At their lunch break, the Newcomers flung their bodies upon the moss, groaning as they went down. The Twins and Jake leaned against trees while the Originalists and all the young children squatted, their arms crossed over their knees, ready to bounce up if they needed to.

Agnes appraised them all like they were a new herd of deer. She wanted to know which was the loner buck. Which was the dominant doe? Which would vie for more territory and authority? Which would die first?

Frank was a tall, thick man with soft hands and easily blistered feet. He had either appointed himself the leader of the Newcomers or simply become it accidentally. But Agnes noticed he paused before making decisions. He looked around. He was uncertain and beyond his depth. And he angered easily.

A better leader would have been Linda, who ruled her children, Joven and Dolores, firmly. But her hands were full. She sighed and sat heavily whenever the group stopped. Joven’s buzz cut was going to grow out like a mop on his head, and Agnes could tell that Dolores’s increasingly matted and tangled hair had once been precious. Her mother probably had brushed it every night at home. But no longer. Joven and Dolores would flourish here, but Linda was too tired to be much of a leader. Too bad, Agnes thought.

Agnes watched Joven and Dolores watching Sister and Brother, who watched them back. Sister and Brother were a little older than Joven, but not by much. Maybe they would become friends. She hoped they would like Pinecone because she was tired of him following her around.

Celeste’s mom, Helen, was interested in all the men in camp. She tied her long hair back in a kerchief. She tied off her long skirt to show her brown legs. They were meaty the way legs had been in the City, but here they looked out of place. Helen’s legs made Agnes hungry, and perhaps they made Carl hungry too, because she saw him gaze at them often.

Agnes’s cheeks warmed. She became alert. Across the fire Jake’s eyebrows were raised and wriggling, and he jerked his head slightly to the left. Agnes followed the directive and saw Debra gazing at Helen’s legs too and tracing her collarbone with one searching finger. Agnes looked back at Jake and he shrugged. She subtly tipped her head to her right where Dr. Harold sat, and even though she could not see his face, she knew he would be staring at Debra. Jake followed and his eyes widened, and he broke into an awe-filled grin. Agnes hadn’t seen him really smile yet. Just seen his thin-lipped smirk, frown, or pensive expression. He had a broad gap between his two front teeth, his teeth the color of a buttercup, his tongue pink like a field mouse’s nose. His grin turned down into a small smile that softened his eyes, and he looked at her across the circle and shook his head a bit, and kept smiling like he was really happy about something and couldn’t shake it. It was something Agnes hadn’t seen very often in her life. For all they had here, she realized, they didn’t often have joy. Not this kind. She wanted to burn it into her memory in case she never encountered it again.

She turned her attention back to Helen and her legs. Helen wasn’t helpless. But she was impatient. And that could be dangerous here. What about Patty’s mom? She seemed nervous and short-tempered. Agnes thought she was probably capable of making a stupid mistake. Maybe she would be the first to die. Perhaps it would be one of the children. But this thought struck her as sad, and she vowed to protect Dolores and Joven. If not the children, then who? Agnes wondered if Jake would think her game dreadful. Was this a weird thing to think about? She was sure nothing would happen to Celeste, Patty, or Jake. They were too strong and sharp behind their sneers. In Agnes’s opinion, Linda was untouchable. Perhaps Frank. He had the ability to be cunning. She’d seen it in the meeting, though she imagined that was more Carl’s influence than Frank’s initiative. No, he was an unprepared person, not just here in a new environment but possibly in every situation. But his weakness, Agnes decided, was his ignorance of this fact. Agnes watched him. He reached his hand out to something in front of him. A frog jumped. And Frank jumped too, even though he’d been watching and poking at the frog. Frank threw his head back and laughed, elbowed Patty’s mom, who closed her eyes, waiting for the moment to pass. Forget even that the frog was a poisonous varietal. Frank was startled by things he himself put into motion. Yes, Agnes thought, Frank would be the first to die.

