Atlas and her grandmother stood in the entrance of the small building they had taken shelter in, staring out at the approaching storm and the vehicle that fled before it. Anji and Robert were inside, hidden from view but ready to strike with their makeshift weapons if the need arose.


    As the light approached, the mosquito-like drone of its engine increasing in volume, they saw that it was a motorcycle. It only seemed to carry one person; a lean, tall figure that rode hunched low over the handlebars. Atlas wondered briefly if whoever it was had noticed their car parked out there.


    Bike and rider pulled off the road with a nerve-wracking wobble. A plume of dust kicked up around them as the tires scraped into the turn, somehow maintaining balance at the last second. They were headed straight for the lot outside of their shelter.


    It was a small rectangular area, with occasionally protruding chunks of cement and three metal posts in varying states of decay. The flatness of the sand hinted that more pavement lay beneath. The remnants of a gas station, Aana and Robert knew. Neither of the girls recognized it as such.


    The bike finally slowed to a stop, right beside the furthest pole, and the figure riding it jumped off without bothering to try to park. The bike toppled to the ground and the person took off on foot, running directly towards the women crouched in the shadows of the abandoned storefront.


    There was light now, spilling from the headlight of the bike and bathing the desert floor. Atlas and Aana could see the rider scrambling closer and closer, perfectly silhouetted. Neither of them dared move a muscle.


    The light did nothing to help the approaching stranger. They could see him perfectly, marking every step in his approach, while he could barely go faster than a trot. His eyes were glued to the ground as he tried to pick his way over the jumble of shadows and rubble without tripping. The angle of the headlight made even the relatively small, flat stretch of land between bike and building treacherous to cross.


    Atlas tightened her grip on the long piece of metal she had found. Her uncle had called it ‘rebar’, but she had little idea what that meant. It was hot in her hands but felt strong, and she was sure that even a moderate strike to the head with it would be enough to send most anyone into unconsciousness.


    Aana crouched to her left, holding her knife. Even among the sharp shadows cast by the bike headlight Atlas could see that her grandmother’s knuckles were as pale white as her face. Though Aana’s features betrayed nothing beyond a tight frown, she was afraid. She kept her eyes cautiously on the approaching figure as she might keep them on a wild animal.


    The sound of uneven footsteps and ragged breathing finally reached them. Every few paces, he tripped and nearly went down. Atlas’s nerves grew as she realized the approaching figure was not only a man but a rather large man. He would stand a head taller than Robert. At least a head.


    She realized, a bit ashamedly, that she had been holding onto the faint hope that the bike was carrying an unusually tall woman. They had encountered few people on their journey south, but of those that they had, their experiences with the men had been terrible at best.


    Aana had told her granddaughters time and time again. Desperation makes anyone dangerous, but it can turn men into monsters.


    “Fuck!” The man hissed as he stumbled again, this time landing badly on his shin. He jumped back to his feet and hitched up the mask that had slipped down to his chin. He was wheezing. They could hear it clearly now, as he closed the last five yards or so between them.


    Aana whispered into Atlas’s left ear. “Before he spots you, Attie. You jump. If we need to we will lead him off of Anj and your uncle.” Atlas nodded, mouth dry with fear now as well as thirst. She counted the paces and tried her best to time it out. By the time he reached them she could easily make out the animalistic fear in his eyes. Desperation, Atlas thought ruefully, and leaped.


    “HEY!” She screamed, her voice surprising even her with its volume. The man yelped and fell again, this time striking the ground face first. He shoved himself up and scooted backwards, throwing his head wildly back and forth before he noticed Atlas standing before him, rebar piece held like a bat and ready to swing. He threw his hands up to protect his face.


    “Please!” He shouted. “Please, wait!”


    Atlas hesitated but heard Aana make a soft noise and caught a gesture of encouragement in her peripheral vision. She pulled back her arms to bring the rebar down hard, but in the moment she was about to strike, he collapsed. Atlas froze mid-swing. When a moment passed and the man made no indication of consciousness, she let the rebar and her arms relax. She felt weak as all the tension drained from her muscles.


    Aana, correctly anticipating that her granddaughter had been considering rushing forward to check on the man, grabbed Atlas’s left arm just below the shoulder. She looked up, startled by the fierceness in that grip. “But Aana—” Atlas started. “He’s not faking… Right?” She turned her hazel eyes, so full of puzzlement that they looked like the eyes of a child, to her grandmother.


