Max had no idea how long they ran. A mile, maybe two. His legs felt like lead and his chest burned, but he was close to the kids and Kal on every jump as never once let himself fall. After running, they jog and walk, alternating their trips, and then stopped for a minute to take a breath, knowing their lungs are breathing in the cold. The kids never complained but they would feel was Max is feel; feet sore and their sweat turning cold against their skin.

"Drink your water, guys. Not too much," ordered Max and the kids take their drinks from their packs. "How far is the nearest shelter?" He asked Kal, seeing the sunlight descending,

"Couple miles away, there's a ranch with a house. If we jog, we can make it."

"Any more up?"

"No."

"At least we came prepared to camp outside."

"Better hurry. Night is dangerous," Kal checks his revolvers, seeing them loaded and put back of his sheath.

They jog for several miles. Max kept looking back at the kids. In their last stop Rin fixed Killeen's injury on his head, just a scratch that bled and stopped it.

They reached the crest of the hill that separated the field of snow from an upslope that wound around the base of a huge mountain.

Kal stalked over to Rin. "Where you learn to do that?"

Rin smiles. "Sanctuary. When I got this scar on my cheek, I wanted to learn it more than what I already know. The nurses and doctor Mike showed me the advance stuff of medical attention. I got to like it and Negan gave me a job to do it."

Kal nodded. "You guys were together for awhile?"

"Since the beginning. We did had family but we were on our own. The RK's- Lalon, Lugh, Vix, and Mal found us and we've been together, learning from them. We're family."

"Yeah," said Kal. "In the school we treat each other as family but it's a dysfunctional family. Some can be a total pain in my butt."

"Sometimes we have that or have a world-class jerk, but doesn't family do that."

"Yeah."

Rin nodded. "How many?"

"Seven. Including Riot and me."

"You talk about Riot a lot," she grinned, wiggling her eyebrows.

Kal's smile was slow when coming. "It's complicated."

"Complicated? C'mon, I heard that story many times."

"Well, it really is complicated. I'm new to it and he's... uh, expressive."

"Expressive as in like Negan. No control- what Mal says."

"Yep, no control. But it's nothing."

"Okay," said Rin. "But you shouldn't ignore it. Talking isn't a big issue."

The afternoon burned on, and they walked the base of the mountain and down the terrain of the forest. Neither spike for almost an hour, listening to the woods.

They walked another half mile.

They round a bend onto the side of the mountain. Even from a quarter mile away Max could see Infected standing in yards or on the fields. One stood in the middle of the house with his face tilted toward the sun.

Nothing moved.

"You ready?"

"Yep," said Johan as she notched an arrow in her bow.

"Yeah," Killeen replied as well with the black pipe gripped in his small hands. Rin nodded and passed her switchblade out. Kal took a long curved knife out of his scabbard.

Max loosened his dagger in its sheath, and led the way. He took a breath, unsure of how exactly the days will come and if he is even doing the right choice and moment, but he shook his head, and went forward.

They slowed their pace as they neared the field. Max stopped and Johan spent a few minutes studying the ranch. The ranch ran upward to where they stood, so they had a good view of everything. Moving very slowly, Max speaks to them.

"Johan, take out the Infected in the fields and wait for a second," Max murmured. "We don't want to alarm them with quick movements to attack. Then we move closer as we take each on down carefully."

Max began moving slowly and the kids mimic everything Max did, and Kal behind, watching Max do his work. Johan go first and heads slowly towards the Infected in the field. On the left had three Infected on the other side of a hip-high barbed wire fence. Two boys and an older woman. Their clothes were tatters that blew in the hit breeze. As Johan gets close, the old woman turned in her direction. Johan stopped and aimed and waited, her fingers gripping the nose of the string, the quilt against her back cheek, but the woman's dead eyes swept past her without lingering. A few paces along, she was only a yard away and Johan sees why the Infected were not moving. She comes over to the old woman and inspects the frozen Infected. Her legs are bare, the snow sucked around her calves, the skin tight as leather, and the whole rotten body is frosted in the cold. Johan realized Infected don't have much clothes on, so they would end up frozen. She turns and whistles for the others to come and walked down. Max sees the three frozen Infected and shrugged his shoulder, and slashes all their heads for safety matters.

