Doc eyes Anne, Trot, and Canary with her brother and sister, hand in hand. Tips his hat. “Nice to make everyone’s acquaintance.” Then he introduces his crew of misfits. There’s Spider, with his head shaved on each side up to the temples, where his locks go wild and wavy. Inferno is a youngish man with burnt-sienna skin and a spiked Mohawk that looks like black flames. He wears a sleeveless leather jacket, camo track suit, and combat boots. Sours is the lone female—dark hair with blond tips down to her shoulders, a stud through her nasal septum, a tie-dyed T-shirt cut just above a navel with a silver belly ring through it. She wears a baby face caught in a continuous pout. The Conductor has a face of stone, tattooed with ink lines that look like scratches under the patchy beard. He wears a cotton ball cap with fishhooks on one side of the bill and a small tire weight on the other side. He looks lean and sinewy in his sleeveless jean jacket, no shirt. Tattooed arms. He has an acoustic guitar strapped over his shoulder. Where did that come from? Anne wonders. Each of them nods. Everyone sits. Some put their packs behind their heads, stretch their legs out.

Words pass back and forth about where they’ve been. Where not to go. Catching out. Getting stuck on trains. Getting chased by yard bulls. Camping beneath bridges and overpasses. They share their candy bars and jerky and nuts and chips. Bottles of water. Converse about how they’ve lived. Survived without constraints. Anne listens, rapt. This is real freedom. Belonging to a real family. She vows never to be kept down again.

Doc looks Cinnamon in the eye and asks, “Tell me why Dredd is no more. I mean, we all know the guy was a maniac.”

Doc’s friends all chuckle at that.

And Cinnamon tells him, “He was. Why I never stayed more than a day or two at his encampment. But the conversations we had during each visit kept painting a worsening scene. And no one would step up.”

Doc laughs. “He always bragged about being a radical in college. Bitched about handouts, then wanted a handout. You know, always wanted to preach but not do.”

“Wanted to be a ruler, boss everyone around,” Cinnamon tells them. “Once I saw the writing on the wall, I split. Those that stayed just got blinded and beat down.”

Doc says, “When you realize what you bought into, you’re trapped.”

“And everyone was afraid to speak out. Why I kept my distance. Kept passing through. It was a like a rest area for traveling.”

“You knew better. Saw through his lies.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t want others to keep getting hurt by his actions.”

“You were smart,” says Doc, the bright feather in his derby hatband bouncing with every nod and shake of his head. “Kept your distance.”