    “We will know soon enough.” Aana said simply. She nodded her chin towards the horizon, where the dust storm was gaining on them. “Better get inside, child. I’ll wait here to see if our visitor is going to survive the storm.”


    A chill ran through Atlas, though whether it was from the rapidly dropping temperature or the cold indifference in her grandmother’s voice, she did not know. She dropped the rebar and kicked it towards the door, then thought better of it and stooped to grab it again before heading inside.


    Her uncle and cousin were huddled together, eyes wide and staring towards the entrance. Anji looked pitifully small and pale in the milky light that the bike headlight cast through the store front. Her lungs crackled and wheezed with each breath. Atlas frowned and dug around in the bags for her jacket. It was a hideous thing, bright orange and oversized, but it was warm. She pulled it on and started collecting pieces of debris that might pose a hazard in the wind.


    Wordlessly, Robert stood and joined her. Atlas quietly filled them in on what had happened as she and her uncle worked to make their little aisle as sturdy as they could. Outside, the storm was starting to make its final approach.


    They had all had enough experience at this point with dust storms to know what to do and what not to do. Scavenging tarps had quickly become a priority, and they now had three that they kept folded tight in their bags. Robert had just started work on setting the first one up when Aana came back in, dragging the unconscious stranger behind her. Not for the first time, Atlas noted with surprise how strong the woman was for her age.


    “Angela!” Robert gasped. He leaped instinctively in front of the place where Anji was huddled, throwing his arms out. Aana frowned at his use of her name. “What are you doing!” His voice was a hiss, his eyes wide in startlement and anger.


    “Peace, son.” She dropped the stranger’s arm unceremoniously and sat down hard. She was out of breath. Hail though she was, the stranger was tall and well built despite the hunger they could all see and recognize in the hollows of his cheeks. “I won’t condemn him to death without good reason. And he wasn’t acting— he fainted.” She turned to Atlas. “Attie, find the wire spool in the green bag.”


    Atlas rushed obey and rolled it across the floor to her uncle’s feet. She was loathe to admit it, but she was terrified of this unconscious stranger. Aana looked at her questioningly but kept quiet. Robert picked up the wire and quickly bound the man’s hands behind his back.


    “There. No threat to us now,” Aana declared. She let her voice soften back to its usual tone. “Robert, drag him over against the far side of those shelves. He should have protection enough from the storm there, but won’t be able to bother us.”


    Atlas could see the doubt and distrust in her uncle’s face but he did as instructed, easily pulling the man across the sandy, pitted flooring and rolling him like a rag doll so that he was positioned at the base of the shelves. Though her uncle was smaller, he had the strength advantage lent to him by not being in the throes of starvation. Between them, Atlas realized, it didn’t seem like it would have been a fair fight regardless of size. The unconscious man looked a week from death.


    His eyes were sunken back in his skull and his hair, long and a brown so dark it was almost indistinguishable from black, looked dull and thin. His shoulders and hips were all angled too sharply and his ragged clothes hung off of him. Laying bound in the dirt at the base of the shelves as he was, he could have been a corpse. Only the whistling wheeze of his shallow breaths marked him for alive.


    The windows were beginning to rattle occasionally now, as the storm winds gusted. Anji stirred nervously as the noise grew to a steady howl. After a few minutes she climbed into her father’s lap as if she were still a toddler. Her eyes kept darting over to the stranger. Robert stroked her head absently, his harrowed eyes staring out towards the light as it flickered and dimmed behind drifts of dust.


    Atlas was looking intently at her grandmother, feeling deeply uneasy at the fear she saw in the set of those old, familiar eyes. The light faded out as the wind continued to pick up. Outside the smashed glass of the storefront the dust cloud approached like a wall of darkness, blotting out everything as it approached.


    Robert pulled the tarp up around them, readying it. Small eddies would swirl in around the edges with each new gust of wind, but they were for the most part protected. When the storm rolled over them they would tuck themselves under it and wait it out. All that could be heard now was the roar of wind and grit pounding the tarps and building around them.


    Atlas squinted her eyes in a smile over her mask at Anji, who echoed the expression reflexively. Her eyes narrowed then sprung wide as saucers, her head coming up so fast she smacked into her father’s chin. She was gesturing furiously towards the aisle behind them, where they had left the bound stranger. Everyone turned to look almost as one, and saw that their captive had woken up.


    “Make sure he doesn’t move!” Aana ordered, almost shouting to be heard over the wind. Robert pulled a dirty bandana from his neck up over his nose and mouth and fumbled in his pocket for a small flashlight. He clicked it on and shown it towards the collapsed aisle, illuminating the man who had just discovered that his hands were bound after a few groggy attempts to sit up.


