Bruce waved toward the model spread out across the conference room table.

"What do you think?" he asked Brennan.

"I must admit being rather overwhelmed," Brennan replied. "This city is amazing. I have so many questions."

"I'll be more than happy to answer as many as I can," Bruce told him. "It's our hope you'll choose to join us."

"That's my first question," Brennan said. "You keep bringing people in, even saving scavengers, but what happens if one proves to be a threat?"

"Well, it does explain why I have a limp," Bruce answered, lifting his cane momentarily. "We brought in a fellow who couldn't leave behind the every man for himself attitude of the outside world; he tried to start some trouble, and we had a disagreement."

"If you got a limp, what happened to him?" Brennan pressed.

"Timothy, you administered the punishment. Why don't you explain?" Bruce said to someone outside the conference room door.

Brennan turned around to get a look at the person to whom Bruce was speaking. Brennan estimated the boy's age to be in the mid-teens. The kid had dark hair, cut short and spiky as if he'd never seen a hairbrush in his life. His blue eyes held a slightly Asian slant to them, but they were as hard as a glacier. Brennan recognized the look as well as a knife scar on the kid's neck from behind the left ear down to where it vanished under the collar of his worn shirt. Life was hard in the world, and the kid reflected it, right down to the scavenged pieces of tactical gear clearly taken from multiple sources to make a complete set.

"When the troublemaker threatened Bruce, he was evicted out the nearest window," Timothy stated firmly. Although standing at ease, the teenager's hands remained firmly around the grips of his weapons, a small caliber pistol and a machete.

"Timothy was one of our first here," Bruce said. "His father, Dillion, is in charge of security, and since the incident, Timothy had been assigned to me. Consider him as either a bodyguard or our version of the Secret Service."

Brennan swallowed nervously. First a scavenger guard and now a teenage soldier who threw people to the zombies if they started trouble. This place was feeling more dangerous than the outside world.

"Perhaps it would help if we explained some," Bruce suggested. "Sanctuary has proven a shelter for many, people who would've died without our intervention. We are one of the last places on Earth where people can be safe from the undead. Humanity hangs by a thread over the precipice of extinction; if our places were reversed, would you do less to defend it?"

"You're right," Brennan agreed as he realized the truth of the matter. "I would've killed him too."

"It's unfortunate such extreme measures are required," Bruce commented. "However, the end of the human race is far less palatable. We must do whatever is required to preserve humanity, even if it means eliminating a few members of it. I wish it was otherwise, but this is where our world has gone, and if we don't take the necessary actions, the world won't come to an end, but humanity will."

Limping past Brennan, Bruce headed out the door and toward the stairs. "Come with me; I want to show you something you might find interesting."

Brennan followed mechanically, his thoughts turned inward. He considered the world that had been and its rules for a "civilized" society. He wondered if there had ever been such a thing or if it had only been in the dream-filled imaginations of men.

Violence was easy to discard when no one is trying to kill you for what you had in your pockets. It is a simple thing to resolve not to kill a human being, but when another tries to bash your head in with a brick, how far does one carry their convictions? Brennan didn't know anymore where the line was on such matters. Killing for survival was basic, but how far could a person or people go before they became like animals as the scavengers had done?

As Brennan followed Bruce silently down to the second floor, his thoughts about the scavengers reminded him of Bowman, a supposedly reformed scavenger. If a savage such as he could be, for lack of a better term, domesticated, Brennan wondered what might have occurred to cause a man to be summerly executed.

He was broken out of his musings when he almost ran into Bruce who had halted at the doorway for the second floor.

"Thinking hard about things?" Bruce asked, opening the door and hobbling back a step for Brennan to enter first.

Although Brennan went in, he hesitated in answering the question. The people of Sanctuary had saved him from the zombies. As a newcomer, it didn't seem right for him to be criticizing the way they ran things.

"Feel free to speak your mind," Bruce encouraged as he joined him on the second floor.

"What happened with the man who was killed?" Brennan asked. "If a guilty man can be thrown to his death..."

"What is to prevent a corrupt leadership from doing the same to the innocent?" Bruce interrupted and finished the question. He took a seat on a desk near the door and leaned on his cane with both hands. "The flaws in every society are a direct reflection of the flaws within mankind as a whole. The way to create an ideal civilization is to first improve the character of those within it. We do this in two ways. The first is through the education of our children, and the second is by way of the laws we impose on all of us. Since we know that no one is perfect, we had to plan for the possibility of someone in authority going bad, otherwise it would be impossible to get rid of them and correct the situation."

