Amanda led a group back to the hospital to stock up on more linens and antiseptics.  They ran across a smaller pack of canids and managed to kill them with only minor injuries on their side.

The RV that he’d put on the market sold for one hundred sixty thousand klax.  He didn’t put the next one on the market right away, wanting to make them seem scarcer and thus valuable.

Amanda slept in his quarters more often than not through the week.  When he jokingly asked her if she’d finished considering her options and made a choice, she just gave him a funny look and put her head on his shoulder.  He let the subject drop.

Though they were scouting and foraging as far as forty miles out in every direction, none of the parties returned with any news of other survivors.  There had been a dozen or so reports of evidence of attacks.  Some of them recent enough that the blood at the scene wasn’t fully dried.  But there was no way to tell if it was human blood.

Sam came home triumphant from a foraging trip with a box full of radio equipment.  He’d finally located a short wave radio.  But after spending a full day setting it up and testing various frequencies, he’d received no replies to his calls.  He made it a habit to stop by the crafting hall where they’d set up the radio each day and cycle through the channels, calling for other survivors to respond.

The general consensus was that Ramon and Nancy had a full-fledged romance going.  Neither admitted to it if asked, but they weren’t fooling anybody.  Chloe was growing attached to him as well, suckering him into tea parties and wheedling him into reading to her at bedtime.

A nearby farm had yielded a chicken coop and a dozen chickens, as well as three goats.  The coop was set up next to the greenhouse, and the livestock was allowed to roam the enclosure.  The areas that weren’t paved, which was everywhere but in front of the gate and around the garage, supplied more than enough grass for the goats to browse.   The kids sometimes fed them dog food nuggets as a treat.  Meg began to offer the kids a klax or two in return for collecting eggs, cleaning out the coop or the rabbit hutch.

Though their sensor network had expanded with the addition of the walls, they still kept two people on guard atop the walls at all times.  They patrolled together, keeping each other awake through their shifts.