactly what it is.  It’s the EMT in me.  I’m experienced with the triage and the less-than-ideal situations shit.  Jac’s getting better and quicker, and she knows some technical stuff I don’t quite fully get, but she’s got a lot to learn about the practical applications of everything she’s learned in class.”  J.T. scrubbed a hand across his face.  “She’ll get it.  Just takes time.  Sometimes a little coaching.  I sucked at it when I was in training, so she’s already ahead of the curve there.”
            They were walking down the center of the plaza, amidst the wrecked buildings.  It was sad, almost depressing.  Any other year, there would be hundreds of students on the plaza, seeking out classes, working their way through Freshman Orientation, checking in with their advisors and trying to get into classes already full.
            Drew shook his head a little.  “Five days and classes would’ve started up again,” he said with a measure of regret.  It was the first time any of them had spoken about school, about what they’d lost, in days.
            Carolyn smiled wistfully.  “I was finally going to take an illustration class this semester.  I was kind of excited.  Heard the professor didn’t suck.”
            “We were going to do Henry IV, part one for the Shakespeare Festival,” J.T. said.  “I was up for Falstaff.”  He leered playfully at Carolyn and she laughed, elbowing him.
            “Don’t be awful,” she teased, grinning.
            J.T. couldn’t stop grinning back at her until he felt the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stirring.  His mirth faded quickly.  Drew went still next to him, and Carolyn went tense.
            Something scraped against the ground behind them, like claws against concrete.
            Almost as one, they slowly looked behind them, toward the source of the sound.
            J.T. couldn’t see anything, but he knew that the sudden chill, the goosebumps, and the hairs on the back of his neck standing up all coupled with the sound wasn’t good.
            “Oh hell,” he murmured.
            “Run,” Drew said.
            They took off.

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            Thom sat quietly, staring at the bottle of pills in front of him, stroking the black furball ensconced in his lap.  The kitten had apparently adopted he and Marin over the past few days, and nothing he did could convince the cat it wasn’t a good idea.  His ribs throbbed dully as his fingertip worried the kitten’s ears, hurting worse than his sore ankle.  Jacqueline was right.  They were all right.  He should just suck it up and take his damn medicine.  I’m just being a stubborn jackass.  I know that.  But why the hell did Jac have to say it like that?  Her words stung more than his ribs hurt or his ankle ached.
            He took as deep of a breath as he dared, tapped three pills into his palm, then tossed them back in one go.  He closed his eyes, grimacing as the pills stuck to the back of his tongue and throat, swallowing twice to force them down.  The kitten’s fur was soft beneath his fingers and he concentrated on that as the pills worked the way down his throat.
            Something cold brushed against the back of his neck and he startled, opening his eyes and looking around.  A shadow darted away from him, so quick he only caught it out of the corner of his eye.
            Great.  Now shit hurts so much I’m seeing things.
            Then he realized that the cat in his lap was shaking, and that goosebumps were racing up and down his limbs, the hair on the back of his neck stirring.
            Oh hell.  No.  No, I’m just seeing shit.  It’s the pain.  I’m probably running a fever, too.  He pressed the back of his hand against his forehead.
            It was cold.
            A shudder went through him and he tried to leverage himself to his feet with one hand and one foot, reaching for his crutch with the other.  The kitten mewled pitifully as he dislodged it and forced his way to his feet.  He hobbled away from the mattress as what sounded like electronic static reached his ears.
            What the hell?
            The sound built until he was almost certain it was static, so loud it made his head hurt, then ceased abruptly with the sound of a small explosion and a scream.  Thom limped as fast as he could toward the source of the sound—Must have been the radio set.  What else would be making static noises like that?  Someone must have been checking it.
            Matt reeled away from the desk where the radio once stood, crashing into Thom and taking them both to the ground.  He was holding his face with one hand, blood seeping between his fingers, the other hand limp at his side, bleeding as freely as his face.  Thom grunted, his own agony momentarily forgotten as he tried to get a handle on what was going on.
            “Matt!  Matt!  Calm down.”
            The other man was shaking, eyes wide as he clutched his bleeding face.  Where the radio used to be was a smoking wreck of twisted metal, smelling strongly of ozone.  Thom wrapped his hands tightly around Matt’s upper arms, squeezing hard.
            “What happened?”  Marin and Greg were there, probably because they’d been closest when the blast happened.  Thom glanced back over his shoulder at them both.
            Keep them focused—especially her.  “We need Jac or Leah, and we need them now, with their kits and a couple suture kits.”
            “Matt?”  Marin’s chest suddenly convulsed and her eyes widened as she looked past Thom, toward her brother, who swayed slightly in Thom’s grip.  “Oh my god, what happened?”
            A muscle in Thom’s jaw twitched.  “Mar, get Leah and Jac.  Hurry, damn it, I’ve got him.  Professor, grab some towels, fast so we can get this bleeding under control.”
            Marin stared at him for a moment, hesitating, and he stared back, brow creasing.
            “Just go, Mar,” he whispered, trying to get his hand over the rent in Matt’s face, other hand grasping his bleeding hand, hopefully tight enough to slow the bleeding.  “I’ve got him.  Go get them so they can help.”
            She swallowed hard and nodded, turning and dashing off, yelling for both Leah and Jacqueline.  Thom struggled not to heave a sigh of relief.  After all, they weren’t out of the woods yet.  He focused down on Matt, who was still shaking, lips moving silently as he and Thom both held onto his bleeding face.  He was pale, shirt and skin darkened by soot.
            “Don’t quit on me, Matt,” Thom muttered, fingers tightening around Matt’s bleeding hand, pressing harder against the gash on his face.
            “Not…quitting,” Matt whispered, almost too quiet to hear.  His eyes met Thom’s and he shivered.  “It exploded.  No reason…”
            Thom shook his head.  “Tell me later, after you’ve got some stitches in your face.  Just keep pressing.”  Exploded for no reason?  Thom glanced for a moment toward what was left of the radio, lips thinning.  Exploded for no reason, but didn’t kill him outright.  Lucky break there.  From the looks…it could’ve.
