Consortium, Massachusetts

[To get to the campus, visitors ordinarily park outside the double layered 12 foot wrought iron fences set into a brick base wall. Due to recent undocumented vessels landing in Boston, offloading passengers without infection clearance, the campus has reverted to wartime protocol. I drive through the external iron perimeter and into a buffer zone, which has been planted with easy, low-attention crops postwar, where I park. On foot, I walk through another set of gates set into thick cob walls that snake for miles around the campus's many acres, much of them wooded. Cob, made from stones, mud, sand, straw and water, dries to form a solid monolith. Built by hand with cemented boulders at its base and short eaves atop, this wall averages twelve feet tall, including the narrow roofing, and more than two feet thick in some places. The second buffer zone is planted with mostly grains and other staple crops. I see many sweet potato plants. This is nothing compared to the third wall, several meters off. Also made of cob, and clearly built with attention to detail, it is fifteen feet tall and as much as a meter thick for most of it. It is a work of art. It has sturdy railing made from scavenged materials, is topped with a platform and roof that serves as vantagepoint from which one can stand well over the heads of ghouls and use sharpened rebar spears to dispatch them. Said rebar spears are hung on hooks spaced every fifteen feet or so, to ensure weapons are always on hand.

Timeless architecture looms ahead as I enter into the third buffer zone, which turns out to be a wide path of packed dirt. The fourth fence is the school's original wrought iron fence, only a meter tall and meant more for style than any semblance of security. It frames the campus. The front gates, once meant for welcoming newcomers to an oasis for women's learning, symbolized safehaven and today remain as a vestige of free and open spaces, where free thinkers were once encouraged to roam without a care.

The pounding of hooves builds behind me and I turn to find a magnificently kept horse barreling towards me. Astride with ease is my host, Asha Tamboli. She is a formidable woman and her happy disposition and deft movements enhance her long and lithe form. In her late thirties or early forties and now a US citizen, her smile doesn't quite cover for an air of exhaustion she seems to carry, though her posture in the saddle is impeccable.]

You made it. Our contact sentry radioed that you parked a few minutes ago. I thought you'd got lost. I'm Asha Tamboli, we spoke on the phone.

Thank you for having me. I was just admiring what you built here. [Asha flashes a smile and dismounts, handing the reigns to a waiting replacement who mounts and trots off, continuing the round.]

You haven't been inside yet. Come on. And, full disclosure, I'm a talker, so if you have any questions, feel free to interrupt or take us in a different direction. You wanted to talk about the school's story, right?

Both that, and the people who planned it, built it and lived in it. I'm also looking to speak to a couple of people. Cedar Barrett, if you know where she is, and Henry Marsden and Arlene Cross, if you know who they are.

Henry Marsden, Arlene Cross. Don't know them, sorry. You're welcome to see our visitor log in case they visited here, though. As for Cedar, I haven't seen her since she visited last year. In case no one's told you, she's a hard one to corner. Sorry I can't help you there, but if she comes by, I'll let her know you're looking for her. She's generally pretty receptive to people. I'll start off with the tour, shall I? I actually worked as a student tour guide here, back before the war, so it'll be like old times.

You saw the outermost gate, the iron on brick, on your way in. We call it Perimeter 1, or just One, since it served as our first contact with the outside world. It was about the first thing we built. The brick was quick to lay and cementing the iron inserts was straight forward. Once they dried, we could breathe a tad easier. A few years later, we were able to source enough iron fencing, brick and mortar that we added a second layer to the fence. That way, if they grabbed you, you'd hit the inner fence and they couldn't reach their face to you. The space just inside was Buffer 1. The outer cob wall is called Perimeter 2, or Two, followed by Buffer or Buff 2. We desperately needed to maintain One's integrity, so we had details along Buffer 1 with rebar dispatching any Zack that came up to the fence. If anything went wrong, you would dash to Two, which had hand holds built into it, I'm not sure if you saw them. We didn't want them to be obvious from the outside. Anyway, if something did go wrong at One, and you were cut off from Two's gates, you'd be able to climb the handholds. Zack can't climb, so that's one blessing.

