"They're guns?" Kevin asked in the basement of the barn, he was down at the bottom of the steps with Peter and Bill. All around them covered in brown tarps were wooden boxes marked food.

"Yup, all of them," Bill had one box open to show the military AR-15 assault rifle in pieces for travel. "Well, some of them, lot of them are ammunition. The trick now is getting them across the border. I've seen that tunnel you guys got, ain't going to do the trick."

"Why?" Kevin asked.

"For you guys, Care of the United States government...not openly though. Hush hush stuff, and they only paid for half. Angela and her girls raised the rest." Bill closed the case.

"That must've been one hell of a bake sale." Peter grinned.

Bill chuckled as he covered it with the tarp. "Angela is no suburban housewife." Bill motioned up, Peter and Kevin headed up the stairs.

Karen stood outside the barn in her new clothes, they were more fashionable and she was told they belonged to Bill and Diane's daughter. The Kaki pants and white blouse would never hold up in the bush so she decided she'd just enjoy them now. She watched a black SUV come toward the house in the distance, just a dot in the distance as the three men joined her.

Diane watched from the porch as the truck pulled up the gravel driveway, it came to a stop near the barn and the engine shut down. Karen moved a strand of hair off her forehead and crossed her arms. She would've felt more comfortable if she was armed.

"It's ok, that's Dakota. He's one of us." Bill said after noticing Karen's tension.

The driver’s door opened as Dakota climbed out, a large Native man in his thirties. He had hair down his back with clear dark brown skin. He was dressed in jeans, leather vest and a t-shirt. Underneath they could see he had a build, muscles held on a six foot two frame. Karen relaxed when she saw a Skin, even more so when Brian and Lucas climbed out of the back.

The second two natives weren't as big or strapping as Dakota but clearly from the same genetic family. Those two were twins.

Mike Preston climbed out of the passenger door, dressed in beige slacks, dress shirt unbuttoned at the top with his sleeves pulled up. He was average height, white with a short hair cut out of a catalogue. A politician in his late twenties. Not who Karen was expecting.

"You Karen?" Dakota asked in a deep baritone voice. She nodded. "Dakota Temptleton; my brothers. Brian and Lucas. The Yakama nation welcomes you to our traditional territory."

"Thank you." Karen said, glancing at Mike. "This is my cousin Peter and his nephew Kevin, from the Cree Nation."

The Indians exchanged handshakes. Dakota chuckled as he saw that Peter and Kevin were about the same age, with Kevin being a few years older than his Uncle. "Yeah, only in Indian Country."

"Hi," Mike stepped forward with his hand. Karen hesitated before taking it. "Michael Preston, United Nations human rights envoy."

"Where's Doctor Susan Smith?" Karen asked, "That's who we were expecting."

"Uh, well, she couldn't make it."

"Why not? She's who we were expecting." Karen used her deeper voice, a challenge.

"I'm her proxy, I can speak on her behalf..." Mike said.

"We came a long way, through very dangerous waters because we were assured she would be here to listen to us, not a proxy, not someone on her behalf, her." Karen backed up a bit.

"I will vouch for Mike, he's a good man." Dakota said.

"Me too." Bill backed him up.

"I don't know either of you. How am I supposed to take that on good faith? As far as I know this could be a trap to just bring out the resistance. We know Doctor Smith. We've seen her pictures, we don't know you." Karen glanced around at the others, if it was a trap she had to figure out an order of attack.

"In all fairness, I was expecting someone else as well. We were expecting to be dealing with Marcus or Patrick. Not you." Mike stated.

"Dead." Peter said.

"Who? Marcus?" Dakota asked.

"Both. Marcus by a hunter last month, Patrick from a measles infection." Peter continued. "Dale as well, all dead."

"So who's in charge?" Mike asked.

"You're looking at her." Kevin stated.

Mike sighed, he was at an impasse as to what to do, then Dakota moved. He reached back and pulled out a Colt pistol. This caused everybody to tense up.

"What are you doing?" Mike asked.

"Hold on." Dakota popped the magazine out and showed Karen that it was loaded before putting it back in. He chambered a round and then held it out butt first to Karen. "I want it back before you leave."

Karen let it hang there for a moment. She nodded and took the weapon. "Ok."

"Ok. This should be fun." Mike said.

The group moved into the house where Diane served the three Indian brothers apple pie with ice cream while Mike sat down at the table with Karen. He updated her on the small pockets of resistance across Canada springing up on and around the reserves.

"Canada's closing down the border as much as they can, but more and more people are going up. It's not as evident out west, but we've seen some results in Ontario and Quebec."

"Bloody Mohawks, leave it to them, eh," Peter said. Kevin smirked.

"We're not getting much though, just this and that..."

"Are they hunting them?" Karen asked. Mike stared at her processing the question. "What?"

"Uh, we don't know." Mike shrugged, "People go in, some refugees coming back...we think so though. That's what they're saying."

"That's because they are." Karen emphasized. She's never met an Indian from Ontario before, she was young when the boundaries were put in place so travel was virtually non-existent for Indians. "What's...what's happening this side of the border?"

"To date..." Mike didn't know where to start.

"As long as the oil keeps flowing people are keeping their mouth shut." Dakota said with a mouth full of pie.

