They found plenty of volunteers to help Max and Zeke carry the venison. As the entire group walked back toward the center of the village, the destruction and general air of trashiness faded. Messy dwellings, half constructed out of plywood, two-by-fours, and tarps before being abandoned, became fewer in number. There was order through the meadow—pathways emerged, trod by many feet. It still wasn't pretty, but looked less like a dump yard.

Morgan was surprised to see that some of the cargo containers had been emptied and moved to create larger spaces between them. Others had been pushed together to create larger units.

Timberly saw her looking and smirked. "Oh, you like our double-wides?"

"Yeah, I can’t believe no one thought about putting them together before.”

"Colton's idea," Timberly admitted. "We cut doors out of the sides with some heavy-duty metal pliers, and used sledgehammers to knock the rest out. We were thinking of pushing three or four together to make a roomy house, but the containers are, like, pure steel. They're a pain in the ass to move.”

"I bet." She took a moment to look over a pair which had been linked together end to end. Some of the storage containers had doors on either side. Putting two together created a long, boxy tunnel. But the containers weren't flush with one another because the heavy doors and hinges got in the way to create a gap. Someone had solved this by laying a sheet of plastic on the roof and weighing it down with stones. The loose ends of the sheeted plastic waved in the warm breeze. Not pretty. But it kept the structure water-proof.

"How did you push the containers together? Tie ropes and drag them?"

Colton sidled up to join the conversation. "Something like that, but we had to use chains. The ropes kept snapping—too much weight."

"Chains? Wouldn't that be hard to get a grip on?"

He nodded. "We dug out under the containers and placed logs under them to roll them over the top. It takes all the rest of us who are left to do it. Dangerous, too." He rolled up his sleeve to show off his arm. A fresh, purple welt extended from his wrist to his elbow like the world's worst blood blister.

Morgan winced. "How did that happen?"

"One container rolled a little too fast. Once it gets moving, we have to throw logs down in front to keep up momentum. I almost didn't pull out my arm in time."

Morgan let out a breath, imagining that. "You're lucky you didn't break your arm.” She touched the bruise gingerly, finding his skin warm to the touch.

He smiled a sort of devil-may-care grin at her and opened his mouth to say something— probably jock-ish and bullheaded, but charming.

That was exactly when a snide voice cut in. "Oh. It's you. I thought you died."

Morgan knew who it was without turning to look. And she was still touching Colton’s bruised arm. She dropped her hand and turned.

"Neveah," she said carefully.

She had to give credit where it was due. Neveah didn’t look like she had been living rough the last few months. Her skin was free of makeup, but she managed to looked as fresh as if she had just stepped out of a shower. She had her thick, dark hair tied up in an intricate set of braids, woven artfully in with a dried vine. Not one strand was out of place. Her clothes, too, were free of stains and dirt, her shirt artfully cut into a sort of a halter top to deal with the afternoon heat. Neveah was a girl who wielded her natural beauty as a weapon.

And Morgan had just been touching her boyfriend. Great.

Neveah stepped forward, pointedly looking her up and down. Even though Morgan held a good inch of height over her, she felt small. "I thought you were going to find aliens or UFOs or something. What happened?”

"Um." Didn't she see Al? A human-sized, feathered raptor was hard to miss. Morgan glanced around and spotted him. He had fallen back to Max and Zeke to supervise the handling of the deer meat. Must be hungry again.

Neveah turned, following Morgan's gaze. The look of blood draining from her face as she spotted Al was deeply satisfying.

With a gasp, Neveah drew back a step, laying one hand protectively over her lower stomach. "What the hell is that thing?"

Morgan couldn't help herself. "One of the aliens I found."

Neveah whipped back around to her, dark eyes narrowed.

Colton stepped in, throwing his uninjured arm lazily over Neveah's shoulders. "How are you feeling, baby?" he asked in a soft tone that grated every one of Morgan's nerves. "You better, now?”

"What the hell did she bring into our home, Colton? What is that thing?" Neveah's voice grew shrill as she pointed an accusing finger Al's way.

"He's not a thing. His name is Al," Morgan snapped.

Colton, though, took Neveah's shrillness in stride. "He's an ally, maybe." Then, with not even a glance at Morgan, he drew the other girl away. "Don't let it stress you out. Now that you're up, you should have some of Zeke's broth. He says it's his grandmother's recipe..." Together, they walked out of easy hearing range.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Neveah’s hand still lay protectively over her belly. If there was a bump yet, Morgan couldn’t tell.

She turned from them to catch Timberly's gaze. Her friend saw her expression and rolled her eyes in acknowledgement. "Yep."

"Colton's the father?" Morgan asked flatly.

"She says so."

Great. Neveah already hated Morgan, and now she was pregnant, she was only going to get moodier.

That's not fair, a small voice inside chided her. She has to be terrified for herself and her child.

She immediately shut it down and turned to walk over to Al.

Max and Zeke were busy unpacking the venison and loading it into a cargo container being used as a smokehouse. They were debating either putting the meat up on prebuilt shelves or finding a way to string it up on racks like they had with the strips of fish inside.

Al, who was not impressed with human methods of cooking, was trying to communicate that good meat was best after it was wrapped in big frond leaves and left out in the sun to cure for a few days. Unfortunately, his raptor lips and tongue could not produce decipherable English.

Also, Max and Zeke were trying to load all of the meat into the container.

