“Okay,” José said, to those of us left. “We’re going to defend this place. And I think it goes without saying that we can’t leave the building, so whatever supplies we have left are what we have to use until they’re gone.”

Jaden had stayed, and somewhere inside me, I was so grateful for that. He spoke up. “There’s not that much. We’ll be able to hold out for a week, if that.”

José shrugged. He was just a kid, really, still a teenager, but he looked more nails than I had ever seen him look before. I wondered what these kids had been into before they got to the building. I’d read some of their zines—there was street combat, and weaponry, how to build bombs, things you didn’t need to know if you were living an easy life. I was suddenly so glad they were there.

“We’ll see how many of us are left to worry about it then, I guess,” he said.

“This is crazy,” one of the men said, shaking his head.

“Well, we’re all crazy,” I guess, Jesse said. “So let’s not talk about it anymore, let’s just make a plan of attack.”

We retreated to my apartment. It was empty now except for me and Ale. Ale curled up on the couch, suddenly looking tired. The rest of us pulled out José’s zine library and began to talk. If they tried to rush the boarded-up door, we used our shield, we used our strength. I still had the gun I had found early on, though I only carried it sometimes. I didn’t tell anyone about it, even as many of them, one by one, admitted they had found guns, too. Mine was tucked into my belt, as always, under my baggy shirt. If anyone could see it, they didn’t say anything.

“Do we use them?” Sebastian asked. “Or will they only make it worse?”

“Do we have to decide that now?” a woman asked. She was the woman in the filthy sari, who still wore it despite its holes and dirt.

“We can put off talking about it all we like, but I worry that when we need to make the decision, there won’t be time to talk,” José said. “If we have to use them at all, we use them as an absolute last resort.”

As we were talking, a sound started rising that I didn’t know the source of. It was a low sound that was almost like a machine grinding to a stop. By the time I realized the sound was coming from Ale, he had already sat up and vomited all over the white couch.