Free Legion of Despair: Book Three in The Borrowed World Series by Franklin Horton

ever return home, so they prioritized the loads with the items they would need the soonest and most often. As with any parents of small children, that meant starting with baby stuff: diapers, formula, baby medicines, clothes, toys, a playpen, and highchair.
    “Surely that will be enough to hold a baby for a day,” Gary said. “I don’t think your mother and I ever had this much stuff when we raised you girls.”
    “Sorry, Dad,” Sara said. “They just make more stuff now.”
    “Then they shame you into buying it,” Gary said.
    “Hey, we didn’t buy all this,” Sara said. “I remember you buying a lot of this.”
    Gary grinned. “First grandchild. I couldn’t help it.”
    “It’s okay,” Sara said, hugging him. “It will all get used and worn out before we girls are done having babies.”
    “I hope we’re never done with babies,” Gary admitted.
    Sara patted him on the back. “Dad, get moving,” she said. “I’ll have another load on the front porch by the time you guys get back.”
    While Will and Gary shuttled the first load to Gary’s house, Sara started working in the kitchen. She and Will did not have a generator like her parents so they’d not been able to keep the refrigerator and freezer going long enough to save their food. They’d eaten what they could and taken some things to her mom’s house. They’d still been forced to clean out the refrigerator several days ago when everything started reeking. There were probably things that needed to be thrown away anyway, like the leftover mustard from a cookout that no one was ever going to eat, the horseradish from a failed coleslaw experiment, and the bottle of wine they’d received as a housewarming present that had tasted like crap when they tried drinking it. Now the refrigerator door was propped open to prevent mildew and the inside was clean and bare.
    Sara made a quick pass through the kitchen and boxed up the contents of her pantry. She considered for a moment that she might need to leave some food for the point in time that she and Will returned to living in their own house, but if they were going to pool their resources she needed to be all in. She would take everything worth taking out of this kitchen and they could deal with restocking it when that time came. As much as she hated to admit it, there was also the possibility that they might not be able to return home anytime soon. She would not think about that now, though. She was more practical and realistic than Charlotte.
    As she passed the sink, Sara glanced outside through the single kitchen window. The window looked out across their sparse backyard to the boundary of weeds on the hill behind them. Their lawn looked pitiful. She and Will had sown grass and planted trees, but it had been a busy summer and the children needed their attention constantly. Yards took time to fill out and mature. Perhaps by next summer the yard would be more presentable.
    She turned back to her work, then froze. Something outside had caught her eye and was only now registering with her brain. She backed up. There had been something else there, something out of place.
    She scanned the yard close to the house but it was so bare that anything unusual would have been readily apparent. She looked higher onto the hillside, where the knee-high weeds merged with the woods that bordered their property. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw three men standing there.
    These were not normal men. Besides all of them wearing black clothing from head-to-toe, they were also wearing masks. They were pullover cloth masks that covered the wearer’s face from the eyes down. The masks were printed with a skull pattern that made them appear to be leering at her from the hillside. In another time and place the getup might have been laughable. Now, with full knowledge of what type of people would be wearing such an outfit and why they would be wearing it, it filled her with terror.
    They made no attempt to hide