The canned, bottled, and preserved food went on the shelves in the big pantry of the cookhouse, but the perishables had to be refrigerated. The camp’s icehouse was only a few yards away, built from a set of nineteenth-century plans reprinted in a survivalist manual. It was a brick structure, mostly underground, lined in zinc and cork with sawdust around the sides. The group had harvested big squares of ice from a shallow lake nearby during the winter, replenished now and then during trips to town. The icehouse was also equipped with a refrigeration unit that could be powered by a gasoline generator, but so far it had never been used.

Lee Wolf had been confident that when people helped unload and saw what he had brought to contribute, their reaction would be good, and it was. He had been careful to include things that the end-of-the-worlders would consider practical, and also things that would brighten the outlook of the non-fanatics who drank and gave their kids candy.

One of them said, “You had three die. Nobody just got wounded?”

“They all did,” said Wolf. “They kept fighting until they got a fatal hit. I left here with them because they were men I respected. I respect them more now that I saw them die.”

“We’ve been watching the news online, but so far we haven’t seen anything about it.”

Lee Wolf looked at the man in surprise. “Now that is strange. We actually took over city hall in Weldonville, Colorado, for a while. I would have thought that the feds would be so proud of defeating six men with only a couple hundred agents that they’d put it on every screen twenty-four hours a day.”

A man named Andy Potts said, “They might be reenacting it for public consumption before they release it. They’ve been doing that since the sixties.”

“Could be,” said Wolf. He never disagreed with Andy, who was always looking for a chance to convince people that the news releases about the government were the secret disinformation projects of Hollywood Jews.

Wolf went back to his cottage, where Edison Leonard and Lonny Mann were eating hamburgers at his kitchen table, which was covered with bags and wrappers. Leonard said, “Want a burger?”

“Maybe,” Wolf said. He sat down and felt the bag, which was still a bit above room temperature. “How old are they?”

“We bought them just before we met up with you. Maybe forty-five minutes.”

He opened one and began to eat. “Thank you.”

Mann said, “We saw you bought a bunch of stuff too. What was all that?”

“Mostly stuff for the whole congregation. It’s important to contribute, and it saves somebody a trip to town and showing his face another day. Have you thought about what’s next for you?”

“Not me,” said Lonny Mann. “Not much, anyway.”