Chapter 50

“Sounds like a good idea,”Claude said,“but we don’t have a dog.Our community is kind of small—less than five hundred people.What about you?”

“We started out with about that many people in our valley,”Josh said,“but in the past year,we’ve expanded to include two adjacent valleys,so we’re nearing thirteenhundred residents at the moment.Have you guys been contacted by the outside world?”

“No,”Claude said.“Have you?”

“Yeah,”Josh said.“We’ve done some trading with a train that starts in northern Virginia and comes through our area about once a week.They want our fruits and vegetables,and so far they’ve traded fuel oil,LP gas,and other things in exchange.”

“That would be a godsend,”Claude said.“How did you manage to contact them?”

“We have a couple of old-fashioned radios—the kind used by amateur radio operators—that were built before computers,”Josh said.“Do you have those?”

“Unfortunately,we don’t,”Claude said.