But none of the other times did he have to worry about getting three women and eight children out of the crack. And in this case, the crack included that the children, at least, were likely to die of exposure if something wasn’t done.

“There wasn’t anything to use at the Hydrological Station.” The Posleen raided for loot, then destroyed every trace of previous habitation. While the station hadn’t been leveled it had been emptied. As had every other building they had checked.

Shari Reilly grimaced. “It’s still nearly fifteen miles,” she said. “Even carrying the kids, I don’t see how we can make it.”

Shari had been thirty-two, a waitress and single-mother of three, when the Posleen dropped on her hometown of Fredericksburg, Virginia. She was one of the very few survivors from that town and was resettled, along with her three children, in one of the first underground cities. It had been placed in an out-of-the-way valley in western North Carolina, despite a lack of roads to supply it, for two reasons: it was unlikely the Posleen would attack into such rugged country, and the local congressman was the chairman of the appropriation’s committee.

As it turned out, after five years of battering their heads everywhere else the Posleen did attack up the Rabun Valley. And Shari Reilly had, again, been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Story of her life, really.

“I’d like to find out what happened to Cally and Papa O’Neal,” Shari admitted quietly. The group had previously visited the O’Neal family farm and she and Papa O’Neal had gotten along very well, to the point that he had asked her, and the children, to come live with him. With the Posleen having overrun the area that plan, like so many others in her life, had been nipped in the bud. But she still felt it necessary to find out what happened to the O’Neals.