Mack was finally going to work with the rest of the men. He had been made a brother on his fifteenth birthday. Roland had made a speech about how proud he was of Mack, how Mack had made the whole compound better and stronger through his sweat and labor. Roland told Mack that the boy would always be a son to him, and he would continue to give him and his family purpose.

  Now Mack was riding on the front seat, up high as a passenger in one of their semi-trucks. It was the first time he'd left the compound in a vehicle in all the years since they'd come here. This time Mack paid much closer attention to the landscape. Their home was tucked into a narrow valley up high in the mountains. The dirt road itself was well-graded after all, Mack and the others spent enough time keeping it that way. It wound nearly twenty miles through the mountains before they reached a paved road. The last few hundred yards were rough though. Roland's people never improved the road past the last curving bit of canyon that concealed the whole place. The pickups managed the ruts and dips just fine, but the two big rigs had to be shepherded carefully so that their trailers wouldn't bottom out.

Once on the highway, the convoy put the mountain range behind them quickly. It took less than half an hour to reach a little town at a crossroads.

  They stopped the trucks there while Roland got out and spoke with an old man at a dirty gas station. Then they continued west. As they drove Mack started seeing more and more signs of civilization - things he remembered even if he didn't miss them. The young man couldn't help but gawk at the big plasteel buildings that began to dot the landscape. Most places were still brick, wood, steel, no different than the homes he could remember as a child, but the plasteel buildings were incredible. They shone against the backdrop, the white almost glowing in the sun. They tended to be very straight and plain, but somehow they always seemed to fit into the landscape – the rigid angles and corners feeling natural to Mack. The contrast between the bunkers he'd help build and these gleaming structures kept him distracted.

  While they drove, about half of the men in the little caravan were putting on armor. It had taken them a long time to figure out how to piece together the armor that had come in on a previous hunting trip, and almost as long to fit individual pieces to the different Made Men on the trip. Every joint was carefully fitted so that no matter how he stretched nothing opened up between the white plates. Glossy and white, Mack felt a bit like a stormtrooper in his, except the helmet was totally different. The helmet was shaped like a bucket, with straps that let it move a bit with his head, even though it mostly rode on a round seal at his shoulders. The front half was made out of a fine mesh of plasteel – it let him breathe easily and he could see out well too, especially during the day.

  After earlier work trips had begun bringing back armor, Roland had the rest had argued about whether to use it. They had experimented with the armor, and after some of the men talked about the cops they had seen wearing the gear they all decided that it would let them be a bit more aggressive than usual while working.

  Eventually, Roland pulled his truck off at an old rest stop. The bathrooms and shelter had been burnt out, leaving only a crumbling brick shell, but the open lot was an easy place to pull the vehicles into a loose circle. The men were divided by vehicle – each pickup carried eight men, the two semis only had three. There were two big panel vans along this time, too. But those only had a driver each. Roland went from truck to truck, giving quiet instructions.

  When Roland got to Mack's truck, he spoke quietly, though you could hear a grin in his voice. “You're last in the line. Follow me, and don't pull through the gate until after we've waved you in. There'll be a big turnaround in front, pull along that and park as soon as you've got the back end of the trailer is pointed at the doors. Don't worry about backing up, this should be fast. As soon as you stop, John, you throw the back doors open and wait. Mack, you Jesus stay in the cab, keep the truck running and be ready to pull out. The other truck will be picking up the load, so just keep the back open and empty until we all get back. I'm expecting that we'll have to leave most of the pickups behind, so you'll be responsible for our getaway.

  “Understand?”

  “Yessir,” said Mack's dad, the driver. Mack and John nodded too, although you couldn't see Mack's head move through the helmet. John's visor was up, so Mack could see him nod. Mack never heard anyone else's instructions, but despite his curiosity about the plan he kept silent. He was determined to be as hard-working and strong as all the other men. He stood quietly until the order came to get back in and move on.

  This time, instead of the leisurely and careful pace of the trip so far, the trucks all seemed to fly down the road, engines roaring in the midday heat. The group left the highway, the pickups racing ahead while Roland's truck and the two semis slowed down and fell back. The destination was a large boxy building, surrounded by an old and rusty chainlink fence. A single tall flagpole stood in front, the flag limp in the afternoon sun. The building was mostly built of plasteel, but the pearly whiteness of the structure was marred by several big steel doors placed all around it. Even though the doors had been painted, Mack knew they weren't plasteel – several of them were broken open already, apparently after being rammed by speeding pickups. As the big tractors carefully rocked their way over a broken-down fence, a massive explosion raised a small mushroom cloud on the other side of the building. It was followed a moment later by a second explosion on Mack's left.

