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Workers started unloading the trucks, moving stoves and propane tanks and flamethrowers down wooden planks and into the basement of one of the houses. Or what used to be the basement, because the first floor was gone. While we worked, Tyris inspected the cans in the bomb shelter, checking for dents and bulges. When she’d given the all-clear, everyone over the age of ten made a chain from the shelter and passed the crates to the supply post. Under Aleka’s orders, we got to work with shovels and crowbars digging up sections of fence and replanting them in twin arcs closer to the building my dad had selected as headquarters, a house marginally more intact than most, only missing its second floor and with a gaping hole where one-third of its front used to be. The sun showed no mercy, the heat pouring out of the sky and emanating from the cracked, baked ground. Some people draped their jackets over their heads or rolled up their shirt sleeves and pant legs, but it made no difference. Sweat drenched my back and my neck felt like it was on fire when my dad finally came over, sized up our work, and told Aleka we could knock off for the day.
    I collapsed in the burning shade and surveyed our new home. It didn’t look like much, in fact it looked like a fort whose army had already surrendered to the enemy. The transplanted fence leaned crazily, anchored by nothing more solid than dirt. The buildings could have been mistaken for piles of rubble. But the adults made approving noises as they studied it, so I guess it was no worse than the bombed-out places they’d seen before.
    My dad took the opportunity to deliver a speech, or as much of one as he ever made.
    “This is a secure place,” he said to everyone who lay there, sick and dizzy with the heat. Aleka kept quiet, but she stared hard at him as he spoke. “There’s food, shelter, clear sightlines to the plain. We have to be prepared to defend it.”
    “To the bitter end,” Yov groaned. I guess three hours on anyone’s good side was about all he could handle.
    Night was coming by the time my dad had made all the minor adjustments to our defenses he always made. While he and Aleka roamed the compound, repositioning lookouts and tinkering with the location of the trucks, Tyris and a couple other adults doled out small rations of the food she’d decided was safest to eat. The meal consisted of slices of some dark purple vegetable and a lumpy white paste, all of it tasting sour and metallic. Thanks to my dad, there was only enough of it to make my mouth water for more. But for once, my stomach groaned with a noise that wasn’t pure emptiness.
    As the temperature dropped the few merciful degrees night afforded us, everyone in camp who wasn’t on sentry duty settled down to sleep. I watched people hunt around to make sure everything they’d had with them at our last encampment was still there, every button of their uniforms, every nail or utensil or photograph they’d stuffed in their packs. Next they freed their feet from their patched, splitting boots, stripped off their belts and sweat-stained uniform jackets, and hung everything on the fence posts to air out until morning. Most dropped off to sleep instantly, with the conditioning that comes from never knowing when you might need to wake up. Four of the adults, though, stayed up into the night, bent over pieces of tin they’d flattened into wiggly mirrors, to complete their bedtime rituals.
    I’d been watching the four perform the same acts for six months. But I still couldn’t watch without a knot forming in my stomach.
    Two of them shaved or plucked hair from their heads, their arms, their eyebrows, then collected the trimmed hair in jars and tucked the containers into the deepest pouches of their packs. The other two cut or chewed their fingernails to the nub and stashed the clippings in similar containers. The next time we made a trip to the river, they’d empty the jars and watch the sluggish water carry dead