Today was Mack's day off. That meant he had to go spend an hour or two practicing at the range. Truth be told, he honestly liked his workdays better than his days off. He was the oldest kid who didn't go with the men to work. That meant that most of the work involved in keeping the compound working fell on him. He had gotten trained to use a bulldozer and a big scraper, and he was supposed to do as much work as he could building berms and keeping the paths of the compound smooth.

Most of the old buildings had gotten rebuilt in the years since Mack and his family had arrived. A year ago, one of the men’s work trips brought back a few hundred plasteel sheets. The camp had mixed feelings about that. That same plasteel had literally destroyed the jobs that most of the men had done their whole lives. The grumbling only stopped after Roland put his foot down and made his feelings clear.

Mack like plasteel, the stuff was just so cool. It was white and looked a little oily in the sun with a rainbow sort of sheen, but it felt dry and cool when you touched it. It didn't rust, it didn't bend, you couldn't even scratch it, even when you really messed up with the bulldozer. It was easy to handle too – Mack could pick up one of the ten-foot by twenty-foot sheets by himself. He couldn’t move it well by himself, something that big was still hard to balance, but he could pick it up.

But it was tricky to use well. Dad had been a welder back before they moved, but welds wouldn't stick to plasteel, and you couldn't melt the stuff or cut it either. After buildings started getting plasteel frames, and cars and pretty much everything that had been metal started getting made from plasteel, no one needed welders anymore. Dad had been able to find a job in a factory for a bit, operating some machine, but that went under when people stopped buying appliances that weren't plasteel.

The sheets they had in the compound would have probably been useless if they hadn't clearly been meant for assembling buildings and stuff. Each ten by twenty sheet had rings and hooks built onto every edge. The hooks fit into the rings just so, with enough space that you could wiggle sheets together. With each sheet being so thin and light, two or three men working together could build a building in minutes by fitting each sheet together like Legos. It wasn't perfect, the joining left gaps where they fit together like the bathrooms at Mack’s old school. They used plaster cloth to fill in the gaps, painted to keep it waterproof. But even with the gaps filled in the building wouldn't hold heat at all. That was why Mack's job was to push big walls of dirt against each of the new barracks they built. His mom and the other women would lay in the plaster cloth and spray on sealant over the gaps, and then the inside would be warm, quiet, and comfortable. The plasteel walls were even easy to clean. Pretty much anything a little kid slapped up could be wiped off with a towel.

Operating the bulldozer was still exciting for Mack, even after he got good enough that most of the tasks had gotten routine. The rest of his life in the compound wasn’t so much fun. There was still school, taught by a couple of the women. There was also lots of training. They ran, they learned karate, they learned how to survive in the mountains, they learned to shoot. Mack never did learn to love shooting. There wasn't much else to do in the compound when you weren't doing chores, especially when the men were away working.

But Mack was a good kid. So when he finished his chores he went and checked out a rifle from the armory and went and sent a hundred rounds downrange. That was the rule – everyone who lived in Roland’s compound was supposed to practice shooting each week. He took his target sheets and filed them for review, one of Roland’s Made Men would check everyone's records and ensure that their marksmanship was up to par, otherwise, you'd get assigned more practice. Mack was a good shot, mostly because he really didn't like shooting and was motivated to not have to practice more. It was the noise that bothered him the most, he thought. Even when he was the one pulling the trigger the loud explosion next to his face was hard to put up with.

He had checked his gun back in and was considering asking mom for permission to leave the compound and explore the creek when he heard the roar of engines coming back towards the compound.

He jogged back to see half a dozen pickup trucks and a couple of flatbeds crunch up to the gate. The two women who had stood as sentries while the men were gone opened the gate to let the trucks in. One of dad's first jobs had been to build an actual gate for the entrance. It rolled open and shut and was sturdy enough that even the bulldozer couldn't easily break it down. Mack knew that because he had crashed into the gate when he was first learning to drive the big machine. Roland, the big guy who called everyone 'brother' and 'son,' just laughed, and complimented dad on his work. Roland always called Mack ‘son.’ Dad had grumbled at Mack a bit, fixing the gate had taken time away from other things, but Mack never had gotten in trouble for that or any of his other mishaps. Maybe that was why Roland had been so insistent about getting plasteel to build with.

