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by each member of the gang until rotters eventually overran it outside of Manchester. Josephine had survived the attack and wandered the countryside until picked up by one of Paul’s raiding parties near Newington, nearly catatonic and unable to remember how she had gotten there. With a little time and a lot of kindness, Josephine had come out of her shock and became one of Natalie’s girls.
    Her girls, Natalie thought derisively. It sounded so fucking sexist, but the term aptly applied. Out of all those who had found refuge at camp, slightly less than half were women. Very few, either male or female, had brought along any skills that would benefit the group’s survival. For better or worse, Paul had erred on the side of survival over egalitarianism. Anyone with military or law enforcement experience had been drafted into raiding parties. Those without such experience had been confined to camp and assigned to more mundane chores such as farming, the motor pool, the mess hall, planting, and the like.
    Natalie had been among the latter until she grew tired of sitting around on her ass contributing nothing. After one raid to Kittery, Robson had returned with a cache of World War II-era Mauser rifles. None of the men in the raiding party had wanted them since they already were equipped with more powerful assault rifles and shotguns. So Natalie had convinced Paul to let her have the weapons and train those who stayed behind so they could defend the compound in an emergency. She had set up a training schedule of an hour a day. Everyone had attended at first, but after a week attendance had declined as most people felt relatively confident in their ability to handle a rifle. By the end of the second week, the only ones who had continued to show up were fourteen of the women in the camp.
    Natalie never knew for certain why these women stayed with the training. She had always assumed it was because it had given them a sense of empowerment after being at the mercy of a collapsed society for so long, or maybe because of the camaraderie. Or maybe they had just been bored and were looking for something to keep them preoccupied. For whatever reason, the fifteen of them trained every afternoon for almost two hours. Emily, who had hunted prior to the outbreak, had led the training. Only a few of the girls had ever shot a weapon before, and their levels of skill varied. Over time they had become more than just proficient with the Mausers, with most of the girls being able to hit their mark at fifty yards at least two-thirds of the time. Along with the newfound skills had come an increased confidence in their abilities and themselves. All of which had paid off two months ago.
    It had happened shortly after the raiding party had returned from a morning run to Wells. Someone had forgotten to secure the main gate, and a pack of sixteen rotters had stumbled onto the entrance and easily pushed their way into the outer compound. Thankfully, Natalie and the girls had been training at the time. They had rushed into the outer compound, formed a line abreast in front of the gated tunnel, and systematically took down each one. It had taken just over a minute to eliminate the threat, and not a single rotter got closer than twenty yards to the tunnel, but that single incident had solidified the girls’ place in the camp hierarchy.
    After that incident, Paul had made Natalie head of camp security. Because she and the girls were now responsible for protecting the compound, they were excused from all other duties, a sweet deal considering they now did little more than take care of stray rotters that wandered too close to the compound or occasionally accompanied the raiding party on supply runs. All of the girls still helped out around the camp, though, to prevent themselves from going stir crazy. The new-found prestige gave them a sense of self-worth and importance. It made them feel in control of their lives again. For many, it gave them a reason to go on