The Boy and his father continued to travel across the barren Earth. They'd barely been getting along, constantly pursued by things they couldn't name. Monsters, covered in and made of shadow. Strange things in the night's air, attacking anything that came close. There were also others, other creatures. People. Humans.

Alexander, or Lex as he preferred to be called, was adrift in a sea of horror. He’d learned to navigate the current of it over the last three months of his life, but not without being rocked by waves too great to overcome.

It had all started with the freeze in time. One moment he had been working on his homework at a whorled brown desk, sitting in a chair two years past uncomfortable. While mentally cursing his maths teacher, something strange seemed to hit the atmosphere. The next thing he knew, he had been trapped in place, slowly unfreezing. First his mind, then a finger, then a thumb. One by one parts of him had unglued themselves from whatever reality they had been entrapped, and as his ears followed with the rest of his body, the sounds started to strike an already ebullient fear in his mind. Raising it. Taking his nerves to a new level of terror.

The world wasn't ending, it already had. And in less time than it would take to watch a film.

They had hidden out in a small hotel nearby, thinking maybe it had the elusive food and water so necessary for their weak bodies to survive. Then that woman, the angry one who reveled in spilling blood, came and ended most of his family in a moment. Why she had let him go, he didn't know. He just knew that the moment she laid her eyes on him, something had changed within. Something primal and uncontainable. It had struck his body with a pain that could never be eclipsed by another for the rest of his life. He was sure of that.

Not emotional, but physical, vomit-inducing pain. His grandmother had died shortly after, and his father had wheeled him out on an old flimsy piece of wood, each bump cascading new torturous feelings. Even with his eyes closed, the sun had still reached its angry hand through, burning him. His nerves twitched with the wind, and his sense of smell was better not to speak of after being holed up for so long without washwater.

It was his father who kept him going, who explained what had happened over the last two weeks while he had slipped in and out of consciousness. Often awakening only long enough for him to be fed a simple broth by a man who was so terrified of their circumstances, that he couldn't say more than drink quietly.

They had found shelter multiple times. A family here, who wasn't so overcome by the apocalypse to ignore a needed hand. Scavengers there, who they could steal from without their knowledge. It wasn't until a month after escaping the woman who destroyed his life, that he was able to walk on his own, and that's when he started to notice the changes that had been brought on to his body.

After he was finally able to stand on his own two feet, he found the first steps hard to take, literally. A strange skipping would occur with each push off of the ground as if everything felt...lighter. Each landing jarred his already sensitive body, but slowly and surely, he learned how to move again. A little less pressure when lifting his foot, and a bit of a slide on his back leg kept him rooted to the ground. His father said it looked like he was dancing everywhere he went, but Lex didn't mind. Dancing through the apocalypse sounded quite nice.

Even though walking felt a little like floating, he needed to learn how to run, but there were problems there. When he had recovered enough for the attempt, he found himself unable to. He hadn’t adjusted to the strange new occurrences with his joints and muscles. They were too tight, begging to be released the moment he applied a little pressure. He'd asked his father, but the man didn't know what to think. They looked him over from top to bottom but found nothing visually different. His acne had cleared up, which was a blessing in itself, but that was it.

Lex stood near a terrible scene, staring at it with dull eyes. Thinking it was time to test just how strong his changed body was, he walked over to a nearby hill and found a series of boulders alongside the road. These were not naturally formed but rather dug up from the earth by a plane crash, its flames long spent. Bodies littered the area of different ages, and he tried not to look at the half-rotted skeletons still wearing the clothes of the living.

The drudged-up boulders were scattered, but easy enough for him to find. He located one early on in his search, no larger than a bowling ball. Before the end of the world, Lex would've had a little bit of trouble lifting the weighty object, but now, he wasn't so sure.

His father walked up behind him, “What are you doing?’

“I need to know,” Lex said simply.

“Know what?”

“How strong I am now. What’s different about me. There has to be more to this. A reason.”

The man put a hand on his shoulder before he could start his attempt, “You’re still you, Alexander. You’re still your mother’s son.”

