When she was alone, Dahlia felt strangely vulnerable and had to work to shake that off. It was easy to lean on Church, or lean close to his power, and she did not want that. Nor, she suspected, did the old man. He wanted her to be strong and self-reliant. Sometimes that was like pushing a rock uphill. Easy at first, but every time she paused for a breath it got heavy and wanted to roll down.

Like her ego. Like her feeling of personal power.

She spent a little time mentally telling herself to grow the fuck up and get a fucking clue.

Then she began moving through the woods again.

Beyond a stand of trees ahead of her there was a patch of brighter light. Not sunlight, but less of a canopy of leaves to block the glare from the cloudy sky. Dahlia removed her compact binoculars and adjusted the focus, seeing a patch of dusty black. A road. When she shifted the binoculars again she saw that there were three figures on that road. People . . . though it was impossible to tell more than that.

Dahlia nearly cried out when she saw them, and if the sound had escaped it would have been a scream. She bit down on it, clamped it in.

Trash was there.

He was right fucking there.

Talking with two other people. She wanted to keep staring at Trash, but she forced herself to follow her training. Learn everything about a situation that you can, Church had told her. Don’t be distracted by any one thing.

So she forced herself to study the other men with her former lover, and Dahlia immediately felt a sudden coldness grip her. The men were older, in their thirties, dressed in camouflage clothing that had a military or paramilitary feel to them. Lots of gun belts with bulging ammunition pouches; lots of knives. Lots of guns. Each wore at least one holstered handgun and held automatic rifles. One had a combat shotgun slung over his shoulder. They looked hard and hardened, as if the end of the world had driven them away from all traces of ordinary humanity. Their eyes were cold, their mouths smiling but without humor. One of them, a big man with enormous shoulders and what looked like shrapnel scars on his face, wore a necklace of some kind around his bull neck. It took Dahlia a long time to understand what was wrong with the necklace. It was big and chunky, set with oversized and unusual stones.

Except they weren’t stones at all.

She tightened the focus on the binoculars and stared in horror.

The necklace was strung with human ears.

Forty-one of them.