Charis Family and Urgent Care Clinic

Amidst the rubble of the city, just a few (what used to be) blocks from the Survivor Safehouse, there's one small house that is mostly intact.

Rebuilt from rubble but cozy and solid nonetheless, it is stone-walled and wooden-roofed, and a metal chimney pipe sticks out from the back, letting smoke escape from what smells like a woodstove inside.

The front door is wooden, salvaged from some broken building somewhere, and outside the door is a neat stack of firewood about ten feet away.

Around the edges of the house, a small flower garden of battered dandilions and clovers, chamomile and mints, and all the hardy weeds that are shunned in civilized yards thrive. They are survivors, like the people left in the city.

In the rear of the little house is another door, this one metal. Beside it, a small generator hums constantly under a makeshift wooden cover. On the other side of the back door, two large barrels sit positioned to catch falling rainwater from the gutters. A larger space had been cleared of debris further back, and by sweat and hard labor, the owner of the small house had tilled and planted, and a garden was sown.

The only indication that this wasn't a residence was a hand-painted sign that hung from a post near the front door. Lettered in neat, violet paint, it reads:

"Charis Family and Urgent Care Clinic. Walk-ins welcome."