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The following critique merely reflects my opinion. If you disagree, pleas disregard.

Plot: David and Grace arrive to the tent to pick up Kenley. She has already left, but he is miffed she he went to the gathering place without her. When they get to the place, she has claimed a bull to pull their wagon. Another man claims it, and he assets ownership. Then he berates Kenley for leaving early. The second part is Kenley’s diary entry telling her feelings about leaving and information from point of view what happened that morning.

Characters: David, a bit overbearing and miffed that his “wife” left without him. Grace and Grandma. Grandma seems in character. Kenely has taken charge when necessary and when scolded, she pouts like an adolescent.

Grammar: some commas and some semicolons. If you are using the commas for emphasis, remember that a little goes a long way.

Style/Voice: nice spare style with few adjectives. Some description, however, is sacrificed. The first part is third person in David’s limited POV. The second is Kenley’s first person. I thought some was wordy, so I gave some suggestions.

Setting: adequate visual description, especially the light. But I craved more taste, smell, and grit.

Overall: the chapter was adequate. I thought David acted a trifle overbearing for little reason. Kenley’s reaction was predictable. A good YA feel. I know if Vampyr were reading this, she would characterize the whole diary part as an information dump. I’m not sure I’d go that far. But … I would pare down much of what Kenley wrote since much of it has been mentioned already. Just keep her emotional responses.

Shadows Fall

CHAPTER SIX

David knocked on the post to Kenley’s lean-to and waited. Grace stood next to him, an assortment of irons and blankets hanging off of her like an (odd-shaped porcupine) This image does not work for me.. He knew he must look just as silly, with two dinner tins on his head and their sleeping bag and tent strapped to his bag What bag? He already has a sleeping bag. A duffle bag?. Everything they owned, right here.

Kenley’s grandmother appeared in the doorway. “Kenley’s not here.”

“Not here?” David furrowed his brow. She must be mistaken. Even as he thought it, he realized how unlikely that was. He already thought this. “I told her I’d pick her up in the morning.” His voice trailed off lamely, and David felt like an idiot. Apparently his new wife thought her plans were more important than theirs.

The old woman shrugged. “She already left. She said goodbye and went to the gathering place.”

David pushed down the annoyance. He and Grace had walked all the way over to get her, and she wasn't here. “Thank you. And goodbye.”

“Take care of her, David Jeffrey,period ” the woman said softly. He could barely hear her quiet words.

“I will. I’ll make sure she gets there.” He tugged on Grace’s hand and pulled her down the dirt path. Dust billowed puffed up behind his quick footsteps.

“My back hurts,” Grace said, rolling her shoulders.

“Let me help you.” David took the irons and strapped them to himself through his belt-loop. His irritation with Kenley grew with each step. They would’ve been there by now.

The clearing came into view, and he scanned the companies until he spotted her. She stood by what resembled a covered wagon, only smaller with a different shape on top. Her hands secured a bull as she argued with another man. David stepped over and dropped all of their gear with a loud thump.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” he said, glaring at her. “We just came from your tent. Thanks for waiting for us.”

She turned to him, her dark brown eyes widening. “Excuse me? I decided to leave early to make sure we got the equipment we needed. Good thing, too. The other bull’s too skinny.” She shot a glare Suggest “frown”; “glare” is a repeat. at the man with her. “And I got here first. This one’s ours.”

David took one look at the bull and the man and put the two together. He’d deal with Kenley later. David looped his hands around the bull’s rope. “This is our bull. You’ll have to find another.”

“Your bull?” the man exclaimed. “How do you figure? You weren’t even here. Where’s your dad, anyway, boy?”

David gritted his teeth. The guards called him boy, but they were about the only people who could get away with it. “This bull was claimed by my wife.” The intimacy of the word embarrassed him. He couldn’t bring himself to meet Kenley’s eyes. “And I might be younger than you, but that means I’m stronger. And I don’t mind fighting.” He dropped a hand and fingered his iron, eyes never leaving the man’s face.

“We’ll see about this,” the man breathed, anger smoldering beneath his furrowed brows. He stamped OR: stomped. off.

Kenley let out a sigh. “I’m so glad you got here—”

David rounded on her. Yelling at the man hadn't vented any of his frustration; if anything, it had fueled it. “Why didn’t you tell me your plans last night? I would’ve come with you. This wouldn’t have happened if I had been here to claim the bull.” I think this is laying it on a bit strong.

She stared at him. “How exactly was I supposed to find you to tell you my change of plans? All you have to say is ‘thank’ you.”

“Yeah that!” David let out a harsh laugh. “You’ll have to give me a better reason.” He snapped the bull around to the front of the wagon. Finding a harness, he |hitched the animal in its traces. latched the animal up. “I would’ve found a bull if you hadn’t.”

Kenley followed him, saying something else, but David tuned her out. He could already tell he liked her more when she didn’t talk. She pulled back the wagon flap and climbed inside.

“Hey!” David lifted his head and banged on the wooden box. “You’re not riding in there! The bull won’t be able to pull you!”