They moved steadily down the yard, always slow. The sun was heading toward the western part of the sky, and would be dark in two or one hour.

"There it is," murmured Kal, and the kids looked towed the house with the blue door. A man stood at the door. He once had dark hair, but now his hair is frosted and nearly gone, and the skin of his face had shriveled to a leathery tightness. The withered face and the dead black pale eyes were pointed directly at the door, as if it had been waiting there all these years for someone to open the door.

"It's just one, I got this," said Killeen as he steadies his pipe. Mac cast a quick look at the right to make sure Infected was there.

And one jumps towards Killeen.

"Killeen!" Max cried. "Look out!"

A dark shape lunged at Killeen out of the snow, popping like a prairie dog. It clawed for him with wax-white fingers and moaned with an unspeakable hunger.

Then Johan pulls him away, using her bow to pivot the Infected's right arm. Rin ducks down to slice the Infected's ankle, pivoting the Infected down, knocking snow. Max leaped onto the Infected's back and used his knees to pin both the shoulders to the snow and strikes the dagger in the back of the cranium.

Max stood up and close his knife. He slapped snow from his clothes.

"I'm impressed for you guys, you know how to take care of yourselves."

Killeen laughed. "We've learned from the best." Then the close the door as they head inside the house.

The house is cold, window boarded with thick heavy drapes so with a fire it would warm the house up. Johan starts the fire in the firehouse, using dead dry twigs, moss, and tree branches. Rin and Killeen looked around and coming back to the living to fold some blankets and set them in the floor. Max went outside to strung two lines across the entrance. The first was a length of twine on which dozens of empty tin cans and pieces of broken glass were strung. When it was in place, it lay against the stairs and by the door, and anyone coming the can will make a jangling din so loud for them to wake up. The second line was in the yard and was a length of silver wire he positioned at mid-shin level. It was virtually invisible in the snow, but someone passed the yard, they would trip over it. Between the noise and this delaying trick, whoever broke in would not be sneaking up on a sleeping kids, but would be sprawled on the ground while practiced hunters hunt them in the dark.

Once the entrance was rigged, he comes up and feels the warm burning fire filling in the house. He unbuckles his gun belt and placed it next to the blanket pallet. Everyone sits down while Rin started pulling out her cooking equipment.

"What have we got for food?" Asked Rin.

Killeen reaches in his bag. "Well, we've good pork and beans, soup, jerky, steak and potatoes we've grabbed, blue berries, and-oh, you're favorite- lots and lots of spam."

Johan cringed. "Why did you grabbed so much spam."

"I was in a rush."

"Give me the soup and steak then," said Rin, "don't want the meat spoiled."

She pours water into the cooking pot and began adding bits of meat and the soup. "Looks empty." Max said to Kal.

"Me, Riot, and Strider already composted the place. In case there was nothing for us to come for."

"You read? I see fresh books in the shelf." There were about fourteen books. Novels, joke books, magazines and comic books. There were stacks of books on every surface heaped against the wall.

Kal looked from them to the books and back again. "I read," he said simply.

"How many of these books have you read?"

"All." He smiled. "I... not only read. I like to write. Like novels."

"Novels?" Said Max enthusiastically. "What kind of novels? I like to see, if you want me to read them."

Kal, lit by the soft glow of the cook fire, was bending over and sadly smiled. "It's back at the school."

To Kal, Johan said, "you read books to the kids back at the school?"

Kal nodded and sat back. "Yes. We have to read all the time. To have knowledge. Sometimes to help them sleep better."

They nodded. "We do too. Or read to have fun." Said Rin. Max took the opportunity to ask him some questions. "Kal, have you been running all this time?"

He nodded. "It's been four months. Four months of running."

"How long you stayed in the school?" Asked Rin.