            “Right,” Matt said weakly, still shaking.
            He’s going into shock.  Damn.  “Keep it together,” Thom murmured.
            “Trying,” Matt whispered.  His eyelids were drooping.
            Not good.  “Matt, look at me.  Look at me.”
            The younger man struggled to focus, but after a few moments, his dark eyes met Thom’s blue ones.  Thom wet his lips.  “You can’t quit on us.  Marin needs you.  She’s going to need you so, so much.  All of us do.”  He sucked in a breath, voice a bare whisper.  “I need your help to make sure nothing happens to her.  I don’t want her to die.  I don’t want what I’ve seen to come true.”
            Matt’s eyes widened.  “What?”
            “I saw her dying,” Thom whispered.  “It’s why I tried to walk away, but I can’t.  I can’t walk away.  I need your help.”
            Color leached from Matt’s face.  His bleeding hand spasmed, gripping Thom’s.  “That’s why?”  He breathed.
            “That’s why.”
            Matt’s throat convulsed as he swallowed once, twice, and then again, jaw quivering for a moment.
            “Are you with me, Matt?”
            “With you, Thom,” Matt whispered.  He squeezed his eyes shut, jaw clenching.
            “Good.  Now hang on.”
            They could both hear the footsteps coming.  Thom sucked in a breath.
            “Matt?”
            “Yeah?”
            “Don’t tell her.”
            Matt’s eyes came open again and he wet his lips.  “Won’t tell anyone, Thom.”
            Thom nodded and kept holding onto Matt’s hand and face until Jacqueline nudged him out of her way three long minutes later.

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            Jacqueline shook her head, staring down at Thom’s ankle, still black and blue and swollen to the size of a small grapefruit.  “You know, Thom, we gave you those crutches so you’d stay off your ankle.”
            “I am staying off of it.  Mostly.”  He winced as Jacqueline pressed a thumb against a tender spot.  “Ow.  Will you stop poking it, for Christsake?  Where’s J.T.?”
            “Still out with Drew and Care,” Jacqueline said, brow furrowing.  There was starting to be brown and yellow around the edges of the bruising.  Signs of healing.  That’s a good thing.  Thank God for any favor.  “Would you rather Leah be doing this?”
            Thom grimaced and shook his head.  “Not a chance.  We both know doesn’t have enough patience to deal with me.”
            “I’ll take the implication that I do as a compliment,” Jacqueline said, smiling wryly.  She started to adjust the splint on his ankle.
            “Good,” Thom said.  “That’s how I meant it.”  They lapsed into silence as he watched her work.  She was almost done with his ankle when he coughed, then moaned, one hand going to his ribs.  Her head snapped up.
            “Are they still bothering you that much?  Did you take something?”
            After a moment’s hesitation, he answered, “Half a dose.”
            Jacqueline swallowed a groan.  Idiot.  “Thom, you need to take the full dose, maybe more.  You’ve got messed up ribs and the only thing we can do for them is control your pain so you can cough and sneeze and move so your lungs don’t fill with fluid so you don’t get pneumonia and die.  You want to die, Thom?  Huh?  What would that do to Marin?”
            He started to snarl, then his face fell and he sighed.  “Fine.  Fine.  You’re right.  I’ll take more when we’re done here, okay?”
            “Are you patronizing me?”
            “No,” he said, a little too quickly.
            Jacqueline frowned and stood up.  Not playing these games with you right now, Thom.  “I’m tired of this, Thom.  Leah can deal with you.”
            “You agreed that she doesn’t have the patience for me.”
           “Well right now I don’t either,” Jacqueline snapped.  “Jesus Christ himself wouldn’t have patience for you patronizing all of us when we’re trying to take care of you!  We’re trying to make sure you don’t up and die on us.  We’re not telling you to take pills so you’re comfortable.  If it was just your ankle, we wouldn’t care whether or not you took the pills.  But it’s your ribs we’re worried about so could you please stop being a total jerk and take your damn medicine?”
            The activity in their general vicinity ceased completely.  Professor Doyle stopped on his way to where he was working with Marin.  Matt stopped dead in his tracks with an armload of wood.  Leah dropped the basket of clothes she’d washed and hung to dry.  Anyone else nearby momentarily stopped what they were doing—no one even dared to breathe.  Few, if any, had heard her raise her voice to anyone—Rory being the sole exception to that rule—and none of them had ever heard her swear.  She glared at them roundly and most went back to their business.  Leah came a little closer, abandoning the basket and looking between Jacqueline and Thom.
            “What the heck is that all about?  What’s going on?”
            Jacqueline turned toward her and pointed at Thom.  “You deal with him.”
            Leah blinked, opening her mouth to protest, but Jacqueline didn’t give her a chance to refuse, storming off in the general direction of where Marin was working, on the planting beds.  I have not the faintest idea how she deals with him when he gets like this.  I’m glad it’s her and not me.  She paused at the thought, grimacing.  It wasn’t very nice, but it was probably true.
            “You okay, Jac?”
            She spun, ready to take out her annoyance at Thom on whoever had just come up behind her, then went quiet as she saw a grease-spattered Davon standing there, trying to clean his face and hands with an old rag.
            “Yeah,” she said after a moment, feeling most of her annoyance drain away.  “Thom’s just being a pain in the butt and I don’t want to deal with it right now.”  She looked him slowly up and down.  There was even grease in his hair.  How did he get all full of…?  “What were you doing?”
            “The generators are starting to go down.  Not sure what’s up with that, since I didn’t see any actual damage, but I got the one working again.  Hopefully it’ll keep chugging along until the building comes all the way down.”
            Jacqueline grimaced.  She wasn’t sure that she liked the idea of any of them risking entry into any of the buildings on campus, considering most of them were in various states of collapse.  “Are you sure that’s safe?”
