The demo team had torn the side off the last of the houses in the Dogwood Glen subdivision and the dozer was pushing all of the refuse and old furniture out into a pile. They weren’t going to bother burning the pile, but otherwise it was post-outbreak SOP. I sat in the car and rolled a cigarette.

A sweep-and-clear team sat on a beat-up sofa, cleaning their rifles. There hadn’t been a scavvie or squatter in Dogwood Glen since our first door-to-door search. There were a few that resisted then, but we just sprayed the mark on the side of the houses and left them for the mop-up team. Since then, quiet. Everything going according to Stanford’s plan. Dogwood Glen was cleared and the scouts said we could fortify with supplies from Camp Cypress. Of course, scouts also said there are two hundred people in Camp Cypress that won’t want to part with those supplies, but that’s not a problem for Stanford. All just SOP.

At 18:00 I watched the dozer operator shut down for the night, and watched one bored sweep-and-clear team replace the other on the old sofa. That’s when the checkpoint guards changed shifts and the cars rolled out on night patrol. SOP. I fired up my engine and fell into the line exiting the perimeter fence. I wouldn’t be missed till 20:00. By then I’d be gone.