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You check the time—10:00 am.

As you pass by the window, you hear a loud moan close to the front of your house. You find a gap between the boards covering the glass and look outside. Across the road stumbles a man wearing the tan-and-white camouflage of the National Guard. He grips a pistol in one hand, and the other holds a bloody cloth to his neck. As he moves onto the curb outside your home, he looks over his shoulder, and you read fear on his face. Suddenly, he trips on the knotted root of a tree jutting through the cracked pavement, then he tumbles and lands on your lawn. A moment later, he rolls onto his back with a subdued moan, and his hands fall to his side. From thirty feet away, you eye the wound on his neck, but it's so covered in blood, all you can see is red. You study him as he lies there and notice the bulging pockets on his uniform.

You scan the street and see no other movement, save for some trash blowing in the wind and a blackbird coasting between telephone poles.

You…

In an ideal world, maybe you'd run out and help this injured soldier. But the outbreak has changed everything, and you feel a wait-and-watch attitude will keep you alive longer.

You stand by the window and study the soldier from afar. He lies still on the concrete pavement, not even stirring or lifting his head. You eye each end of the street and listen for any sound, though you hear nothing but the whistling of the brisk wind. Some trash blows over your lawn, and a blackbird coasts between telephone poles, but otherwise, there's no movement.

A few minutes pass, and finally the soldier moves, rolling to his side and placing the cloth back on his bloody neck. He struggles to rise but only manages to sit on the curb, legs in the street. As he tries to stand, a motor roars in the distance. From around the corner, an armored Humvee straddles the sidewalk and straightens at the end of its turn. As the hum of the engine rumbles through the street, the soldier springs to his feet, wobbles, then crashes to his hands and knees. He half crawls, half drags himself a few feet before tumbling curbside onto the street.

The Humvee rolls to a screeching stop, and the front passenger door swings open. Out steps a tall, lean man with a youthful face. Curly blond hair pokes out from under his cowboy hat. He carries an M4 carbine and leaps up to sit on the front hood of the vehicle. His bottom lip bulges, and he spits a wad of brown liquid into the grass. With the way he appears, you can't help but think of him as a cowboy.

The driver steps out next, a massively built man with dark features and a bald head. He folds his arms over his chest, which further bulges the muscles of his arms.

The back door on the driver's side swings open, and a dark-haired woman slides out. She's shorter than the top of the Humvee's door but stands tall and strong in her battle fatigues. Her hair is curled up in a bun, though several strands hang over her thin face and seem to bounce off of her high cheekbones as she walks. As she moves onto the lawn, she sidesteps the cowboy's spittle and adjusts a holstered pistol on her belt.

As the new soldiers move about, you…