Perimeters 2 and 3 took an entire season to build after our first winter - what year was it? It was the year or two after the Great Panic and I think we were hearing about the LA Sweeps and the Honolulu Conference that year, which would have been about four years before the Road to New York got under way.

Were you expecting the army to make it here? Was that something you hoped for?

Why, do we seem like those secessionist dickheads who can't get over the reality that there were no good options? ... I'm sorry, I escalated that quickly. Some of them are bitter about that because they can't let go of their past, which is always hard. I get that, I really do. Some of them have grown happy ruling their own little kingdoms and can't let go of their present. Come on.

I mean, no one is saying the Redecker Plan was moral or ethical. You could sit in an armchair with a pipe and some whisky in a room lined with academic volumes and pontificate on how, given the circumstances, ethics and morality were definitely on the army's side. But not even the army would agree with you there. It was a terrible option in a series of non-options. It was the only viable plan that would keep any form of infrastructure intact enough to plan a future for hominids.

They say American civilians survived fairly well compared to other civilian populations. Millions of firearms and ammunition squirreled away in every nook and cranny, individuality and an identity entrenched in the idea of frontiers and glorious superiority. A lot of it is true, but that American culture has a longer lasting negative impact. My parents sent me and my sister here, saying they'd follow us. We all knew that wasn't really going to happen. But their self sacrifice was expected. Immigrant parents to any country frequently sacrifice their personal wealth, status, dreams and freedoms for their children's opportunities. The idea of setting aside your wants for the greater purpose. It's a concept that secessionists still don't have for the whole of humanity, and that's why governments around the world are still struggling with trying to reintegrate surviving groups who can't comprehend that change is cyclical.

Even though a lot of us, including myself, weren't Americans, we were happy to hear that the US government was still intact, because it meant an eventual 'liberation' of sorts. But we weren't holding our breath. The military had to pull back for a reason, so we weren't expecting any help within our lifetimes, and our life expectancy had drastically shortened. We planned accordingly. As for their return, we expected that it would eventually happen, and the world is always changing. If we couldn't learn to adapt to another change, then we hadn't learned our lesson on survival in the first place.

We're standing in Buffer 3, which you'll notice, is narrower and unplanted. We left it that way so we could exercise the horses somewhere that wasn't Upper Lake's trail. We have two lakes, ponds really, Upper and Lower. During the war we started to run our horses on Buffer 3, which gives them a good workout, depending on how many rounds we give them, serves to keep our sentries on Three sharper, which in turn keeps our perimeters more secure and [leans in slightly] spreads the manure around a little more.

This iron fence and the main gate are from the original campus. We kept it to trip up any Zack that somehow made it that far. We figured we needed a clear line of sight to Perimeter 3 from the main campus, and if Zack, or anyone else, really did get that far, we were probably screwed, anyway.

You'll notice the campus walkways don't really make sense. They aren't supposed to. The architect who designed the campus wanted America's women scholars to exercise wandering feet as well as wandering minds, so the paths kind of crisscross and swerve around. Drove some of the students crazy back in the day. During the war, it drove some of us crazy because it made planning crops and calculating yields that much more labor intensive. It was a good thing the founders planned for The Orchards.

The Orchards?

The Orchards. It was one of the country's preeminent 18-hole golf courses. Don't ask me anything more about it, I know nothing of the sport. The point is, the founders left us with a ton of information and optional plans. We ended up planting a series of orchards, including some longer term nut trees and other crops. The golf carts really saved our necks hauling planting materials around campus, especially when we went out and got a bunch more from the country club. We mainly used the school's horses, and some that we picked up from the other schools and nearby stables. Once we got more established, we were able to use the horses instead of cars and golf carts, since we had enough feed and grazing area, and we had to conserve our fuel. Started out with so many horses, they wouldn't all fit in the stables. We had to use the field house.

Can you tell me more about how this place started? Tell me about these founders?

