The house had a couple trees growing up through it. Didn’t look like anybody’d been there for years. I still made sure it was empty before I gave the kid the okay. He’d scared himself telling me stories he’d heard about Andersonville, mostly ghost stories his brother had told. A lot of people had been killed there when the government tried to stop the riots over the food shortages. Even more when they locked the fences and said they’d shoot anybody who crossed ’em. But ghosts weren’t what made Andersonville dangerous, people were. Bands of scavengers had made camps there for years, each being pushed out by the next, again and again. My dad used to say that the only ghost in Andersonville was its reputation. But that was enough to keep most folks away. He said that folks had stayed away so long, they had forgotten some of the things there. He said there was a bunker under one of the buildings that had a generator and a water pump and tons of canned food. And guns.

The kid got quiet for a while, then he said, “I know where there are some guns.” And then his eyes went wide with fear. I felt something hard poke the back of my head. And then a man’s voice, “The only gun around here is mine.”