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weaken the Event Exit Strategy.

[4] (i) If you are a lone Member who must travel to join your Group, proceed immediately to your Place or nearest rendezvous point. (ii) The First Phase of the Event Exit Strategy involves unacceptable risk to lone Members. As such, this phase is restricted to a Group-sanctioned excursion Party.

CHAPTER FIVE

    w hy before the Lull?” Mary asked again.
    Levi finally lit the cigarette. With the upper half of his face still polish-dark from the First Phase, and the black-and-white gleaming in hot, phosphor contours along his profile, he
looked
like Levi. This was a new person, a smoking person. We’d beaten the shit out of Adam and left him ducking in the parking lot, watching for cops.
    “The Lull is a contradiction,” I said. “We have to get the jump.”
    Mary was refolding her headkerchief in her lap. “What does it contradict?”
    Levi muted the black-and-white. “Those who think to get out are going to wait until things get quiet. ’Til people start running out of steam.”
    “Everybody’s high now,” I said. “Smashing and speeding and what the fuck else.”
    “Eventually, they’ll get tired,” Levi said, “and the misinformed will make a break for it.”
    Mary looked up. “So—”
    “Think about it,” I said. “Everything’s quiet, suddenly you’re the only one racing out of town.”
    “Bad idea,” Levi said. “You become game, prey. Something to chase.”
    “Or,” I said, “you think you’re getting the jump, but you just end up in a mob of evacuees. Everything starts over, but this time you’re fucked—stuck in your car on some road across town.”
    “But leave before the Lull,” Levi said, “and sure there’ll still be Outsiders gunning around, but the odds are on your side.”
    “Sickest numbers game ever,” Mary said.
    Or the best.
    “How can we tell when it’s before the Lull?”
    We
.
    “It’ll be a narrow window,” Levi said. “We think there’ll be a sudden rise in civil activity: sirens, emergency lights—that sort of thing. But it’ll be a false dawn. By that point, most Groups in town will have mobilized. The civvies will just get in everyone’s way, so they’ll be removed.”
    “But you guys are Salvagers, too, right? I mean—”
    “Mary,” I said, “beyond this room, there are only Outsiders. Predators, enemies. Targets. But it’s a two-way lens.”
    …
Trust no one…
.
    Mary’s phone rang. We tensed, watching as she pulled it from her pocket and set it against her jaw. She looked at us, hesitant, guilty-looking. I got up to monitor Broadway.
    “Hello.”
    Smoke was rising from the square.
    “What?”
    Someone was upset on the other end of Mary’s connection. I could hear garbled panic-speech.
    “
What?
”
    Somebody must’ve Placed the courthouse. With enough Members, it could be impenetrable. But no land.
    “Wait—”
    Which meant everything they needed would have to be Foraged. In an urban center. Eventually, it would become a death camp. And there was the matter of all these churches, if you stuck around in town. They’d find you. Prearranged mobs. Armed and hungry and divinely ordained.
    “No, Ruthie, just wait,” Mary said. “They won’t come in.”
    She had been staring at the ceiling, at the fishing net, staring phone-call distances at nothing. I turned around.
    Now she looked at me.
    “Just stay there,” she said into the phone.
    I talked like she wasn’t there. Like Mary wasn’t standing there.
    “Is this a bad idea?”
    Levi looked at Mary. This is how things worked. A decision was external, every time. Someone else’s doing. Beyond Group-thinking, even. This was Place-thinking.
    “I don’t care if it’s a bad idea,” Mary said, moving back and forth from the window to us.
    We ignored her, facing off. Generating thought. I had my sword in my hand, the .38 in my pocket.
    “You’ll have to Forage the place quickly,” he said.
    “What?” Mary tried to get between us.
    I grabbed her