Night falls, and Corrie seems to regaining some functionality, so the guys go to get a truck from one of the other houses.

Homer had an ability to put himself into the minds of the soldiers, to think their thoughts and to see through their eyes. Imagination, I suppose it’s called.

…there’s a lot of things I’d call it before I’d call it ‘imagination.’ First to pop to mind is “he watches too many military movies” and second is “hey, no, let’s go back to this, why DOES Homer always seem to know what the soldiers will do?”

I suspect the real answer is just “the author is using Homer as a shorthand for explaining the enemy’s movements, since he doesn’t have an enemy POV,” but it’s still a big ol hanging question.

They argue about whether or not to go along with the original, pre-infinite-resources-jet plan.

‘We can’t just crawl under the bed and stay there till this is over,’ he said to her. ‘We’ve made a lot of mistakes today,

But…what mistakes? At the time he berated the group in general for not setting out a sentry, but a sentry wouldn’t have given any more warning against helicopters than just…hearing helicopters. Leaving the dog out in the yard, was that the mistake? A stretch, but if you count it, that’s all of…one.

Eh, they’re stressed, I guess small things do get blown out of proportion.

Corrie, Fi, and Kevin go to pack supplies, Homer and Ellie head back to town on bikes to look for Lee and Robyn.

I wanted to spend more time with this new Homer, this interesting and clever boy whom I’d known but not known for so many years. Since our trip to Hell I’d been getting quite interested in Lee, but a few hours away from him, and in Homer’s company instead, were making a difference.

What…am I looking at?

Does the book think Ellie can only be interested in one dude at a time? Is she now romantically attracted to Homer? Does she find logistics sexy? (Not that I’d blame her.) I mean, I get that Homer has shown a new competence in the face of adversity and it’s natural to want to spend some time redefining your opinion of someone, but bringing Lee into this makes it seem like the narrative is conflating “literally any interest at all” with “at least somewhat romantic interest” and also “THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE!”

It’s so random, and also I’ll pass on all those implications, thanks.

Homer and Ellie make it to Robyn’s house and hide out on the hill behind it trying to get their bearings. They think they see movement and sneak in to investigate, almost get shot by Robyn who’s hiding in there with a rifle, but thankfully have a joyous reunion instead.

Erm, sort of joyous, Robyn faints dead away. Ellie helpfully informs us that she’s prone to that and give some past examples, which…maybe should have been relevant before sending her off into an invaded city full of possibly dead friends and family?

See, “Robyn gets faint with relief from seeing a friend after a really, super, uber, mega stressful day” doesn’t really NEED historical context, but once you DO introduce the idea of ‘fainting at the sight of blood,’ well, now it has to apply to all past actions as well.

Stop trying to justify perfectly normal things.

When Robyn wakes up, she says that Lee has been shot, but he’s still alive and hiding in his family’s restaurant. She hasn’t been able to get back to him, because the street he’s on is super busy.

She told us what had happened. They’d had trouble at every street corner, nearly running into a patrol, having to hide from a truck, hearing footsteps behind them.

…how convenient? This army seems to be either completely missing or show up in random amounts purely according to what the plot needs to have happen.

While hiding, they ran into another townie who was hiding, Mr. Clement. He told them stuff we already know, about the showgrounds and the army padding their numbers with conscripts.

Oddly enough, it was the professionals who treated people better.

That’s…not any amount of odd.

Mr. Clement also said there were a few others who had evaded capture, but they were all hiding and he was going to keep on hiding too, thank you very much. Then he popped smoke out of there. Robyn and Lee try to keep going, but they get spotted and shot at so they duck into a news agency, and Lee lags behind because he’s been shot in the leg.

the door was locked, and that Lee was a long way behind her. ‘I thought he’d stopped to look at the pornos,’ she said.

…

…

…why?

So Robyn takes charge, breaks the door that’s locked, and carries Lee out of there.

Now I know Robyn’s fit, and strong, but she’s not that strong. Don’t ask me to explain it. I reckon it’s like those stories of mothers lifting cars to get trapped babies out from underneath, then you ask them the next day to do it again and they can’t even move it, because the urgency’s gone. Robyn, being religious, has got a different explanation, and who knows? I’m not stupid enough to say she’s wrong.

OR MAYBE SHE’S ACTUALLY STRONG ENOUGH TO CARRY YOUR LIMP ASS BOYFRIEND, HOW ABOUT THAT?

Lee isn’t some linebacker that takes incredible amounts of strength to carry. And Robyn has him on her back, which is a position that lets smaller people carry much larger people surprisingly well. You carry all that extra weight on your legs, not your arms, in that case, and legs are hella strong. Especially the legs of ‘fit’ ladies who do sports like Robyn.

I am a skinny-ass 5’3” lady with bad knees and I can still carry guys who outweigh me by a good 50+ lbs while wearing armor. Not far (we do relays using about half a football field), but then again, Robyn isn’t going very far either and I’m not hyped up on adrenaline.

People need to get the fuck over the idea that any kind of physical work means upper body physical work. Women and men are pretty decently matched when it comes to core strength.

So she carries Lee out the back and into the back door of the restaurant, then goes looking out the front window. …where she sees a bunch of soldiers looking in the news agency’s door for a while, then wander off smoking cigarettes and laughing.

…this army literally just does whatever is convenient for the moment, don’t they?

‘They probably thought you were looters,’ Homer said. ‘Like Mr. Clement said, there must be a few around, so the patrols’d see them quite often. They wouldn’t bother mounting a big operation just for that.

But…but…the five soldiers ALREADY THERE aren’t a big operation?

Anyway, Robyn finds Mr. Clement again, and he’s a dentist and has some medical knowledge and also the tools in his office for basic stitches. He checks Lee out and sews him up and leaves some injectable painkillers.

I’ve given him two injections today. It was cool fun.’

‘Robyn!’ I nearly passed out myself, in amazement. ‘You faint when people even mention injections!’

So we need to mention needles to explain why she fainted at the house, but also she can handle needles now?

They decide they need to get Lee out of there, because he’ll be found eventually.

‘One of the biggest problems is that Barker Street seems to crawl with soldiers, compared to the rest of town, anyway,’ Homer added.

Compared to the rest of town, literally any amount would count as ‘crawling.’

They brainstorm ideas for getting him out, starting off with sneaky ideas and then realizing they can go in loud and surprising as long as they’re well protected.

In a bulldozer.

Because bullets would ‘bounce off’ it.

A bulldozer.

Because bullets would bounce off it.

Yeah, they’re going to bounce right the fuck off all those windows.

Also, not everything that’s metal is bulletproof. And while the heavy scoop is probably some decent cover, that cab is no more armored than your average car. (By the way, cars will not stop bullets.)

The kids care not about my window concerns and carry on with making plans to pick Lee up in a bulldozer, then transfer him to a waiting car once they’re clear so they can make a quick getaway.

(Caterpillar makes a high-speed bulldozer that goes…16 mph. The others I could find were all in the 7-9 mph range. The average human’s running speed is about 10 mph for short distances, 7-8 for marathons. And humans are a lot more agile than bulldozers around obstacles like city streets. So even if they take everyone by surprise and only have soldiers on foot to deal with, they’re not getting away. I’m sure the kids will care even less about this than they do about windows.)