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believe he wouldn’t be.  
    “I’m going to go out and pick up some supplies,” he said quietly to Alex after they’d put their collective six kids to bed. “We can’t leave them with nothing.”
    She nodded, her face drawn. “And I was always the pessimist.”
    “Not much left to feel optimistic about. This doesn’t seem to be stopping.”
    “At least they’ll all be together,” Alex replied, wiping an errant tear. “At least there’s a bunch of them, and a few of them are older, and maybe the state will let them—”  
    “There’s no state anymore. No one’s going to come in here and split them up, because there’s nowhere for them to go. You’ve seen the news.”
    “Well, I guess we just do what we can do while we’re still here to do it, and hope it’s enough,” she mumbled, reaching for her car keys. “Let’s get what we can.”
    There had been some looting around the city, mostly by kids that were left to their own devices, but on the whole, things were relatively calm. They drove to several grocery stores, picking up whatever they could get their hands on; canned goods, bottled water, frozen meat and vegetables. When they got home around midnight, Joe felt a bit better.
    “I’m going to convert most of my savings to cash tomorrow,” he said, as he loaded the freezer.
    “I’ll do the same,” his sister whispered, as she stocked the hall cupboard with toilet paper. “God help poor Leah and Rachel with all these boys.”
    “They’ll keep them in line,” Joe said, grinning wryly at his sister. “Just like you always kept us all in line.”
    “I can’t believe we’re planning for this.” She shook her head. “It’s necessary, but shit. I mean, I feel fine.”
    “Everyone feels fine until they don’t though, Al,” Joe replied. “You know that. Look at Mark, just last week, and Bec…” His voice cracked. “Even two nights ago, she thought it was allergies.”
    “At least it was quick,” Alex whispered, sitting down at the kitchen table. “We can thank God for that, I guess, and for the knowledge of that when our time comes.”
    “I’m not sure I’m in the mood to thank God for much these days, but I agree,” Joe nodded. “I guess we’ll just have to make the most the time we have left, Sis. Try and teach these kids what we can.”

    July 2012
    Campbell

    Lucy Campbell had always done her best thinking under the stars, late at night while the rest of the world slept. She’d done it when she was a little girl, tucked away in a low-income apartment in Toronto, sharing a bedroom with her two brothers while her mother worked two jobs and slept on the couch. It was there, on a balcony covered in pigeon shit, that she’d first imagined the end of the world.  
    Her end of the world was different than most kids, because it happened years earlier, when her mother had met with an unfortunate end on the wrong side of a knife one grey winter morning. She’d been on her way home from an overnight shift at a coffee shop in a bad part of town. At eight years old, it had marked Lucy’s transition to adulthood. The world falling apart? It had been her salvation; the only chance she had and she’d clung to the plague and pestilence like a life raft in a dark, rough sea. To her, all the death that had nearly ended human civilization meant she got her life back. She’d thrived on what she considered a second chance.  
    This night, her visitors occupied her thoughts. She’d considered their request for a meeting long and hard, because she didn’t like to plan her victories, and she knew she’d hate them enough to personally want to flatten them. She’d heard all about Connor Wilde from kid after kid, about his arrogance, his shitty attitude towards everyone that wasn’t him or his tight inner circle. She wasn’t sure, especially after meeting him, how he’d come as far as he had. Name recognition went a long way, she figured. It certainly wasn’t his charming personality