CHAPTER 5Mike Strong came back to the group and said, “They’ve barricaded the town. We’ll have to go around it.”
There were some fifty of them, several groups that had merged against the common danger of an uncertain future; women and children mostly, with a small scattering of men; a merging with each of the groups holding more or less to its own identity.
Mike was with a group of seven, three women and three children. Two of the children belonged to Sarah Turner—Barbara, six years old, and Johnny, nine. The other small one was the baby Jeanne Barns carried in her arms. Greta Rood, a big, motherly Scandinavian blonde, was unencumbered. Her whole family had been killed in the first instant of the h*******t.
Why Mike had attached himself to this group and given it his loyalty and protect
