Wendy Cummings shrugged and shook her head, pulling a lock of hair out of her eyes.

“We’re still in the same boat,” she said, gesturing at the gray skies. In the last few hours the sky had begun to darken. While the women, with their new upgrades, could probably survive the environment, the children were without any shelter or heavy clothing. Getting them both was the second highest priority, the highest being to keep them out of the hands of the Posleen.

Wendy was the main point of contact between the other two women and sometimes she felt like the only thing holding the group together. She was a well-endowed blonde, another survivor of Fredericksburg, who had until recently been stymied in her desire to go off and kill Posleen like her boyfriend was doing. She was doing it now, whenever the Posleen came in view, but killing Posleen while carting kids around took all the fun out of it.

Still, a mission was a mission.

“We need to get the kids some clothes and we could use some supplies,” she continued, gesturing at the two soldiers. “Even with what the sergeant major and Mueller supplied, it’s not enough.”

“There was plenty in the cache,” Mueller noted. He slid a little more dry wood into the fire and looked up at the sky. “If we move fast we can make it to the O’Neal house by midnight.”

“Later,” Mosovich replied. The sergeant major was the antithesis of his subordinate, slight and wiry. But he had been beating around the bush when Mueller wasn’t even a gleam in his father’s eye and could carry loads that were frankly astonishing. What he would not do, in these conditions, was lie. “Even with their girls’… improvement, we can’t carry all the kids that far. And in a few hours it’s gonna start raining, cold rain. And by morning we might be looking at sleet.”