“Let’s go, Carl. They should have been here by now.”

“I know, but I promised TJ we’d look after ’em.”

“Jim and Mike are old enough to take care of themselves, now let’s go, the rest of the boys are getting restless and could give two shits about them. Truthfully, we were all tired of hearing their bullshit. You sending them over Beech Mountain to hunt was a blessing to our ears.”

“Maybe so, but TJ is going to be none too happy if I show up without his brothers.”

“Listen, I know your families go way back, but times are different. And we’ve been helping them out for a while now with little in return. That bunker of theirs is the only reason they’ve made it this long. And their dad built that. They’re all a bunch of freeloaders, if you ask me—drained their poor dad down to nothing before he died. We should have killed them all and took their food right after Yellowstone blew.”

“Family is Family up here, you know that. We”d all be dead if we hadn’t been watching out for one another. Look at the Hedrick brothers over there; they saved your ass last summer. Earl, Larry, hell, all of us have stepped up when needed, and the Jones boys will too.”

This piece of microfiction is a character story from my apocalyptic novella Every Yard Is A Grave. Character stories are small glimpses into a character’s life before, during, and after the book.