Damien and Marx left the apartment building just before the hour when the city settled into its most uneasy quiet.
"You know she's going to yell," Marx said.
Damien didn't look back "Yes."
"She's definitely going to yell."
"Yes."
"Just checking you're prepared emotionally."
Damien glanced at him."No."
Marx grinned, "That's the spirit."
They reached Rose's compound ten minutes later.
Calling it a compound was generous. Before the collapse, it had been a garden centre attached to a small rural hardware store, the kind of place people visited on weekends to buy soil and ornamental shrubs. After the collapse, it had become something much more practical: reinforced fencing, watch towers made of stacked pallets and welded sheet metal, a scattering of low buildings lit by generator power.
Someone on the wall saw them first, a flashlight beam cut across the yard "Identify."
"Marx," he called back.
A pause, then the gate clanged open.
