I winced as Monique DeFriend chided, “You disobeyed a direct order by going after those creatures.”

I stepped through the doorway, interrupting Bella Maharaj as she stripped the wet jumpsuit from Andria’s naked body, wrapping her in a wool shawl.

“My God … he’s alive.” Monique stared at me like an overbearing sorority housemother. Her red hair was now tangled and gray, and a wicked white scar encircled her throat, the tan, leatherlike flesh sagging noticeably.

The years had been kinder to Lara, who hugged me tightly around the neck, her breasts peeking out from a fur-lined poncho sewn together from several animal skins. “Ike, thank God! This is a blessing, a true miracle. How long have you been awake?”

“About three days.”

“You must be freezing. Take off those wet clothes—”

Andria pried Lara loose. “I’ll see to my fiancée’s needs, if you don’t mind. He’s not community property.”

“Actually he is,” stated Bella. “That is, if the human race is to survive.”

“Not now, Bella,” Monique growled. “There are more immediate concerns to address than your ridiculous extinction theories. Andria, where did you find him?”

“By the crater.”

“Were you followed?”

“Yes. Three males.”

“Damn it, Andria—”

“Fuck you, Monique. I’d rather die in battle than be killed in my sleep by those eight-legged vermin.”

“Where’s your bow?” Lara asked.

“I lost it in the ambush.”

“The quiver, too?”

“Do you see it on me?”

“Andria, I used the rest of the water hemlock on those arrows. How the hell do you expect us to stop the octopeds without it?”

“One arrow each to their skulls should do the trick.”

Monique rolled her eyes at Andria’s bravado. “We’ve been at this forty-seven months and you’ve yet to come close to a nontoxin kill.”

“Forty-seven months?” I gasped. “You ladies have been awake almost four years and this is all you have to show for it?”

“We’re alive,” Bella said, shooting me a harsh look.

“Ike, you have no idea what we’ve had to endure.”

“Now’s not the time,” snapped Monique. “Lara, take the northwest post, Bella—the southeast. Andria, you and lover boy get some sleep, you and I will relieve the ladies at dawn.”

Lara and Bella crossed the main room, each ascending a bamboo ladder that led to a loft and what I assumed was a sentry post on the roof.

“Come on, Ike,” Andria said.

The farmhouse was essentially a two-thousand-square-foot rectangular chamber illuminated by oil lamps. Semiprivate enclosures were set off in each corner, partitioned by what appeared to be bison hides dangling from the rafters. A large fireplace occupied the wall opposite the front door, a food prep area close by. Like the walls, the floor was limestone and shale, set in mortar.