“It’s what I fear. It’s where I came from. All I ever knew. It’s how I got here.” Anne pauses, her mind moving a mile a minute. “I want to create a project.”

“A project?”

“Yeah, I don’t want any more bad things to happen to good people—no more Dredds to pull others into a slave-like existence.”

“We already kinda help others,” Cinnamon said. “Leaving messages and word of mouth for others we encounter.”

“It’s not enough. I was lucky to meet you.”

“I understand what you’re saying, but—”

“No. We don’t break up our family. We help others create other families. Teach them to bond and to love. They don’t have to be part of some dictatorship, some cult-like group. They’d be free and work together to create their own family.”

Cinnamon reaches for her and kisses her.

“So young and full of want. Thirsty for community, for knowledge. We can do whatever you want.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. We can do whatever you want.”

Adrenaline and endorphins pulse through Anne as she and Cinnamon sit watching the world go by outside the open boxcar door. This is her freedom, her family. And she can help others discover the same, until the day comes when she no longer can.

Norman reedus can currently be seen in the tenth season of AMC’s hit series The Walking Dead, playing everyone’s favorite crossbow-wielding zombie killer, Daryl Dixon, and on AMC’s unscripted series Ride with Norman Reedus. He is best known for playing the role of Murphy MacManus in the cult movie The Boondock Saints, written and directed by Troy Duffy, and its sequel, Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day. His additional film credits include the Robert Redford directed feature The Conspirator, Pandorum, Cadillac Records, Six Ways to Sunday, Blade 2, and many others. Reedus is also a burgeoning director and an accomplished photographer, and in October 2013 he released The Sun’s Coming Up . . . Like a Big Bald Head: Photographs by Norman Reedus, a book of his photography. He lives in New York.

Frank Bill is the author of the novel Donnybrook, now a major motion picture; the short story collection Crimes in Southern Indiana, one of GQ magazine’s favorite books of 2011 and a Daily Beast best debut of 2011; and The Savage. He lives and writes in Southern Indiana.