June 23
St. Demetrios Monastery
9:25 AM

After breakfast with the laity, which consisted of oatmeal, grape juice, and a hot, spicy tea made from herbs grown in one of the monastery gardens, the foursome were given back their weapons and returned to their cells to gather the rest of their things. Once in the hallway, Ozzy said, "Cassie will drive us to the rendezvous point so we don't have to hike."

"You told her where the rendezvous point was?" Dianne asked.

"Why not?" Ozzy asked. "She knew it had to be within hiking distance anyway, and they're our friends now!"

"I hope you didn't tell them where the Kingdom is."

Ozzy looked uneasy. "No," he insisted. "Of course not. But…I might have told her my camp was in Mount Vernon."

Dianne sighed. "We've known these people for all of one day. Just because you got your dick waxed last night is no reason to be giving out pertinent information."

"Got my…what? I never said any such a thing!"

"You didn't have to say anything. My wall was on the other side of yours."

"Least yours wasn't near the desk," Daryl muttered.

Ozzy flushed. "Cassie's trustworthy. What does it matter if she knows where my camp is? I'm coming to trade in a month. I might come sooner. You know, to exercise my horse. There are good riding trails out this way."

"Yeah, I'm sure it's your horse you want to exercise," Dianne says with a smirk.

"Oh, cut me some slack. You're the one whose sleeping with your former enemy. And it's easy for you to say, when you're getting some semi-regularly." He lowered his voice to a near whisper. "Until last night, I hadn't gotten laid in fifteen months."

"Yeah. It sounded like it had been a long time," Dianne agreed. "Just don't let her play you when it comes to the trades. And be cautious until you know them better."

"You make it sound like she's using me for something. She enjoyed herself, I assure - " Ozzy fell silent and looked down the hall because a monk had come in from the fields to use one of the bathrooms. "She's waiting for us at the gate. Let's go."

When they got to the gate, Cassie was standing outside the empty flat-bed truck with a crossbow on her back. One of the camp's two motorcycles was gone, but the one with the sidecar was still there. "Someone out scavengin'?" Daryl asked.

"Yeah."

"How come the Redeemers didn't take your bikes?" Daryl wanted to know.

"They wanted us to be able to keep scavenging for them. Not that you can carry much on a bike, but they didn't care about that when they took our flat-bed." She looked at Ozzy. "Your father is working in the vineyard if you want to go say goodbye to him."

Ozzy shook his head. "He doesn't care that I'm leaving. And he'll be annoyed when I come back to trade. He thinks family is a spiritual distraction."

"Still, you're allowed to say goodbye," Cassie insisted.

As Daryl, Carol, and Dianne tossed their packs in the bed, Ozzie asked, "Didn't it bother you? Your father sequestering himself in here? Two letters a year? No visits?"

Cassie shrugged. "I had my own life. Didn't you?"

Ozzy sighed. "Not one I was very good at juggling. Not at that age. And there was my little sister to look out for."

Cassie got in the driver's seat of the truck, Ozzy took shot-gun, and the other three piled into the bed. When they rode to the rendezvous point, Cassie insisted on waiting with them until she saw they were safely picked up. She and Ozzy talked more about their monkish fathers and Orthodox upbringings while Daryl loaded his bow and said he was going to hunt a little in the nearby woods. "Whistle for me when they get here. "

"You should stay here," Cassie told him. "You'll get too far in, and they'll have to wait for you."

"Nah, I'll stay near the road. Just get a bird or somethin'." He was bored.

"Maybe you should hunt in the woods across the street." Cassie jerked her head that way. "Looks like better grounds."

"How you figure?" Daryl asked. "Be fine. Be gone fifteen, twenty minutes." And he vanished into the woods on their side of the road.

He came back out of those woods six minutes later with Father Nikolas's collar grasped in his hand and the priest's shotgun hung on his own shoulder. "Don't look like he went scavengin'," said Daryl, shoving the priest toward Cassie, who was sitting on the tail of the flat bed of the truck next to Ozzy.

The priest stumbled two steps and stood straight.

"Looks like he was lyin' in wait back there, with a buried bike, and a shotgun, just waitin' for our ride to show. What I want to know is why?"

Cassie sighed. "Because I asked him to. So we could follow you at a distance on the motorcycle after you got picked up. That one's electric. It's quiet."

Ozzy pulled back from her with a look of betrayal. "Why?"

"Just to make sure," Cassie replied. "That you're who you say you are. Decent people, from some place with women and children. Not a part of some network of raiders or extortionists. That you aren't playing us. That you aren't working some kind of long game here."

"What kind of con would involve us bringing you back your truck and weapons?" Ozzy demanded.

"I don't know. That's why I called it a long game!"

"So last night…you were just manipulating me? Trying to get information?"

"Last night was a lot of fun," Cassie said.

Father Nikolas looked down at the ground.

"A fun way to get information, you mean?" Ozzy asked.

"Well, I can't think of a more enjoyable way. Can you?"

Ozzy shook his head. He stood from the truck. "Well, good thing Father Nikolas here is such a shit spy who couldn't keep from being found in the woods. Because you're a damn good one."

"I'm not a spy." Cassie got down from the truck's bed and stepped toward him. "But the laity looks to me to protect them. Frankly, so do the monks, though they would never say so. And I failed them all when the Redeemers rolled in. I'm not going to fail them again."