    “Don’t move,” Robert barked. His voice wasn’t threatening, but the stranger instantly froze at the words nonetheless. Atlas could see his chest rising and falling in shallow, quick breaths. She felt a moment’s sympathy for him as he tried to look around, blinded by the small flashlight.


    “Please don’t hurt me,” the stranger whispered. The noise of the wind nearly swallowed the words, but Atlas could make them out on his lips. Robert placed the flashlight on the ground and crawled towards the man, leaning close to be heard.


    “Stay still. We’re here sheltering from the storm same as you. We’ll let you ride it out in here with us if you behave, alright?” Robert eyed the stranger’s hollow cheeks and trembling lips. “You’re clearly in no condition to fight anyways, I suppose.”


    “I’m-” the stranger started weakly, but he was interrupted by a coughing fit.


    Aana materialized at his side, holding up a bottle. She offered it to the stranger but he violently shook his head, coughing all the while.


    “It’s safe,” Aana said, demonstrating by taking a long sip from it herself. She offered it again but he shook his head once more. His face was reddening from the effort of coughing. The older woman sighed and placed a strong hand around his jaw, holding him still. She tipped a small amount of water into his mouth and he choked, jerking upright and out of her hold and gasping.


    Before he could fully recover she had the bottle back to his mouth and her other hand supporting his head. He swallowed reflexively and made a slight movement as if he meant to break away again, but then stilled. His eyes fluttered closed and he gulped at the water in a way that told Atlas he had been thirsty for a long time.


    “There,” Aana said. She capped the bottle and stood. “Robert, we best get under cover now.”


    The stranger gasped for breath then let his head fall back to the ground. He looked relieved and exhausted.


    Atlas noticed Anji had come up behind her and took her hand, leading her away from the stranger and back into the nook where they had made their camp. Robert stretched another tarp out over the stranger, tucking it under him, and warned him again not to move. It hardly seemed necessary, as he was almost unconscious again.


    Anji fetched one of the large, scratchy blankets they’d had since leaving home and dragged it over to Atlas. They bundled together in it and kept their backs to the broken storefront, relying on their own backs to protect them from the worst of the storm, should all else fail.


    The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Robert came by after double- and triple-checking the tarps and secured their one precious particle mask over Anji’s face. She looked at him gratefully and leaned her head against Atlas’s shoulder.


    The two girls watched as Robert secured their bags and then wrapped Aana up with himself. Talking was useless now, as the sound of the wind had reached deafening levels. They all looked at each other quietly in the growing dark, fear contesting with exhaustion on every face.


    The building shook when the wind finally hit, and then came the familiar eerie hiss of dust hitting every surface with enough force to slough away paint and pit metal. Atlas rocked slowly back and forth, trying to soothe Anji and to just have something to focus on besides the deafening noise, the warm thick wind, the pitch blackness, and the occasional moments of dust swirling up against the exposed parts of her skin when the wind managed to make its way around the tarps. It stung and sent her eyes watering and her nose running.


    Time seemed to spool out, the small group huddled in their tarps quickly losing sense of day, night, hour. It might have been five minutes or five days for all Atlas could tell. She felt her legs start to ache from the way she was seated and adjusted them, wincing at the pins and needles that swept in after the pain. Anji had fallen asleep and woken back up, and now laid in her arms dazed and unmoving.


    She was about to doze off herself when the storm finally started to slacken off. The tinny sounds of sand against the building lessened and light began to filter back through. Robert and Aana were peering through the dark at the girls and Atlas looked back at them, wondering if it was safe to leave the tarps.


    As if in answer, her uncle tapped his face to indicate to her to keep her mask on. She nodded. He stood up, stretched, and pushed aside the edge of one of the tarps to look out. The silence the storm left behind it seemed almost as loud as the wind had.


    “…Aana…” Robert said. His voice sounded odd. Aana got to her feet in a hurry and looked over his shoulder. She gasped.


    “What is it?” A new voice asked from the other side of the shelving. Atlas jumped before remembering the stranger who was tied up over there. His voice sounded stronger now. Nobody acknowledged him beyond a wary glance.


    “Girls,” Aana began. “Girls, come look.”


    Atlas roused Anji and shrugged the blanket off their shoulders. They got up stiffly and joined the adults at the tarp. The dust was mostly settled now, aside from the usual low-to-the-ground cloud of it that remained sometimes for days after a storm passed through.


