Daniel had woken several times, but could only manage to see a bright light shining in his face. He also realized that he was sitting in a chair, with his hands tightly bound behind his back. His bouts of consciousness only lasted for a few seconds each time, before he blacked out again.

He slowly came to again. This time it was different. Before, he had wanted to stay conscious, but now he didn’t. The hooded figure was in front of him, blocking out the bright light. The person was holding a glowing hot poker from a fireplace.

“Calmarse. Calmarse,” was all he could hear coming from under the hood in a very low voice.

“No! No!” Daniel screamed as the figure shoved the hot poker into his bleeding shoulder wound.

He screamed in agony and then again when the dark figure shoved it into the second hole. The pain was so intense that Daniel got his wish and passed out. The next time he came to, he was surprised to see that someone had cleaned the wound and bandage it with a fresh dressing.

It was daytime. He could tell because there were slivers of daylight slipping between the cracks of the boards on the window in front of him. He was still tied to the chair, and felt a dull ache in his shoulder. Since it was freshly wrapped in clean bandages, that meant that his captors couldn’t be all bad. It also meant that they wanted him alive.

Looking around, he realized that he was in a bedroom. By the looks of it, it didn’t get much use. The twin bed, dresser, and a second chair near him had thin layers of dust on them. While he was studying his room, he heard someone unlock the door behind him and come in.

A woman came around to the front of his chair holding a bowl and spoon in her hand. She was a middle-aged Hispanic woman, maybe forty-five, with her black hair worn up in a bun. Even with the two-inch scar on her face, she was somewhat attractive and had a medium build. He noted that she wore tattered blue jeans and a black and white checkered flannel shirt. She wore the .357 in a leather shoulder holster. He had been correct about it being a Taurus.

“Let me go,” he blurted out.

The woman ignored his order, and slid the free chair over in front of his. She sat down, and began to spoon feed him soup. He was about to protest, but he was starving, and the first taste had been absolutely delicious. It was some type of mushy corn soup. He didn’t say another word until she had fed him the entire bowl.

“Take me to your leader,” he demanded as she rose and put the chair back where it had been.

“Yo no hablo ingles,” she answered.

“Spanish?” he said. “Your speaking Spanish?”

“Si,” she replied.

Daniel thought quickly, trying to remember what Spanish he knew. It was no use. He had taken the language in the ninth and tenth grades, but couldn’t remember much. He could only ask her where the bathroom was, or if there was a bus station nearby.

“I want to speak to your leader,” he demanded again, sticking with English.

Then he heard footsteps behind him.

“Is that your leader?” he asked, trying to turn his head to see.

It wasn’t. It was the young girl that he had first seen. She came over and sat in the chair that was now off to his left and smiled at him. He crossed his eyes at her, making her giggle. Then he made a serious face and tried again.

“Ingles? Leader. Do you have a leader?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she replied with an accent. “Carlos.”

Daniel let out a long sigh of relief, glad to be able to communicate, “I need to speak with Carlos.”

“You can not,” she frowned.

“I must speak with Carlos,” he stated more firmly.

“You can not. My father is dead,” the little girl whispered, with a small tear slipping from her left eye, then she jumped up and ran from the room.

The older Hispanic woman pursed her lips and stared at him with an angry look. She looked more attractive when she was mad. She pulled the chair back up to him and began to roughly remove his bandage. When Daniel let out a painful grunt, her face became soft and she worked more tenderly.

Once the bandage was off, she applied a salve to his burnt and cauterized wounds. Then she carefully re-wrapped it with a fresh pad. She gave him a slight smile and got up from her seat. Daniel needed to think fast if he wanted to get out of the chair. Then he remembered his Spanish.

“Necesito usar el bano,” he said.

“Eres un gringo guapo. Desearia poder confiar en ti,” she gave him another weak smile and left the room, closing the door behind her.

He really had to pee, but he could hold it for now. He was happy that his shoulder was feeling much better. He grinned to himself, but not because of his shoulder. He knew that he wasn’t in any immediate danger. You don’t feed and treat the wounds of someone that you plan to kill. He was starting to think that the two ladies were all alone, since they were the only ones that he had seen.