            Davon shrugged.  “We need those freezers to keep working as long as we can keep them working, right?”
            “I guess,” she said, frowning.  “You’re careful when you go in there, right?”
            “Of course.  Why wouldn’t I be?”  He grinned.  “I don’t have a death wish like some of our friends seem to.”  He paused, looking around for a moment, then stepped closer to her, dropping his voice low.  For a brief moment, she found herself distracted by how good he seemed to smell, even after working on the generators, before she realized he was talking.
            “What did you say?”  She asked, hoping that the blush she felt rising wasn’t evident on her face.
            He frowned a little, then repeated, “Do you know what those funny little piles of rocks all around the camp are all about?”
            “You mean the cross piles with the leaves and circles?”
            Davon nodded.  “Yeah, those.”
            “Apparently, something I’m not supposed to worry about,” she told him.  They’ve got something to do with the stuff that Mar and Kel and Rory and Drew tried not to talk about around me.  Don’t know why.  Maybe they figured I wouldn’t approve.  “Why’re you asking?”
            He shook his head, shrugging.  “I almost tripped over one of them out by where Thom and Rory staked out the perimeter for the walls they want to put up, that’s all.  Looked weird.”  His eye twitched a little.  Jacqueline cocked her head to one side.
            There’s more to the story than that, but God knows he probably won’t tell me.  “You could ask Kel or Marin.”
            “I guess I could.  Is Kellin even back yet?”
            Jacqueline shook her head.  “Not yet, but they said not to expect them back until around dinnertime, maybe, depending on what they found at the farm.  Marin’s here, though.”
            Davon grimaced.  “Yeah, but I’m not sure I want to ask her.”
            “Why not?”
            He shifted uncomfortably, apparently unable to meet her gaze.
            “Davon?”
            The words tumbled over each other as he spoke.  “Because I don’t know if she’s sane, Jac!  Right now I’m really not sure we’re doing a smart thing by hanging onto whatever…hallucinations she has as some kind of prophetic…something.”
            Jacqueline set her jaw, planting one hand on her hip.  “You don’t believe her?”
            He spread his hands.  “Do you?”
            “As a matter of fact…yeah, I do.”
            Davon went quiet, staring at his shoes.  “I…I should go get cleaned up.”
            “Probably,” she agreed, suppressing a wince at the ice in her tone.  She watched him as he turned to go, then she asked as he made his retreat, “Why don’t you believe her?”
            He turned toward her, frowning.  “Because I’m afraid of what it might mean if the world’s actually ended.”
            She nodded and watched him walk away.  “We’re all scared, Davon,” she whispered at his back, even though he couldn’t hear her.  “It’s what we do with that fear that counts.”

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            “…I think he means that,” Brandon said lamely.
            “Y’think?”  Kellin snapped, mind racing as Stasia tried to calm their panicking horses.  Hellions on pogo sticks, this was the last fragging thing I expected!  She looked at Tala, who shook her head quickly.
            No help there.  Damn.  Kellin sucked in a breath.  “We’re not here to hurt you,” she called toward the voice.
            The shotgun clicked as the source of the voice—male, probably a younger one at that—got ready to fire again.  “Who are you?”
            “Call me Kel,” Kellin said, risking half a step forward, away from the others and the horses.  “I’m from the university.  Y’know, the one north of here?”
            “I’m familiar,” the voice said warily.  “What do you want?”
            She glanced back over her shoulder at the others. Brandon was clearly trying to figure out where the voice was coming from, probably so he could launch some kind of strategic strike.  Tala shook her head a little, holding two of the horses’ reins while Stasia gentled the other two.  Kellin took another deep breath.
            “Look, you can see we’ve got the horses…I used to come here with my girlfriend, about every month or so until a couple months ago.  I remembered the place and remembered the sheep.  That’s what we came for, if they were still alive.”
            “Well, there’s someone else here alive that would very much like to keep the sheep he’s been working with for the past five years.”
            “We didn’t come here to hurt you.”
            “Right,” the voice said, oozing sarcasm.  “You already said you’re here for the sheep.  What were you planning on doing if you found anyone alive here, huh?  Slit our throats or something?”
            Our.  More than just him here, then.  “Of course not.  We’d be asking you if you wanted to come home with us.”
            “Home.  Right.  We are home.”  A figure—male, probably early twenties—stepped out from the shadows of the ruined barn, shotgun leveled at the four and their horses.  “Now I suggest you mount up, ride off, and don’t come back.”
            Something moved behind him, a small figure making its way nimbly amidst the wreckage.  Kellin pretended not to notice, slowly stepping back.  “All right.  Suit yourself.”
           Brandonlooked at her, blinking.  “We’re just going to go?”
            “Yeah.  If he doesn’t want to come, he doesn’t want to come.  I’m not going to force him.”  She turned toward her horse, reaching to take the reins from Tala.
            Behind her, a young voice hissed, “Paul!  Paul, don’t let them go!  They’re not like the Shadow Man, they’re nice!”
            Shadow man?  Kellin froze for a moment, heart thudding against her breast, but didn’t turn.  She waited, trying to school her expression back into indifference, if only to hide the concern that started to pile up.  Shadow man.  Whoever’s with him can see things.  Maybe both of them can.
            Tala put her hand on her arm, leaning in.  “Are you okay?”
            Kellin hesitated a moment before nodding.  “Fine,” she murmured.  “What’s he doing?”
            “Looks like he’s in shock, actually.”
            Kellin turned around again slowly, studying the young man with the shotgun.  “She’s right, you know.  We’re not bad people.”  She looked past him discreetly, trying to see the source of the small voice from before.  She could sense a spark somewhere back behind him, but she couldn’t see anything in the dim.  “There’s about thirty of us back on campus, and we’re going to try to survive this without becoming some kind of uncivilized rabble.  You—and whoever’s here with you—are more than welcome to join us.  More hands means more safety, right?”
            “Listen to her, Paul!  She’s a nice lady.”
