The tent’s front flap hung inward, unzipped. Dryden could see a sleeping bag inside, on an inflated air mattress, and a bag of trail mix held shut with a clothespin. Tucked under the mattress’s edge, just visible, was a red leather wallet.

Danica went to the tent, leaned in and picked up the wallet. But before she could open it, there came a sound from the nearby kitchen: a muffled thump, as if from inside a closed container.

Dryden turned and raised the M4. He took a step toward the kitchen; the bulk of its space lay out of sight past a dividing wall. Another step brought the room fully into view: it was every bit the shambles they could have expected, with one added touch—someone had thrown the contents of the refrigerator out onto the floor, including the shelves. The fridge itself was closed at the moment.

It had happened recently.

Maybe very recently—there were things among the debris that could not have been lying there for long, like loose scraps of aluminum foil and plastic wrap, some of them already skittering in the breeze that filtered through the house.

Dryden traded a look with Danica, then raised the rifle and trained it on the refrigerator door—finger outside the trigger-well, but ready. He spoke in an authoritative voice, not loud, though hard and clear:

“Whoever’s in the fridge, show me your hands first, and come out very slowly.”

Before he’d finished speaking, someone moved inside the appliance—Dryden pictured somebody flinching, banging an elbow into one of the interior walls.

“Do it right now,” he said. “Hands first. Slow.”

Three seconds passed. Then the door jerked open, and the hands came out at the same time as the face—a woman’s face. Dryden had just a second to get a sense of her features—blond hair, green eyes, probably around his age—and then the woman saw the gun pointed at her, and her expression flooded with panic. She fell out of the refrigerator screaming.

The sound of it seemed to cut through the air—seemed like it would carry a thousand yards outside the house.

Dryden lowered the rifle and waved his hands. “Quiet, quiet, stop it!”

The woman couldn’t hear him. She was clambering over the discarded shelves and the putrid debris from inside the fridge, banging into its open door, scrambling away—and all the while still screaming, a jumble of No and Please and Don’t.

“Hey!” Dryden said it just loud enough to get through to her.

The woman stopped screaming; she had pushed herself backward into a corner of the room, where the cabinets met the wall. She sat there, her knees drawn up and her forearms in front of her, defensive.

“Don’t shoot me,” she whispered. “I’m sorry—”

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Dryden said. “Look.”