“This day just keeps going sideways”.

Aldous and Reilly had returned to town to scavenge for parts. Each of them had a pistol strapped to their leg while Aldous carried a shotgun slung over his shoulder and Reilly carried an automatic rifle. As they waded among the vehicles he had been inspecting earlier, Aldous kept commenting on the status of their day while Reilly, for the most part, agreed. “Right now, I think we’d have been better off getting out of here when it started going bad. That’s all I’m saying”.

“You said so yourself”, Reilly remarked. “As short as we are on supplies we wouldn’t have gotten far. Parts we could do without, but food, we needed”. Pointing at one of the vehicles, he asked “How about that one?”

Aldous shook his head. “Too small, not enough cargo space”. Continuing his search, he resumed the conversation. “Okay, I get that we needed food, but why here? Isn’t this where you got dumped when they let you out of jail?”

“They didn’t ‘let us out’”, Reilly answered curtly. “They dumped us here because they knew Reavers hit this place from time to time”.

Aldous looked at him. “Seriously?”

Reilly nodded contemptuously. “Our glorious Alliance figured that their little pit monsters would take care of the surplus prison population”. Pointing to another promising vehicle, he asked “That one?”

Aldous bent down into the vehicle and froze. “No”, he said slowly. “Booby trap. See?” he pointed. “There, by the accelerator. The box with the oily-looking wires coming out. Start it up and it’ll blow”.

Reilly followed his gaze. “So, what do we do?”

“Just back away and don’t even touch it”. Aldous stepped back slowly. “So, how’d you get off this rock the first time?”

“By chance, some scavengers came by and we were able to barter passage off this rock. We worked for them until we found a better deal, and so on, and so on, and here we are”.

“So why stay with him?”

Reilly looked up. “The best way to survive is to have people around you you can count on. He’s had plenty of chances