He rested up a bit, waiting until it was late in the night. Nobody had come back into the room, and it was very quiet inside of the house. Maybe they had gone? The one pressing thing on his mind was that now he really had to pee. He either got himself free or he pissed his pants.

Daniel leaned way forward, and thanks to his muscular legs, managed to struggle to a crouching position. The chair was still tied to his back and hands, with its four legs sticking straight into the air. ‘Here goes nothing’, he thought, and threw himself backwards as hard as he could. The wooden chair splintered with a large crash, breaking into several pieces.

He rapidly freed himself from the ropes and the last few pieces of wood, hearing a door open somewhere in the house, followed by hurried footsteps. Daniel moved fast to the corner of the room next to the door, remembering that it opened into the room. The doorknob turned and the old wooden door slowly swung open and away from him, The room was only lit by the moonlight coming through the window slats.

The floor creaked as someone started to enter the room. The first thing he saw was the nickel-plated Taurus .357 glinting in the moonlight. He sprange forward like a cat, grabbing it with his left hand wrapped around the cylinder, so that it could not fire. With his right hand he grabbed the person around the neck in a head lock. He twisted the gun up and back as he had been trained to do.

The movement ripped the weapon from the woman’s grasp. He knew that it was her, because although her body was firm against him, she was also curvy and soft. He shoved her away, farther into the room.

“You might as well come in her too, young lady,” he spoke out into the darkness.

The young girl came in, holding an oil lamp that she lit. Both women looked very frightened now, staring down the barrel of the Taurus. Daniel popped open the cylinder and dumped the six bullets onto the wooden floor. He flipped it shut and rotated it around in his hand so that he was now holding the barrel. He held the weapon out with the handle towards the confused Hispanic woman.

“Tell your ma that I’m not going to hurt you guys,” he said.

“She isn’t my mom. She is mi tia…my aunt,” the younger girl answered.

“Tell her what I said. Then I need you to tell me something very important,” he grimaced. “Where is the bathroom?”

The following day he learned much. The world was a mess. The fight with the overseers was over, pretty much before it had started. They had wiped out all of the electronics, electricity, and communication systems before they simultaneous crushed all of the major military installations of the world. It was almost as if they had a map of every key fighting unit on the planet.

All major national and military leaders were dead within the first hour. It left the human response disorganized and light. Still, resistance units rose and put up somewhat of a fight. It didn’t matter much. Our weapons were mostly ineffective against them, and they were in solid control of the planet within the first two days.

The older woman was Aunt Carmen and the child, who was actually eight-years-old, was named Rosalita. Carmen, and Rosie, as she called her, had been part of a large migrant camp that had been working on Cambell Farms in northern California. When the overseers came, most of the migrant workers stayed together and made their way north. They stayed away from all of the heavy fighting to the south in the big cities. 

When they entered Oregon, there had been over seventy of them. By the time that they reached Washington, they were down to twelve. Carmen’s husband and Rosie’s mom both died in the first year. Rosie’s father Carlos was the leader of the ever-shrinking band of migrants. They joined up with a group of locals in this area, which is where Rosie had learned English.

Carlos had died a year ago, after he stepped into an old rusty bear trap. It took the infection over a week to kill him, which had been hard for the group to take. The rest of their companions had gone out to collect food one day, while Carmen and Rosie had been caring for Carlos. None of them had ever returned. The two ladies had been alone ever since.

“We are leaving tonight,” Rosie told him over a bowl of Carmen’s delicious soup. It seemed that they only ate once a day. He caught Carmen staring at him several times during the meal. Every time he looked back at her, she would look down.

“Where?” he asked.

“We have several safe places set up. We survive by moving around every week or so. We are going a few days early, because you brought a lot of the spacemen with you. They are looking for you,” she answered. “Will you come with us?”

“Yes. For now.” He smiled at her and ran his hand through her curly black hair, causing Rosie to giggle and Carmen to break into a big smile. “Why do you travel at night?”

“We can see the flying machines better at night thanks to their lights. It’s important to see them first and avoid them. If they notice you, the spacemen come,” she verified what he had already learned.

“Do you know anything about the resistance based on Alcatraz? Are they still there?” he asked.

The little girl looked confused, and said, “There is no more resistance. Just the spacemen.”

