How can they be happy? Ron wondered. In the middle of all this, how can they laugh? Then he realized that the children didn’t know any other world. They’re like kids everywhere. All they want is a chance to live.

Then he saw that they were playing a war game, fighting a make-believe battle with sticks or fingers for guns. Feeling sick inside, Ron knew that none of those children would ever see thirty.

There were adults in the city, Ron discovered. Up in the market area, along Broadway above Times Square. You could buy food there, and clothes, and other things. This was the black market, with stalls set up on the sidewalks offering goods smuggled in from outside the Dome.

Walking along Broadway, under the sagging blank theater marquees, Ron passed long wooden counters heaped high with canned foods, clothes new and used, gadgets of all sorts, and even some jewelry. Behind the counters were adults, men mostly. Some of them were really old, Ron saw. As old as his father. He bought tools that he needed from some of these aging men. He saw that they all carried guns and had young assistants at their sides all the time; the assistants were also armed.

You needed money in the market. No bartering, no trading. Just cash. That’s why the kids worked so hard for money during the summer. The only way to get food after the city was officially closed for the year was to buy it at the market, or steal it from another gang. No gang had enough money to buy all the food it needed, not when a tiny can of peas cost five dollars. Ron suddenly realized that somebody on the Outside was getting rich off the teenaged gangs.

They smuggle food into the City and make a fortune doing it, Ron told himself. It’s all carefully organized and smoothly operated. Everybody profits . . . except the kids.

And the kids were almost always hungry. Ron knew that he was losing weight, getting as skinny and mean-looking as Dino or Al or any of the others. Even Sylvia was beginning to look gaunt, and she ate better than most. It wasn’t yet winter, either.

Ron had heard stories about gang raids on the market area. Soldiers had suddenly appeared inside the Dome, killing mercilessly, burning whole sections of the City where the gangs lived. Even the Army is part of the system.

Ron saw Sylvia just about every day. She smiled at him, talked with him, let it show very clearly that she liked him. But Ron never touched her, never even let himself get within arm’s reach of her. He wanted to hold her and love her again. Instead, he kept his distance.

When they talked, it was mostly about non-dangerous topics. Like Davey.

“He’s helping me a lot,” Ron would say. “He’ll be a good mechanic someday.”

And she would reply, “You oughtta see his room. He’s got it filled with stuff. Looks like th’ junkyards down by th’ river.”