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Hoould he get along with his brothers? They would ask him all the questions his parents wouldn’t They’d ask him what he had done They’d ask him if he represented They’d ask him if he had stood up or wimped out That hat brothers were like, at least his

Whenever the barrier ca to theall kinds of stories And pretty quick people would realize they hadn’t just all sat around catching up on their homework

People would realize it had been more like a war And then all those questions Were you scared, Mohamed? Were you picked on? Did you ever run into all these insane freaks we hear about on TV?

Did you ever kill anyone? What was it like?

He hadn’t killed anyone He’d had a couple of fights; one of them was pretty bad He’d had a nail driven into his butt cheek and broken his wrist

Mohae that story a little Nail in the butt sounded funny It hadn’t been, but if he ever got out, yeah, he’d change that story

As for freaks, the only one he’d spent any time as Lana She had healed his butt and his wrist

So, yeah, don’t diss all the freaks, not to Moha Split, Mohaone to Albert and asked his advice Until then Moha in the fields, but Albert had seen so in him

Albert had liked him for the fact that he had no real friends No faed to stay under the radar All those things--plus Mohaht for the job Albert had for hi AlberCo at the lake

Mohamed still had no friends But he had a job An important one Albert would want to know details of Astrid’s return He’d want to know that she wassome kind of stain on the dome Maybe he’d want to know about some weird, mutant animal Astrid had supposedly killed And he would definitely want to hear what Mohaone out on

Mohamed walked down the familiar, dusty road

He walked alone

Hoas already en route to Coates He had a long day of work ahead of him Hopefully his contractors would have run soetables and fruits up to Coates and locked them in the rat-proof steel cupboards in the kitchen

Hoould have to chop the produce up as small as he had patience for, then carry it to the still He had a little firewood in place, hopefully enough to get the cooker started Then while the batch was cooking he would have to hack around the woods looking for fallen trees, which he would then have to cut

All of this used to be Orc’s job Orc could haul a lot of bottles Orc could haul a lot of firewood Orc swinging an ax was a whole different story fro would be cut through For Howard the sa was getting to be a lot less fun It was a lot more like real work In fact, Howard realized with a sudden shock, he was noorking harder than just about anyone else Kids picking veggies in the fields didn’t even work like Howard did

"Gotta get Orc to be norain," Howard muttered to the bushes "Boy needs to take a drink or six and start feeling it again"