(Continued from here)

We made good time that day.  We were nearing the Isabel SIM, home of the Shelter.  Word was you could rest there, meet friendly people, and not fear for your life.  It was a little bastion of order in the chaotic sprawl of the Mainland.

And shelter was what we both needed. We'd been on the road for nearly a week now, and we hadn't run into a single person who hadn't either run from us, threatened us, or didn't speak English.  We needed to talk to someone other than the two of us, to make sense of all the crazy things we had seen, to confirm that this wasn't all some strange dream we were walking through.