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As they pulled up, Mack could see bright lights flashing inside the windows, and the shapes of people running back and forth. He couldn't hear anything except a ringing in his ears. The truck pulled around as instructed, and Mack watched as John jumped out to run and open the back doors of the truck. Mack jumped out too, as backup and to help watch the cab of the big semi. As he jumped down though, he was surprised when one of his feet jerked out from under him, spilling him flat on the ground.

  He started to get up but fell again when one of his elbows suddenly folded under his weight. And it was raining, too. He could see puffs all around him where raindrops were kicking dust into the air. Bemused, Mack tried again to get up, despite the way his body tried to jerk now and then outside his control. It wasn't until he felt the sting of grit in his face that he realized that someone was shooting at him. He saw a bullet ricochet off his shoulder and bite into the ground, the ping and whine of its passing just audible as the buzzing noise in Mack's head started to fade.

  Looking over, he saw that John was on the ground too, the doors of the trailer still latched shut. That meant Mack had a job to do and couldn't just stand around.

  Staggering forward, he only fell once more as he made his way to the back, throwing the doors open. That done, he got into the trailer to wait. He was starting to hear again – there was lots of shooting going on, mostly from inside the building. He could hear shouting too, and the shrill pulse of an alarm going off.

  He stayed ducked in the trailer, watching the entrance and visible windows as he did. He thought maybe he should figure out where the guy who had been shooting at him had been, so he could shoot back. But no, he was supposed to follow orders. It felt like he had been in the trailer for days already. He knew it hadn't been all that long, but he was thirsty. His mouth was so dry it took some thought and effort to keep his tongue from sticking to his teeth. And he needed to use the bathroom.

  Another eternity. More shouting, more shooting, and still the alarm blared over everything.

  Yet another eternity. More explosions started shaking the building, not as big as the two big explosions that head deafened him before, but a lot louder than the gunshots had been. After each boom was a brief lull in the shooting, punctuating the fight like a monstrously irregular metronome.

  And then Mack felt the truck start to move. No one else was in the back except Mack, weren't they supposed to be more getting on with him? That's what he thought he had been told. As they pulled away, he saw John on the ground on the side of the truck, still where he'd fallen the first time. John had put the mesh visor of his helmet up. When they'd practiced, John had always hated the armor, said it was hard to breathe, hard to see. Mack didn't get it, maybe your head got kinda hot but it wasn't any different than a bike helmet. But now John was laying on his back with a red pool glistening on the pavement around him.

  Mack could only watch as the building fell away in the distance behind them.

They kept driving west – farther both from the fight and from the compound. Mack could only sit in the back and hold on, he didn't have a way to talk to his dad or anyone else. They pulled up on the side of the road, and after a moment Mack's dad stuck his head around. The man slumped as soon as he saw Mack sitting inside, he crossed himself and muttered something that his son couldn't hear.

  Then he climbed into the trailer and spoke louder, “Quick, we have to get you out of that armor. I don't think anyone's chasing us, but if they spot that getup we'll be in trouble.”

“Dad, what happened? Where is everyone?” Mack's hands were starting to shake, which made it hard to get at the straps and latches to get the armor off. The whole system had to go on and off in order and was set in a way that made it very difficult to manage without the cooperation of the occupant. He had to pull a tab inside his helmet with his teeth, first, then they could start working on down. Neck, shoulders, back, and so on.

  “I'm not sure. It was supposed to be fast, easy. We were going to steal some generators. There's supposed to be some there that don't need fuel, it would have meant a lot fewer raids. Roland said it would be easy, just a few rent-a-cops who'd give up as soon as we were in. The vans exploded at the main entrances to keep people out and give the cops something to focus on while we worked.

  “There had to have been more guards there than just a few security guys. You heard the shooting. Those weren't normal security types. I don't know what happened to everyone – some of the pickups got out, that's when I pulled out. I saw John got killed, but who knows about everyone else. We're all on radio silence now, until we get back to base.” Dad helped him finish taking off everything and they dumped it into a duffel bag. Then they got back out of the trailer and ducked into a parking garage nearby. It was a big crumbling cement structure between a bunch of old office buildings. The whole place was overgrown with brown weeds, and the office windows on the first couple of floors were mostly boarded up.

  Mack was surprised to see it, he hadn't realized they were next to anything at all. He figured they had stopped in a field or something on the side of the road. As soon as he realized he was surprised Mack laughed at himself a bit. He had been inside a big windowless trailer, he couldn't have noticed anything outside. So how could he have had any idea what to expect?

  And then he remembered John laying in his own blood, and the humor left.

Dad had a key to a big van parked in the garage. They got in and made their way home to the mountains.