Maggie, Amelia & Joshua
[She wondered when the hell the prison had become home. Thick walls and the rank smell of bodies, dirt, blood and death had been a warm blanket to bundle herself up in when she came to, shivering with borrowed memories of blood sticky on her skin and brain matter on skirts she didn't own. She woke and death was heavy in her throat, sick-sweet and the blond in the bunk across, the talkative kid from some kind of show where everything worked out in the end, she was gone. For a long minute, Maggie found gratitude where sorrow ought to be: alone was how it had always been, alone was safer than anyone reliant at her heels.
But alone didn't last long. Over-run. Bodies massing beyond the fence, thick as flies on shit. There wasn't a moment alone with bruised mind and the sick roll-over of her stomach as it lazily dived and flipped, there was just the clear solidity of instruction. Get the kid and the woman out. She had the gun from the bar, slung over her back with string, a thick knife shoved through a sawed-open denim pocket that served as a holster. And she strode into the bunk without acknowledging the invisible walls and doors they all pretended they had in a clutch at privacy.]