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barn to patch up the gaping hole left behind when the bandits had broken in through the picture window.  I don’t know if he thought if we could just pick up the broken glass and clear out the broken furniture that we’d find my mother's body.  But we never found her.  She, along with the majority of our stockpiled food, was gone.
    “We can’t stay here,” my father announced, breaking the uneasy silence that had begun to feel oppressive. “This place is firewood now.”
    “It would be foolish to leave, Brandon,” my grandmother protested.  “Where would we even go?”
    “We’ll find something.  It’s not safe here anymore.  Now that the house has been compromised, the bandits will just keep coming back.”
    “Then we stay and fight!” I exclaimed.  My body shook so violently, I nearly tipped over my bowl of oatmeal.
    “These are dangerous, moral-free people, Sam,” my dad noted gravely.  “We’re leaving,” he said with a firm nod.  “We’ll pack up whatever’s left of the supplies, see what’s salvageable, and we’ll leave when the sun’s up.”
    “Well, I’m not leaving,” my grandmother said, crossing her arms over her chest in a sign of defiance.  “I’m too old to be traipsing around the country.”
    “We’ll figure something out, Mom,” my father insisted.  “It’s better than waiting here to die.  Please.”
    “Fine,” she sighed.  Her sunken eyes closed.  I wondered what she was thinking.  In a life dotted with economic depressions and a World War, I wondered where this ranked.
    I was happy she was going to stay with us.  I couldn’t handle losing her, too.  Not now, not so soon after my mother…
    “Can I stay in my room tonight?” I asked.
    “No.  I want you all where I can see you,” my father said sternly.
    My grandmother laid a withered hand on his forearm.  Her hands reminded me of bread dough.  They were strong, capable hands, even for a woman her age, but they were also warm, soft, and seemed to always have a sheen as if she’d just been kneading lightly oiled bread dough.  “Let her have the night, Brandon.  If anyone comes, we’ll escape through the second floor stairs like last time.”
    He frowned, clearly unhappy with my cautionless plea, but finally he relented.  “Fine.  But don’t stay up all night.  We have a long day ahead of us.”
     
    +++++
     
    Like the first floor, my bedroom had been turned upside down.  Things had been ripped from my closet and the drawers of my dressing bureau had been upset.  My boots crunched as I walked through broken glass.  I picked up a picture frame that had been knocked from its place on the top of my dresser.  The glass was shattered and the photograph that had been inside was missing.
    Who knows what they’d been looking for in my room.  It’s not like I stashed canned goods under my bed.  I thought about refolding the clothes that had been thoughtlessly tossed on the floor, but it was a useless action.  They were just clothes.  It was just a room.  It wasn’t mine anymore.  It had stopped being mine the moment the news anchors on the television had told us about the asteroid.
    I opened my bedroom closet and stared for a long time at its contents.  I had a few items of clothing in my emergency pack already, most of them specialized camping and hiking gear designed for keeping warm and dry in subzero temperatures.  I frowned at the button-up shirts and the few skirts and dresses that hung there.  None of them seemed essential enough to take up space in my backpack.  I closed the closet door without taking anything out.
    I swept my eyes across the room.  Knick-knacks, stacks of books, makeup, jewelry.  They all seemed so unnecessary now when at the time I’d bought them or asked for them as a present, they’d seemed so essential.  The laptop computer I’d saved my summer earnings to buy was now less helpful than a paperweight.  I went to my desk and opened up all the