            Behind Kellin, Stasia and Tala exchanged a look.  Tala shifted uncomfortably and Brandonput a hand on her shoulder, giving it a reassured squeeze.  All three were probably hoping Kellin knew what she was doing.
            Truth be known, she was hoping the same thing.
            She spread her hands.  “It’s up to you, really.  You can stay, or you can come with us.”
            He stared hard at the four of them for a few moments, then slowly lowered the shotgun.  “Can’t go anywhere there’s not a safe place for the flock,” he grumbled, then half turned back to the shadows and debris.  “Come on out, Angie.”
            “We’ve got a dry space set up for the stock right now,” Stasia offered, stroking one of the horse’s noses.  “We could take you back and show you, if you’d like.”
            A small figure emerged from the shadowed rubble behind the man; a girl of ten or eleven, dark hair cut into an almost boyish bob.  Her big brown eyes took in each of them, almost looking through them.
            She has old eyes, Kellin thought, meeting the girl’s gaze.  The girl smiled, taking the man’s hand in both of hers.
            “I like her, Paul.  She’s a nice lady.”
            Paul’s lips thinned as he momentarily looked worried.  Stasia shot him a smile and passed the reins to Tala.
            “Want to show me the kind of space you think they’ll need?  I’m Stasia, by the way.”
            He shook himself and managed to force a smile.  “Paul.  This is my baby sister, Angie.”
            Kellin wiggled her fingers at Angie and the girl laughed.  Stasia grinned.  “That’s Kel, the one you were talkin’ to.  Brandon’s there, and that’s Tala with the horses.”
            Paul nodded a little.  “It’s, uh, nice to meet you.”  He looked at Stasia.  “Come on…I’ll show you what’s left of what we’ve got here.”
            Stasia gave him a reassuring smile and a nod.  “Lead on.”
            They got three steps before Paul turned around and looked at Angie.  “Don’t you go anywhere, kiddo, y’dig?”
            Angie beamed and nodded.  “I dig, B-bro.”
            He gave her a firm nod, then disappeared into the barn with Stasia, Brandon ducking after them both after a momentary hesitation, apparently deciding that Stasia needed an escort.  Tala led the horses over to the fence, tying them there as Kellin made her way over to a patch of grassy ground and sat down, watching Angie.  The girl studied each of them with no small measure of curiosity before she came and sat with Kellin.
            “You know about the Shadow Man,” Angie said as she settled cross-legged on the ground.  “Did he come and talk to you, too?  He tried to make Paul help him with something, but I wouldn’t let him.  The Shadow Man got mad and left.  He scares me.  Does he scare you, too?”
            Wise beyond years for sure.  Old soul, like one or two other people I know, and knows things she shouldn’t.  Heavy burden for a little kid.  Kellin nodded slowly.  “Yes.  He scares me, too.”

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            Stasia whistled ahead of them, and Kellin reined up her horse, a gray mare they hadn’t named since rescuing her and her stable mates from possible starvation the week before.  The mare trotted forward a few more steps before Kellin hauled back on the reins again.  The horse let our an annoyed nicker and stopped half a length behind Stasia’s big bay colt.
            “What’s the matter?”  Kellin asked.
            Stasia shook her head and pointed.  “Is that the farm, you think?”
            It was hard to tell at first, since so much of the landscape had changed, thanks to earthquakes, a rising Lake Michigan, and rocks falling out of the sky, but as Kellin squinted into the distance, she thought what she saw looked at least vaguely familiar.  She nodded slowly.
            “I think so.  Trees and everything are right, so’re the fields.  This should be the place.”
            Stasia nodded and kicked the bay into motion, heading down the hill and toward the farm.  Tala drew up alongside of Kellin and glanced at the other woman as Brandon passed them both astride a monster black stallion, following Stasia.
            “You okay?”
            Kellin considered the question for a moment, then nodded.  “I think so.  It’s been a while since I came out here, that’s all.”
            “Not since Jamie left, right?”
            “Right,” Kellin murmured.  She felt a pang of regret, of guilt.  Maybe breaking up with her had been wrong.  If they had stayed together, maybe Jamie would’ve stayed inMichigan, stayed close instead of going back to the East Coast.  Then Kellin wouldn’t have been sitting astride her mare, wondering if the other woman had survived.  She’d probably never know.  “It was a few weeks before she left, the last time we came.  We’d already broken up, but I came with her anyhow.  She wanted to get some fleece for the road, y’know?”
            Tala reached across the gap between them and squeezed Kellin’s knee.  “You miss her.”
            “I probably made a mistake when I broke up with her, yeah.”  She shook her head slowly.  “Too late to fix it now.”
            “I don’t know, maybe someday…”  Tala’s voice trailed off and Kellin shook her head.
            It’s a nice thought, but it’ll never happen.  There’s no way I’m ever going to see her again.
            “Do you regret it?  Letting her go, I mean.  Would you regret it even if this hadn’t happened?”
            “Gods and monsters,” Kellin whispered.  “I do, Tala.  I really do.”  Biggest mistake I’ve ever made…and hopefully the worst.  “I think I’d regret it even if this hadn’t happened, yeah.  I miss her.”
            “Are you two coming?”  Stasia called from ahead of them.  She and Brandon had reined up at the bottom of the hill, waiting for Kellin and Tala to join them.  Tala shot Kellin an apologetic smile and got her mount moving.  Kellin trailed in her wake.
            Once the four were together again, they angled their horses west, along the gravel roadway that lead from the main road down toward the farm.  Beyond trees at the far end of the property, the land had gone to swamp, the lake’s water rising and falling with the tides, noticeable even this far inland.
            The main house, which Kellin remembered as a beautiful old three-story farmhouse was now a blackened ruin, taken either by fire or by lightning—probably fire born from lightning.  One of the barns looked to have taken a similar hit, though half of it was more or less intact.  A smaller barn and what looked like a pair of storage sheds looked relatively untouched, and big, wooly sheep grazed quietly in a field, the fences around it still intact.