    It was a little past sunrise, and the heat had already started to pick up again. The desert looked slightly odd after being swept with sand all night; the landscape that had been vaguely familiar now looked strange and new. The sky was grey, though, as if the storm was still there. But the air was clear.


    No, Atlas thought. Not clear, exactly. It’s hazy in the distance. She squinted through the open storefront.


    “Rain,” Aana said.


    “Rain…” Robert repeated.


    Anji was on tiptoe, trying to see past her dad’s shoulder. He stepped aside and yanked the tarp down. The sand that had gathered at the bottom in a small heap should have fallen away easily, as dry as the desert was, but it stuck stubbornly to the plastic.


    Atlas noticed this curiously and stooped down to feel it. It was… Wet? She hastily straightened as realization dawned on her. Anji had taken a few steps out into the sun and was peering up at the grey sky.


    “Rain clouds,” Aana said beside her. She always seemed to know exactly what her granddaughters were thinking. “Today will be a great travel day, if they don’t burn off.”


    “Attie!” Anji shouted. She was twirling on the spot, arms now raised up, hands outspread. “Anji! Come see this!”


    “It’s been off and on for three days.”


    The voice made everyone jump this time. They had almost forgotten that he was there. Atlas turned around and saw the stranger propped up on his elbows in the shadow of the tarp they had sheltered him with. “I’ve been in front of that storm for the past day or so. Trying to outrun it. I had to stop to search out water and it… Caught up.”


    He trailed off, noticing the wary look in every eye upon him. Even Anji had stopped twirling and stood half-hidden behind her father, staring at the stranger as if he might attack at a moment’s notice.


    “Uh…” He tried again, clearing his throat. “Thank you for not, er, killing me on sight. Yesterday. ” He turned his eyes back to the ground when nobody responded, his dark shaggy hair falling around his face.


    Atlas glanced at her grandmother, who seemed to be sizing the stranger up. Her thin, dark eyes were narrowed in thought, the creases around them deepening with the expression. “You’re welcome.” Aana said suddenly. “And you’re welcome for the water, too.” Atlas raised an eyebrow.


    The stranger cast his eyes upwards again and smiled, looking slightly abashed underneath his relief. The light hit his face and Atlas saw what the shadows the evening before had hidden from her— he wasn’t just a little lean, he was positively gaunt. What might have been passably handsome features in better times had been robbed by hunger.


    Aana seemed to notice too, because she made a tutting noise to herself and left the entrance of the store to rummage around in their bags. “I am called Sedna,” she introduced herself to the man. “But most just call me Aana.”


    “Aana…” The stranger repeated the word as if it felt strange on his tongue. “My name is Cody. I’d shake your hand, but, well.” He waggled his wrists behind him, still bound in wire.


    “Ah, yes. You’ll forgive me if I don’t untie you. We haven’t had the best of luck with strangers on this road, I’m afraid.”


    “Sure, I’ll try not to take it too personally.” He grinned. Atlas felt suspicion at the grin. This man wasn’t acting like the others they’d met, but the easy humor he had made her even more suspicious. It was the hidden snakes that were the most dangerous.


    Aana smiled back at him. A real smile. “That’s my son-by-marriage, Robert. His daughter, Anji, and my other granddaughter, Attie.”


    Atlas nodded politely and took Anji’s hand, leading her out into the overgrown parking lot that was even more covered in sand than it had been when they’d arrived. She intended to check out the vehicle this stranger, this Cody had ridden in on.


    She paused for a moment when she felt the rain. It was pleasantly cool and reminded her of home. She closed her eyes. Anji was giggling at her side, sounding for once like the young child she was.


    “Do you remember the snow at home, Anj?”


    “Do you remember I was ten, not three, cousin?” Anji shot back. So much for sounding like a child.


    “Okay, okay. But do you remember when we would dig out a hole of clean snow, and chuck it at each other?”


    “Mmhmm, and one time David got me in the back of the head with one, only there was ice in it, and it-” she broke off, gasping for air. Atlas’s bemused smile tightened at the rattling sound she could hear behind the breath. “-made me bleed!”


    “Oh, hmm. I seem to remember you shoved him so hard he fell on his face in the grey-snow and he broke out so bad you couldn’t see the skin on his face for a week!”


    Anji grinned, unabashed. “He deserved it.”


    Atlas playfully jabbed Anji with an elbow and both of them laughed. The laughter died quickly, as both girls tried to avoid thinking of what had happened to their childhood friends in the end.