"Can I have my shotgun back now?" the priest asked Daryl.

"Nah. Y'all can put the bike on the truck, get in that truck, and start drivin' back to your camp, right now. We'll keep the shotgun."

"Oh, just give him the shotgun," Carol said. "If they were going to kills us, they had plenty of opportunities when we were unarmed and in unlocked rooms last night. And I don't blame them for being cautious. You would do the same thing. You just wouldn't get caught."

Daryl smirked at the compliment. Reluctantly, he held the shotgun out to the priest, who took it back and swung it over his shoulder. "Go on home,"| he told them. "Don't wait with us. Don't try to follow us. And I'll fuckin' know if you do."

The priest nodded. "I'll put the bike on the bed," he told Cassie. "Save energy." He vanished back into the woods.

"Still coming to trade in a month?" Cassie asked Ozzy.

"It's not up to me," Ozzy said. "I'm the head of the security forces at my camp. Not the head of the camp. Though I guess I need my security card revoked now."

"I'd like to see you again," Cassie insisted.

Ozzy huffed bitterly.

"I meant it when I said it was fun."

Daryl helped the priest get the bike in the bed. "Electric?" he asked. The one the priest had rode in on last night, with the sidecar, was gas powered.

"Yeah. Rechargeable battery. We recharge it on the dead mill."

"How long will it last, ya think? The battery?"

"Longer than the gas. Another two or three years. And if it dies early, I've got another one in storage in the cellar that the Redeemer's didn't loot. Between the two, we might get up to four years out of this."

"If you were so damn worried 'bout us playing a long game," Daryl told him, "shouldn't of told us about that cellar."

"That's what I told George after he told you about it last night," Cassie said. "But he's still got a lot of the monk in him. He thinks God uses all things for good in time. He thinks it's a miracle that the monastery survived, a miracle that you four showed up on our doorstep-"

"-Perhaps it is," Father Nikolas interrupted.

"I don't believe in miracles," Cassie told him. "I don't believe in any of it anymore."

"Did you ever?" the priest asked.

"When I was girl, maybe. But the soulless are walking around and devouring people, Niki, how does that fit in your theology?"

"The world has always been fallen. It's just fallen in a different way now. I find it much more pleasant to believe that this world will be redeemed than that this world is all there is."

"Well, I won't try to argue you out of your pleasant belief. We all need whatever solace we can find." She looked at Ozzy. "Speaking of which, I do hope to see you again."

"Sure," he murmured.

Cassie stepped forward, kissed Ozzy on the cheek as he stood stiffly in place, and then got in the truck.

Daryl watched them drive back in the direction of the monastery.

Ozzy turned to Dianne. "Don't say I told you so."

"I think she sincerely likes you," Dianne said.

Ozzy let out a bitter laugh.

"No, I really do. And she's right. We should all find solace where we can. If I were you, I'd exercise my horse before June is out."

"Yeah?" Ozzy asked hopefully.

"Also…That way you can keep tabs on them for the coalition."

Ozzy rolled his eyes.

A redheaded man named Daniel, who looked to Daryl as if he were dressed to go up and down ramps in a skate park, picked them up in a short, yellow school bus. Dianne introduced them through the open door.

"I gotta ride the special bus?" Daryl asked.

Carol chuckled and patted his back as Daryl mounted the two stairs. He threw himself down in a seat two rows behind the driver, with his crossbow on the floor, his back against the window, and his leg stretched out on the seat.

"I guess you're not sharing," Carol said and sat in seat opposite him, while Dianne and Ozzy took the two front seats.

"This seems like an inefficient choice in terms of gas consumption," Dianne said. "Our share of that tanker won't last a year at this rate."

"It's what was available and functional. Besides, I've done some scavenging on the way." He waved behind himself at the seats, several of which were covered by cardboard boxes full of assorted supplies. "I needed the room. After I drop three of you at the Kingdom, I'll take Ozzy on home to Mount Vernon. I need to deliver some of these boxes there."

"In exchange for what?" Dianne asked.

"Brittany asked me to find her some things," he replied.

Dianne raised an eyebrow. "So you get nothing out of the trade?"

"I'm sure he'll get something," Ozzy said with a chuckle.

Daniel glowered at him in the rearview mirror. "You're lucky I don't come back there and kick your ass."

Ozzy scoffed. "I knocked you on your ass when we first met, if you recall."

"Yeah, well, you had the element of surprise then."

"Did Dixon and Zach and Jerry and Tina make it safely to the Kingdom?" Carol asked.

"They got there about when I was leaving yesterday," Daniel answered. He glanced at Dianne in the rearview. "You staying at the Kingdom for a while?"

"Long enough to go to the Council Meeting tomorrow. Then I'm going to the Sanctuary to check in on Gavin. I suppose Jerry told you he was shot."

"He also told me you were sleeping with him. Care to deny it?"

"No, I don't care to deny it. Why should I?"

Daniel shook his head. "I just don't see how you can stand to screw someone who used to extort us."

"You're screwing someone who jumped you on the highway and locked you in a slave cabin."

"Fair point," Daniel conceded. "But it all turned out for the best, didn't it? We're all friends now." He glared at Ozzy through the mirror. "Most of us, anyway."

Daryl turned to look out the window to see if they were being followed. When they weren't, he turned forward again. Carol smiled at him from across the aisle. "I can't wait to see this Kingdom," she whispered.