We can hear them outside again, all those broken fingers catching against every surface they can reach in the hope that they might eventually reach something they can eat. Or someone. They haven't been human for so long that even if they had names before the sky broke them, there wouldn't be anyone left alive who'd remember them.
Most days they keep to the outskirts, to the places where coydogs and wolves eat the dead we throw away. The days they step inside the settlement boundaries are fewer and fewer each year but they seem to take more and more to compensate.
Last week we lost seven and the month before that they took five. We didn't think they'd be back for at least a few more days but our alarms were triggered, the guard dogs were silenced and the sound of broken bones dragging themselves along the ground grates our nerves to the point where we're all quietly daring someone to go outside and meet their end.
Anything to make them stop.
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