    David was long since dead. They all were, and laughter at the good memories couldn’t guard against the pain of that truth for very long.


    When they reached the overturned motorbike, Atlas kicked aside the wet piles of sand and inspected it for bags. The bike had definitely seen better days. It was dented and rusted out all over, and even the headlight--which had gone out in the night— was cracked down the middle.


    There wasn’t much to search over, just one small pouch slung over the seat that had blown open in the wind and was full of sand. Atlas crouched beside it and scooped out the sand, brushing her hand off on her shirt afterwards. She reached inside and felt only a few items, which she dumped unceremoniously on the ground.


    A bottle, empty judging by the hollow sound it made as it landed, fell out first. Then came a small zipper pouch made of a clean, shiny material that Atlas didn’t recognize. Lastly, a glassy tablet which was had a crack spreading out from one corner like a web. This she caught with one hand before it hit the ground. She tossed the empty bag aside and turned the tablet over in her hands, inspecting it.


    “A computer?” Anji asked.


    “Sort of, yeah.” Atlas frowned. “Your father used to have one like it. Remember?”


    Anji shook her head. She reached out and clicked a button on the side of it but nothing happened. “No power.”


    “I think we’re still quite far from any cities.”


    “Don’t remind me.”


    Atlas grinned at the cynical seriousness in her cousins voice. “Okay,” she said airily. “I won’t.”


    Anji narrowed her eyes and Atlas swept the tablet up and took off running back towards the door, laughing.


    “Hey!” Anji shouted after her. “Attie, wait!”


    The two of them laughed as they ran back up to the store, the rain pleasantly cool and the air tasting cleaner than it had since they’d left home. Even Anji, her small lungs damaged as they were, was able to sprint most of the way.


    They tumbled into the store entrance, panting, and Atlas’s laughter halted as she felt the telltale rattling deep in her own lungs. She cleared her throat and held the tablet out towards Aana. “This was in his things. That’s it.”


    Robert was crouched beside Cody, talking in a low voice. Cody’s eyes darted over to Atlas and then returned to staring straight ahead. He looked intensely focused. And… Scared? Atlas wondered what on Earth her uncle was saying.


    Aana turned the tablet over in her weathered hands, frowning. “Well it wouldn’t be much use to him out here,” she muttered.


    “That’s uh, that’s mine…” Cory’s voice was louder, more assertive than it had been.


    All eyes shifted to him, except Aana’s. She just smiled a knowing smile and continued her inspection of the device.


    “Please!” Cory tried again, this time nearly shouting. His face was almost as pale as it had been after his fainting spell last night. Atlas, her ears already attuned to the sound, could hear his breathing becoming labored and wheezy. “Please, you can leave me tied up, I don’t care, leave me here to fend for myself, just please, please don’t take m-”


    “Take?” Aana interrupted, her eyebrows raised. “We’re not thieves.”


    It was clear from the desperate look in his eyes that he did not even consider that she might be telling the truth. He started to struggle to sit up, shifting his arms around behind him and squirming against the wires that bound him. His breath grew louder and more uneven.


    “We are headed south.” Aana had crossed to the boy and crouched, speaking into his panicked face. In one hand she offered him the tablet. “We have been on the road for a long time now, and most of the people we’ve encountered have been less than friendly. You, boy, are another stranger to us. But I don’t get the sense that you bear any malice. You have a hunted look, like you’re running from something just as we are. So, I’m going to trust you. Do you understand?”


    This was all spoken in a low voice, but a voice just cold enough to plainly say she would not hesitate to bind him or worse should he prove himself less than trustworthy.


    Cody’s eyes were darting all around, and he didn’t grab the tablet right away. He obviously thought it was some kind of trick. But his breathing was getting away from him. Atlas felt pity return as the wheezing grew louder. He had forgotten the tablet, now, amid the effort to catch his breath. His lips were growing pale.


    Without really thinking much about it, Atlas pushed her grandmother aside and roughly shoved the stranger over, toppling him to his side. She held her hands on his back so that he was balanced on his left side.


    “Breathe,” she commanded. He may have tried to obey, but it was impossible at that point. He could only gasp like a seal that had found its way into bad waters. Atlas turned to call to Anji but the girl was already there, clutching a worn red backpack in one hand and digging around in it with the other.


    She pulled out a small metal pot and a book of matches and handed it over. Atlas quickly struck one up, lighting the bottom of the pot and shoving it towards Cody’s reddening face. Anji wrapped a piece of cloth around her palms and cupped her hands between the pot and Cody’s mouth.


