“Pssst.. pssst, Liz are you sleeping?” Connor whispered and reached out with his paddle to tap her foot. She jolted awake and yawned, finally letting her eyes come to rest on his.

"No."

Connor laughed quietly. There it was again, he hadn't done that in a long time. He liked the girl's company, even though he still wasn't certain that she wouldn't eventually shoot him in the back for what he had caused and more so what he had done to her uncle.

The canoe made a terrible scraping sound as he guided it onto the bank, just below the first house that they could see from the creek. They were in a small town called Lancaster, around a ten minute drive upstream from New Vista so he estimated it would be another hour or more of floating with the current.

"Lets stay here for the night. We both need some rest." He said

Elizabeth nodded and started to gather her things but she froze at the sound of a Sharlah dropship overhead. It was high, probably even in the clouds, but it still made them both uneasy.

"I think we're going to have to get used to that. There's more and more every day. They're winning." Connor said, dragging the canoe into the tall grass that lined the bank.

"I'll never get used to this and we shouldn't. I don't care if they're winning. They don't belong here and I'm going to kill them until they stop coming." Liz said coldly.

Connor reached out for a fist bump and to his surprise, he got it.

"We kill them until they stop coming."

Connor opened the door to the first house and if not for having Liz close behind, would have fallen back down the front stairs. A broom and dustpan clattered to the floor sending a jolt of adrenaline through his veins. He gathered himself and pressed forward through the doorway, his single round of 30-06 looking for a home but finding nothing. The house looked like it had been robbed but nothing was taken. The décor was in shambles, the furniture flipped and tossed, the curtains hanging awkwardly as if nearly pulled down.

Connor motioned for Liz to go right and she understood her assignment. She lifted the muzzle of her rifle and moved silently down the hallway as Connor worked toward the kitchen and dining room.

"It's clear." Liz whispered.

"Clear." Connor answered and began opening the cupboards. Again, it was all there. "I think these people were taken, they didn't pack up and leave. The Sharlah must have swept through here at some point."

"Hopefully that means they won't come back."

"Yeah, hopefully. Let's not do anything to get their attention. Keep the doors shut and the curtains pulled. Let's search the place for gear and settle in. Here." He said and tossed a can of ravioli to her.

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"Cold ravioli, nice." She smirked.

"Yeah, another thing we'll have to get used to. No more power."

"We could set the house on fire and warm them up?"

"Good thinking, but lets not do that." Connor said with a smile.

The bedrooms yielded what was expected, clothes, books, and the usual personal items. Liz flipped through an old fashioned photo album and concluded that it was an elderly couple's home that they had decided to invade.

"Yeah, I could tell by the clothes and the smell."

"The smell?"

"Yeah, old people have a smell, here." He said and held out a suit jacket.

Liz walked over and held her nose out but stopped short and met his eyes instead. His body endured a second shot of adrenaline but he broke the eye contact and looked down.

"I'm gonna to pull another mattress in here and sleep on the floor by the door. I think we should be in the same room, you know.."

"Yeah, that's a good idea, just in case." Liz said, grinning. "I'm not scared or anything, but you probably are."

"Right." He said and walked into the next room.

"Jackpot!" He whispered and came back in holding a shotgun with a folding stock and a short barrel. "The old guy was packing heat. There's like 200 rounds for this thing in the closet where I found it."

"Packing heat?"

"Yeah that's right. He had a heater stashed in there. He packed it in the closet. Anyway, he has some other guns in there too and I found a box of 30-06, pass me my rifle."

He took it and loaded the internal magazine. He felt his confidence grow with each round of hate that he pressed into it.

"You should take a look. He has a few handguns in holsters that would go nice with your outfit." Connor said, his mood skyrocketing.

Liz rifled through the gear using a flashlight that she had found. Connor had been so shocked to find the shotgun that he had missed all of the rest. The man was a clearly a prepper, it was a jackpot indeed.

"He has backpacks with food and water, water filters, lighters, a medical kit, knives, guns, two way radios, flashlights. He has it all." Liz said and held up a chrome .45 handgun.

"They must have caught him with his pants down. It looks like there was a fight out there but I didn't see any blood or bullet holes."

"Yeah, he was ready for a lot of things, but not that." She said. She took off her belt and worked it back through the loops to include her new holster and magazine pouches. "You were right, this looks good on me."

Connor thought that he would have trouble sleeping that night, laying on the floor on a foreign mattress that smelled of the old, but he didn't. After an hour of quiet reflection, wondering what to do now that he had no mission, and feelings of extreme guilt, he did eventually drift to sleep.

He didn't dream, not that he could remember, he was just dead for a short time and it felt good. He awoke sometime in the night, feeling the expected discomfort from the cold canned dinner, and then drifted back to nothingness. It was better than dreaming. If he had dreamed that night, he would have seen Laura again and he couldn't face that. Not yet.

He awoke again before the sun had even started to rise. It was cold and he could see Liz shivering in the bed above him. Connor pulled on his brown coat and layed his blanket over her softly so as not to wake her. He sat up the rest of the night thinking about Laura and wondering if he had done the right thing. Would she have wanted to die rather than be a prisoner of the Sharlah? What would she say about the pretty blonde girl sleeping in the bed beside him.

She would know. The jokes, the smiles, the subtle flirtations. She would be disgusted by how fast he could do those things, feel those things again after she had passed. After he had killed her with his own hands. Connor looked at Liz and felt a wave of shame wash over him. How could he smile and crack jokes. His mind was a whirlwind again. He pressed his hands into his temples and stood, tripping over his boots by the door.

"Connor? What's wrong? Are you okay?" Liz said, sitting up in her bed.

"Yeah, sorry, I had a bad dream."