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With a bit of liquid courage resting in his belly, Nealson once again turned his attention to his wound The bullet had passed through cleanly, tearing apartbone entirely The blood flow had ently prodded the wound to see if he could feel any fragments of the bullet at either side A fresh dribble of blood and another wave of painhis attention back to the boxes

“She couldn’t have used up all the bandages” Nealsonauze He tore it open with his teeth and divided it across both sides of the wound before taking the re it down to keep it in place A long, thin toas quickly fashioned into aback at the co cold canned corn with the edge of a knife blade while wondering what to do next

“Boss?” A voice called fronizing the voice and relaxing

“Get in here” He answered back before taking another bite A h the front door

“Boss? What… what happened here?” The pair entered the coht of the bloody pile of bandages, the general state of disarray and a

t Nealson sitting with his ar

“She happened Her and that family of hers”

“Where’s everyone else?”

“Dead All of ‘em”

One of the pair shook his head “We saw a couple bodies out front but didn’t think… how’d you stay alive, boss?”

“Luck and skill” Nealson took a last bite before tossing the can to the floor He wiped the knife clean on his pant leg before standing up and slipping it back into his pocket “Where’s the truck?”

“Down the road Things looked off so the boys stayed with it while we came up to take a look”

“Good thinking Signal theet up here” One of the pair nodded and ran out the front of the building while Nealson addressed the other “What’d you bring back?”

“Couple bags of uns, a couple water purifiers and a bunch of boxes of food Mostly canned stuff Oh, and seeds Enough to start growing souess we’ll need to find some new labor to work on that, huh?”

“Nah” Nealson shook his head “We don’t need new ones There’s still a few perfectly good ones They just up and ran off is all” The sound of a truck engine cah the door