Work brought me through the old neighborhood, so I looked Dave up again. Imagine my surprise when I found him still living in the exact same place from three years ago, back before we moved out. My memories from then aren’t rosy: our block hadn’t seen the worst of things yet, but the militias were already encroaching on the outskirts of town, sporadic pillaging was underway and barricades had started to crop up a few streets over. By now, well, I don’t think I would have visited if the boss hadn’t let me borrow one of the armored vehicles from the caravan.

Coming up the road I counted more broken windows than intact, and residents peered out through them with a mixture of fear and tepid hope. From a distance, an armored truck could be a militia raider. Or it could be Alliance forces, finally pushing back. When they finally catch sight of the Merchant’s Guild insignia the best and the worst case scenarios both fade away, leaving bland insignificance in their place. We’re not here to pick sides, just to keep pantries filled and cars gassed up. Does it really matter whose?

Dave’s house stood out from the others on the block. Windows intact, siding bright and spotless, a tall wrought-iron fence encircling the property. An automatic gate creaked into motion as I approached, and Dave came out to greet me with open arms.

“Raul!” he called out to me, stepping down the concrete steps of the front porch. “How have you been?”

I shrugged, looking up to see my old friend. Aged, but not like the rest of us. His skin had grown paler, more sallow. His once-fitted shirt hung loose off of his frame. Dave hadn’t escaped the hard times–no one really could–but he had held up better than most. I shrugged at him.

“You know,” I replied, “surviving. Same as everybody else, I guess. Got myself a gig as a traveling salesman.”

I delivered the last bit with a wink, and Dave’s mouth crinkled upwards in a hint of a smile.

“What about you?” I asked him. “How are you still here? And how is this house so…”

“Intact?” he suggested.

“Exactly.”

Dave glanced back at his home and smiled.

“The people with real money,” he told me, “they spent it on getting out. Not just a state or two over, really out. Beyond all of this.”

“There’s a beyond this?” I asked incredulously.

“Well, that’s what the people with money were saying. Anyways, it wasn’t for us. This is our home, dammit. Besides, I did the math and we couldn’t afford the smugglers. Not the kind that get you where you want to go, anyways. So we put everything we had into the house.”

“It looks nice,” I said.

“It looks nice, but this place is a fortress. You see that siding?”

“Yeah, I like the color. Wood?”

“Nope. Concrete wood mixture, backed with steel plate. They had to double up all the studs to support it, but you’d have to hit the same spot with an RPG twice if you wanted to get through.”

My eyes widened at that.

“That’s how we’re surviving,” he continued. “Bulletproof windows, with inch-thick steel shutters we can drop if we need to. Heavy duty roof, solid steel doors with vault locks, the whole nine yards. You’d need a tank to get into this house.”

“And if they bring one?”

He scoffed.

“It won’t get that far. Some things you just gotta have faith in, Raul, and that’s ours. The Alliance is coming back for us, it’s just a matter of time.”

“Well for your sake,” I said, “I hope you’re right.”

“We’ve made it this long, anyways. Come take a look inside, Jan and the kids will want to see you. I think we only had the one, last we saw you.”

“That’s right, how many now?”

“Just one more. Sam. It’s hard bringing ’em up nowadays, you know.”

“I can imagine.”

He led me up the steps to the front door, covered in an unassuming wood veneer. He waved his wrist over the handle, and a slow grinding sound answered from inside the door jamb.

“I gotta get that oiled,” he said, then held up his bracelet for me to see. “Automatic locks. We’ve all got ID tags for it.”

“Neat,” I replied, following him through the now-unlocked door.

He pushed it shut behind us, the door gliding smoothly on its hinges until it automatically locked itself in the closed position. I had the day off–compensation for an unexpected firefight on the way into town–and I spent most of it with Dave and his family. Reminiscing about old times and catching up on the new.

Catching up on their new, anyways, I didn’t volunteer mine. Better that way. For Dave’s family, life still moved forward. The kids were learning, Dave and his wife were working when they could, and everyone still ate most of their meals. This hulking contradiction of a house harbored a warm home behind its martial exterior. Before I left, they invited me back.

“We’re having a dinner party tonight,” Jan told me. “First one since, well, the trouble started. It would be lovely if you could stop by.”

“I’d love to,” I said. “As long as they let me take the truck again. I’ll come by if I can.”

I said my goodbyes, and as Dave walked me to the door I heard the slow grinding of the lock and saw the door pop open on its own as we turned the corner into the living room.

“It sees you coming?” I asked Dave.

“Oh no,” he said. “That’s just Finney. See?”

He pointed to the base of the door, where a fluffy tuxedo cat was making its way through the cracked entrance. The door pulled itself shut moments after the animal crossed the threshold.

“That bell he wears on his collar,” Dave explained, “has an RFID tag in it. We got tired of the in and out routine, so we just added another reader to the bottom of the door.”

“Huh,” I said. “I guess that works. Alright, take care of yourself, man. Hopefully I’ll see you tonight, but if not…”

“…then we all take care of ourselves,” he said. “Until next time.”

We hugged and then he opened that leviathan door for me again. I climbed back into the truck and drove out through the automatic gate.

The boss let me take the truck again that night, so I made it to the dinner party after all. It was a quiet affair, with three other families visiting plus me. We pulled our cars into the extended garage–armored, of course–and all crowded inside the living space for dinner.

The party began uneventfully, with a cheese plate, introductions and light conversation. Then, just before dinner, the first bullet struck the window. Our heads turned in unison towards the loud crack from the front of the living room, then back to Dave. We didn’t say anything, but our eyes begged for reassurance. Dave cracked a brave smile.

“Looks like dinner and a show,” he said. “Don’t worry, they won’t get through. Most of the raiding parties have already figured out it’s pointless, this crew must be new. You can all stay the night, our company will be gone well before the patrols come out in the morning.”

And with that, everything went back to normal. We all accepted his explanation, what else could we do? We ate our dinner and pretended not to notice the occasional crack of gunfire, the tapping and creaking and pounding on the walls as the gang outside searched in vain for a way in. The house really was a fortress.

We nearly forgot world outside, so engrossed with the meal and the company that we barely noticed the low grinding sound from the front door. It caught our attention nonetheless, and so here we find ourselves. Mouths agape, eyes focused where the door lies around the corner, silence settling over the room as the light tinkle of a cat’s bell drifts to our ears.