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teeth.”
    “Jo!” Rooney called out in a musical tone, still far away.
    I was making an attempt to process what she meant. All I could think about was that the Scaves were some sort of dog people who if shown another person’s teeth, would think of it as a threat and immediately attack that person for having done so.  
    “We’re coming!” she hollered back at him. “Just remember what I said,” she added in a whisper.
    The small huts where the Scaves lived came into view first when entering their camp. They were made up of mismatched items, some wood, some bricks finished off with rocks or leaves. It seemed whatever they had found, or took, was thrown together in order to make a shelter. The huts were very poorly made, and I wasn’t going to dare go near the ones that had rocks as a roof looking as though any wrong bump or movement inside or out could cause the whole thing to tumble down on your head.  
    “She’s right here,” Rooney shouted from up ahead.  
    He had obviously announced my arrival to the rest of them as I could hear the shuffling of feet dragging in the dust up ahead. My pulse sped up instantly. I took a deep breath and kept my head down as I trekked slowly on into the depths of the Scaves’ realm. When I finally did look up, I gasped.
    Jo had used the word gruesome. That didn’t even begin to describe the appearance of these underfed, filthy people who now gathered around to see my coming. Rooney held out his arms and pointed directly at me.  
    “There she is,” he announced. “Jo says she’s a Scave.”
    My eyes met with a woman on my left who only had one eye. The other side of her face was deformed and mostly skin now covered up the spot where her eye used to be. She didn’t even bother to try to hide it. Her hair was gray, frizzy and long. The skin on her cheeks sagged. She reached out a very skinny arm toward me as if to touch me. I uncomfortably moved out of her way so that she couldn’t get close. I huddled toward Jo’s side as I was eyed by even more Scaves. All of them turned to stare at me, their faces beholding curiosity filled with both concern and hatred at the same time. Scave men had long hair and beards, some of them reaching their waists. Their collar bones protruded out from their shirtless bodies, and their skin was covered in the dust from the ground as if permanently stuck there. A younger woman, probably in her 30s, drummed a long black fingernail along the side of her cheek as she examined me. I looked down at the ground. The smell of their unsanitary premises no longer bothered me. The fear of seeing the disgust in their beady, little eyes brought on a whole new more overwhelming sensation that outweighed the previous one.
    From the back of the crowd, an old man pushed his way through until he came to the front. He stood directly in front of me, his scraggly whitish-gray beard wrapped around his wrist. He held a crooked branch in the other hand as a cane to help prop himself up. The stench from his open mouth, which he breathed through, immediately made my nausea return as if something rotten was growing from inside his throat. He made a wheezing sound as he breathed, almost like a continuous growl. He had scars covering the skin on his face, and his teeth were sharp, the top ones overlapping his bottom lip in spots. He looked more like a beast than a man, far more horrific than any of the others. I clenched my fists at my side and swallowed hard.  
    “What are you?” he said, almost in a deep hiss.  
    It took every ounce of willpower I had not to run away right then and there. This was the kind of creature I pictured lurking on the banks of the Evadere beach at night when everything was black. This was a monster unlike anything my imagination could even have come up with, and yet here I was, standing in front of him, knowing this interrogation wasn’t going to end well. I barely knew anything about contributors or Scaves. I could put some of the pieces