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laugh about how they’d be such great friends when Sandra probably hadn’t had anything to find humor in. I’d seen with my own eyes what happened to college-aged women after the invasion. There wasn’t anything to laugh about.
    Branda must have caught my mood shift. “Where is she?”
    “I don’t know. Most likely dead,” I said.
    “I’m so sorry, Evan,” she cooed and started to get up from the bed, no doubt to come and comfort me. I waved her off. Everything about her suddenly seemed so fake. I hated her at this very moment. I hated myself as well because I knew as soon as Ellie fell asleep, Branda would want more than I wanted to give, and I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.
    “What happened to her?” Ellie asked.
    “Sandra? I don’t know, Honey. I never found her,” I said with sadness.
    Ellie jumped off my bed and ran over to my chair, climbing up in my lap and putting her arms around my neck.
    “I’m sorry, Evan,” she said, and I could feel little tears soaking into my shirt.

CHAPTER 7 - Truth and Consequences
     
    When my week of rest was over, I packed my gear and headed to the main house to meet up with Tony and get our next assignment. Sometimes we would patrol the same route consecutively, sometimes we would get a different sector to range around in. The same sector a few times in a row would give us a keen eye for any changes since the last time we’d been through the area, and then we’d get a change-up to a different sector for a bit to make sure we stayed sharp. We’d talk to other scouts who were heading out if they were getting our sector or vice-versa to let them know of anything they should pay attention to.
    I mounted the steps to the main house and Jerry Glavin met me at the door before I could knock. Mom must have had him on door-greeting duty. Either he’d done something right and his gig was a promotion or a gold star of recognition, or he’d screwed up and this was to humble him a bit. I’d never bothered to listen to gossip about what went on in council or the even juicier rumors of what eccentricities Mom had. Some were about purported sexual deviances like orgies or multiple lovers at once. Some were about how Mom had a working generator and a ton of media equipment in a hidden basement and the council was privy to it. One I had overheard had to do with the council and Mom breeding some weed that could make you go blind.
    People would talk about anything, whether it was true or not. Worse, people would believe anything, true or not. Even after the bulls landed and almost wiped out our civilization, humans hadn’t learned much of a lesson. I suppose those of us at the Farm were a rung higher on the evolutionary ladder in the fact that we’d somehow found others of like-mindedness and had, even more amazingly, kept it all together and running mostly smooth for twenty years.
    But even within the borders of the illustrious Farm, humans were only one step ahead of those on the outside. The same petty arguments, gossip vines, and prejudices existed in here. We just had learned how to keep it in check to where it never interrupted the well-oiled machine of… whatever this was that we had. A democracy? A constitutional monarchy? A collective? I didn’t know. I didn’t really care. If someone couldn’t keep it in check, they were shown the gate.
    A group of nine scouts already waited in the dining room. I made ten, and was the last one to arrive. Mitch Duncan passed around sheets of paper to each scout. I was a little surprised at this, paper being a rare commodity these days with no paper mills and the fact that wood pulp products tended to have a short shelf life in this brave new world. I looked down at mine. It was blank. Confused, I looked over at Tony’s paper. It was blank as well. I thought for a second that maybe we were supposed to write down whatever Mom or a councilor told us to, but I glanced over at Shanna’s piece of paper. Her and her partner’s scouting