Kal's eyes were as hard as steel, but they glistened wetly. "Six weeks."

"Kal," Killeen said with a soft voice, "what kind of Frontiers are we dealing with? They're Flyer Frontiers, but they are more brute."

"They want to take over the Ruins, everything. Tradepost, the Eleven Towns, control and exterminate Bounty Hunters. People are in fear and that's how they control Frontier outpost, and they pick out the weak, punishing them or to the fighting pits- alive or dead reward. I hate them, they are like bullies; picking me like dirt, hitting me because I'm small and weak, but I never listened to their hurtful words," he said in a small, sad voice that was an echo of the child he ha once been and would never be again. He sorted through his conflicted emotions and jumbled thoughts. "When Nathan and Riot made the plan to escape, I was beyond happy. I was bliss to be free, yet I needed help. Every time I found those Famous Infected Cards, I believed them as my Herod and someday I would find one to help me face the Frontiers and end them once and for all. They were ten of us."

"What happened to them?" Killeen asked, and Max winced, not wanting to hear the answer.

But Kal shook his head. "Annie was the first. They caught her. She fought against them. She bit. Kicked. Thumbs to the eyes." He made a fist so tight, his knuckles crack, and the lights in his eyes looked both dangerous and angry. "But no matter what, they hung her while we just ran away." Kal shook his head in denial of the memory. "Demi fell into their traps with her cousin Lilah and ran towards the trap. I ran to get them back. But... when I found them, thumey were gone. Then... they came back."

"Oh God, no..." Rin gasped.

"Tried to bite."

More tears fell from Kal's eyes. It was all that Kal would say on the subject. Killeen asked him what he's done with those two kids, but Kal just shook his head. Max matched this against what Kal had told him, of the people Jal has been trying to run away over and over again. Frontiers. All these long, frustrating months, Kal had been killing the image of the Frontiers in the hopes that one day he'd get them within range to take revenge for what had been done to him and others.

That put an end to the conversation until after the stew was cooked. Rin dishes out the food.

"Kal," Max said, "how far is the school to the Frontier compost."

"Ten miles," Kal said with a shudder. "They didn't get the chance to find us so it gave us some time."

He set down his dish and leaned his elbows on his knees. "Look," Max said, "I'm nobody's idea of a hero, but I don't think I want to go back to Tradepost just yet. In fact, I don't think I can go back to town with your kids."

"What are you suggesting?" Asked Johan. "That we march into this camp and act upon."

"I don't know, but we have to do something," said Max. He jumped to his feet in agitation and began walking back and forth as he spoke. "What if we make a force in your school. Train those kids to fight them, give them the chance to prove the Frontiers to not mess with them. Make your school a fort, filled with armed weapons and traps. It would give us time for the RK's to come an help you guys. Make a diversion."

Kal and the kids stared at Max in total silence for more than two minutes. The stew in the pot began to bubble and burn; the wind roared softly in the background. Max stood there and waited out of the silence. Johan took the burning stew off the fire and set it on the counter. She leaned toward Johan and Killeen. "Is he... damaged?" She touched her head to indicate where the suspected dance might lie. Killeen held one hand up and seesawed it back and forth.

"Opinions vary," Rin said.

"More like possibility," Killeen replied. "You just sound like the RK's, like Mal for the moment."

"It could work," said Max.

"It could," said Kal, and they all looked at him. A crooked smile had worked its way onto his lips, and he appeared to be re-evaluating the diversion. "The kids need to be trained very good be a use our leader wouldn't be pleased by this."

"Then we convince them more," replied Max.

Killeen ran his fingers through the blonde tangles of his hair. "If not, we use force. Put the fear into them to convince them."

Johan broke out into a smile. "That will work."

Rin snorted. "Of course it will work."

Max broke out into another twisted grin. "What you say Kal?"

Kal turned to him, and his smile was every bit as big and bright as his.

"I'm counting on you, Max. Let's get some sleep and head over there and discuss our plan to them."

And Max was counting on it.