The Land of the Shadow
learning how to assemble, clean, care for, and augment various firearms.
    The class had been Carly’s idea. He hadn’t liked it, hadn’t thought anyone would be interested, and he figured once she saw the signup sheet remained empty, she’d give up on it. He had been surprised.
    There were twenty-seven residents of their little town now, all carefully screened before admission. Like Carly and Justin, most were “family” groups that had assembled themselves after the Crisis. Perhaps it was Carly’s influence, but Justin now saw the ability to value love as a measure of a person’s character. The emotional baggage he had avoided in his former life created stability, and the responsibility of love grounded a person in a way nothing else could. In the Unit, he’d been taught to value independence, creating no ties and being loyal based on an oath, but love was a force more powerful than anything he’d encountered. And a strong foundation for a community.
    Over time, Justin ended up with twenty members of their community, ranging in age from fifteen—the youngest he would accept—to forty-five, in the class he had first told Carly he wanted to call “Shooting & Blowing Shit Up.” And then he enjoyed watching her face as she struggled to decide if he was serious.
    When his students were tasked with reassembling guns over and over again until they could have done it in their sleep, he suspected he would lose some of them. Then he thought it would be during the lessons in basic chemistry. Justin didn’t know the letters and digits that made up the chemicals’ written compositions due to his dyslexia, so his first class on this subject had been damn near embarrassing. He had pretty much resigned himself to having to admit it during the next session, but to his surprise, Kaden came in prepared, hopping up to write the chemical formulas on the board as though Justin had assigned him the task.
    No doubt about it, the kid was handy. But Justin also knew they needed to have a talk soon because Kaden displayed some of the behaviors Justin had seen in his fellow foster kids. He was trying to make himself perfect and indispensable. Justin wasn’t sure if words alone would assure Kaden that he didn’t have to worry about whether Justin and Carly would keep him, but he knew the kind of stress attempting to be flawless could put on a kid.
    They arrived at Brownsville before noon, the small town lying still and silent under the hot sunshine. This was the last nearby town they hadn’t scouted. Justin initially hadn’t seen the point in bothering, because it was bisected by two major highways and would have been picked clean by travelers. But then he had seen an old advertisement for a garden center pinned up in Colby’s town hall one day, which had piqued his interest.
    The first building they came to was a small grocery, not much larger than a convenience store, but Justin stopped the wagon anyway. Since they were already here, they would do a thorough search, just in case previous scavengers had missed anything. Kaden kept a tight grip on his shotgun, but his breathing was steady, his eyes sharp.
    The glass panels in the doors had been broken and the empty metal frames hung crookedly on their hinges. Justin led the way inside, picking his path with care through the debris, his steps measured and silent. Kaden followed close behind, stepping in the same spots as Justin.
    Justin paused for a moment, listening to the silence. The store was mostly bare, as he had expected, the empty shelves stretching off into the gloom. They passed the greeting card aisle. The shelves were tipped over, and the cards lay scattered across the tile like ghostly leaves. One on top had a heart, and he picked it up but found he could not read the curly font. He tucked it in his back pocket, thinking Carly might like it—girls found that shit romantic—but he’d have to have Kaden read it to him to make sure it said something nice.
    He spotted a
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