Of course! The founders. Well, we mostly just call a somewhat fluid group of people the founders. Technically, some count me as one of the founders, although I was only a first year when the Great Panic started, and I didn't take a leadership role until we were more established. I'm originally from Pakistan. Some of the older girls who had graduated from the same grammar school as me had come here, too, and mentioned at a student club that there was a group of upperclass students who were drawing plans to fortify the school. The US was still largely in denial, like most governments, but fear was slowly trickling in.

When I told my parents about the students who were quietly, and mostly in jest, planning a project together to fortify the school, they bought my younger sister a ticket, even though she was three years younger than me, and not college age, yet. They told me in no uncertain terms that I was to seek out these girls and make friends with them. My sister was to come to school with me while our parents figured something out for themselves. If the school was crunched for space, she would sleep in my bed.

[Asha hands me a folded paper from her pocket. It is a flier, including a generalized map of the campus before and the campus as it stands today beneath it. The flip side has general history notes and points of interest, including some of the original school's founding information.]

When I arrived for my second year, it was July - way before classes would ever start. The Phalanx scandal had broken late the previous summer, and the Panic had been escalating since winter ended. Instead of dorm room decorations, my suitcases were filled with items that had I had gathered over the summer with my family. Before I left campus the previous semester, I had followed my parent's orders. The true founders, the ones who worked on the project, are the ones who sent me a list of things to bring. Things that would become commodities that they didn't have time to focus on, or things that would be inevitably necessary. Medicines, female hygiene products, many sewing kits, nail clippers, hand mirrors, toothbrushes. I got together with another returning student and we found a bunch of looms so we could make clothing.

We arrived at the airport which was a relatively short drive to campus. A school van was waiting for several of us in the chaos. One girl had brought her two younger brothers and her older brother, and another had brought her grandmother. The van was driven by a guy from one of the other colleges, but he took everyone, no questions asked. It was dark when we got there. I was exhausted, and looking forward to getting to my dorm room. Instead, we were taken to the athletic field house, where they'd set up about a hundred cots and blankets. Our driver apologized and explained that this was new protocol. We would be able to get a good night's rest and in the morning, we'd shower in the athletic center's locker rooms. It wasn't comfortable, but we were tired, and there was a sense of relief at having made it. I never noticed the girl who stood guard on the balcony above us. Later, when I took up intake shifts, I found out it was to take care of any possible infection.

The next morning, some of the Founders greeted the newcomers. Cedar Barrett, I'm still sorry I can't help you more in finding her, had graduated the previous year and hopped on. The last anyone had heard, she had these grand plans of joining the military. Something about tracking herds. [Shakes her head.] I don't know where she got her energy. Or her balls. Sorry.

Not at all.

Now, it was a new core group. Marana Northrop, Baozhai Chen, Maxine Bent and geography Professor Mike Gaines were the remaining members of the original project. Fatima Gibson was another one, but she didn't make it to campus until later. Justin Liu, our driver from the night before, was a student from UMass. Trina Wilson was from the other womens' college, and Lucas Foster and Cyra Welch were from Amherst and Hampshire, respectively. They weren't all there that morning, I was just listing them, in case you didn't see their names on that flier there.

Anyway, it was just Maxine and Justin that morning. About forty people or so had come in the night before, and they brought everyone a great breakfast and gave us the rundown. We were going to fill out a medical form if we were new, and an update sheet if we were a returning student. I was returning so I only filled out an update sheet. Mostly about any contact with Zack. Then, they carefully explained that they needed to check everyone for infection.

By that point, anyone paying attention knew Israel was using dogs to sniff out infections, but they didn't have any dogs, yet. That meant the showers. They told us that if they found a bite mark or a suspicious injury, we would not be kicked out. Instead, we would be given a choice. Since it was a known death sentence, they were willing to put you out of your misery in any way you chose, barring drug overdose since they were stockpiling those, but you were welcome to a bullet if you wanted that. If you didn't want that, you could spend your last days, assuming you had that long, helping out with fortifications and eating good meals under supervision. Once you turned, they'd put you down. It was all very gently explained. They knew both people and Zack would soon be clawing to get in, and they wanted to set a positive precedent, especially since most of the people coming this early had heard of the project by word of mouth. Friends of friends.