No sound came from inside. David clenched his jaw and glanced around. People were watching. He would lose face if he had to go in there and get her. “Kenley,” he said under his breath, adding a few swear words after her name. Nice. They worked real well together.

“Company eight?” An official’s voice directed David’s attention and he squinted through the gray haze. The official from the day before stood there with a local man next to him. “By now you’ve met your company captain.” The official clapped the man on the shoulder. “Captain Hastings will lead you. He gives the orders and if you are plan or want to survive, you’ll listen to him. I’ve spent the last hour briefing him on the journey. He will disperse your rations. He has the maps and everything you need. You can rely on this man. . Everything you need, you can rely on this man.”

“What about weapons?” A man about Jed’s age stepped forward. “All we have are irons. Will that protect us against Marauders?”

Marauders. David hadn’t allowed himself to really think about the threat, but now his fists tightened. The bandits had stopped trying to steal from the camps a year ago,no comma after the guards left a group of caught Marauders stripped and tied to the fence, a warning of what would happen to any others.

He glanced toward the fence, close enough to be visible through the ash. In a moment the group would walk past the protection the fence offered to Camp Orange, leaving themselves vulnerable to outside influences. Rumors were things besides Marauders hunted the perimeter. There were rumors of other things that hunted the perimeter. Mutated animals that survived the nuclear fall out.

But the Marauders frightened David the most. Sometimes at night he would wake up, thinking he heard them. He remembered their loud whoops and victory cries from the days when he and his parents made the journey east. They would take all the supplies and harvest the company members, if given the chance Suggest you move the previous dependent clause to the beginning of the sentence.. The only way to escape them was to avoid them.

The official looked at Captain Hastings, deferring the question to him. Hastings spoke up in a clear and confident voice. “Most of the Marauders only have make-shift weapons , what they have put together from scraps and abandoned houses. Your irons will be enough protection, for the most part. In the event of extenuating circumstances, the government opened the provision house, giving us not only food, but guns.”

Guns! David relaxed a little. Not just him, either, judging from the excited voices in the company. They just might have a chance, then.

“There are not enough guns for everyone, and it wouldn’t be safe to hand them out,” Hastings continued. “But there might be times when it is they are necessary.”

The official cleared his throat. “As was already stated, resources along the trail are limited. We have water taps set up along the route, but the water could run out. For this reason, each company will travel different courses from the other companies. a parallel course with the other companies, and not the exact route.”

“How long is the journey?”

David recognized this man from the quarry. His name was Casey, or something like that.

“Three weeks,no comma if all goes well,” Hastings replied.

“What about doctors?” This time it was a woman. She held a small boy in her arms,no comma a little younger than Grace. “What if we get sick?”

Dead silence fell over the group. No one even coughed, waiting for the answer. “Sickness and death will be dealt with in the company as it has been here in the camp,” Hastings said.

David knew what that meant. In the camp, the sick house was really another term for death house. Sickness meant quarantine. Death meant a hasty burial before disease could set in or someone with less scruples decided to eat the body.

The official clapped his hands. “Good luck! We must continue our journey eastward and find the other camps. May we meet again at the Sanctuary!”

A raw cheer went up from the company. David cheered too, or he tried to, before a cough ripped through him. They were off.



August 29, 001

Can I just say one thing? David’s a jerk. Yeah, my new husband. A total and complete jerk. I don’t care how green his eyes are.

So we’re on our way, and I can’t even be happy about it, because he totally ruined my morning. Right now I’m in a covered wagon, stewing over the way he treated me. I know, I shouldn’t be in here, making the bull pull me along. But I’m socomma so mad at him.

It’s been a bit of a rough morning for me, anyway. I woke up with that heavy sensation in my chest, an ache in my throat. At first I couldn’t remember why. Then the controller beat on the pole and yelled, “Morning!” and I remembered.

I reached outside to get our rolls and pills, and Grandma was awake. She sat on her blanket, holding her roll in her hands while I stuffed mine in my mouth. I nearly choked on it, but I had to do something to keep from crying.

“Kenley,” she said, and a tear ran down her face, “this is for the best. But I’ll miss you.”

There’s one thing you should know about me. I hate to cry. Hate it. I’d much rather hit something than cry. But at that moment, I almost couldn’t stop the tears at that moment. I stuffed my blanket into my meal tin and groped around for my iron, trying not to meet Grandma’s eyes again.

Grandma grabbed my hands, stopping me. “Take an extra blanket. You might hit bad weather.”

No way was I taking Grandma’s blanket. I might never see her again, but I had to imagine her warm and safe in Camp Orange. She needed her blanket. But I didn’t feel like explaining all that, plus I knew she wouldn’t listen. So I said, “We’ll get there before then.”

But Grandma wrapped it around my waist and tied the ends, then said, “Take it. It’s all I have to give you.”

My eyes burn just remembering. I knew she wished she could do something more for me, so I took it. I wanted to take it all back, take back the fake marriage and the stamp and tell her I’d stay with her forever. But I couldn’t do that either,no comma because I was committed to this journey. So I let her leave the blanket on me.

