“We need committees,” I said. I was thinking again of those block parties in my childhood. This was a pretty ’trosh excuse for a party, but here we all were, and we had to slag to make it go.

“Yes,” Kristen jumped in, but I kept going over her.

“A food and water gathering committee, a cleaning committee, a defense committee. Am I forgetting anything?”

“Clothes,” Jaden said.

“Childcare,” the woman in the sari added.

“Food prep,” said a man we had found in the streets.

“I’ll take charge of the food and water committee,” I went on. “Anybody who wants to join can go with me.”

“But no one should be in charge for too long of anything,” Kristen said. “It’s better if we all take turns leading.”

“Fine,” I said. “But for now, everybody who wants to go out there and look for food and water, be ready at the front doors in half an hour. Bring comfortable clothes and boots if you can find them and something to defend yourself with.”

5 There was only one other person. Even Jaden wanted to stay behind and do work in the building. I came down the stairs to meet him in a pair of Italian leather boots that I was going to destroy in the mud and the dirt. But there was a whole closet full of them in my size, so I could afford to waste this pair.

He was carrying a crowbar. I had my gun tucked in my belt where no one could see it, and was carrying a butcher knife. I felt like that gun was my ace in the hole, and would protect me against anything if need be—even this guy who was supposed to be on my side.

We stepped out into the chilly air outside the door. The sun was shining down, but the mud on the ground was still wet and sucked at our boots. The bodies we had seen in the streets in the days before hadn’t been moved, and there was a smell in the air of rotting and decay. We tried to avoid where they lay, walking across the street to get around them. Cars were slung across the street at every angle, and we had to climb up and over the roofs of some of them, our boots leaving dents in the hoods.

We walked for a few blocks, and found two stores across from each other. One was a corner store, an upswing one from the looks of it. The other was a chain pharmacy called Allen Brewster’s.

“We’ll get food and water first, then look for bleach and vinegar in the AB’s.”