Mr. Church came and squatted down in front of her. “Listen to me,” he said gently, but with a voice pitched loud enough for the others to hear. “Listen. You’ve survived this long on a useful combination of wits and natural talent. That’s good, but it’s not enough. There are tougher and scarier things out here than you. I’m one of them. The dead are a threat, but there are people out here—living people—who are far more powerful, more frightening, and much more dangerous. If you ran into any of them, you’d be dead. You all would.” He paused and gave her a tiny smile. “Lessons like this are frustrating and they’re hard. They’re supposed to be. I won’t make them easier. You need to rise, become craftier, refine your senses, get stronger and faster, become wiser. If I didn’t think you had that potential, we would not be here in this moment. If I thought you were just a thug, like your friend Trash, then you’d either be recovering from wounds received or be dead.”

He rose and looked around at them.

“Understand this,” he said. “I am not a nice man. I am not particularly patient and in no way forgiving. Not before the outbreak and less so now. I am not interested in whether you think these exercises are fair or fun. They are neither. I am not interested in complaints of any kind. If you have assessments, useful opinions, insights or ideas, then that door is always open.”

He turned back to Dahlia.

“You make a lot of jokes about Star Wars and Harry Potter and The Karate Kid. I get them. Maybe if the world hadn’t turned into a horror movie then they might be funny. They’re not. They are both inappropriate and a waste of our time. Either discard them or find something useful in their themes to draw on. Stories often contain wisdom.” When she began to speak he held up a finger. “We will do this exercise again, right now. You will do better this time. You’ll endeavor to take your ego out of gear and stop pretending to be tough . . . and simply become tougher. Do I make myself clear?”

Dahlia got slowly, heavily, to her feet. The others sat in silence, none of them daring to speak a word or make a sound. She wanted to grab a knife and stab the old man. She wanted to tie him down and let the dead have him for lunch.

Instead, she unzipped the boiler suit and tossed it to him, then bent to pick up the blindfold so she could put it on again.

***