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That baby be weighing down on her something awful. If we ain’t lucky, she be giving birth before we move camp again. But there be no profit in worrying like that now, so I squeeze her hand back and head to the edge of the light.
    Cinnamon’s story be reaching the point where the sky and the sea can’t live without New Orleans being they own, so they start to fight over her, sending they daughters and they sons to wreak havoc. I be too far away to hear him naming the storms that tore the city down, but I know the names: Rita, Katrina, Isaiah, Lorenzo, all the way up to Jesus, or Hayseus, like Cinnamon say. And that be the end of New Orleans. She love that last storm so much, she run off with him and leave only Orleans behind.
    The woods be dark and deep tonight. I smell pine needles, fresh after yesterday’s storm, musty and sharp at the same time. The air be cooler here, away from people and the fire. I look behind me and be glad to see we built this place right. Ain’t no fire seen from here, the way we shaped the hogans, wove them tight, blocked the view. It been Romulus who taught us to build camp in a spiral so there be rows enough to block the light, but it be my daddy who show me how to dig a fire hole deep enough to cover real quick. Uncle Rom be surviving in a group, but Daddy show me how to survive on my own.
    I reach the edge of the clearing and wait for my eyes to adjust. To my right I hear an owl screech. I hoot soft and the owl don’t answer, but some of our boys do, off to the left.
    Then the wind pick up from another direction and I hear something else. Rustling from deep in the woods. I hoot again. This time there be no response. Whoever it be, it ain’t our boys.
    Then I see torches. Headed toward camp.
    “Allez! Allez!” I scream the alarm, warn everyone to flee. I pull my knife and run back to camp. To Lydia.

4

    WHEN I GET TO CAMP, EVERYTHING BURNING, like the sky be on fire. But I run into it. I got to find Lydia.
    The smell tell me they be blood hunters, come to harvest our camp. But they ain’t just taking, they killing, too. It don’t make sense. I keep running, looking for Lydia.
    A shadow move in the light and I see the crazed eyes of an AB in front of me. ABs got it bad when it come to Delta Fever. It kill off all they good blood, so they need more. Now they trying to take it from us. This one rise up in front of me, six feet tall and wiry like the green trees we use for tent poles. He grin real wide and I smell blood on his breath, see scars on his arms in the firelight, thick like mine, but made from needles, tubes, reeds. He got a sling in one hand, loaded with a rock, but I be too close for that, so he pull a short, ugly club out his waistband and swing at me.
    ABs need what blood they got, so they use blunt instruments, no blades or arrows—nothing that cuts a body, ’less it be for one of they transfusions. But I can dodge a club. And throw a knife. My cuts heal.
    My knife catch him in the gut and he go down. I take the AB’s club, wipe the knife on his pant leg, and keep going.
    Lydia ain’t at the fire, but I see Uncle Rom done gave the O-Negs they arrows back. I hear them split the wind like giant mosquitoes and I flinch. In the light of the fire, I see my people go down, hit by clubs and bolos—rocks tied to rope that wrap around they legs and drop them to the ground to be taken by drug-fueled ABs. Peyote, cannabis, scavenged drugs from before the Wall—the ABs shoot, swallow, and smoke anything to forget the pain of living with, but not dying from, the Fever. Lydia been trying to stop all that, but that ain’t nothing but a fool’s dream now.
    I dump nearby buckets of sand on the fire to give the hunters less to see by. We OPs know our camp, we can run it just as well in the dark. But the ABs been busy. Our hogans be on fire, burning thick with smoke as the green leaves catch light. It hard to see much without burning my eyes.
    I got to find Lydia. I swing the club at