Dawn lit a straight path toward a town that shimmered in the morning dew. Exhausted and heedless of any danger, we walked in its direction. The broken and weed-strewn asphalt slowed our progress, but with a destination in sight, we couldn’t be stopped. My breath escaped in a thin wisp while the sun simultaneously warmed my nape. If I wasn’t too weary for deep thought, I would have remarked on the polarizing experience.

Our ragtag group of child soldiers stood atop the pockmarked asphalt road that looked down onto a small town. The street was full of holes from lack of maintenance and would be unable to support any but the most robust, off-road driving vehicle. Not only were all the roads damaged from years of neglect, but from my time with the liberation group, I knew that we were right in the middle of a vast mountain range that made traversing the area difficult and rare.

At the bottom of the small rise, the ground evened out for a couple of hundred meters. Packed tightly on each side of the road were lines of buildings, which in the town’s heyday, must have been the area they call downtown. It was down, and it was a town, so I supposed that it wasn’t wrong. As we all stood there unmoving, I took a few more moments to scan for any signs of life. I couldn’t see any lights or fires, nor any smoke coming from anywhere. The stores didn’t look too bad; they were dark and covered in dirt and leaves, but at least all the windows that I could see were intact.

“Sarah,” I called, then looked around for her. She was only a few people away, so I walked over. “What do you think?” I might have helped everyone escape, but she was the leader. Her insight into our situation didn’t disappoint me either.

“We’ve been walking for a while, and everyone is tired and hungry. We also have some wounded, including you,” she looked at me sternly, “I wish we could put more distance between us and the camp, but this might be as good as we get.”

“I’m surprised this town is here, but I know that there isn’t much past this point except wilderness,” Melody added to our conversation. She had walked over to Sarah with me, and I also noticed that Melody stood very close to me.

Sarah looked at Melody with a quizzical face, and I knew she was still trying to figure out if she could trust her.

“We also have to figure out what to do about the camp,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Sarah asked.

“They aren’t going to let us go,” I stated, but it didn’t surprise her. “It’ll probably be sooner than later, and we need to be ready. There’s more that you don’t know though, we all need to sit down and talk about what to do. But planning our defense is going to take priority, I don’t think we’ll have long.”

“Well then, let’s go see if we can find a place to rest and some food to eat,” Sarah said as she began walking down the dilapidated road. I looked to Melody, who grabbed my hand, smiled and nodded. Victor, silent as ever, appeared as he clasped Melody’s other hand, then he looked to me, smiled and nodded just as his sister had. I chuckled, and we all set off down the road.