They drove along the backwoods trail at a crawl with just the running lights on. The trail had once been a road or something many years ago. Now, it was only two indentations on the ground that corresponded with the width of a car. The forest encircled them from all sides and formed a canopy of greenery above the trail. Dan sat in the shotgun seat while Joe and the Giguere brothers sat in back. Nari's dog Hye sat behind them in the SUV's cargo area. The dog had its head resting on the back seat while Preston slowly rubbed the top of his head.

The group rode in almost complete silence since leaving the three dead men behind. The only real conversation had involved everyone complaining about Joe smoking in the car. He grumbled and cracked a window and kept his cigarette close to the glass to keep the smoke from getting too far into the car. The car radio was down low as it played some kind of Sousa march for the third time over the last two hours. Like all the big radio stations across the country, the ones here in Vermont were subject to heavy censorship and only played a select few songs throughout the day. Those songs and hourly "news" bulletins from Socialist Washington filled up the programming on every major radio station in the United States. All the small stations the Soviets could get to had been shut down.

Joe finished his third cigarette of the drive just as the cabin came into view around the bend. To call it a cabin was being generous. Their base was more like a sophisticated series of lean-tos filled with guns and supplies and held together with nothing but hopes and dreams. Just like its inhabitants. Joe couldn't help but smile at the thought.