            Stasia reined up and frowned a little.  “They haven’t been out here in the rain.”
            Brandon frowned.  “How do you know?”
            “If they’d been, the fields out here wouldn’t be as nice looking as they are—they’d be trampled down and muddy.”  Stasia’s lips thinned as she looked slowly around, as if seeking threats.  “Someone’s been taking care of them.”
            Brandon, ever the eager would-be knight in shining armor, swung down out of his saddle.  The gesture would have been more impressive, Kellin reflected, if he hadn’t stumbled sideways a few steps before he got his legs back under him.  None of them, after all, were that used to riding horses.  Stasia was the sole exception to that, and Kellin envied her ease in the saddle.  She already knew that her legs were going to ache, and badly by the time they got back to campus.
            Brandon looked around, absently patting the stallion’s neck.  “Guess we should find whoever’s here, then, right?”
            “Right,” Kellin agreed, then carefully dismounted.  A tremor ran through her muscles and she leaned against the mare’s flank to steady herself.  The horse nickered softly at her, then nudged her shoulder as if in encouragement.  Kellin choked on a laugh and shook her head.
            Great, a horse is telling me to straighten up and get to business.  She almost laughed at that as Tala and Stasia dismounted as well.
            “Where should we start?”  Tala wondered aloud.
            “Probably the barn,” Kellin said.  “The one that’s still intact, I think.”
            Brandon started to walk toward the barn.  “Sounds like a plan to me!”
            The sound of a shotgun going off stopped all four of them in their tracks, set their horses rearing and the birds perched on the barn roof scattering.
            “Not another step!”  A voice shouted.  “Or I’ll punch you so damn full of holes your grandparents’ll leak.” 

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            The trio made their way the long way around the edges of the ravine, moving toward what used to be the Lakes Plaza, where most of the university’s old classroom buildings were now in various stages of ruin.  J.T. kept looking at Carolyn, trying to mask his concern.  Her jaw had a hard, determined set as they moved, but her eyes were worried.  Drew looked as grim as she did, and J.T. got the sick feeling that both of them had more of an idea what was going on around them than he did.  That didn’t sit very well with him, especially since he’d been the quietly self-declared protector of most of their female friends for the past four years.
            The loop took them around, past the place where Thom and Rory were gridding the walls and the shelters.  J.T. waved and Thom waved back, then turned back to his work.  At least he and Marin had quit fighting for the time being.  That freed J.T. up to worry about other things and other people—people like Carolyn and whatever she was starting to see.  That worried him more than he’d have worried about anyone or anything else, though he imagined that if it had been Jacqueline, he’d have been pretty concerned, too.  It wasn’t that he didn’t think that Carolyn could handle it—whatever it was—because he knew she could.  He was just worried.
            They rounded the ruins of Mackinac, heading toward the hilly lawns in front of the clock tower, where they would maybe expand their little village someday in the future, if they survived that long and had the need to do so.  J.T. kept stealing glances at Carolyn, paying more attention to her than their surroundings.  She stopped abruptly as they rounded a pile of rubble that had once been the registrar’s building.  He and Drew kept going a few more steps before her voice stopped them.
            “Oh my god.”
            “What?”  J.T. blinked, staring at her for a moment.  Briefly, he saw a small figure on her shoulder, cloaked in a blue-green light, then it was gone and he was following her gaze toward the heart of campus, where the clock tower had once stood.
            “Look…it’s still there.”
            “Is it…is it standing straight again?”  Drew squinted at the spire, brow furrowing.  It was hard to tell without much frame of reference, but it certainly looked like the tower had trued up since the last time any of them had come this way.
            “Must have been the big quake, squared shit up,” J.T. murmured, then shook his head slightly.  “I don’t believe it.”
            Carolyn smiled.  “I can’t believe it either, but I’m not going to complain.”  The smile faded after a moment.  “Thank god for small favors.  C’mon.  We still have to check the garden.”
            J.T. barely stopped himself from taking her hand.  Instead, he fell into step with her, Drew flanking her on the other side.  Something flickered in Drew’s eyes as they made their way between collapsed buildings and skirted the boggy ground surrounding what used to be a retention pond.  The library was still standing, though most of the glass was gone.  Their shoes crunched on that shattered glass as they moved through the library’s shadow, passing out of it well within sight of the  half-collapsed Lake Superior Hall and the hedgerows that bounded the Shakespeare garden.  The building had collapsed away from the garden—more toward the PAC and the mass trench graves they’d dug to bury the dead they’d found—and so the Shakespeare garden should’ve been more or less intact.
            It wasn’t.
            They slipped between hedgerows and into the garden proper to find the tiny gazebo at the far side blasted to kindling.  Half of the plants, from the carefully tended wildflowers to a bed of roses, were torn up, dirt and roots and shredded greenery littering the ground.  The stone bench that sat at the center of the garden was broken into three pieces, and the birdbath had been dashed to pieces along the flagstone path into the garden.  Tendrils of ivy waved in the breeze, tattered as if some kind of wild animal had taken claws to it.
            Carolyn gave a little gasp, her hands going to her mouth as she slowly made a circuit of the small garden, once so lovely and peaceful, now so utterly destroyed.  Shock and horror marked her face as she moved around, crouching here and there to brush her fingers along broken stones and trampled flowers.
            J.T.’s heart rose into his throat as he watched her move around, even as the hairs stirred at the back of his neck.  Something didn’t feel right here, and a glance toward Drew confirmed that the other man had come to the same conclusion.
            “This wasn’t wild animals,” Drew said quietly.
            J.T. shook his head mutely, drifting toward the edge of the garden nearest to the PAC.  There was something out there, something he couldn’t quite see, shadows and light playing over the turned earth that had once been a lawn.  He suppressed a shudder.  Some of them looked like they had faces, and the more he looked, the more he thought that they looked sad.
