Meg stood, holding Chloe in her arms.  “Nancy, I’m so glad to see you.  We’ve… lost so many.  And Chloe is the only little one I’ve seen since that thing hit town.  How did you manage?”

Nancy nodded toward Allistor.  “He saved our bacon.  More than once now.”

Allistor shook his head.  “She’s being modest.  She went all stabby-stabby on a wolvite and saved me from having my arm chewed off.”

Nancy changed the subject.  “What happened here?” She indicated the funeral pyre.

Sam’s voice was rough with grief.  “My sister, her husband and kids.  They were out here camping already, missed all the bad shit in town.  We came out here to find them, get them to the rally point.  When we got here, we found…”  He didn’t say any more.  The blood spatters on the nearby picnic table and restroom cubicle told the story.

Robert Edward kicked the dirt and said, “Damned dog mutants.  Six of them.  We killed them when we got here, but it was too late.”

Meg whispered to Nancy.   “Sam’s niece was Robert Edward’s girlfriend.”  The two men just stared at the ground, grieving.

After a few moments, Sam added, “We burned the bodies so none of the monsters out here could eat them.”  Allistor thought it was a good idea, less because he was worried about strangers’ bodies being desecrated, more because it would have made the monsters stronger. Looking at the sorrow on the faces around him, he kept that thought to himself.

“You mentioned a rally point?” he asked Sam.

The man shook himself and raised his head.  “Yeah.  The caves here in the park.   Sandy over there,” he pointed to a woman Allistor didn’t know, “is one of the rangers here.  She does… she did tours of the caves before the world went to shit.   There’s solar power and a few natural springs for water.  The entrance is wider than I’d like, but we can maybe build a wall or something to block it off.”

Allistor had been in the caves once as a kid.  But he’d been bored and anxious to get back to his games, and he hadn’t really paid attention.   “Is there enough room for the whole town in there?”  He immediately regretted the question when he saw the looks everyone gave him.  “Right.  Sorry.  About how many do you think are left?”

Meg said, “If we’re lucky, about twenty of us.  That we know of, anyway.  Might be a few others that got out.  Or found a place to hide.”

Nancy spoke up.  “Just FYI… don’t hide in the storm sewer tunnels.  Nasty vermin colony down there.”  The others all nodded, accepting the information as just one more way their new world was screwed up.