...but runs into trouble.

It takes a few minutes, but finally all the women have their clothes back on and (in the case of the core group) their weapons ready. Jaz leads the way back through the halls behind the gym, past the office and out into the schoolyard. They slip one by one through the hole in the fence, and proceed slowly and cautiously down the alley and onto the streets. The claimed women form a knot, now - a protective bubble around Grant and the unclaimed women, who seem to have drifted to the interior of the formation...if only for the sake of safety.

The streets are still eerily quiet for the most part, though occasionally the noise of some altercation splits the air. Still, the large group gets most of the way back to Grant's apartment building before they face a real problem.

As the group begins to move across an intersection, there's a sudden flash of lights and the squeal of tires. Jaz and Eve, in the lead, gasp and throw themselves backward as an old and battered Ford Explorer comes barrelling toward them from the cross street. The first couple ranks of the claimed women press themselves back as several behind Grant seize him and pull him bodily back from the vehicle, which screeches to a halt in front of them. From the corner of his eye, Grant sees Mary and Olivia raise their guns, training them on the vehicle as the claimed women around them duck out of the line of fire. "Whoa, whoa!" he cries. "Let's not shoot anyone just yet!"

He sees Mary tighten her grip on her rifle, and he's not sure that she's going to listen to him, when the passenger door of the SUV opens up and a wide-eyed, slightly disheveled young man with a ball cap on over a scruffy orange-red goatee pops his head above it. "Holy fucking shit!" the young man exclaims.

"What the hell are you doing?" Mary demands loudly.

The young man's gaze swings to her momentarily, but then it continues its revolution of the crowd and lands on Grant. "Holy motherfucking balls, dude. I can't believe this shit. You claim all these bitches?" He looks behind him, into the car. "Yo, Jose, pull your dick out for a second and get a load o' this."

The rear door of the Explorer swings awkwardly open, revealing the back seat. On it, a grungy-looking brunette girl wearing a backwards skater cap is bent over, arms tied behind her back cheek pressed into the seat, her moans muffled by a gag as a young, dark-skinned Latino man fucks her from the rear. "Unh! Unh! Fuck...that is quite somethin', dude. You do all this?" he calls to Grant.

"...Yeah. I did," Grant says loudly and firmly. He folds his arms as he steps forward, several of the claimed women clustering protectively around him. He gently puts up a hand to prevent Eve from stepping fully in front of him, wanting to make sure he can communicate directly to these younger-looking guys. "What are you guys playing at, trying to hit us with that car?"

The driver's side door opens, and a skinny white boy with short-cropped dark hair emerges. Like the other two, his clothes look cheap and worn. He leans on the hood of the car, a cigarette dangling from his lip as he looks out at Grant and his pack of women. "Sorry, man. Didn't mean to offend...we've just been trying to catch some pussy for ourselves. You know, come outta the darkness and scatter the group, then grab the stragglers..." He takes a long drag on his cig. "Hasn't worked super well so far...the only bitch we've got is Jaycee there, and that's just because she was hanging out with us when all this shit started."

"Unnh! Fuck!" Jose grunts as he thrusts his hips against the girl's waist and tilts his head back, clearly reaching his climax as he grips her waist, knuckles tightening. "Ha...yeah, she's a good little slut and we'd all wanted to fuck her before, but just one bitch is gonna wear out...even if Kyle's good at sharing..." He smacks Jaycee's ass as he slips out of her, turning away from the onlookers in a bizarre show of sudden self-consciousness as he cleans himself off and buttons up. Grant can see the girl, panting, straining to turn her head, looking over her shoulder toward the skinny boy. Kyle, apparently.

"She's claimed by you?" Grant asks Kyle warily. Kyle nods, taking another long drag.

"Yeah. We were all hanging out by the skate park down on 12th when the message came through. She was skating when it arrived and these two were too pussy to actually try it, even if all of us had wanted to tap that ass for a bit. So I got her first. But..." He shrugs. "Bros before hoes, right? And after a couple fucks I got kinda tired, so I told her to let the others do whatever they want to her."

"Where'd you get the guns, dude?!" Goatee boy calls. "Fuckin' sick."

"I've got my sources," Grant says warily.

"You goin' after more women, then?" Kyle asks. There's a hungry look in his eye. "Maybe we could help you out, if so...team up, kinda. We've got wheels, and four men'll be able to do more than one...you're not gonna be able to rely on claimed women for everything, after all. Maybe we can set up some kinda trade...?" His eyes linger on Zoya and Magdalena with obvious interest.

"No, we're heading home," Grant says curtly.

"Must be a pretty nice place if it fits all these bitches," Jose comments, done getting decent. "We haven't figured out where to hole up yet. Garret's and mine is a shithole, and Kyle - "

"I ain't wanna be living with my parents, these days," Kyle says with a thin smile.

Grant's mind races as he looks the three men over. They're all clearly young, directionless - and they're eyeing him, his guns, and his women with looks that mingle admiration, envy, and respect. I wonder if they'd...I wonder if I can...