            “Oh,” Carolyn sighed after a moment.  J.T. tore his gaze away from the shadows, looking toward where she knelt next to the shattered remnants of the gazebo.
            “What is it?”  He asked quietly, stepping away from the hedgerow.
            “Look,” she said softly, holding a trailing bit of ivy away from the flagstones.  She looked up at him and smiled bleakly, and he had to smile back.
            Sitting beneath the ivy, somehow sheltered from the destruction of the garden, sat two tiny cups made of thimbles and bits of old clip-on earrings, laid out as if its tiny owners were ready to sit down to tea.  They sat there, ready and waiting, for their owners to return.
            They were a small bit of simple magic amidst the ruin, the most powerful magic in the world.
            Hope.

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            She could hear J.T.’s colorful insults before she came around the pile of rubble.  She wasn’t sure whose mother he was cursing, but she was glad it wasn’t hers.  Carolyn rounded the mound of broken brick and concrete, studying the three mud-spattered men.  J.T. was knee-deep in the hole and swearing about something while Matt and Drew clearly fought down laughter.  She cleared her throat.  “How’s it going, guys?”
            J.T. froze, going silent.  His back was to her, but Carolyn could see his ears turning red.  It was apparently the last straw for the other two, who busted up laughing.  J.T. glared at them, growling, then slowly turned around, face flushed.  “As you can see, not well.  We’re having a hard time telling if we’re hitting water, or just more mud.  And the clay sucks monkey balls.”  He looked like he wanted to swallow his tongue after what he’d just said.
            Carolyn tried not to laugh, shaking her head.  “That bad, huh?”  She held up the Thermos she’d brought along.  “I brought leftover coffee from this morning.  Thought maybe you guys might like something to warm up a little.”  She dug a few mugs out of the messenger bag she had slung across her body and headed over to a slab of fallen concrete that seemed level enough to set the cups on.
            Matt shook his head.  “I need more than a cup of coffee to warm me up.  I’m going to go get cleaned up and park myself next to the fire for a while.  It’s too wet for us to know if we’re actually hitting water.  Let’s call it a day.”
            “Y’sure, Matt?”
            He nodded in response to Drew.  “I’m sure.  We’ll see if tomorrow’s a better day.”
            “Oh goody,” J.T. grumbled, mopping his brow with his arm.  All three were sweating despite the chill.
            “Looks like it’s been hard work,” Carolyn said as she filled the mugs.  She handed one of them up to Matt as he passed, heading back to the tents.  She sat on the edge of the slab, looking up at Drew and J.T. and shaking her head a little.  “Really hard work.  You two look like all you’ve been doing is rolling around in the mud.”
            “Believe me, that’s what it feels like we’ve been doing,” Drew said, frowning as he took a sip of coffee.  “A lot of work, not a lot to show for it.”  He looked down toward her.  “What were you doing back at camp?  Anything interesting going on?”
            She shook her head.  “I helped Marin move some lumber around for the raised plant beds.  Kel and Tala left for that sheep place.”
            “Who all ended up going with them?”  Drew asked.
            “Stasia and Brandon.  I think that’s it.  Most folks just stuck a little closer to home, though I think that Leah and a couple of the staffers went down toward the river to see if they could catch any fish that looked safe to eat.”
            J.T. grimaced.  “I don’t think I’m going to be eating any of those fish if I can help it.  Soda crackers and peanut butter for me if I have to.”
            Carolyn laughed.  “Not that brave, huh, J.T.?”
            “There are a few things that I won’t risk, and fish from the Grand is one of them.”  He took a long swallow from his mug and shook his head, squinting up toward the gray sky.  There wasn’t any sun, but it didn’t look like it was going to rain again today, either.
            “How have you been holding up, Care?”  Drew asked after a few minutes of silence, looking at her.
            “With…everything?”
            He nodded.  J.T. pretended not to be listening too closely, and Carolyn smiled a little.
            I know he believes.  “It’s a little frustrating.  I still don’t know how I knocked Marin out of the way of that support pole, but I’m kind of glad I haven’t run into any situations that I’ve had to try to do anything like that again, y’know?”  She shivered, holding the thermos in her lap.  “There’s a lot more fairies here now, though, than there were a few days ago.  Have either of you noticed them at all?”
            Drew’s nose wrinkled.  “I thought it felt a little different.  Rory was complaining about something hiding things from him, too.”
            Carolyn tried not to giggle.  Rory’s mutual enmity with the fae was fairly well-known, even to her.  “They probably are…they think he’s a little too grumpy.”
            J.T. snorted.  “Then what do they think about Thom?”
            Carolyn shrugged.  “I haven’t asked.”  Her shoulder tingled and she felt a slight weight settle.  She glanced slightly to the side to see Longfellow, the small, young fairy that had come to her first, dressed in blue and green. His tiny, round face was curious as he plopped down cross-legged, gossamer wings folding back like a butterfly’s.  She looked back at J.T. and Drew.  “I’m not sure I want to,” she admitted.  “Kind of afraid of what they’ll tell me.”
            “Probably that he’s being dumb,” J.T. said.
            She was aware of Longfellow nodding vigorously and Carolyn choked on a laugh.  “Probably,” she agreed.  “I’m just glad that they’re not bothering anyone…except for Rory.  It must be the wardings; I think they feel safe inside of our camp.”
            Drew frowned a little.  “What about the Shakespeare garden?  That was always their haven.”
            Longfellow pressed close to her face, shivering a little.  Carolyn frowned, murmuring, “What’s wrong, little guy?”
            He whispered in her ear and her eyes widened.  She wet her lips and looked at J.T. and Drew.  “I think that maybe we need to take a walk,” she said slowly.
            “Why?”  J.T. asked.
            “Because I think something happened to the garden, and it might be something we need to see.”

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            Thom leaned against his crutch, keeping weight off his injured ankle and ignoring the soreness of his ribs.  They were getting better, but it was slow going—they’d probably been broken when the ceiling came down, something that he’d been in a little bit of denial about, trying to convince himself they’d only been bruised.  At least they were healing now, getting better slowly.  They’d keep getting better, as long as he didn’t do anything stupid.
