“Isn’t it a bit dangerous to have a town or village in the Epicenter?”

Stephen smiles at me. “Some might think so, but we have our ways of coping. The danger may have started here, but there are much more dangerous places to be. And since so many people think the way you do, many don’t even think to loot for supplies around here, so we get, or got, most of the supplies for ourselves.”

“I see you haven’t cleared the hospital yet,” I say.

“We go in as needed,” he says. “We are a small group. We are tactical…smart.”

“How many people?” I ask.

“Just over fifty.”

“Are you their leader?”

“We don’t really have a leader.”

“Do they look to you for leadership?”

A pause. “Yes.”

The door opens and the man that hit me in the head comes in with my coat and shoes. He places them on the table in front me and then leaves the room without a word.

“Are we going somewhere?”

Stephen nods. “We’re taking a walk.”

“I want my guns,” I say.

“You mean the ones without any bullets?”

“There was one left.”

He lets out a laugh and stands. “And why do you think I’m going to let you have that?”

I don’t say anything as I pull on my shoes and coat. He leads me out of the room and into a hallway with brown wood paneling, cracked and water-damaged. The place looks to be an old office building. I glance into one of the rooms and see a bunch of old computers in their cubicles. I shake my head as I think about the people that might have worked here long ago - how everything used to be about work. It was a fight for survival, just not in the same way we face it today.

We reach the end of the hallway and walk out a door that leads into a wide open parking lot. It’s not raining as I expected, but the clouds are dark and heavy. To my left are barriers of trucks, tires and wooden pallets that make up the perimeter wall. To my right I see a group of children playing some version of tag. I can’t help but smile, not because of the children, but because my unique ability had given me the upper hand once again.

Stephen leads me through an alley, past another building until we come to another parking lot. This one has a protective wall at the other end and people are spread all about, talking with each other, laughing. Some are playing games, others have made fires and they sit hunched over a warm cup of coffee.

“These are my people,” Stephen says. A few of them look up at me and when they notice that I’m a newcomer, they stop what they are doing and stare.