"You made laws?" Brennan questioned.

"You sound surprised," Bruce observed. "Without the rule of law, would we be any better than the scavengers or the undead? You shouldn't think I'm in charge simply because I started all this. I'm in charge because the citizens of Sanctuary voted me in."

"I'm sorry," Brennan apologized. "This is still new to me."

"Don't worry about it," Bruce said, waving it away like an annoying fly. "As for the gentleman in question, when one pulls a knife and attempts to stab the leader of a community to death, there really isn't the need for a trial as he has confessed his misdeeds before a jury of his peers."

Bruce pushed on his cane and stood up with a small grunt of effort.

"We have to walk the line between iron handed justice, possibly leading to tyranny, and merciful benevolence which could lead to the festering of corruption when the system isn't strong enough to dig it out," Bruce explained as he started slowly moving around the perimeter of the floor. "We're fortunate to be starting with people who know how bad it can be out in the world. They see the good in here and know it's worth protecting."

"One didn't," Brennan pointed out.

"True," Bruce agreed. "Despite the regrettable incident, it did give us the opportunity to show the others we stand behind our convictions and will follow through on the punishment of any criminal who threatens what we've built here. Perhaps, it may give someone else pause if they decide to walk a similar path. This may save lives and ensure stability in the long run, at least we can hope."

Brennan walked silently as he considered Bruce's statements, but he spoke up when he noticed an unusual construction in front of an empty window frame. Four gutters were propped up, side by side, on a wooden framework and protruding out the empty window. The downspouts were directed into a square pan before a pipe mounted on the underside redirected the flow of any incoming water into a tall and rounded barrel.

"What is that?" he asked.

"It's our water collection system," Bruce explained. "We stuck the gutters out the windows rather than attaching them to the buildings in order to cover more area and collect as much water as possible. The mobile pipe underneath the rig lets us swing the downspout into new barrels when the first gets full. Everyone is on bucket patrol when it rains."

"Between the plants, people, and sanitation, you wouldn't believe how much water a city uses," said a new voice, and both men looked in the direction of the speaker to find a black haired man in blue jeans and a red flannel shirt. He sat at one of the office desks beside a rain barrel while writing on a small piece of paper.

"The name's Ryan," the man introduced, standing up and offering a hand to Brennan in greeting. "I used to be a scout for Walton until I got rescued from a pack of undead."

"Same here," Brennan agreed.

"Ryan has been communicating with Walton," Bruce explained. "It's given us some ideas for sharing tactical information such as zombie concentrations, movements, and methods of survival. Would you care to add some information yourself?"

"Yeah," Brennan agreed. "I noticed some heavy groupings of zombies before they boxed me in. My encounters with them have been increasing of late. I used to run into a handful or a few dozen at most, but recently, they've been in larger groups. The last one was massive."

"Have you seen the one hanging around downstairs?" Ryan asked jokingly.

"It only adds to what I've been seeing," Brennan insisted. "The zombies are becoming more heavily concentrated, gathering in larger numbers wherever the living are still active."

"They're combining," Bruce concluded. "They've spread out across the world, looking for anyone they can consume. Their food supply is running out as the survivors are eliminated, so the undead close in on all locations where they can find us."

"What about Walton?" Ryan asked quickly. "My wife, Mary, is a guard there. If a horde this size shows up there, will the wall hold?"

"I don't know," Bruce admitted. "But, I think we know what information we need to include in the next message."

"I'll get right on it," Ryan promised, sitting back down at the desk and writing again.

Brennan took a seat across from Ryan and began relating to him the information he had. He told Ryan in what towns he's seen zombies, what locations were empty, and in what directions the hordes were moving. Ryan wrote it all down in tiny print on the small sheet of paper, and when he was finished, he rolled it up and secured it in a small tube.

Retrieving a diminutive cage from a bookshelf, Ryan opened it and removed a palm sized bird with white feathers. He clipped the tube to a small strap around the ankle of the animal. He stroked the bird in a soothing manner before letting it go. In a flutter of white wings, the bird took flight out the window where the water collection system was established and headed across the sky toward the distant location of Walton.

"The warning has been sent," Bruce stated.

Brennan nodded in agreement, but in the interest of not killing the slender amount of hope they still had, he said nothing about his question if the warning would be in time. If Walton didn't get the message before a mass of zombies arrived, another city might be lost.