"There's strong opposition to what's happening, in Congress and the senate. There's voices." Mike added.

"So why don't they do anything?" Kevin asked.

"Because..." Mike didn't want to say it, "Nobody believes it. And those that do are shut down by the right and Christians."

"Nobody wants to believe it." Dakota backed Mike up, emphasizing the key words.

"What do they think? That we're making this up? People are dying? We're dying?" Karen raised her voice.

"What they think...what they've been told is there was a war, and things happened so extreme measures had to be taken. Until that war is over..." Mike shrugged, there was no way to finish the sentence.

"They're hunting, for sport. That's not a war." Karen lost her temper. Kevin had never seen that before.

"We need proof...so they know it's happening."

"I'm proof! I'm telling it! They need to get in there and stop it." Karen hit the table.

"We can't. It's politics."

"Fuck politics." Karen stood up and moved to the counter. "They're just going to let us die. This is all just a fucking waste of time."

"What kind of proof?" Kevin asked.

"Video?"

"You want us to get video of them hunting Indians?" Peter was puzzled. "You know how messed up that is?"

"But it'll change how the world sees you."

"We have to let them kill someone, and just stand there as they do it." Karen continued. "Who the hell does that?"

"Plus a camera needs a charge." Kevin stated.

"So?" Dakota chimed in.

"They have sensors and things, anything with a charge they pick up and find. Moment you turn the camera on, or a phone, or anything they'll know it's there." Karen explained. Their world was literally stone aged. "We don't even wear watches anymore."

Mike nodded. "I know what that is...we made it."

"Oh yay." Karen said.

"We built it to find people in earthquakes stuck under buildings, but we built it so I know some people that'll know how to get around it." Mike shrugged. "I can get you a camera that'll do it."

"And if we don't?" Karen asked.

"Nothing changes."

"Yeah, it's bullshit." Karen handed the gun back to Dakota and left the room. There was a moment of awkward silence in the room.

"Get us the camera." Peter said to Mike, who nodded.

Several weeks later.

Kevin watched as Rachel put on her bra, clasping it in the front and then turning it all the way around; she noticed him watching. "You perv."

Kevin smiled, he laid back and looked up at the sky; they were still in the birch trees but he could see the stars through the branches. He dressed first and was now waiting for her.

"Come back with me." He said, "Rachel..."

"This is not something I want to talk about, not right now." She said as she pulled on her shirt, getting to her feet.

"This is our only chance to talk about it. We head back out tonight."

"And that's what you want then, our last hour together fighting about it?" She knew where this conversation was going. They've had it before.

"It doesn't have to be our last hour together. Come with me." Kevin got to his feet.

"Into hiding? There's nothing out there for me."

"There's nothing here for you."

"My life is here."

"This isn't a life! You're fucking cattle to these people. You're not even cattle, at least cows have some use to them dead." Kevin got worked up. He spent a lot of time trying to convince people to join the resistance and couldn't understand why they would choose the life of servitude.

"Stop it!" Rachel put her foot down, "My family is here, and you know they wouldn't survive out there and I'm not about to leave them here by themselves."

Kevin stared at her then waved her off as he moved to one of the trees. She was choosing a culling over life. A betrayal of everything he was raised to believe in.

"You could stay here with me."

Kevin smirked and turned back to her, for a second he wondered if he could get her and her family south to the border and across as refugees. He dismissed it.

"We could change things here." Rachel said. She smiled. "Not all of them are evil, some are good."

"Who? Who’s not all evil?"

"The Agents. Some of them you can reason with, sometimes, kind of." Rachel shrugged. She's seen some interactions that were ok.

"Some? Just some." Kevin arched an eyebrow.

"Some are better than none, and it has to start somewhere, Kevin. One's nice, then two. Pretty soon we're all treating each other like people again."

"You're delusional." Kevin said it with humor but disbelieving that was possible.

"I'm an optimist." She chirped, "Stick around and I'll show you. I see it everyday. Sure, you have to look for it sometimes, but it's there. One act of kindness, leads to another, to another…next thing you know we're all handing out flowers and frybread."

Kevin stared at her then frowned as she winked back at him with a grin.

"There's too much going on, I was going to be in a lot of shit trying to explain bringing you back. You know how bad it would be if I didn't go back?" Kevin shook his head.

The two knew there was no meeting each other halfway. This is the world and it can't be changed right now. Rachel put her hand on the tree and used to her foot to fiddle with the dirt on the ground. She sighed.

"They took Jacob."

"I know."

"You knew?" Rachel looked up at him and stepped forward.

"We have someone feeding us info. We heard he was tagged."

"And you didn't do anything?"

"There wasn't anything we could do." Kevin said, "It's not like we can drop everything we're doing and come racing in. They've got militia out there looking for us now, with special security papers that let them kill us on sight."

Rachel chuckled.

"What?"

"Security papers, hunting licenses for free range Indians."

"Yeah, he's Alex's cousin too. So we wanted to come for Jacob, but couldn't." Kevin said. Alex, who was a traditional runner for them, delivered messages out in the bush by foot so everybody knew him and everybody liked him. They all felt it when he heard he was going to lose his cousin.

"Sucks all around, doesn't it." Rachel stated.

Kevin nodded.