“Look, I don’t think this is as dangerous as what we just left,” Dance said.

“Why? Because they’re girls?” Jamey snapped. “Girls are just as dangerous as men.”

I watched the women’s sides. I hadn’t seen any guns. “I don’t think they’re armed,” I said. “Maybe they can hide us for a while, until Jake gives up.”

Grayson helped Jamey with Starla as they got out of the truck, and I stretched my hand into the front seat. “The gun,” I said to Dance.

He looked around. No one watched us; they were busy with the baby.

“You said they’re not armed.”

“The gun,” I repeated.

After a moment, he pulled it from the slit in the seat cushion and handed it to me. The gun, flecked with rust from its long sleep in the earth, felt cold. It felt heavy and strange. I shoved it deep in my coat pocket.

Dance was looking at me over the seat. I could read the challenges in his eyes. Could I use it? Had I shot one? Why did I have it? “You better get used to me having it,” I said.

But I felt those questions knocking around my own head. I should have practiced with the gun. I should have gotten ammo for it. If I needed to use it someday, would it even work?

We threaded through the forest after the women. Exhaustion hit me as I walked. The simple work of following, of watching where I was going to avoid roots or branches, seemed too much. I felt the bruises from my fall into the skate park, a sharp and tender ache. I couldn’t remember the last thing I had eaten, and the last time I had slept was in the truck.

I heard a rustling, and looked behind me. In the clearing where Dance had parked the truck, women were piling pine boughs and brush over the truck, covering up the vehicle and my house. If I turned back in a few more minutes, they would be hidden, safe. The group ahead of me went around a curve, and I followed. When I looked behind me again, the clearing and the women were lost to shadows.

What were these women doing in the woods?

Up in front, Dance walked in step beside the woman in the ski mask. She carried Starla in her arms; Jamey seemed fine with it, maybe grateful for the break. Starla was quiet now, wrapped so securely in blankets I could barely see her face, only a tuft of her hair, like a corn silk.

“Did you come from Skate State?” the woman asked.

“How did you know?” Dance said.

“We have one of their pigs. And some refugees.”

“What are you doing out here in the woods? Do you live here?”

“We do now,” she said.