[Chickens and goats graze in penned areas to ensure they don't damage crops. Dogs roam the campus, making rounds. Now that the war is over, outdoor structures have been built for livestock and storage. The buildings have been reclaimed as classrooms, dormitories, offices and dining rooms. The college has re-opened its doors, maintaining its status as the longest surviving place of higher learning for women in the US. It also makes it the first prewar institution east of the Rockies to receive students after VA Day, starting class a mere four months after VA Day was declared. The incoming class will be the the ninth class since the school reopened its gates.]

I would have thought people would freak out over the inspections. Everyone was scared, but it was all logical and they had explained it with so much compassion that it actually went over really well. We were also working on a full night's sleep and full stomachs, which helped. Luckily, a couple of the new arrivals were, in fact, dog trainers and experienced owners of finicky breeds, so as soon as we could get some dogs they'd have their main job.

Once we left the field house, we were assigned housing. It was cramped. Since the school, and the US, were officially in session, and the Founders didn't know how many students wanted, or could, show up that year, they crammed as many people to a room as possible. The school administration was crumbling as more of the staff had family members stopped answering their calls, and a lot of them were going to look for them, or packing their cars and heading north to join family members they knew were going that way. It wasn't that they didn't think we could do it, it was more that our idea seemed ridiculous, kind of cliche. It was. Every youthful generation is berated by older ones for being lazy, horny, stupid, all that stuff. We, along with other campuses and churches and groups that were starting to kick into gear, had this idea that we would maybe go hungry a couple of days, but ultimately prevail against the undead, come of age and then get on with our lives.

We managed to get into Auxiliary Services to get the door keys to all the the dorm and campus doors, and collect all of the master keys. We needed to organize all of the keys and have a system. A lot of the doors were primarily swipe access, which wasn't sustainable. That was my main job. The school year hadn't started, yet, so I was able to monopolize all of the keys. With input from Marana, I was able to work out this system wherein there was a hierarchy of keys and master keys. There was a whole system laid out about keys, access and the philosophy behind it.

It might seem nitpicky, but those were plans from Marana and the other Founders themselves. It was an open door policy for the most part, anyway. Buildings and rooms with valuables, like our weapons caches, medicines, food, feed, records, were all kept under lock and key. But personal rooms were all unlocked. You could lock your door from the inside at night, but when people were out and about, everything was unlocked. We needed a culture of trust. It's not like money or jewelry were valuable for anything other than sentiment, anyway. And what if you carried your key somewhere and died? It's not like we could just replace them, so we got cozy.

Turns out Marana was the de facto leader because even though several of the professors were staying with their families, the professors tended to be academics who knew very little about the workings of the campus, and many of the administrative staff had booked it. A lot of the staff and faculty really cared. Custodial staff would drop off their keys to me if they could, and wish us luck. It turns out later that they all had some idea of the Founders' plans, because Marana, Maxine, Cedar and Baozhai had already gone down the list of the staff and had them write instructions on how everything in the school functioned. They truly left no stone unturned. They had everything collected in the Geo Lounge. The Geo Lounge was the lounge for the Geology, Geography and Environmental Science departments. Even before the first Zack moaned it's first, that geo lounge had machetes, rock hammers, maps, camping stoves extra socks and cactuses piled everywhere. That was where Cedar left the Bible.

Bible?

