They moved through the eastern district like the city belonged to them.
Seven of them, all men, all armed with weapons that hadn't been scavenged from apartments or improvised from whatever was available.
These were proper weapons which where military grade or even better. They moved in a tight formation that had the loose practiced efficiency of people who had been doing this together long enough that communication had reduced to hand signals and eye contact and the occasional low word.
The leader was at the front.
He was not a large man, not the way Gareth was large, not the kind of size that announced itself.
He was lean and unhurried with dark patches under his eyes and moved through the dead city streets with the particular ease of someone who had stopped finding it threatening a long time ago. His name was Cole and the people who had encountered his group in the past thirty days had generally not had the opportunity to tell anyone else about the experience.