In fact, Mack had only gotten into real trouble once. He had found a muskrat nest on the side of the creek and lost a day watching it quietly from a nearby tree. He had watched them start getting active as they foraged around in the cool evening. The way they pulled big plants into their den through the water had absolutely fascinated Mack. He hadn't realized how late it had gotten until it was fully dark. On his way back he walked right into one of the search parties that had gone looking for him.

Dad had been about to beat him, but Roland intervened. Instead of getting spanked, Mack spent a month with reduced rations and had to stand guard duty for eight hours every night. It was the last time Mack had lost track of time.

Mack wished Roland hadn’t ever noticed him. The tall man went out of his way to keep track of Mack. He talked to Mack’s karate Moreh each week and got updates on Mack’s progress. He checked on Mack’s shooting, which was part of why Mack went out of his way to make sure his targets were properly filed. Roland even watched during dinner to see if Mack finished his meal and would give the boy extra meat most nights too. Not that Mack was ever hungry, if anything Mack usually felt like he ate too much.

Roland would even drag Mack into his meetings with the Made Men a few times a week. Roland had to sit quietly while they talked about ammunition, food, building plans. They talked about people they knew and talked to from outside, and discussed where they would go to work this week. Sometimes Roland even asked Mack for the boy's opinion, when Roland had to make a decision about rewards or punishments.

All of that meant that none of the other boys in the compound would play with him during their free time, in fact, they usually went out of their way to make his life harder. They couldn't be too aggressive with him - one boy had knocked Mack's bowl of stew onto the ground and got a beating and had to sleep outside for a week. Mack had learned to shake his sheets out every night, dirt and sand were the mildest of what he’d found in his bed.

After passing through the gate, the pickups all pulled into the same garage where all the cars went. The garage used to just be a berm that kept the wind off a bit, now there was a big wall of dirt and cinderblock that made a big U shape, and it was roofed over with the corrugated steel that the old barracks had been made from. There were three flatbeds, not two. The big trucks pulled up to the main cabin. One of them must be new, when the men went out to work, they had only taken two of the flatbed semis. Roland slept in one cabin, the other was used as a mess hall, meeting room, and warehouse.

Mack joined the line that had formed up at the parked trailers – everyone had done this before. Each flatbed was loaded with boxes, crates, and bags, so a chain of people began passing anything that could be carried while others used a couple of dolly carts to move the bigger crates. Roland, dad, and a few of the other Made Men were picking over the boxes piled on the new truck. Most of the bags and boxes Mack was helping unload looked like food and household stuff – one box broke and spilled plastic forks all over the ground. Most weeks when the men went out to work, they came back with loads that looked just like this.

The new flatbed was loaded with something different though – wooden crates, each stamped with a big “USA ARMY” on the side, with red lettering that said “SENSITIVE ITEMS” splashed over the top. He heard Roland say, “Not here, we'll bring them inside and see if this is what we expected.”

Roland had been about to say something else when a high-pitched shout went up from the garage. A few of the women had gone in to greet their husbands, and one had started screaming wordlessly. With a few gestures, Roland dismissed most of the people who had been unloading, so Mack wordlessly joined his dad to follow Roland into the garage. The woman had stopped screaming, out of breath, but she was collapsed on her knees and shaking while a few other women clustered around with their arms over her.

Roland knelt in the dirt in front of her and reached one hand out for a moment. He held it out and then dropped it limply while he looked at her. “I'm sorry, Ruth. Isaac was a good man, and I'm proud to have had him as a brother here. The day he was made part of our brotherhood was a happy one. He died for us all, and we will honor him.”

She sobbed again at this, but her eyes locked with Rolands as he kept speaking. “Blood is not new, and we have all been fighting since before we came together. But I'll not cheapen his murder by pretending it was common or expected, or anything less than a tragedy. We can still remember him, by working every day, by bringing back a place we can be proud of.”

“Ruth, you and your children will always have a place here, don't be afraid. We all grieve with you.”

Mack’s dad pulled him away, back to the trucks. Back to work.