The man in the tracksuit put a hand over his eyes, trying to see them better. Then he clapped his hands gleefully. “Well, what do you know!” he cried. “You got the cast iron pot I sent!”

? ? ?

And then there were twenty. Again.

The Newcomers were off the waitlist. A waitlist the Community had never heard of before. A waitlist that over the years had grown from a few names into hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands. Maybe more. That’s what the Newcomers said.

They also said they had originally been bused to a different entrance, a place called Lower something or other, on a route that took them through a sliver of the Mines, but that there had been some unrest there and they had to turn around abruptly and change locations.

They said that after another long bus journey, they had been left at a desolate dock, blindfolded, and taken by a small motorboat, escorted onto the shore, and only when they could no longer hear the boat burbling away were they allowed to look.

They said they had been here on this beach for some time. Possibly months or more. They used to have a calendar.

“But you burned it,” said Carl.

“Yeah,” said the man in the tracksuit. This man who had sent them the Cast Iron many years ago. His name, he said, was Frank.

They said when they were dropped on the beach, they’d had watches too.

“But they broke,” Carl said.

Frank nodded, looking reassured that someone understood the strange facts of their new lives.

Frank looked around at his group, and with regret said, “There were two more with us in the beginning.”

“But they died.” Carl waved his hand. “Don’t worry, it happens.”

“Don’t blame yourselves,” added Glen gently with an empathetic smile.

Carl rolled his eyes.

“Should we say what happened to them?” one of the women asked. She wore a torn animal-print skirt and glittery sandals.

Carl frowned. “Nope.”

The Newcomers looked both relieved and even more stricken, glad to know they wouldn’t be blamed, but alone and unsure what to do with their grief. The Community eyed them warily. They had not been looking for new people with new hang-ups. New grief. They had only gone where they were told to go. Now everything was different.

Agnes studied these new people carefully as the rest of the introductions were made. The way they looked was both strange and familiar to her. She inched closer and closer to a girl’s shoe just so she could smell it. It was white and soft, like cotton. The eyelets and tongue made the shoe look like a lizard. There were no laces. She thought all shoes had laces. She had a strong memory of opening a closet and a smell wafting out. She knew that smell would belong to the shoe. But she got too close, and the girl with the shoe kicked at Agnes. The girl, older than Agnes, had been watching her approach. She bared her teeth, but the woman next to the girl slapped her arm and the girl howled dramatically.

“Pay attention, Patty,” the woman snarled. The woman was definitely the girl’s mother, Agnes thought, or otherwise related, as they had the same skeptical brow.

The girl rubbed her arm and frowned at Agnes, blaming her for everything. She tried to pull her foot closer to her body somehow, to keep it away from Agnes. But Agnes had already retreated.

The mother’s name was Patricia, she told them all, and that was her daughter, Patty.

“You’re both named Patricia?” Debra asked.

“I’m Patty,” the girl whined. “Just Patty.”

“And I’m just Patricia,” said Patty’s mother, rolling her eyes.

There was another girl who looked to be Patty’s age named Celeste. She had a streak of blue in her hair and wore combat boots, which Agnes thought was one of the more sensible footwear choices of the group. The girl’s mother, Helen, wore the ripped skirt and strappy sandals, her toenails covered in sparkly gold polish. The mother seemed embarrassed of her daughter, the way she stood next to her but apart, hugging her arms as though cold. The daughter seemed to feel likewise, slouching away, leaning toward Patty. Agnes watched the two girls briefly brush their hands together in solidarity.

Patty’s dad was Frank. He did most of the talking for his group.

There were two other children, a little boy and a girl, young, with their mother. The mother was Linda, and the boy and girl were Joven and Dolores. The kids looked overwhelmed by the distance of the horizon and kept their eyes down. Sometimes the girl, Dolores, covered her nose, as though still unaccustomed to the smell of this place, even though they’d been there weeks, possibly months. It was so wet and rotting. So salted. When the girl looked up briefly, Agnes caught her eye and wrinkled her nose sympathetically. Dolores smiled shyly, looking just beyond Agnes, as though it was the closest her eyes could get. Joven wore glasses and had a buzz cut that made his hair look like a velvet cap. Dolores had braids, one on each side of her head, and formerly white socks with a folded cuff adorned with lace. The socks were smudged dark brown now, but the fold was still impossibly crisp, as though sewn into place. Dolores reminded Agnes of herself, when she was a young girl first here. Though Agnes would have been more excited than the girl seemed. But maybe she was misremembering. She might have been just as scared back then, with the new sights and sounds and smells, not able to look at much full on. But she couldn’t remember. She could only remember being how she was now. She made a note to ask Glen.

“That’s Jake,” Frank said. “He’s with us.” He pointed to a boy whose bangs covered his eyes just like a curtain Agnes remembered from her apartment, one that swept to the side and was gathered in a hook. His ear was supposed to act as the hook, sweeping the bangs to the side. But it did a poor job, and he kept jerking his head to whip the hair out of his eyes. It seemed intentional that his eyes were covered, and yet it also seemed to Agnes that he wanted to see. It didn’t make any sense to her. She stared at him, thinking of all the ways he could be killed here with hair like that. Then, he snapped his hair out of his eyes and smiled at her. She realized that he had been watching her. Watching her face work through all her thoughts on his hair. She hadn’t noticed because he had hidden his eyes from her, tricking her into letting her guard down. It had been a trap, as effective as the dead drops they set for small animals. And now she could see that his smile was more of a smirk. A knowing look. He had good instincts. She felt a wave of respect and blushed.

The Newcomers had set up a makeshift camp from tents, and around their tents, they’d built a small collection of useless shacks. They said they’d found old boards and either had scavenged nails from this unexpected wasteland of civilized detritus or brought them in themselves. Either way, they seemed to have grown attached to their illegal structures. The Community only saw them as broken rules they would probably be penalized for. Around the perimeter of their camp were clumps of purple shit, pocked with skins. They’d been living off the hard beach plums and feral grapes and hadn’t bothered to dig a pit toilet. Someone would have to search for each smeary shit in order to bury them.

Carl asked if they knew anything about the baby car seat and the missing baby, Rachel. The Newcomers said they did not and it was easy to believe them. They had no idea what was about to happen to them. With their cargo shorts and loafers, skirts and button-down shirts. The unbroken rubber soles of their shoes. They looked like they would not last long. With their fat stomachs and thighs. Their skin so soft and uncooked by the sun. They had all their toenails. All their toes. Their hair was smooth and unbroken and glinting in the sun. Agnes could barely remember when they themselves had been that fat and delicious-looking. But she knew they had been. A line of drool fell out of her mouth and into the sand.

“Okay, we’ve got a big Community now,” Carl said. “We’ll have to stay here for a few days, get more provisions. Introduce these Newcomers here to how we do things. Tomorrow, first thing, we’ll tear down these shacks.”

“Why?” the Newcomers cried.

“Because you can’t build structures here.”

“Why not?”

“Are you serious?” Carl asked. He grabbed the Manual and threw it at them. It landed at their colorful covered feet.

“You should be familiar with this already,” he said. “What did you do on all the buses? Watch movies?”

They exchanged sheepish looks.

“Name one rule.”

“Hmm.” Frank paused. “Leave no trace?”

“And what does that mean?”

They all looked at their feet.

“Are you telling me you’re not familiar with any of our rules here?” Carl was getting worked up, which made Agnes snicker. Carl hated rules. But no one would know that from the way he was staring incredulously at the Newcomers. He shook his head, his body slumped with dramatic disappointment. As though he thought the rules were the only thing that mattered.