It had been three days since the children had eaten more than a few mouthfuls of beans from the last can she had salvaged out of the mini-mart. She knew she’d need to find more but this was not a time of abundance. The highways were choked with men like the ones who had taken the parents of the small brood she’d acquired. She was left to amble down country roads, three children whom she guessed now were hers following behind like ducklings. In the three days since she opened the final can of beans she had seen the vast expanses of prairie yield to what had once been the manicured lawns of the suburbs before the Collapse. She worried about the children’s hunger, about the…