Dahlia wished that the plan had been to lure the Rovers in and then let them have the damn place while her Pack and the other survivors snuck out and faded into the woods. She’d even proposed that to Church early on. But now she understood why Church had turned it down. She’d seen proof of why. The Rovers were attacking on all sides. Even though the groups to the rear and west were smaller distraction forces, they were there. They were armed. They could possibly stall the Pack long enough to draw the whole Rover force in for the kill.

No. The only real way to win this was to use the town itself as a weapon.

And so she rallied her people. The supplies brought from the houses were there and she climbed down and began distributing them. There was no good plan. Only plans marginally less suicidal than others.

She recalled a snatch of conversation she’d had with Church about this as they drew near to Happy Valley.

“Some of the members of the Pack want to know why we’re bothering,” she said to him. “Those aren’t our people in there. We don’t even know how many slaves are inside the walls. Or how many Rovers are out here.”

“That is the kind of question soldiers often ask on the eve of battle,” he had answered. “In World War II, in Iraq, in other wars, soldiers were often asked to go fight and possibly die for people they didn’t know, people they would not otherwise have met. We are not a conquering army, Dahlia. We are not the ones who start a war. We don’t get to choose whether war happens. What’s left to us is to decide is whether the people caught in the path of a war deserve our commitment to try and save them. Or free them. Or even avenge them. No one fights alongside us because of coercion. You don’t.”

“No,” she’d admitted.

“No one is forced to go with us to free the slaves in Happy Valley. Not one member of this Pack is required to do that.”

“No.”

“So, tell me,” he asked gently, “why are we going to fight this war?”

She thought about it for miles of that walk.

“Because no one else will,” she said, then paused and amended that statement. “Because no one else will bother.”

He nodded. “Give me more.”

“Because . . . if we walk away, if we let what they’re doing to people in there stand, then we are allowing it. We’re . . . what’s the word? Complicit.”

Church took her hand and raised it to his lips and kissed it. There was nothing remotely romantic or sexual about it. He held it for a moment and then let it go. He said no more to her about it. Now, maybe there would be no time to ever finish that discussion.