She told me she loved me and we parted. I was supposed to wait for David at the lean-to, but once we’d said good-bye, I couldn’t exactly hang around. I had to get out of there. So I headed for the town square. I didn’t think it would be any big deal. We were, after all, joining our group in the square, so we had to meet up there eventually.

Well, apparently it wasn’t okay. David went ballistic. I'm not sure why. Because I got there first? Because I went without him? It seems more like he's angry that I have a mind of my own.

Anyway, so I went by myself, and I found our group and our captain.

Oh, so I have Too many “so’s”. Suggest: “I need” to tell you about our group. We’re a small group,no comma with maybe twenty people. There are ten or twelve wagons. Yes, wagons, like the old kind used for traveling west. Covered wagons. The canvas is a different material, more like a tarp And how is that different?, and it’s gray. The wagons blend in with the scenery quite nicely. And the wheels have wooden spokes, but they’re also tires. I don’t know if they’re air tires or not, I don’t know anything about that sort of stuff. There are two extra wagons. I assume they have our food supplies.

The wagon isn’t very big. I’m inside ours right now, and I’m using my lighter to write, because the gray tarp doesn’t really let in much sunlight. any of the little bits of sunlight available out there. The wagon bed is smaller than my bed at home was. I think they would call this a twin. But this is where we’ll sleep tonight, at least Grace and me. David might be camping out underneath us.

Back to this morning. I got to camp and the captain told me I needed to claim a wagon and a bull. I was quite impressed. I didn’t notice a caravan pull in yesterday when the officials arrived, but they must’ve had all the equipment with them to build these wagons. I knew we had livestock at Camp Orange, though I’ve never seen it. Sometimes I’d hear the cows. They kept them indoors, out of sight. I guess they thought the temptation to steal one would be too great. Maybe they were right.

Anyway, however they got all this stuff here all this stuff is here. , it’s here, and lots of it. I picked a wagon and threw the blankets, my meal tin, and my iron inside. Then I went to the bulls, tied to separate stakes in the ground. They’re rather skinny animals, and they didn’t even look interested in getting free from their stakes. But the horns were a bit scary, so I just stood there, trying to decide which one to make a grab for. There were only three left, a skinny black and white one, a big brown one with white spots on his rear, and a tan one. I was eying the big one, trying to get the courage to grab him (he was snorting at me!) when a woman came over and took him.

That did it. I marched right up and took the tan one. He’d looked pretty mild on the stake, but he put up a stink when I started pulling him. He grunted and dug his heels in and tossed his head with each step. He was starting to wear me out. I stopped to take a breath, and then this shortcomma bald guy came running up to me.

“Hey!” he said, “That’s my bull.”

“Not,” I said, “he’s mine.”

The man said, “I already chose him. I just went to get my wagon ready.”

Well, that was his problem, wasn’t it? So I said, “You shouldn’t have left him. I guess the last one is yours now.”

Would you believe, the man put his hands on my bull? He tried to take the rope from me! And he said, “I don’t want the skinny bull. If your daddy wanted the big bull, he should’ve come himself.”

Let me tell you, I saw red, and for more than one reason. #1: For that guy insinuating that I couldn’t get a cow all by myself, and #2: For talking (smack) This doesn’t seem like fitting vocabulary for Kenley. about my Daddy, even if he had no idea what he was saying.

I probably would’ve said or done something horribly stupid if David hadn’t appeared at that moment. He dropped all his stuff at my feet. I felt such a rush of relief. I was actually grateful that I had a man to protect me and take my side! I was just about to tell him how glad I was to see him when he said—get this—he said, “Thanks for waiting for us at your tent.”

Which of course I did not do, but I had no idea it would be a problem. So I said, “I had to go early. And good thing, Sometimes you use a comma before “too”; other times you don’t. Suggest you chose one style for consistency. too, or we would’ve been stuck with the skinny cow. This man is trying to take ours.”

David caught on then,no comma that this guy didn’t like the cow he had and wanted ours. He stepped up to batThese idioms seem out of place; did they have baseball?, telling the man to back off and get his own bull. The man started in on David, giving him the same grief about his dad needing to get the bull for the family. I almost laughed, except I knew David was still mad at me, but I saw the way he clenched his fists and pushed his feet into the ground. He didn’t like the man saying that anymore than I did. Then he said, “My wife claimed this bull. And I’m younger and stronger than you, so I don’t mind fighting.”

I’m not sure what happened next, but the man left. I was a bit stuck on the word “wife.” For a moment, I thought maybe I really was. But as soon as the man was gone, David turned his aggression on me. He accused me of planning on leaving by myself last night, of not telling him about it. So that I could what? Set myself up as camp leader? I told him it was a lousy way to thank me for getting the bull for us. And he said it didn’t matter,semicolon he would’ve been able to get a bull. Right! We would’ve been left with that skinny shrimp thing, but I guess it still counts as a bull!

Or maybe he just meant that he’s so full of bull, he would’ve been able to find it no matter where we went. Whatever. So we yelled at each other, and when I’d had enough, I climbed up in here. I know I’m being childish. But really. Is this the way things are going to be?