––––––––
The thing is, you can’t anticipate everything, can’t be 100% alert every waking second of the day: it’s just not possible, especially when you’ve been walking for something like twelve hours. All we knew was that there’d be a bed for me and that the island of grass in the middle of the lot would work for Ank; and that we hadn’t seen anything since Bowden, anyway (and that had only been a lone edmontosaurus grazing at the side of the road). It certainly hadn’t occurred to us that by walking onto the lot of the Empire Inn and Suites—which was surrounded on three sides by strips of dilapidated units—we might be walking into a kill box.
And yet that’s what it nearly became when the pickups squealed into position (effectively blocking any exit) and the men piled from their payloads—