A series of bibles, or encyclopedias, really. Cedar Barrett, as it turned out, was fastidious as fuck when it came to documentation. Pardon the language, but it's true. She had the Founders' original seminar project printed out; all of their maps, research, sources, some of them translated from Japanese by a friend. Then, she had several copies of this booklet that was, like, a table of contents for the series of collected resources. It was like a cheat sheet on how to use all of these resources. One of the binders was lists of businesses, farms, just a textual map of resources within a twenty mile radius, with a note from Cedar in the margins reminding us that if the pandemic gets as bad as projected, (and we were advised to reference Maxine's maps and ideas on the subject), then we'd do best to avoid exceeding that distance in foraging for materials or supplies in case a horde come by that we couldn't handle. The Founders had the general ideas that everyone brainstormed. They'd drawn up some notes, but overall it was Cedar, with Maxine's help, who was obsessive enough to work out the details and organize them. Apparently, people only discovered that anyone had written everything out when they found that Cedar and Maxine had spent graduation night lugging their compiled library from their dorm to that lounge.

The Bible even had information on places she'd already contacted. If we were planning on agricultural endeavours, and she included a handwritten notation that we should, then we would need a reliable source of pollination. Baozhai's dad, Mr. Chen, was well and truly loaded, so he funded a lot of the Founder's purchases. Other student families pitched in, but Mr. Chen takes the cake. From what I hear, he had family money, loads of it himself and had one child to spend it all on before the world turned over. Anyway, she'd used this guy's money to pre-buy several beehives, associated tools, and instructions. Even advised us to give the guy a bonus payment in the form of goods upon pickup, in case that incentivized him to move to the campus and bring his beehives, tools, knowledge and ability to pass on that knowledge. She'd left a library of resources. She'd used that guy's money on great stuff. Books on carpentry, solar panel installation, on generators, car maintenance, foraging, canning, water sanitation. There weren't many books on cob construction, so she did online research; compiled and printed off booklets on that. She gave us our starting place.

This was a little before Yonkers. We didn't know about the Redecker plan, yet. But even though we didn't know the army would leave us behind, we knew that winning one big battle wouldn't solve our problems. Our first priority was going to be erecting Perimeter Zero, which was really just a chainlink fence. Cedar had pre-bought a crap-ton of chain link fencing, and we were to put that up until we could build something better. She'd drawn out different configurations of campus borders, based on how much time we estimated we had, and how much labor we had available, with later extensions planned should we choose a smaller, safer initial layout.

We had about four hundred people at that point, in a school whose dorms had housed the vast majority of it's normal student body of around 2200. Even during the war, we never reached max capacity, even while having the first couple floors of every building uninhabited. The school had issued an announcement that they would not be holding orientation, classes or anything for the foreseeable future, and that they were waiting to hear from authorities on whether it would be safe to officially begin the semester. Once that announcement was made, we got more and more people, mostly students from the five college consortium whose families were hoping everything would turn around, and the students were just waiting for classes to start. We had the dogs to check for the infected by then, and we gave the same deal to anyone who wanted a safe place to die. We knew we were playing with fire, but we needed the labor. Since everyone was working, everyone was carrying tools, so everyone was sufficiently armed against Zack.

Because of the number of people willing and eager to work, we picked one of the more ambitious plans drawn up in the Bible. It would give us several square miles. We'd build the brick base, and install the iron fencing, all along Morgan as it turned into Pleasant, head up Amherst, then west along West Street. Then, we'd break off from the road and encompass the Orchards, which would be labor intensive with uneven terrain and inexperienced builders. Once we got around the Orchards, we'd join with Woodbridge Street and head south until we met Morgan Street again. It was potential suicide. The smart plan would be to build the eastern wall along Cold Hill Road instead of Amherst, but Marana was determined. She also wasn't stupid, it turned out.

Marana had sent Justin with some of his buddies on a mission to some construction sites and farms. They came back with a backhoe, two tractors, a couple of bulldozers and a mind-boggling amount of gas. Did you know they'd been stock-piling gas for a while at that point? And the school had it's own little gas reserve for when their athletic teams went on trips, so that had been topped up. Marana's plan was also to monopolize on things the fence would block in, including pre existing greenhouses, fertilizer, et cetera from neighboring farms. It was ambitious, and I was panicking until I heard we weren't going to be doing it all by hand. With some saws, the bulldozers and backhoe, we wouldn't need to worry about clearing a swath around the Orchards, and on some of the house's front lawns to widen the streets and allow for buffer zones. Some of the families even welcomed it, because it meant their yard was gone, but their house was within the area where we planned on building the innermost borders. The houses across the street were left out, but the families were okay with that, too, because they were either long gone, living on campus, or moaning for lunch.

