Despite his family’s anguish and turmoil, Nathan kept moving forward. It was the only thing he knew to do. Things were not right with his family, and he didn't know how to fix them; he just held them together with his will to survive another day. The only difference now was that his family was larger.

They’d stayed a couple of days to rest and get everyone’s strength up, then began moving again. The first day on the road Nathan sent David up on point and dropped back through the gaggle to walk with his wife, who’d been talking to the women.

“What happened to them?” he asked.

She looked sideways at him. “What do you think? Those bandits murdered their men and enslaved them. If we hadn’t come along and killed most of those bastards, they’d never have gotten out.”

“But they weren’t even chained up when we found them.”

She shrugged. “One of the scumbags – maybe the only one with a soul – threw them the keys as he ran away. But they were so scared they just stayed there next to the food. Some of them were afraid they would come back. It’s classic abuse syndrome. They were terrorized.”

He nodded. “I’ll try to explain to the boys…tell them to treat them with kid gloves for a while.”

“No!” She softened her tone. “No, Nathan, if you do that they’ll just feel like broken toys. Just try to treat them like human beings. That’s all any of us are.”

He took her advice, and over the next days and weeks they really became a family, or at least a clan. Several of the women proved they could handle guns, so now they were armed too.

Bethany and David even made a sort of peace, although they were still cautious around each other, not quite knowing how to get past what was done and said.

Nathan was thinking of these things as he walked in front of his new larger ‘family’. He wasn’t sure what alerted him to the fact that something was wrong, but he suddenly froze and raised his hand. He felt the group behind him stop begin to look around them carefully. He turned and signaled everyone to move into the ditch to one side of the road. Nathan motioned David up and then went forward himself, carefully hugging one edge of the cracked blacktop.

After walking slowly for about a hundred yards, Nathan spied a large dark square compound with a tall fence around it through the dense trees. The road they were traveling passed to the left of the structure. Nathan didn’t see anyone, but felt like he was being watched. He pulled his binoculars from his bag and quickly scanned the walls and guard towers. At each corner he saw at least one man with a rifle and one of them with binoculars of his own that suddenly seemed to be looking right at him. Nathan dropped back down into the ditch pulling David with him.

Great, he thought. Did they see us?

They crawled back towards the others. Nathan wondered if there would ever be an end to these nerve-racking encounters. Death was always close now.