Lisbeth sat back on her heels and opened her eyes. “I didn’t feel anything, did you?”

“No,” I lied.

At the compound, one of the cars had a pair of underwear speared on the radio antenna, pink and small. On the ground there was a cooler tipped open on its side. A dog licked blood out of the lid.

“Stay safe,” Dance said, then went with the man with the rifle.

The woman and the baby had disappeared inside the shed, and I was supposed to follow her, to walk into who knew what. Jake drank his beer on the porch, watching. Grayson looked at me, then got in the truck and drove it away where they told him to go. I hoped he would be able to grab the knife.

I was left alone in the yard.

For a moment, I thought that this was my chance. The air was still and white—the only sound: two of the dogs, snarling over a bit of food. Jake rocked on a chair against the house, too far to reach me if I bolted.

But how far could I run without a car, without my house and supplies? Where would I go? Where were we, other than West Virginia, in a holler darker than my own?

And I wasn’t alone. I felt it on the back of my neck, as cold as the knife Dance had passed me: men watched me. Jake wasn’t the only one. From the outbuildings, from the burned-out cars, from the woods, I felt eyes. I could not run.

I went to the shed as if it was my choice. Went willingly. Rosemary grew wild against the side of the shed, only half-dead. Herbs could live through a lot. I crouched down and broke off a sprig, still green at the top. I could feel Jake’s presence behind me on the porch. I put the rosemary in my pocket.

The shed might have held wood once, or tools. It had a thin plastic storm door, smeared with grease. I pushed it open without knocking and went in.

A smell. A mattress on the floor. Some laundry, I thought.

There was no heat. Ice crystalized on the window in patterns as pretty as a quilt. The girl with the baby stared at me from the mattress. I was wrong to call her a woman. She was young. Her hair was a lank, yellow smear. Her eyes looked huge and hollow, rimmed by circles of blue pencil.

“You want food?” the girl said blankly.

No hello. No names.

I was hungry—but I didn’t want to take food away from her or the child, an egg-haired toddler on the girl’s lap, her cheeks fat and pink from health or from cold, I couldn’t tell. Her belly protruded from her sweater. Her legs and feet were bare and filthy. She stared at me, silent and sullen as her mother.