[Students weave around us as they pass between classes. While most students are of traditional college age, there is a notable population of older and younger than traditionally aged students. There is excited discussion about a party this coming evening. It will be hosted at a nearby co-educational campus, opening its doors for the first time since the war.]

Marana was a taskmaster, and smart, but we still cut it close. Even with the acquired construction machines, the brick, the cement and one guy who was a real foreman. Even with, after another two weeks, around seven hundred people, all furiously working to create a haven from Zack. We cut it close. We still had television and internet streams, so as we neared completion of Perimeter One, we watched the Battle of Yonkers during our water breaks. We'd think we were spent, go put up our feet to watch the battle progress and be scalded into a furious new work pace. We were panicking. Marana looked stricken. She wasn't working on bulldozing the trees, collecting the wood, smoothing the ground, preparing the mortar, laying the brick or installing the wrought iron fences. But no one wanted to trade places with her. I'm sure she relied quite heavily on Professors Gaines and Wells, and Baozhai, Courtney and Justin, who advised her a great deal. But she had to plan ahead.

The news was brutal. We tried to watch reruns of shows that some stations were broadcasting for - hell, who knows why? We tried to unwind to them is what I'm saying. There was this reality television island show for a bit early on. We started watching that to get ideas on how they were setting up. Then, they imploded, live.

The one part of the news she sort of trusted was the weather. The meteorologists were the only people who were still willing and able to deliver sound estimates and predictions based on fact. The cumulative incidents, the seasonal wild forest fires that went unchecked and every "minor" incident that released a little more pollution all built up. Then Yonkers happened. Both American continents were clogged with everything that had been happening, and Yonkers was a little too close to home for comfort. The shit hitting the fan was always just a prewar expression to describe the smell affecting everywhere. It reached whole new levels of meaning that summer.

Marana had gone several steps more and expanded Cedar's plan even further, including some of the school's buildings that would be more difficult to fence in, but damn it she was going to preserve the school's integrity, and no one would argue with her, remaining professors and faculty included. Cedar's plan had accounted for most of the school's original acreage. Marana wanted it all.

At some point, she developed a sixth sense and took to carrying a pistol on her hip, somehow knowing when one of the infected workers was about to turn. She would appear just as someone was beginning to drag their last. She had a list of the infected, you see. She would put a casual hand on their shoulder, invite them for some iced tea and take them around the building, towards some picnic tables. A couple minutes later, having delivered a final gift of a cool drink and a friendly smile, we'd all hear the shot. Then Marana would head back to work. Cataloging supplies, creating more permanent housing assignments, rationing food.

Couldn't she have delegated some of those tasks?

No. Every able body needed to be building and reinforcing that fence. Besides, too young and inexperienced, and they'd screw something up. Anyone too old or frail would be sent with one or two strong guys to collect hay.

Hay?

Yes. And sand, for Perimeter Two.

She was planning on building Perimeter Two that same year? In a couple of weeks?

No, she was more pragmatic than that. We needed to collect as much sand, straw and dirt as possible. Luckily, terraforming the areas around One helped with collecting a lot of easy boulders, dirt, and firewood for later, as it happens. It also evened out and packed the ground, making for a more stable foundation.

She had done the math. Winter was going to come early, and it was going to hit hard. Who knew what spring would bring? She was going to have the dirt already piled into neat piles all along the perimeter, ready to be worked and built into Perimeter 2 by the time the snow fell. She needed to send the more frail on food runs, too. And anyone who knew how to handle horses, anyone on the equestrian team, needed to go collect horses from nearby stables. There were a thousand tasks to do. We'd have to see which would reach campus first, ghouls or snow.