            Easier said than done.
            His gaze swept across the expanse of grass and broken concrete where they were going to plant their village, between the rubble of Mackinac Hall and the collapsed dormitories, their backs to the ravines and the river.  The flat lawns between the student union and services and beneath the clock tower might have been better, but there was too much danger of the tower coming down, the others had said, and he’d elected to believe them.  For the moment, that option was out.  Maybe later, when they expanded.  They’d have to, if they survived and more people came.  Maybe sooner, maybe later.  Maybe a lot of things.
            He scrubbed a hand across his eyes, looking back toward the tents.  Rory was supposed to be getting stakes and string to mark out the grids.  Hopefully, the weather would hold, at least until they got this done.  With the help, it shouldn’t take too long.
            Thom coughed and winced, touching his taped ribs lightly.  Maybe I should’ve taken something.  I feel like crap.  Breathing didn’t hurt anymore, but everything else still did.
            “Where are we starting?”  Rory’s voice was accompanied by the sound of thin wooden stakes clacking against each other as he dropped an armload on the ground.
            Thom glanced back over his shoulder and gestured.  “Over this way.  You have the line?”
            Rory held up a ten-pound spool of heavy string looped around a dowel rod.  “Yeah.  How much concrete’s still intact out here?”
            “Earthquakes cracked a lot of it.  It’ll just be heavy to move when we start moving it, if we don’t break up the slabs.”  Thom started to limp toward the perimeter where he’d been thinking about setting the walls.  He’d had Tala and Deirdre pace out the distances, the stake they’d left with a scrap of yellow tape tied around it waved lazily in the midmorning breeze.  He hobbled to it, then turned slowly, coughing again into the crook of his arm as he looked back toward the broken dorms and the rim of the ravine, toward where the tents stood forward of the rubble.
            Rory crouched and tied an end of the string to the stake, following Thom’s gaze.  “It’s a lot of space, Thom.  Think we’ll need all of it?”
            “If we survive?”  Thom murmured.  “All of it and more, I think.”

            “We really don’t have anywhere else to go,” the man said, expression grim as he glanced toward the small knot of people at his back.  “They took everything of any value when they came through and burned everything that was left after that.  All we’ve got is what little we were able to save or scavenge on the way here.”
            Thom looked at Marin, then at Kellin.  Kellin was the one to smile at them and spread her hands.
            “Then welcome home.”

            Thom shivered, then winced.
            “You okay?”
            “Yeah, I’m fine.”  The words almost stuck in his throat.  I used to be good at covering up.  What happened?  “C’mon, we’ll pace it out to the north corner first.”  He started out along a line heading due north, toward the remnants of M-45.  They were a couple dozen meters out before either of them spoke again.
            “So what’re you going to do with those sheds we brought back from the home improvement place?  You said that you could use them.”
           “And I will.  After we get the heating trenches done, we’ll get the sheds lined up and anchored down…and roll from there.  Not as cozy as the dorms, but it’ll do until we can start working on something better, right?”  He scratched the back of his neck.  “Actually makes life a little easier when it comes to building.  We’ve got something we can work around rather than starting completely from scratch, and it’ll get us out of those damn tents that much faster.”  And we stay in those tents much longer, I might go a little crazy.  He just kept seeing what happened to Marin over and over again, the tent coming down, her beneath it.
            It was crazy, because he hadn’t actually seen it, only had it described to him.  He wasn’t quite sure which could’ve been worse.
            Rory nodded, planting a stake and looping the string twice around it to secure it before they kept moving northward.  “When’re we going to start trenching?”
            “Probably in the next day or two.  Maybe tomorrow, if the weather holds, but it’s going to depend on what they find down at that sheep farm or whatever.”
            “What the hell are we going to do with sheep, Thom?”
            Thom shook his head, coughing again.  Damn, it hurt.  All the wet and cold was settling into his bones and his upper chest.  He spat to the side and grimaced, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.  “Playing the long game.  Sheep means wool, which means a trade good or at the very least something we can use.”
            “You’re banking on there being other people out there.”
            “Call it a hunch.”  Or me believing what Mar and Kel and the others keep saying about the fact that we can’t possibly be the last people alive, that people will find us, but not all of them will find us.  I’m bloody cracked just like everyone else.  Thom scrubbed a hand over his face.  “Logic says that we can’t possibly be alone.”
            Rory shook his head, planting another stake.  “How much further?”
            “Not too much.”  They crossed out of the parking lots a stake later.  Thom nearly tripped over the pile of rocks in a circle, the skin on the back of his neck prickling as his hair stood on end.  The hell?  He dropped his crutch, almost falling as he struggled to avoid knocking the rocks out of position, or scuffing the edges of the circle.  “What’s this?”  He hopped sideways on one foot, trying to regain his balance.
            Rory retrieved the crutch and shoved it under his arm.  Thom cursed, ribs screaming at him again, then coughed, sending more ribbons of white-hot pain through his chest.
            “Damn, Rory,” he said, voice straining.  “You could’ve been more gentle about that.”  He leaned into the crutch, finding his balance again and looking back down toward the pile of rocks.  “What is that?”
            Rory seemed almost ashamed to answer, but finally dredged up the words, as if he’d dug them out from somewhere dark and locked away.  “It’s a ward.  Kellin set it.”
            “A ward.  Against what?”  Thom hid the fact that his stomach dropped right down to his ankles fairly well, all things considered, plastering a disgusted look on his face that wasn’t far from truth.  Wards.  To keep away the things I keep saying I can’t see.  The things that attacked Marin down there in the ravine.
            Rory shook his head.  “Against shit that goes bump in the night, Thom.”
            Thom exhaled and forced a little venom into his voice.  “Whatever helps people sleep at night, I guess.”
            “Exactly,” Rory said.