*

After several days of sunless walking in the wet forest, they burst out into a thin, open forest dotted with orange-skinned pines. They raised their arms and hands to ward off the pressure of the unveiled sun on their eyes. They peeked out from behind fingers and balled fists trying to acclimate to the newly identifiable day.

Though the forest thickened and thinned, the tree skins turning from orange to white back to orange, it remained cool, airy, and dry, and was, for some reason, empty of useful life. They would need provisions soon. So for several days they walked and camped quickly, lying mostly under open skies, eating jerky, cooking minimally.

Eventually this forest delivered them to the edge of a tall ridge that crumbled at their feet to the valley floor. It was possibly a hundred trees tall or more. The valley was foggy and muted as though the morning sky had fallen to earth. Just below them on an outcrop, Agnes saw a swatch of red. A glint, something shiny, or at least it had been shiny once. Something that caught the light like nothing else in nature. Something plastic. The Newcomers didn’t notice it. They were too recently acquainted with plastic. So it didn’t register to them as anything notable. But all of the Originalists snapped their heads toward it immediately upon stepping to the edge of the ridge.

It took a moment for the Originalists to see the gleam of blond fur. The matte brown of old blood and the dark hollowness of the crevice of a big joint like the hip. A body. A human body with a red plastic poncho and straw-like blond hair, tufted like the worried fur on the hindquarters of a deer. A body almost intact except for the gouges in its pelvis, where something had tried to find nourishment. Had it been an attack, or had something scavenged on this mysterious body? The body lay on a small outcrop just before the ridge gave way to thin air. Carl and Juan carefully picked their way among ridge rocks to retrieve it.

The man had been naturally pale, but patches of his skin had turned maroon and scabby after what must have been a violent and blistering sunburn. Still on his head was a green cap with a wide tail that covered his neck. Under the tail his skin was soft and cool. Agnes pressed her fingers against its rubberiness. He wore cargo shorts and a fanny pack. The shorts were sun-bleached, and the fanny pack had been torn open by something small but vicious. A badger maybe. Whatever had been in it—food, jerky perhaps—was gone now.

They stared at the body, taking in all the details they could make sense of. His hiking shoes, the one white sock and the bloody one. His bushy mustache with a short growth of patchy beard. A handkerchief remained neatly tied around his neck. A spotting scope hung there too. He looked like a man out for some birding, and the Originalists wondered if it might be a Ranger they’d not met before enjoying some off-hours. But that pale neck. No pale Ranger could remain that fair. And the burn. No pale Ranger would let a burn go so wrong. The shorts might be regulation, but the shoes weren’t. No Ranger would wear shoes. They wore boots. And that fanny pack. That fanny pack.

Carl turned to the Newcomers. “I thought you said there weren’t more of you.”

“There aren’t,” Frank said. “He’s not with us.”

“Then who would he be with?” Val said, taking on the accusatory stance that Carl had introduced.

The Newcomers shrugged. They were too new to have a guess.

The Originalists looked at one another, then back at the man. A rube. A know-nothing. Out of his depth but out here nonetheless. Deep out here. How could someone like this get through the entrance? Get this far? Where was his gear? Was there a camp? Were there more like him?

Debra said, “He was probably visiting one of the Rangers and got lost. He’s probably a relative.”

“Or . . .” Linda said. She looked around, cleared her throat. “I mean, I don’t know. I just got here. But are there other groups here?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean other groups like you. Like us. Who are out here, living like this.”

“Of course not,” Carl said. But he looked puzzled. He cocked his head at the corpse and bit his lip, which Agnes had never seen him do.

Val snapped her support. “What a stupid question,” she said, an angry speck of spit landing on the dead man’s cheek.

Linda huffed and Agnes saw her look around, perhaps trying to catch a sympathetic eye, but everyone else was mesmerized, nodding at the corpse, a new thought dawning on them.