It was three months before the next visitors came.

Each time there was a long lull, Adam had to teach himself to speak again. When he was alone, language wasn't necessary. He remembered his routine in pictures and muscle memory. He didn't need words to represent the things he knew.

But these visitors would not be worth the time.

They came in crashing through the forest on motorized machines. They were loud and boisterous, trampling the plants and flowers he had growing on the south side of the forest.

They came into the clearing near his cabin and pillaged the well, dousing themselves with bucket after bucket of fresh water and scrubbing the dirt and sweat off of their filthy bodies.

When the water was low, they threw their clothing on the ground and helped themselves to the garden vegetables. They pulled fruit off the trees and ate that too, grunting and laughing with loud, jabbing hoots and hollars. They pissed in the grass.

Adam’s cabin was hidden behind a series of carefully grown bushes and trees. From the front windows, he could see out into the clearing, but it was impossible for anyone out there to see him.

He waited all day to see if the men would wander around and possibly discover him, but they seemed content to relax in the clearing, and stayed there together for the rest of the night.

When the men were snoring, Adam quietly stole out into the darkness and gathered supplies from the armory.

The way he had it set up, the armory was completely locked from the outside.

No one could get in or out the front entrance, as it was covered in locks and chains that only he had the keys and combinations for. Parts of the doors were welded shut.

The only way to access the armory was through a broken solar panel on the roof.

He lowered himself down from the ceiling with the rope ladder he kept hidden there. Once inside, he went to the shelves that held the handguns.

He stuffed a backpack full of ammunition, and grabbed grenades as well.

Just before he left, he checked the trap he'd set at the armory's front door.

There was a string that reacted to any jarring, forcible movement. Underneath the ground outside, the line was connected to a row of live explosives.

The last thing Adam needed was for the men to break into the armory, and to get caught up in a shootout against big guys who were armed to the teeth with his own weapons.

Adam slept that night in the forest canopy instead of the cabin. Near the tree tops, there were vines and branches that would tightly intertwine, allowing him to create a sturdy little hammock for himself that was hidden from ground view. The men hadn't explored the forest that day, but they might do it the next. He didn't want to risk being found in the cabin, where there was no easy escape atop the rocky cliff. Everything about these visitors seemed dangerous. It was better to wait out their stay, and let the forest deal with them.

The boy was born on this land, and it was all he knew.

It used to be a utopia, called “Paradiso.”