That night they packed up their three backpacks and left the house. Daniel was happy to have the 12 gauge shotgun back in his hands. Carmen locked both of the doors on the house and made sure that several of the plastic buckets around the house were turned upright. They were used to collect water. Not only to flush the toilets, most of which still worked, but to drink. Then they made their way over to a cornfield that was growing wild in the field on the side of the road. 

The trio grabbed as many of the cobbs that they could fit in their packs, and they headed off, bearing northwest. They walked for most of the night, stumbling over things every once in a while, but tried to stay as close to the road as they could. Just when the sun began to creep into the pre-dawn sky, they made their way into a small, wooded grove next to the road.

Carmen went to the center of the trees, where a patch of sunlight was starting to fall through the branches and hit the ground. Where it did, was a circle of carrot stalks ringed by a two-foot wire mesh fence. Inside were maybe twenty plants. The Hispanic woman bent down and pulled eight or nine of the carrots that were ready.

They spent the day in the tree grove, resting, while Rosie climbed one of the trees every so often. She would watch something to the south for about a half hour, then she would come back down. They advised him that they were watching one of their “safe” houses. They always study their next destination for a day, making sure that it was empty.

“Are you looking for overseers?” Daniel asked.

“No. The spacemen only come if they are chasing somebody. We are looking for bad people,” she frowned. “There used to be a lot of them, but now we haven’t seen any for a long time. Maybe they are all dead now.”

Once it got dark again, they made their way to a one-story ranch house, that sat back off the road about fifty yards. Again, all of the windows were covered in wooden slats. Come to think of it, every building that Daniel had seen so far had covered windows. 

When they reached the back of the home, Carmen grabbed a key from under a nearby rock and opened it. She pointed at a full bucket of water that Daniel grabbed, and the three of them crept quietly into the house.

They spent the next week in the house without much incident. They ate a large bowl of carrot soup the first few days, and then ate the rest of their corn the last half of the week. The three of them got along well, and Rosie and Daniel laughed a lot. He really liked the little girl. He was also glad to see that he was no longer losing control of his emotions. He had feared that it might have been a permanent side effect of the overseers’ bitter drink.

Daniel and Carmen were also developing something, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was. They shared long looks at each other, with her often blushing and turning away. At one point, he caught her watching him dress. He too was feeling an attraction to her.

On the seventh day at the new home, a column of hover cars hummed down the road, heading back northeast. They decided that it was time to go. That night they packed up and made their way back to the carrot garden. Carmen took another six or eight of them, leaving new seeds in the ground, about six inches apart. Then they continued straight south, heading away from the road.

Once they were off the road, it was dark and hard to travel. He was holding Rosie’s hand and Carmen reached out and took his. He liked it. They stumbled through some brush for a few hours and entered a fruit grove. Daniel couldn’t make out what was growing here, but Carmen started picking some fruit and stuffing their packs.

“You’ll like this place,” Rosie whispered. “Apples.”

Daniel had to catch himself to keep from chuckling out loud. He would have been happy not to see, let alone eat another apple, for the next year. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers. It seemed that the migrants had made a net of safe havens with various food plots available. They would move from place to place, eating the various foods that each location had to offer. Smart. Very smart, he thought.

Once again, they stayed in the trees all day, while Rosie occasionally climbed one and studied a nearby barn. When they were sure that it was unoccupied, they made their way to it after the sun fell from the sky. When they reached the sliding door, Carmen quickly drew her revolver and pointed at the broken lock. Daniel had unslung his shotgun from his pack the second that the woman had drawn her weapon. Clicking off the safety seemed extremely loud in the tense quiet.

He noticed Carmen study the frame of the door before starting to enter. He grabbed her shoulder, pulling the woman back, and entered first. The light from Rosie’s oil lamp threw light into the room from behind him. Daniel swept the barn and found it to be clear. It was a small modern aluminum style barn, about twenty-five yards across and fifty yards deep. There was a ladder leading up to a small loft in the back and an animal pen built under that.

The barn contained dusty tools and some old dusty cots. Carmen came in and kicked several empty bottles of Frosty Dog beer that were scattered around an old fire. Daniel touched the ashes and verified that they were cold. Whoever had been there was long gone. Carmen shrugged and they quickly got a small fire going.

