Davey woke up late in the afternoon.

“I’m hungry,” he whined.

“Shh,” Sylvia said. “We gotta wait a while before we can eat.”

Ron said to her, “I’ll take a look around outside. Maybe I can find something.”

“No!” She looked alarmed. “They’ll be prowlin’ around out there. Wait ’til dark.”

Ron waited. It got colder and darker. Sitting there on the cement basement floor, Ron found himself shaking from the cold. They didn’t even have coats. Davey had started coughing again. Ron got up and paced around the cluttered basement floor.

“It’s dark enough,” he whispered to Sylvia at last. “I’m going out.”

He might as well have saved his energy.

The gang’s main building was completely gutted by the fire. The food supplies, guns, ammo, clothing—all gone. What hadn’t burned had been carried away by the victorious Chelsea warriors. Even the dead bodies had been stripped of anything useful or valuable.

There were no people around. None living, that is. The dead bodies littered the streets. And there were the rats. Ron nearly stepped on one before he realized what it was. In the dark, he heard a chittering sound, the skritch-skritch of clawed feet scurrying across cement pavement. And he saw the tiny, gleaming, wicked eyes.

A chill raced through him. All thought of food vanished. The previous night, the fire had kept both humans and rats terrified and cowering. Now the rats were out to claim their usual, ultimate victory over the humans. Ron raced back to the basement where he had left Sylvia and Davey. In the darkness, he tripped over a body and sprawled face down on the sidewalk. Something furry brushed against his hand.

Ron nearly screamed. He did scream, in his mind. But he managed to keep it silent.

He got to the basement and found them both asleep, untouched.

“Come on, we’re going upstairs,” Ron said as he shook Sylvia awake.

“Wh . . . whassa matter?”

“Rats.”

He could feel the shudder go through her. Silently, they climbed to the top floor of the building and slept on the floor of a bare little room.

But Ron slept very little, only in snatches of a few minutes each. By the time morning started lighting the streets outside, he was wide awake and aching with cold. And he was hungry.

Davey was coughing again. And crying.

“Ron, he feels hot. Like he’s burnin’ up!” Sylvia said.

The child’s face was red. Fever.

“He needs food,” Sylvia said, her voice close to cracking.

“And medicine,” Ron added.

Davey’s eyes were still closed, but he was moaning softly, “It hurts . . . hurts . . .”

Dewey! Dewey will know what to do. He’ll have food. And medicine, too, maybe.

“I’ve got to get to the market,” Ron told her. “I can get food there, and whatever else we need.”

“Th’ market? You’ll never make it that far.”

“Yes I will. I’ve got to.”

She reached for his arm. “Ron, don’t! You’ll get caught. If th’ Chelsea gang don’t getcha some other gang will. They all know Al’s dead by now. They won’t give a damn what they do to you!”

He pulled free of her. “I can’t sit here and let us starve. Davey needs food and medicine. No way to get them except at the market.”

“Ron, wait—”

“I’ll be back,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.”

He was out the door before she could say anything else.

It took three days. Ron had to travel slowly, avoiding everybody and anybody on the streets. Most of the day he inched along, a block at a time, sometimes just a building at a time. Ducking into a doorway, he’d look carefully out onto the street and wait until no one was in sight. Then he’d sprint as far as he dared and duck into another doorway, praying that nobody saw him.

Twice he was spotted. Once he simply outran a pack of little kids. He ran until his lungs were aflame and his vision blurred. He raced down one block, cut around a corner, through an alleyway, up a fire-escape ladder, and down the other side of the building. When he collapsed, chest heaving painfully, the kids were nowhere in sight.

Just as night was falling he was surprised by three warriors from a gang he didn’t know. Ron stepped into a shadowy doorway and the three of them were already in there. They were just as surprised as he was.

They were smoking something and didn’t expect to be disturbed. For a flash of a second the three of them froze, wide-eyed, scared. Before they could recover, Ron took off, running wildly again. After a few minutes he looked back over his shoulder. No one was following.

He got to Dewey’s place late that night. He nearly forgot about the traps that the old man had set up along the stairs. But he remembered them just in time.

Finally he stood under the hole in the ceiling where the rope ladder had been and yelled out? “Dewey, it’s me, Ron. It’s Ron! Wake up. Hurry. Please hurry!”

A powerful light suddenly blinded him. He put his hands up over his head to shield himself. The light was blazing bright; Ron could feel its heat.

“You alone?” he heard Dewey’s voice ask.

“Yes.”

The rope ladder tumbled down and dangled in front of Ron. In a few minutes he was standing in Dewey’s living room, trying to tell the old man everything at once.

“Slow down, slow down,” Dewey said. “I can’t hardly understand you.”

Ron took a deep breath and tried to speak more slowly. He told Dewey about Dino, about the raid, the killings, Sylvia and Davey, their need for food and medicine.

Dewey nodded grimly. “Okay. I get the picture.”

Then the old man quickly moved through the apartment, pulling a worn old hiking pack from a closet, stuffing it with cans and plastic packages of food, a canteen of water, and cartons of powdered milk. From another closet he took a small metal box marked with a red cross.

“There’s penicillin and bug-killers in this kit,” he told Ron. “Hope they can do the job, ’cause there’s nothing else we can do for him here inside the Dome.”

Ron nodded gratefully.

As Ron started to slide his arms through the pack’s shoulder harness, Dewey said, “You know you ought to eat something, and get some sleep. You’re not goin’ to get back for another day anyway, and you look mighty worn out.”