He got busy hefting those fifty-pound bags. Each layer was stacked in the opposite direction as the one below it, providing stability. By the time he finished, he was sweating and thirsty, but he didn’t pause. Instead, he jumped onto his platform, braced his feet, and started swinging the ax upward.

The stack of feed wasn’t completely stable, and his balance was a little precarious because he couldn’t move his feet, which meant he couldn’t put all his power into his swings. With those constraints, it took him half an hour to chop a man-size hole through the ceiling and the flooring above. When he judged it was large enough, he knelt to carefully place the ax against the stack; then he stood, bent his knees, and jumped.

He caught the rough edge of the hole and hung there for a few seconds, getting the swing of his bod)1 under control, then flexed the muscles in his upper arms and shoulders and pulled himself up. Under the strain, the cuts Cate had so gently tended the night before stung as they began bleeding again.

When he was high enough, he gave a surge of effort that shot him upward, enabling him to wedge one arm on the floor. Planting the other arm, he pushed and lifted himself through the opening, and rolled onto the floor of his own bedroom.

Swiftly he stripped naked, leaving his wet and dirty clothes where they lay.

When he dropped back down into the feed store, he was dressed for hunting.

Every time the outside door opened, Cate’s stomach would tighten and her heart would give a little leap as she looked up, hoping to see a lean, shaggy-haired man coming in. When time after time it wasn’t him, she felt her nerves wind tighter and tighter, until she had to distract herself or go crazy.

She tried to keep busy, but there was only so much to be done in a basement with so many people who were hungry, thirsty, and in need of a bathroom. The thirsty part, at least, was easily taken care of by Perry and his water bucket, Cate and Maureen did their best with food, but Maureen hadn’t been prepared to feed that many people; she didn’t even have a full loaf of sandwich bread on hand. They heated soup and stew on top of the kerosene heater, and slathered peanut butter on a mound of crackers for a quick protein fix. Other than that, without electricity, they were limited in what they could do.

The bathroom situation was more iffy, since it involved leaving the secure basement and going upstairs, where there wasn’t as much protection, but desperation eventually sent every person up. With no electricity to run the water pump, flushing involved carrying a bucket of water up with you to pour in the toilet, which meant Perry was kept busy drawing water from the well. Even Creed managed to hobble up the stairs, to Neenah’s consternation, using Ciena’s cane.

“Last night was a lucky shot,’ Creed said, pausing on his way up when Neenah mentioned Maureen’s close call. “They were firing for effect, in the dark, keeping us off balance. They haven’t been shooting as much today, because now they have to factor in how much ammunition they want to waste. Of course, they can always go get more, while we can’t. I figure they’ve been shooting whenever they get a glimpse of Cal.”

A sort of charged silence fell over everyone, and Creed looked around. He saw Cate standing at the foot of the stairs, white-faced and feeling as if she’d been punched in the stomach.

She knew that everyone who had arrived that morning had told of being located by Cal, rescued by Cal, taken care of by Cal, sent over by Cal. She had pictured him as a sort of shepherd, rounding up the flock. Instead, he was out there getting shot at.

Creed winced when he saw the look on her face, muttering, “Shit,” under his breath. Then: “Cate, he’ll be all light. Better men than those yahoos have tried to kill him.”

She felt light-headed as she put out a hand for balance. Creed winced again, evidently realizing his last statement hadn’t been exactly reassuring, and backtracked. “What I mean is—I was in the Marines with him. He knows what he’s doing.”

She didn’t feel any better. Presumably Creed had also known what he was doing, but he’d gotten shot anyway. Maybe if she hadn’t already been widowed once, she would have had a more noble outlook, but she had lost her husband suddenly at a young age. Untimely deaths happened—and doctors had been fighting to save Derek. Now people were actively trying to kill Cal; how could she possibly be reassured?

She felt as if she had just met him. and something was bursting to life between them. Everything was new and exciting and trembling with promise. She couldn’t lose him now.

Forgetting about his errand for now, Creed hobbled back down the stairs and gently took her suddenly cold hands in his. His rugged face was kind, his hazel eyes full of understanding as he warmed her hands in his. “He 11 be okay. I don’t know who those guys shooting at us are. but I promise you none of them is even close to being as good as he is. Cal wasn’t a regular Marine, he was Force Recon. I don’t know if you know what that means—” He paused, and she shook her head no. “Well, it means he’s an expert at a lot of things, and high on that list is not getting killed.

Emotion roiled in her, terror and anger and even embarrassment that she was falling apart like this. But she couldn’t help herself; she clung to his hands for support, looked up at him for even more reassurance. “Mr. Creed, I—”

“Call me Josh,” he said. “1 think everyone here is on a first-name basis, don’t you?’

“Josh,” she said, vaguely ashamed because she had kept him, too, at a distance. “I—you—” She stopped because she was stammering and had no clear idea of what she wanted to say. Go get him? Bring him hark safe and sound? Yes, that was what she wanted. She wanted Cal to walk in that door.

“Listen.” He squeezed her hands, then patted them. “He’s doing what he does best, which is finding out what’s going on.”

“It’s been hours—”

“People are still coming in, aren’t they? He sent them, so you know he’s okay. Roy Edward,” he called, raising his voice. The elderly Starkeys were the most recent to arrive. “When did you last see Cal?”

Roy Edward looked away from Milly Earl, who had been cleaning his face. He and Judith, his wife, were bruised and scraped from falling. They weren’t nimble on their feet; both had taken some bad tumbles, but, by some small miracle, hadn’t broken any bones. “No more’n an hour,” he replied. The old man was exhausted, his voice thready. “We were the last ones, he said. He was going to gather some things before he came back here.”

The last ones. Stunned out of her own misery, Cate looked around at those who were here, and those who weren’t. Everyone in the basement was doing the same thing, because no more neighbors would be arriving to cries of relief and welcome. Mario Contreras. Norman Box. Maery Last. Andy Chapman. Jim Beasley.

Lanora Corbett. Mouse Williams. They’d lost seven people—seven!

Silently Creed made his halting way up the stairs. Tears streaked Neenah’s face as she went with him, lending him support so he wouldn’t damage his leg more.

“We can’t let ‘em just lay there,” Roy Edward declared, something fierce entering his cracked old voice. “They’re our people. We have to do right by them.”

Again there was silence as, one by one, they realized the enormous responsibility that lay before them. Retrieving the bodies would be a daunting task, and even then, without electricity, there was no way to present” them. Still, they had to do something. The weather was warm today, which meant the need for action was extremely pressing.

“I have that generator,” Walter finally said. “We all have freezers. People, we’ll manage something.”