    “Breathe the smoke,” Atlas instructed. His eyes were rolling in fear but he obeyed. As best as he could, anyways, with his lungs seizing as badly as they were. One labored, halting breath. Then another. The third came easier. And by the fourth there was only the high pitched whistle beneath the gasps. Color returned slowly to his face and he slumped against Atlas’s hands. She could feel him trembling.


    “Worse than Anji,” Aana mused to nobody in particular. She came over and squatted beside the girls, peering into Cody’s gaunt face. “Where did you come from, Cody?”


    “S…” he sucked in another breath mid-sentence. “A city… West. Southwest of here.”


    Atlas could hear his breathing evening off and slowly lowered him back to a supine position. He glanced at her gratefully.


    “A city?” Aana repeated. She looked at her companions, her face blazing so fiercely that she looked decades younger. “And how many days did you travel?”


    Cody just shook his head at the question, squeezing his eyes tight. He was shaking harder, now.


    “Gran…” Atlas plead. “Please, Aana, let’s let him be for now.”


    Anji plunked a heavy bottle into the dirt beside Cody’s head. “Drink,” she ordered, with a confidence far surpassing what someone her age should have been able to manage. Cody drank, needing help at first to tip the bottle back but gaining strength enough to hold it himself.


    “That vehicle couldn’t have held much fuel. The city, I’d wager, is a few days’ travel at most. We’re almost there.” Aana’s voice didn’t betray any of the excitement that shown on her face. Robert looked wary at his mother’s sudden change.


    Cody set the bottle back down and pushed himself to his elbows. “Ma’am…” He stopped to clear his throat. It didn’t take the hoarseness away but he continued regardless. “Sorry, but… That’s not a place you want to be right now. The entire place is on lockdown. I barely got out.”


    Aana’s face didn’t change in the slightest. She looked at him and blinked, lost in her own thoughts. After a moment of silence she asked him, in a strange and cautious voice, who he was running from. She asked it as if not expecting an answer, and he didn’t offer one.


    Instead, he laid back down and closed his eyes, still breathing in shallow and trembling gasps. Atlas watched him settle into a shallow sleep before turning to her grandmother. She narrowed her eyes, almost accusatory, and pointed at the sleeping boy. “What on Earth, Aana!” Her voice was a hissing whisper. “What did he mean, ‘lockdown’, and what did you mean, about him running? You know something you’re not telling us.”


    “Not telling any of us!” Robert agreed, frowning.


    Aana looked at all of them, serenely. “I don’t know about the lockdown. I know that, the last time I was in the South, the…” She paused, frowning. “The Powers That Be were creating all sorts of problems.” There was a mirthless smile on her face now. “There were rumors… Only rumors.”


    “Rumors of what?” Atlas prodded. She frowned at her grandma’s sudden reticence as much as at the clouded, thoughtful expression on the older woman’s face.


    Robert cleared his throat. “Well. Regardless of what’s going on over there, we’re dead if we don’t find some kind of civilization. Likewise if we stay here for much longer. Shouldn’t we get going?”


    Aana snapped back to reality at the words and turned to Atlas, who sighed. Loathe as she was to admit it, her uncle was absolutely right. They had to keep moving. “So we leave Cody with his bike to follow and murder us in our sleep?” She asked flatly. “Or do we tie him up again and leave him to die?”


    Anji looked stricken by the options, and Atlas almost regretted saying it all aloud. Almost. She avoided the accusing stare of the younger girl and looked at the other two adults. They just frowned thoughtfully, understanding the dilemma.


    “No, we won’t do that,” Robert said, though he didn’t sound entirely convinced himself.


    “So we take him with us.” Everyone turned to look at Anji, who had drawn herself up to her full height. Her face was fierce. “We take him with us, we can keep an eye on him, and we know at least that he won’t die in the desert.”


    Atlas glanced over at Cody, who was still sound asleep. She didn’t like the idea of dragging this stranger along with them, but she knew she couldn’t leave anyone to die who did not deserve it. And he hadn’t been a criminal. Just someone lost in the desert, exactly as they themselves were.


    Letting out a long sigh, Atlas nodded. “I think that’s our only solid option.” There was a long pause, during which Anji continued to stare at the adults as if she towered over all of them.


    “Okay,” Aana said finally. Relief slid across Anji’s face and she relaxed. The women all turned to Robert.


    “Alright,” he sighed. “He comes with. Attie, wake him up.”