They traveled unsupervised, supporting one another along the way.

They traveled unsupervised, supporting one another along the way.
HOUSTON (AP) -- They're out there.
The shooters, the choppers, the looters, the lines, the foul water and the bodies. Especially the bodies.
"But we're in here," says Victor Fruge.
Others -- hundreds of thousands of them -- had also escaped from New Orleans. But few could match the extraordinary, even miraculous odyssey of Fruge and his comrades -- 16 mentally ill men and recovering addicts, cast out of their group home, Abstract House, by the storm.
For a week, the men stuck together through Hurricane Katrina and its rising waters, following a survival instinct like a candle in the dark and gamely caring for each other as they traveled unsupervised for nearly 500 miles.
They arrived at dawn in Houston, a sprawling and unfamiliar city.
Along the way they ate and slept in at least four different shelters and caught rides on four different means of transport, always clutching the psychotropic medications that keep their imaginary devils at arm's length while the real world around them sunk into a deeper hell.
Sticking together
"You don't see that a lot in this business," says Dr. Sara Allison, a psychiatrist who treated the men during their first night in the Astrodome and has been checking on them daily since then.
"But there were a lot of things in this [emergency] that you don't see a lot of."
Hollywood screenwriters might be tempted to pitch this remarkable journey as "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" meets "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." B
ut these guys don't quite fit the stereotype.
They are not inmates. Though they might be delusional, largely toothless and at times hilarious, they are not really rebellious.
Wearing scraps of donated clothing, the men range in age from 30 to 70. Several are quiet -- Leonard, for one, didn't speak for 12 days after the storm.
For these men who are schizophrenic, bipolar, severely depressed, obsessive-compulsive and shellshocked from war -- often simultaneously -- Hurricane Katrina and its agonizing aftermath have forced them to function as a family, perhaps for the first time in their lives.
"We look out for each other," said Raymond Jean Pierre, who everybody agrees is the oldest.
"We stick together," said Patrick Pitchford, whose tattoos crawl down both arms like psychedelic shirt sleeves.
"If one person had to go to the bathroom, we all go'd to the bathroom."
For now, the men are living in a group home here. If it's not the Ritz, it's warm, clean and safe.
They kill time in a haze of prescriptions and tobacco smoke. In important ways, Katrina has changed everything for the 16 men from Abstract House.
The journey
Their odyssey began with the rest of New Orleans' poor. On Sunday morning, the Abstract House caretakers hustled a total of 16 residents -- and Mike Campos, a former resident who was visiting for the weekend -- into vans headed for the Superdome, about a mile away.
Abstract's director, Barrie Byrnes, explains she was following instructions from city officials.
Stress and disruption are as threatening to the mentally ill as the winds that peeled the Superdome's roof like an orange. Once inside, they barricaded themselves behind privacy curtains and packing crates.
Victor doled out the next round of medications.
Haldol, Seroquel, Depakote, Zoloft, Cogentin, Xanax, Paxil, Cibalith. And about a dozen more.
"I'm in charge of the medications because of my street knowledge," he explained. "That, and my mother was trained to be a nurse. Some of these guys need their pills four times a day."
On Thursday, they edged their way outside. A National Guard truck chugged them through the filthy floodwaters and onto the cloverleaf where Interstate 10 meets the Causeway.
They finally were loaded on a bus, and after being turned away at Fort Polk, a large Army base in western Louisiana, the bus pulled up to the Astrodome at dawn Friday. They circled their cots again, then looked for help.
Three of the men -- Bruce, Richard and James -- were hospitalized. On Sunday, psychiatrist Allison relocated the rest to the Liberty Island group home. It operates in a converted hotel.
What's next?
In New Orleans, the men paid their Abstract House caretakers $400 a month. Liberty Island will cost at least $600 a month, in part because it is a more structured environment. It's unclear whether FEMA or another government agency will subsidize their stay.
What's next for the Abstract 16? Some say they may look for a bottle. Others have been known to smoke a rock of crack cocaine.
"They made it," said psychiatrist George Santos.
"They managed the situation without overreacting. It's not reasonable to expect them to be symptom-free now."
Will they return to languid, delicious, sexy New Orleans, where life on a good day feels like you're high?
Will they even stay together? The idea that Hurricane Katrina could break up this misfit family long after the winds died and the floodwaters recede ignites fear in the men's eyes.
Liberty Island's door is open. Nobody could stop them.
Victor: "How long we been gone?"
Mike: "Seems like a month."
Ray: "If somebody can't take their own medications, you can't let them go."
Patrick: "I got family in Texas. They know I'm alive. That's good enough."