Billy finally gave up last night. He never got any better, there was never any change at all. I don't know, maybe it was us who gave up. It wasn't Billy anymore. It was just the outside of him. The inside, the Billy we knew and sometimes feared, died at the intrusion.

It's been maybe two years since I've been in real time. Our numbers have grown now,there are twenty-two of us. We lost a New One about six months ago. We found his body in the middle of the highway, shot once through the head. We try to stick together. Someone from outside our group had killed one of us. The Man is gone, that much we knew. I think it's just that we don't know who to fear anymore, and it's making us unorganized.

Nigel took over immediately after the battle. He's been here almost as long as Billy had,and we still feel a certain respect for time served. But he wasn't up to it, I don't think. People would need direction from him. Sometimes something minor, like where to put up camp, sometimes something major. He usually just didn't care, and he took to asking me.

"Should we stop here?" Kit would ask him. She had appointed herself as head of patrol,and walked with her group many meters ahead of the main group to scout the area. She was very good at it, and had saved us from trouble many times.

"Hmm," Nigel would say, and look to the sky. "What do you think, Kit?"

Kit would invariably become annoyed with him. "Why the hell do you think I'm asking you,Nigel?"

"Yeah," he would mutter. "Check and see what Candice thinks. If it's all right with her, it's all right with me."

I would do the work, and tell the others Nigel had sent me. Most often, I had sent myself. It didn't take too long before the others noticed, and began to bypass Nigel all together. I don't think he cared. Hell, I don't think he even noticed. He wasn't the same since Billy died.

So suddenly I was in charge. I didn't want this. There's a lot of whining and paranoia I have to put up with, take care of. It's like having children.

So we walked, we kept moving and we felt safer. We decided with very little discussion that our city just wasn't safe anymore. We had bicycles at first, but the effort against the heavy air in The Other was just too much. Walking was easier. We never used any automobiles. The noise was a dead giveaway. We crossed over the mountains heading east, following the old Interstate 70. It's not in good shape, but the military road parallel to it had too much traffic. It is the only one used anymore. Sometimes we can see the military road from I-70, but it's usually a kilometer or two from us. There aren't any freezer cars on I-70, nowhere for enemies to hide. Ben calls the suspended people "freezers." I've picked it up.

I've picked a lot up from Ben. He joined us about three months ago. He came along quietly, he almost seemed like he was expecting us. We were all enthralled with him from very early on. See, he was at the arena during the battle with the intruders. In real time.

He's twenty-two years old, but he seems young to me. Of course, I'm still eighteen on the outside, I'll probably always be. But you get older, wiser, in The Other. It was when we were all huddled together in a shack very near the Continental Divide. We weren't making good time, anew girl had fallen and broken her leg, so we finally stopped trying and camped for the night. Ben had shown up just before we came into Grand Junction, Colorado, and we were always on our best guard when around big cities. He had been with us for about three days.

"You know," he said to the crowd of us near him, watching him, "This explains a lot."

"Explains what?" Amanda asked him. People had turned their attentions to the conversation.

"The shopping arena," he said.

"What do you know of it?" I asked him, a little too harshly. He didn't notice my tone, or pretended not to.

"It was destroyed. No one could explain it, so it was never reported, even though everyone knew about it. Hell, everyone was talking about it. It happened yesterday, and I still can't understand it. Maybe it was people here, on this side."

"Yesterday," Kit mused. "Yeah, it seems like that sometimes."

"Yesterday, real time," Amanda said, softly, and I could feel all of us who were there collectively catching our breaths.

"I was there, you know," Ben said, "At the arena."

No one said anything. But we all leaned forward, trying to catch his words before he said them.

"I was hanging out with a friend of mine, we were just messing around. I'll always remember, I was telling him about a viewer we were looking at, you know the interactive one. My friend has one. Had one." He paused.

"Then everything changed. The smell, like after a huge gang battle. Parts of the ceiling were just gone. Vanished. There was a little boy at my feet. Well, most of a little boy. People were screaming everywhere. Blood all over the place. I fell down, my leg was bleeding like crazy,hurt like hell. I had no idea how I got hurt. I just looked around, you know, with my mouth hanging open, staring at everything. The friend I was with wasn't even there. I figured out later that the bloody mess splattered all over the viewer we were checking out was him.

"I think I just freaked. Cause then, all the sound stopped, and there were people moving around me, but not as many people as there were who weren't moving. Not moving one bit, just standing there, screaming, but with no sound.

"It only lasted about ten seconds. The people I saw in that time had guns. I didn't say another word till the next day. The doctor said I was in shock. He said I'd been shot, that the gangs had somehow slipped security and come in and shot everyone. But you know the security at the arena. That's just not possible. There were other people who saw the gang, the ones with the guns, but they were all young like me, so no one believed us.

"Everybody was talking about it today. Or whatever day this is. I keep calling this today,'but I know I've been here awhile. Wherever this is.

"When I got home from the hospital, my parents thought I'd lost it. Gang war they could believe, but not my story. Hell, I was starting to agree with them. I was laying in bed in my room, and I was thinking about stuff, and the sound stopped again. I think that has to be when I came here. Since joining up with you guys, I've been thinking. I think I saw whoever was at the arena that day, I think I came here for a second."

He looked at me.

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