Jenny sat cross-legged on a crumbling concrete slab, the worn survival guide resting on her knees. The wasteland stretched around her, vast and unfamiliar, its silence broken only by the faint whistle of the wind through rusted steel. She flipped the guide shut with a snap, the old paper smelling faintly of mildew and grease.
Her lips curled into a faint smirk. “Three weeks without food? Guess they never tried skipping lunch when Ma was mad.”
The smirk faded as her grey eyes scanned the horizon, her gaze flicking between the skeletal trees and jagged rocks. The guide had been a lucky find, snagged from the pack of one of the expedition members when they weren’t paying attention. She shifted slightly, her fingers brushing the battered cover as a flicker of unease stirred in her chest.
It hadn’t been hers to take. Some recruit had probably needed it—someone trained and ready for the mission it was meant to support, not a runaway trying to patch up her own mistakes. The thought gnawed at her, but she shoved it aside with a small shake of her head. Out here, survival didn’t leave room for shame or guilt. If the guide was helping her now, wasn’t that what mattered?
Even so, the weight of it felt heavier than it should have.
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Jenny leaned back, pulling her knees up as her unbuttoned field jacket shifted slightly. It was standard issue in the bunker—olive green, with faded patches that once carried rank and insignia. They’d made her keep it neat back home, the cuffs buttoned, the collar stiff, the belt cinched tight around her waist.
She hated it.
Now, the belt was buried in her pack, stuffed alongside the extra socks and tins of food she’d swiped from storage. The jacket hung loose over her frame, flapping slightly in the wind. Her trousers, slightly too big for her, were tucked into heavy lace-up boots—standard bunker issue but worn in by years of training drills and scavenging runs. Jenny had rolled up the sleeves of the jacket, exposing her lean forearms. For the first time, she felt like she could wear it the way she wanted, not like a cadet on parade.
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Most of the guide sounded like the kind of overblown warnings her instructors would give during drills, full of dire consequences and things that went bump in the night. Don’t stray from the marked paths. Don’t trust the surface. Don’t go alone. It all boiled down to the same mantra they’d repeated her whole life: stay in the bunker, stay safe.
Jenny scoffed, tossing the guide back into her pack. “Weather and bad water,” she muttered to herself, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Like that’s the worst thing out here.”
She stood, dusting her hands off on her trousers, and adjusted the strap of her rifle. They didn’t tell us anything, she thought, the frustration rising in her chest like steam from a kettle. Whatever the expedition teams saw out here, they sure as hell weren’t talking about it. The elders kept everything locked up tight—classified, as they liked to say. And now I get to find out why.
She shook off the thought and slung her pack onto her back. As she began to walk, her eyes caught on the faint scribbled notes she’d spotted earlier in the guide. Something about lighting a fire using a battery and steel wool.
Jenny laughed out loud, the sound startling in the empty air. “A battery? Seriously?” She couldn’t imagine finding one now, let alone one that actually worked. Most of the ones in the bunker had long since corroded or been stripped for parts. The person who’d written that had to be ancient—or as clueless as the elders thought she was.
Still, there was something oddly comforting about the guide. It was so grounded, so... practical. It didn’t say anything about the kinds of things her overactive imagination whispered about at night. It didn’t mention the faces she thought she saw in the shadows or the feeling of being watched in an empty room. Those things were just stories. They had to be.
“Resource wars,” she muttered, parroting the explanation she’d grown up with. “Human greed ruined everything, and now we live in the dirt.” She paused, looking up at the wide, endless sky. “Doesn’t explain why I feel like something’s watching me, though, does it?”
Jenny adjusted her rifle, shaking off the eerie thought. She had a goal—a real one, with a map and a mystery to solve. The guide might have its uses, but she’d figure out the rest as she went. After all, the wasteland was hers to conquer now.
With one last glance back at the horizon, she set off toward her destination, the folded map burning a hole in her pack.
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From the shadow of a distant ridge, a figure stood motionless, half-hidden behind a jagged rock. The man’s eyes tracked her every movement, his posture relaxed but deliberate.
He made no sound.
As Jenny disappeared over the next hill, he lingered a moment longer before slipping silently into the wasteland’s embrace.