Simon looked up and sighed. “They were reserved for the Major. Seems he liked them young and ‘unspoiled’.” Simon looked out the window. “The girls were brought to the Major and when he was finished with them, they were broken. If they had spirit before, they were broken afterwards. The life was taken from them.”

Simon stopped speaking and I had to rein in my emotions. My first impulse was to pack up and head west, not stopping until I had a chance to confront this mess of vipers, but my more rational side realized it was futile. I couldn’t go two thousand miles across country to fight a pedophile bastard and his cronies.

My attention was diverted as Tommy and Duncan came spilling into the room, joking like a couple of teenagers. They glanced over to the table and their expressions turned serious as they felt the mood of the room. They came over to the table with curious looks to Simon and sat down with questions in their eyes at me. I shook my head as I motioned for Clays to continue.

“I was there for twenty months and it reached a point where I couldn’t stand it any more. There were women’s screams every night and children crying for their mothers. In the bunkhouse where I shared sleeping space with the fathers and husbands, there would always be one or two crying rage and shame at their helplessness. More than once rebellion was contemplated, but it was tamped down because of the kids’ camp.

“I finally decided to leave on a night I knew the guards would be distracted. One of the scouting and foraging parties had come across a large group of people who had been travelling. There were a lot of women and children and the men were licking their chops at the new flesh. That night, I ducked the fence, smashed a guard across the teeth with a rock, and took off into the night.”

Simon shrugged. “I guess I survived because it was winter and the zombies were frozen. I moved as far as I could every day, and slept only a few hours at a time. I stuck to the country as much as I could, figuring the Major’s men would be too lazy to search off the roads. Chances are they never missed me or just didn’t care.”