Morgan stepped in and argued that since Al had killed the deer, he should get first choice of the meat. It was only fair.

Max took one long look at Al’s claws. “What does he want?”

Al picked a thick haunch and some of the puddled blood that had pooled in a low point in the tarp on the way over. The humans got the rest. Considering that included the prized backstraps, everyone left satisfied.

Zeke, who seemed to be coming around to Al, spoke up. "I bet he'd love the bone jelly my Ma used to make."

"Bone jelly?" Morgan repeated.

He nodded. “She used to boil the marrow of beef bones and cool it down, then make cubes to throw into soup later. No reason you couldn't just eat the cubes," he added with a glance to Al. "But I can't remember if she added anything to make it firm up or not."

Morgan frowned and glanced back the way they had come. If there was a Knowledge Transfer Device around, Zeke would have been able to call up the memory perfectly. Too bad the closest one was at the border between ranges.

"I do like marrow," Al offered.

Morgan smiled. "We'll get you to like cooking one way or another."

Al suddenly tensed, which gave a her momentary warning before someone rested a hand on her shoulder. She turned, surprised. It was Colton. He had returned, thankfully without Neveah.

He also looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Sorry about earlier. Neveah—She's, well, we're—”

Morgan didn't want to hear it. She told herself she didn't care, either.

There was nothing between them.

"It's fine," she said, stopped, and then shook her head. "No, actually, it isn't fine.” She looked around and made sure Zeke and Max were in the container and out of immediate hearing range before she hissed, “You got her pregnant? How could you be so stupid?"

He jerked back as if he’d been slapped. “We thought we were being careful! It's not like there are condoms around."

"Yeah, well, it's not like there are doctors around, either. What if something goes wrong?"

"You don't think I know that? That she doesn't know it?" he snapped. The flash of honest fear in his eyes took her aback. “We didn’t plan for this to happen.”

Al let out a querying sound—half growl, half croon. It was a sort of, ‘Do we have a problem, here?’ noise.

Shaking her head in a quick negative, Morgan forced herself to let out a breath, and her irritation along with it. “I know. I—that was out of line." She hesitated, wondering if she had the right to ask. "Is she okay?"

"Yeah. I guess." Colton ran his fingers back through his dark blond hair. "She has real bad morning sickness. We’re trying tea and broth and stuff, but every smell nauseates her, and—“

"I get it. That would put me in a bad mood, too." She could feel a little sympathy toward Neveah for that, if nothing else. Plus, facing down giving birth without any prenatal care or doctors or midwives or anything? Yikes.

Another reason why they had to get back to Earth.

She shook her head and glanced around, taking in the burned-out fire pits, all the disused storage containers, and the lack of people. She’d seen less than fifty since arriving. "Colton, what happened here? I thought you said you were going to get everyone working together. The village looks like a war zone."

"It looks worse than it actually is," he said. "I tried to get people to pull together, start community projects. That sort of thing.”

"Community projects?"

He nodded. "I wanted to bring the cargo containers together—create separate areas for housing and storage and latrine pits. Or just get people on a chore schedule. Some would pitch in for a day or two and then screw off and pretend to forget they were needed. My guys would end up doing all the work, and that made for bad feelings all around."

"Donut's crew?" she guessed.

"Yeah." He sighed. "He just wanted to bum around his fire pit and make his brew. Lots of his people said there wasn't a point in assigning work because we already had everything we could want. I mean, there's no McDonalds, but it wasn't like anyone was in danger of starving."

“There wasn’t a strong enough Matron to keep them from fouling their own nest,” Al said wisely from not too far away. He'd found a fern-like plant somewhere and was outwardly busy wrapping his meat up. But it was clear he'd been using his sharp hearing to eavesdrop.

“What did he say?” Colton asked.

She wasn’t in the mood to explain raptor society so she simply said, “That’s when things fell apart?”

Colton shrugged. “He threw some massive parties at the end. Things got rowdy."

She suspected that was an understatement. What grass was left showed burned out fire pits, stubs of charcoal, and scorch marks everywhere.

"Then Donuts said it was time to leave," Colton added. "He took half the village with him."

Morgan gave him a hard look. "How many people are left? Exactly."

He blinked and looked momentarily surprised, as if he hadn’t expected her to call him out on his bullshit. Then he sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Ninety, give or take. A few migrate back and forth between the villages—we can't stop them, even if I wanted to."

Ninty out of two-hundred and fifty. Max had said the village had split in two, but they were left with barely a third.

“When they left… Did anyone get hurt?” But what Morgan really wanted to ask was, ‘Did Lucas get hurt?'

"No." Colton shook his head. "It wasn't like that. It was actually kind of peaceful. They just took whatever stuff they had and settled about a mile and a half east... or whatever direction the suns rise around here." He brightened. “But the people who stayed are the ones who are willing to put the work in to get things done. You think the village looks bad now, but this is after we've been cleaning for a few weeks. Assigning chores and stuff is a lot more manageable with fewer people. Maybe it's for the best."

"No," Morgan said sharply. "It's not. The only way we're going to survive is if we all stand together."

His gaze locked on her. "What do you mean?"

She glanced over at Al. He bobbed his head, and she nodded back. The silent communication was clear: Tell him.

Neveah's jealousy be damned. Morgan took Colton's good arm and led him away from other ears. "Let me tell you what’s waiting out there.”