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of people like Adam and me. I get up and carefully walk around the edge. There’s a bulldozer up ahead with a massive metal scoop. At first I think they must have used it to dig the pit, but then I see there’s a scrap of clothing caught on the teeth of the scoop and I realize they were using it to fill it. Directly below me there are corpses reaching almost all the way up to the surface, piled up where they were tipped out. They look like they’re climbing over each other to get out.
    I jog back over to Adam, forcing myself to look away from the dead. How many sites like this were there, and are any still in operation? Even now as I’m wasting time here, are more of our people being killed elsewhere? Then another thought crosses my mind that makes me go cold: my daughter, Ellis. Did she end up in a place like this? Is she there now, waiting to die? Is she here? For a few desperate seconds I turn back toward the corpses and start looking through them, terrified the next face I see will be my little girl’s. Then, as quickly as sudden panic just took hold, common sense takes over again. If she’s here there’s nothing I can do. I have to believe she’s still alive. She’s all I’ve got left.
    “So where are they all?” Adam asks.
    “Who?”
    “The fuckers who did this. Where’d they go?”
    “I don’t know,” I answer as I lead him out behind the main building toward a group of three square-shaped, light-colored, prefabricated huts that look new in comparison to everything else. “Just abandoned the place, I guess. Maybe they were attacked?”
    “Hope the bastards got what they deserved.”
    Two of the almost identical shedlike buildings are locked. The corrugated metal roller door on the front of the third, however, is not. I open it fully and go inside. It’s small, cramped, and half full of bags of chemicals. Doesn’t matter. It’ll do for tonight. No one with any sense will come here, and even if they do, we’ll just play dead. I’d have fought side by side with any of the thousands of people who died here, but they’re just rotting meat now, and we’ll use them as cover.
    Adam sits down on a pile of sacks, struggling to get comfortable and still talking nonstop about nothing of any importance. I close the door, then find myself a scrap of space in the far corner of the hard concrete floor and try to sleep, resting my head on another plastic sack full of Christ-knows-what. It could be poisonous or corrosive, but it doesn’t matter. I cover it with my coat and close my eyes, too tired to care.

4
    I’M WOKEN BY A crash and a muffled cry of pain. I sit up quickly and look around the dark room, struggling for a second to decide where I am. The combination of the acrid chemical smell and the stench of decay helps me remember. Where’s Adam? I catch a momentary glimpse of him outside through the open door, hobbling back toward the main building. I grab a knife from my backpack and run after him. I’ve barely taken two steps out of the chemical storeroom when I hear other voices up ahead. There are people around the front of the cull site. I drag Adam out of the way, stopping only when we’re both pressed up tight against the outside wall at the back of the main killing chamber.
    “It’s Unchanged,” he whispers, voice full of nervous excitement. “I saw them.”
    “How many?”
    “Don’t know. Heard engines.”
    What the hell do I do now? Despite what Adam probably thinks, we can’t risk taking them on until we know how many we’re facing. There could be hundreds of them here, and if they’ve dared come out into the open like this then they’re probably armed to the teeth and ready to fight. What do they want? Maybe they’ve come to try to get this place restarted? Shit, maybe they’re here looking for us?
    “Wait here,” I tell him, pushing him toward an alcove. “Keep yourself under control and don’t do anything until I come back, okay? I’ll try to get a better look.”
    Adam