Tell me about what happened, then. How did the first winter go?

[We have continued to walk the campus, seeing the now fruitful Orchard orchards, the lakes, stables and are now overlooking a few of the many fields.]

We finished Perimeter One in time, a day and a half after Yonkers. We had worked to exhaustion and waited for everything to dry, hoping the fence would keep them out. Marana had other plans. She send a couple of her lieutenants under heavy guard to strategic junctions with instructions to strand cars in a pile up at the junctions. She was still open to taking people in, but she wasn't going to risk our location on a flood of the undead as they ploughed their way north. It was an extremely risky move, sending the teams that far south.

The moment One looked like it'd be finished in a half day, she sent them south towards Springfield so they could disrupt bridges and routes leading to campus. Campus was strategically placed, compared to the rest of the five colleges, and compared to coastal, city campuses. It sat with a river to the west, a small mountain set protected it to the north. A sparsely populated zone for miles to the east. The problem lay south. The air base a little south of campus was a plus, in case the military did indeed try to evacuate or supply civilians, we would be a prime choice. Further, they'd left an army custodial team there to maintain the airfield. They made it clear to us that we were on our own but, nonetheless, it gave us a sense that were weren't entirely alone. But the problem remained in its direct connections south, which were already highly trafficked, though the tide was ebbing. We needed to loosen our ties with Chicopee, Springfield, Hartford and New York.

That wasn't all. Just as we were finishing up the fence and road-blocking teams had been dispatched, Marana gathered more people and sent them on some final supply runs for food and medicine. The pharmacies and hospitals had already been picked over for a lot of things like aspirin, but things like insulin, codine and lidocaine aren't usually the first things people grabl. We cleaned everything out and added it to the pharmacy Mr. Chen had basically bought for us.

You might be about to ask whether it was a little late to do food runs for around seven hundred people? Yes, but there was a method to her madness. People had forgotten about fast food stored in bulk. The fatty, greasy, high calorie, quickly made food. We had spent weeks, months if I know Marana, and who knows what provisions Cedar had tucked away, hoarding dried beans, rice and other staples. Now, she was looking for quick calorie food. No one had raided the fast food freezers yet, so from a mere handful of stores and the local middle and high schools, we were able to grab entire banqueting feasts. The school had been preparing for it's own academic year, so all the freezers were already chock-full and ready to feed a campus of 2200 students while we had less than 800. As long as our generators kept us warm, we'd be able to feed ourselves through the winter and have the strength to plant crops come the spring.

Marana let everyone who wasn't a food runner or a bridge blocker rest. By now, we had more people coming, looking for a safe place. Most just passed us by, too spooked after watching Yonkers. They'd be driving a prius filled with jugs of water, food, guns and their dog, give us a once over, at our scrawny gate, shake their heads and keep going. That was fine. We wanted people who wanted us. Marana still had that stricken look, but couldn't stop. She sent parties looking for livestock. Chickens, goats, and meat rabbits were what she was looking for. Cows eat too much, their shit is worthless, they're loud, slow, they erode soils. If they were all we could find, then fine, but they'd be the first to be sacrificed when times got hard. We got lucky. A few of the local farmers wanted sanctuary and brought the chickens, goats, rabbits, feed, cages. More, they brought experience in farming and planting. And they had fruit-bearing orchards of their own that we could harvest from, assuming we could access them. The beekeeper, James, came which probably saved us, since the winters were so long. The bees and greenhouses were major.

Justin and the others came back safe. Marana was lucky, because if they hadn't, the group's trust in her leadership might have been challenged, regardless of how much support she had from the founders. Turns out the army custodial team liked the idea and even helped out when Justin asked. It almost didn't matter. Even though they'd successfully blocked off the access points on the junctions and arteries that led to campus, they had to book it back to campus with Zack on their tails. Marana had ordered people who knew how to use the tools in the theatre department shop to prepare hand weapons. Those early weapons didn't last long, but by our third year in, they were basically masters at making sturdy, efficient Zack Crackers. We needed them.