Carmen mashed up some apples and made a tasty warm applesauce dish that was very filling, Then she stared into Daniels eye’s, and reaching into his pack, pulled out his bottle of rum. He smiled at her, and they pulled one of the cots over to the fire and sat on it, sharing the bottle. When it was about half empty, she moved closer to him and snuggled against him.

Rosie, who had fallen asleep on one of the other cots, stirred and then sat up, saying, “I have to pee.”

“Do you want me to go with you?” Daniel asked.

“No, I’ll stay close.” She yawned.

Once she had gone, Carmen stared deep into his eyes and said, “Que tan guapo.”

Then her lips were on his, full, pouty, and forceful. He kissed her back, hard, feeling her tongue flicking into his mouth. Their passion-filled embrace was interrupted by a shriek of pain from Rosie! Both of them jumped up, and grabbing their guns, ran out the door into the darkness.

Rosie was sitting on the ground, sobbing, with her foot in a hole. Leaves and sticks were strewn about her, showing that the hole had been covered. Carmen grabbed the lantern and brought it over. The hole that the young girl’s foot was in was full of sharpened sticks. One was protruding from the top of her blood covered foot.

Whoever had made the fire in the barn had left behind a trap. Daniel knew that they were called ‘punji sticks’ from his training, because these pit traps were often made during conflicts in third world countries. Daniel studied the stake in Rosie’s foot intently, noting that the pit smelled of urine.

He grabbed the young girl under both arm pits and said, “Okay, this going to hurt. I’m going to pull you up on a count of three. Ready?”

She continued sobbing and shook her head yes. “Okay, one…”, then he pulled her straight up, pulling the eight year old smoothly off the wooden spike, causing her to let out a loud whimper. Carmen and he helped Rosie back into the barn and laid her on the cot that they had just been sitting on.

“She is going to get infected,” he said to Carmen “They peed on the spikes, and maybe worse.”

Carmen looked at him with confusion while she started cleaning the girl's bloody foot.

“Infeccion,” Rosie whispered, her eyes running freely with painful tears. Carmen grabbed a bottle of pills and gave two to the girl, which she let her chase down with a sip of rum.

She motioned for Daniel to hold Rosie down, which he did. Carmen took the bottle of rum and poured the rest of it onto the wound, causing the girl to shriek out in pain, which only ended when she passed out. Carmen wrapped up the foot in a clean wrap.

They took turns watching the girl through the night, and into the morning. By midday, she was burning up with a fever. Carmen began speaking rapidly in Spanish while packing her backpack, which the fevered girl translated.

“Mi tia says that there is a small town very near here, maybe two miles to the south. She is going to go there and see if she can get some penicillin or any medicine that might help me. She wants us to wait here until she returns,” Rosie explained.

“What about the stuff that she put on my shoulder?” he asked, not liking this plan at all. It was still daylight, and he didn’t want to separate.

After a brief conversation between the two females, Rosie translated, “She used the last of it on your wounds, besides, she needs something much stronger.” When Carmen started for the door, Daniel grabbed her hand.

“Wait.” He took Carmen by the shoulders, saying, “We should all go together.”

After the young girl translated, an argument ensued, because Rosie couldn’t walk. Daniel strapped his shotgun on his pack, and after putting the rucksack on his back, he picked up Rosie. She had her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Carmen shrugged and led them straight south, at a slow pace. Once they hit State Route 4, they were able to make better time. They passed a couple of abandoned cars, and then a burnt-out fuel tanker truck. By the time they reached a sign that said ‘The Village of Stella. Settled 1844. Where Eagles Soar’, Daniel was sweating profusely.

Within minutes, they started seeing houses and outbuildings. They made their way towards town, looking for a pharmacy, when they found a family health center. The windows were broken, and the front double doors were missing. Daniel made for the front doors, but Carmen stopped him just before he entered. She pointed at a glowing green power circle around the frame. He had nearly stepped through with Rosie.

He turned to thank her, but she interrupted him by planting a kiss on his lips, then whispered, “Gringo guapo. Este noche eres mio.” They made their way to a side door, and after checking it, went inside.