“My father. I wanted to tell you—just couldn’t find the right time.”

“I think you just did. You’re just full of surprises. Keep it on the down low, girl. We need to get moving. Too many eyes. Last thing we want is attention from the local PD.”

Feet shuffle and bodies move to another street. Deeper into the city, where Cinnamon, Canary, Apple, and Trot lift dumpster doors open and climb into the big square steel containers, ripping apart bags, searching and sorting through the trash of local eateries before the morning pickup. Sometimes finding clothing, fruits, and vegetables from the day before, filling their packs.

Walking down other streets, they rummage through trash cans, dumping out cups of unfinished soda unless they are over half full. Removing lids, they take a sniff followed by a swallow. Keep the cups to reuse. Finding paper sacks of half-eaten breakfast sandwiches, breakfast burritos, biscotti, scrambled eggs, and pancakes. They take them, share them, eat them, offering to the kids first, then splitting the rest with one another.

In this manner, they work their way down sidewalks, from one street to the next, scouring the area. By twelve o’clock, they have collected all they can carry, looking like a band of gypsies. With the bills and coins they had made, they hit a local grocery on their way back to catch a bus out of the city. They grab coffee, Spam, potted meat, tuna, bags of rice, ramen noodles. Anne checks the local and national newspapers for mention of the brother she had left for dead, and is relieved to find nothing.

Once they had paid and left the store, Cinnamon tells Anne, “This should stock the camp up for a while. We’ve done our part, but we’ll need to go again. Stock up for our departure. So before we get back, skim anything you feel is of value, and hide it. ’Cause Dredd always gets first dibs. And he ain’t the sharing type unless you got something to offer in return.”

Anne realizes that even here, with these people, there is a pecking order. It isn’t all free love. Everything is open to interpretation. There is politics.

Figuring out the route, waiting on the bus, Cinnamon tells Anne, “These are our skill sets. Our means for self-reliant survival. You got what it takes. Damn sure are braver than most I’ve ran with. Hauling that damn pistol out on that homeless dopehead. He looked about ready to shit hisself.”

“I wasn’t giving him any ground. Not about to let him bring harm to Sweet Tart or me. Told him we could share the corner.”