            Thom shook his head and hobbled another few feet away from the ward.  He tapped his crutch against a spot in the grass.  “Plant it here and let’s do the other side.”
            Rory planted the stake, encasing the ward within the future walls, and the pair headed off to finish the perimeter.

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            Matt looked up from tending the fire at the sound of Thom’s limping footsteps, then reached for one of the ceramic mugs stacked on a cutting board.  “Made coffee this morning.  You want some?”
            Thom nodded, slowly sitting down in the grass nearby, wincing a little.  “Please.”
            “That book helping?”  Matt filled the mug from the pot sitting next to the pile of mugs and passed it over to the other man, who had stretched his bad ankle out toward the fire and started to take out his sketchpad and pencil.  He’d found a book on Roman architecture and engineering among Marin’s books and passed it along to Thom.  Something told him that maybe the other man could use any possible inspiration he could get.
            “It might be, actually.  I’ve been reading some of the sections on the baths and it’s been helping sort a few things out.”  Thom took the mug, cradling it in one hand as he balanced his sketchbook with the other.  “We might be able to pull that off.”
            “Pull what off?”
            “Baths,” Thom said, taking a sip of the coffee.  “Among other things.  I think I have the heating situation figured out, it’s just going to require some trenching and pipework, but you guys brought pipes and ductwork and stuff back on the flatbed.”  He glanced toward the fallen dorms.  “…and we might find more stuff in the rubble.”
            Probably.  Hopefully not caked in asbestos, but I don’t think most of the buildings are quite old enough to worry too much about that.  Matt nodded, getting up to add a few more sticks to the fire.  “You really think that you can build baths, Thom?”
            “Not by myself.  I can design them, though.”
            “I hope you’re going to engineer a way to pipe water into them, too, and aren’t going to be relying on whatever well we manage to dig.”  That’s going to be a beast, but we need it.  I just hope it doesn’t take as long as I’m afraid it’s going to.
            He shook his head, frowning a little.  “I was thinking a rain and snow-fed cistern for most of the year.”  He took another swallow of coffee before he glanced at Matt again.  “Why?”
            “Just not looking forward to digging wells, that’s all.  I’m not quite sure I know what I’m doing, going out to do it.”  Matt sat back again, looking at Thom.  “But none of us are really sure what the hell we’re doing in that, so it might as well be me.  Tala knows what to do after we hit water.”  We just have to hit the damn water first.
            “Better than rain barrels and hiking to the river.”  Thom shivered, then winced.
            Matt stared at him for a moment, frowning.  “Are your ribs still bugging you?”
            “Don’t tell your sister,” Thom mumbled, hunching over his mug and his sketchpad with another wince.  “She’ll worry, decide it’s been too long and that I’m doing too much and she’ll make J.T. sit on me or some shit so I stay put.”
            She loves you, dumbass.  Matt shook his head.  “I’ll only tell her if you piss her off again.”
            Thom opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again and shook his head.  “Right.”
            Picking battles, Thomas?  That’d be something new.  Matt felt his annoyance ebb.  “Is she okay?”
            “Yeah.  No…more nightmares or anything.”  Thom rubbed his face.  “It’s a relief, really.”
            Matt gave him the hairy eyeball for a moment more, then nodded.  Maybe the end of the world did teach you something.  “I don’t quite believe her all the time, either, y’know.”
            Thom flinched like he’d been hit.  He stared down into the mug cradled between his hands, expression tightening and lips thinning.  “I do believe her, Matt.  I just don’t want to sometimes.”
            I don’t want to believe her most of the time.  Matt felt a pang of regret for all the fights he’d picked, though only momentarily.  Maybe he and Thom were a little more alike than he’d thought.  He suppressed a shiver at that and grabbed a bag of bread, starting to make toast.  “Is she staying here today, or is she riding out with the others to that sheep place?”  Damn, we’re going to run out of bread pretty fast here.  Have to start baking it in those dutch ovens until we can put together some brick ovens and crap.
            “She’s staying here, I think.”  Thom took a long swallow from his mug and started to thumb through his sketches, making notes.  “I’m not sure what she’s going to do, though.  Probably help Professor Doyle with the planters or something.  She was making noises about taking a couple sets of hands and trying to get as much stuff out of the library as we can, though.”
            “I guess that’s not a terrible idea,” Matt said, briefly frowning.  “Dangerous, maybe.”
            Thom shrugged.  “We can’t afford to lose those books, I guess.”
            Matt didn’t argue the point.  Who knows what we’ll find in those books, anyhow?  Maybe help surviving, beyond all the academics.  There’s got to be some stuff in there that’s practical applications, right?  He thought briefly of the book he’d given Thom.  Then again, even histories have their uses.  “She’s still playing for the long game, huh?”
            “We’re all playing for the long game, Matt.  Otherwise you wouldn’t be digging a well and I wouldn’t be designing a bathhouse.”
            Choking on a laugh, Matt nodded. “I guess you’re right.”
            “First time for everything,” Thom mumbled, eyes returning to his sketches.
            Tala appeared with two buckets of water.  “Toast again, Matt?  When’re we going to get some eggs around here?”  She grinned at him, teasing as she set the buckets down near the fire.
            He snorted a laugh.  “Around the same time Stasia’s chickens start laying them again.  She keeps saying that shouldn’t be much longer.”
            “Well, at least we’ve got milk…which I have to go help her take care of.”  Tala sighed, grinning helplessly.  “And everyone said that my historical reconstruction background wasn’t going to help me do a damn thing.”
            “Sounds like they were wrong,”   Thom offered her a weak smile.  “Have a cup of coffee before you go.”
            She shook her head.  “After, with my toast.”  She grinned at Matt.  “Save me a couple slices?”
            He nodded and waved her off, getting up to start readying the buckets of water for skimming and boiling clean.  Thom watched him for a minute and shook his head.
            “And all that Eagle Scout training is paying off for you, too.”
            Matt snorted.  “Thank god for small favors.”

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