Punishment Is DuePitts leaned back in his chair and groaned with relief. One week. One week since the incident. The power was finally back on, and the dead, the truly, honestly and finally dead, had been decapitated and burned and buried. The world seemed to tilt back on its axis again. What a week. What a friggin’ week. The worst thing hadn’t been the obvious. Over three thousand dead or missing, many of them people he’d known his entire life. Leevon Grossman. Clay Skinner. Bill Calgary. Leon Lafayette. He’d blown John Stevens’ head right off in front of Sammy T’s, bashed Wayne Brown’s brains in with the butt of his rifle inside the Hyperion. And yet that hadn’t been that bad. That was survival, plain and simple. Survival and protection. Protecting that little girl. Protecting his own