God it was so annoying to find herself the focus attention, Karen wished she could just head off on her own but then she'd be an easy target.

She knew that the lazy nature of humanity would insist on the easy way which motorized vehicles weren't. They would be like rats in a maze funneled into traps. She had seen it when she was with the army troops that headed to St. Louis, of course the convoy she'd been with hadn't been attacked because it had been made up of three military vehicles.

What she saw though were cars an trucks that had bullet holes in them and she knew some were attackers but some were victims. The officer in charge of her group told her that the age of the Highway man had returned and the only safety was in numbers and fire power. 

It sounded good till they ran into a pack of wacks in St. Louis who used fire crackers to draw the walkers. Corpreal Willis fired the saw till it's barrel was smoking and the floor of the Humvee was littered with so shell cases that you almost couldn't see the floor.

That's when the Wacks attacked, the used sniper fire to kill Willis as he was switching barrels. Karen's convoy had run dead into an ambush which only she and another managed to escape from.

She looked down at her maps and thought that at least with her course they'd only be attacked out in the open. Hell if they could get a couple of those huge tractors working she'd consider taking them along but their fuel millage was a joke.

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In the darkness outside about 400 yards from homesteads perimeter Hal Peters Leader of the Comanche blood as he named his group waited for the recon team to return or the sounds of battle neither mattered to him so long as he got what he wanted.

His group was 120 strong on this raiding party with another 60 men back at camp 5 miles off. He also had better than 55 slave women to help entertain his men who would one day help him create an empire out here in the plains.

His mind was awash with thoughts so grand that if he told anyone they'd think him mad but the thought that was foremost was of her. Young, fit, beautiful and smart, she'd make a perfect empress once he trained her.