Free Rage Within by Jeyn Roberts

quite get it, but she wasn’t a golfer or a chef. Must be an inside joke.
    Mason nodded and mumbled a hello. He put his hand briefly on Aries’s shoulder before pushing past Joy and into the kitchen. He tossed the motorcycle keys down on the table and headed through to the living room. Aries heard his feet on the stairs as he went straight for his bedroom. He was the only one besides Colin who preferred to sleep alone and away from the group.
    “Anything good?” Joy’s eyes searched her carefully.
    “Nada,” Aries said. “But it was expected.”
    Joy nodded. Earlier that morning Aries had asked her if she wanted to take the trip back to her home too. Joy had declined the offer even though she had three brothers and a sister she hadn’t seen since the night of the earthquakes. Her reasoning was simple, although Aries had thought it was a bit cowardly. If they were dead, Joy didn’t want to see their bodies.
    “My sanity is better off not knowing. At least this way I can picture them still healthy and alive and not the other way around.”
    There was a certain amount of intelligence in Joy’s reasoning now that Aries had her answer. Would she have been better off not knowing?
    No, if it gave her nightmares and the inability to sleep at night, she’d survive. She’d had her breakdown back in her bedroom. Although it had been hard, she still felt less heavythan she had this morning. She could move on now.
    “So you found nothing?” Joy closed the door and locked the dead bolt.
    “Yeah, pretty much,” Aries said. Her eyes burned and the tears threatened to come back. Blinking hard, she fought to keep them away. “There was some blood, though, so I’m going to say it’s probably best to assume my parents are dead.”
    “Oh, hon, I’m so sorry,” Joy said as she threw her arms around Aries.
    “Don’t be,” Aries said. “It was to be expected. I just needed closure. Now I have it.” She forced a yawn. “I’m beat. Gonna go lay down for a bit if you don’t mind.”
    “Not at all,” Joy said, waving her spatula. “I’ll call you when it’s time to eat. Kinda doing a potluck surprise thingie. We’ll have to do a grocery trek soon. We’ve run out of everything decent. There are only so many things I can do with stewed tomatoes and macaroni noodles. And I’m running low on propane for the camping stove. If we don’t find any soon, it’ll be cold canned tomatoes and uncooked noodles. Bleh.”
    “I hear ya, sister.”
    She left Joy in the kitchen to finish preparing their canned meal of the evening and decided to stick her head in the living room before going upstairs.
    Nathan and his sister, Eve, were sitting on the couch. Colin sat in one of the big chairs, playing a video game on one of those ancient Game Boy Advances that ran on batteries. The theme music for Super Mario filled the room. Someone had found the Game Boy a few days ago and everyone had gotten excited over it. In a new world where iPods, PlayStations, and Xboxes no longer worked, finding something that ran on regular batteries was a godsend.
    In the middle of the room stood Brandi, an older womanwho was hiding out in another home a few streets down. Since their arrival a few weeks ago, they’d discovered others taking refuge from the Baggers. Brandi ran a safe house with a bunch of people, mostly adults in their thirties and forties. Another group of survivors a few blocks down had Graham, a father in his forties who was lucky enough to have his entire family intact. He was taking care of his wife, his kid, and his elderly mother and father along with a few other people who had found him along the way.
    Aries, Graham, and Brandi went out of their way to visit each other every other day or so. It helped being in contact. And if one of them got some information, they were able to pass it on.
    “Good to see you, sweetie,” Brandi said when Aries entered the room. “Just popped my head in to say hello.”
    “Any news?” Aries