feet, and the madman missed with the other barrel.

Steven had fled like an animal, and since then had lived like one. He'd stayed away from the men, remembering how his father had looked with half a head—and because the few times men had seen him, they'd chased him; either they were afraid he'd steal from them, or they wanted his knife or belt or something. Once or twice men had shouted that they wouldn't hurt him, they only wanted to help him—but he didn't believe them. Not after seeing his father that way, and after the times they had tried to kill him.

He watched the men, though, sneaking around their fires at night—sometimes because he was lonely and, later on, hoping to find scraps of food. He saw how they lived, and that was the way he lived too. He saw them raid grocery stores—he raided the stores after they left. He saw them carrying knives and guns—he found a knife and carried it; he hadn't yet found a gun. They ran from the dogs; he learned to run from them, after seeing them catch a man once. The men raided other stores, taking clothes and lots of things whose use Steven didn't understand. Steven took some clothes at first, but he didn't care much about what he wore—both his shirt and his heavy winter coat had come from dead men. He found toy stores, and had a lot of toys. The men collected and hoarded wads of green paper, and sometimes fought and killed each other over it. Steven vaguely remembered that it was called "money", and that it was very important. He found it too, here and there, in dead men's pockets, in boxes with sliding drawers in stores—but he couldn't find any use for it, so his hoard of it lay hidden in the hole in the floor under the pile of blankets that was his bed.

Eventually he saw the men begin to kill for food, when food became scarce. When that happened—the food scarcity, and the killing—many of the men left the city, going across the bridges and through the tunnels under the rivers, heading for the "country".

He didn't follow them. The city was all he'd ever known.

He stayed. Along with the men who said they'd rather stay in the city where there was still plenty of food for those who were willing to hunt hard and sometimes kill for it, and, in addition, beds to sleep in, rooms for protection from the weather and dogs and other men, all the clothes you could wear, and lots of other stuff just lying around for the taking.

He stayed, and so he learned to kill, when necessary, for his food. He had six knives, and with them he'd 

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