Cord always felt slightly hungry. He assumed that everyone else did, too, but not even Dolly complained. Even the youngest children understood how close to the edge the farm might be balanced. But there were still—for now, anyway—enough game to trap, enough plants to gather. Wild onion, chicory for coffee, salad greens, agave to make the sweet syrup that Cord loved. Plus, this year’s harvest would be good, thanks to careful irrigation. The chickens, mercifully, didn’t contract any diseases from bioweapons. “Well, that makes sense,” Emily said. “You start fooling around with avian pathogens, you could infect all birds and really ruin the ecology.” She fell silent, realizing that it was she who was not making sense. “Aunt Emily, how many other people are left alive near us?” Kezia asked plaintively. Uncle DeWayne said, “There are still some groups posting. A large one in Colorado, one in east Texas, one in the Arizona mountains. A few more, farther away. Then there are groups in the East, plus a few overseas.