He nodded without looking back, “Of course I am. But, there’s something else going on here. I need to know my limits.”

They stood quietly like this for a long moment. A father trying to comfort a distraught son, before the hand removed itself and he stepped back, “As you wish.”

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Lex bent over without wasting time and easily lifted the boulder. To test himself, he palmed it as best as he could and held on with only one hand. He turned to face his father, “This isn’t normal.” He said as he lightly tossed the boulder up before catching it again.

His father’s eyes followed the light throw, “What’s normal anymore?”

Lex let the boulder fall with a loud thud, before finding another. This one slightly larger than a tire. Bending forward, he still had no issues at all with the weight. It should weigh several hundred kilograms, yet to him, it felt like no more than a dozen. Too unwieldy to palm, he instead put it over his head and thrust up with one arm, placing his hand underneath it and in the center. It wobbled a little but held.

“A little strain with this.”

His father nodded, “So, one of your arms is a little stronger than the strongest human ever to live," He said in an unimpressed voice.

Lex smiled at him, remembering them watching strongman competitions in the past and his father always cheering them on loudly, knowing they couldn't hear him. His father's sense of humor since the events that led to their exit from London had changed. He used to laugh openly, but now everything had a dry tinge to it. As if humor was another casualty of this period in time.

Putting both hands underneath it, he shot it toward the sky as hard as he could, bending then flexing his knees quickly with a slight hop. It rocketed toward through the air, arcing in the direction they’d come from. He’d never have done this at night when the shadow monsters could get them. But aside from some scavenging bands of humans, it was relatively safe during the day.

Lex’s sharpened eyes watched the boulder fly, its descent pushing it into a series of trees, many of them parting with snaps and cracks that could be distinctly heard miles away as the boulder finally landed with a boom.

He smiled again at his father, who gave a tired one in return.

That was two months ago, just before his father had died, doing his very best to keep his son going. To keep him strong. Alive. The shadow monsters had surrounded them, slowly peeling away any routes they had for escape. His father had shoved him into a dark tunnel, then continued his run. His last words were a quickly shouted I love you, then all that could be heard were receeding footsteps and heavy breathing. Lex had been too shocked to follow after him, remembering his father's warnings about being a hero. He didn't want to waste the sacrifice the man he admired performed for him. So he sat in a small tunnel in the dark and waited until daylight.

Blessedly he didn't hear his screams.

He now stood, alone, staring down at the largest active settlement he’d seen since the end of times had come. Laughter rang up from below, the chatter of those unburdened by the failure of the world to stay together. Lex watched them, focusing his eyes over a mile away on a couple sitting at two stools, the woman’s hand on the man’s knee while he told some kind of story.

It's not fair, Lex thought to himself. Why do they get to be happy? Why do they have this, this place? I've been running for months!

As he began to stand up, he heard the easily identifiable click of metal latching onto metal. The cock of a hammer.

"Don't move," a tense voice said behind him.

"Or what?" Lex couldn't help but ask.

"Or you'll find a round between your shoulder blades."

Thinking back to his father's sacrifice, he held still without speaking.

"What's your name?" The voice asked. It held the higher pitch he was used to hearing in females, a slight tremor landing on the final word.

Lex couldn't help but laugh, "Names? As if names matter anymore! Everything's dead and gone!"

"And yet, I'll still have it."

"Lex...Alexander Lewis."

"Well, Alexander...um....we have a problem."

"What problem is that?"

There was a pause before she began speaking again, "We don't know you, and um, that's the uh, problem."

"You know my name," Lex fished, trying to get the nervous girl aiming a gun at the back of his head to calm down a little."

"Yes, but..."

A branch snapped behind them, loudly. Lex heard the trigger pull before a loud noise snapped out and he felt something punch into his back.

Not the head

He stumbled forward onto all fours while the girl had a panic attack behind him.

"Oh my god, oh god, oh god. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to kill you! Oh my god!"

"Calm down, you didn't kill me." He said, standing up. He turned around to face his accidental attacker.

A girl no more than five foot tall stood there, red hair spilling down and around her shoulders in a river of scarlet. When she met his eyes she put a hand across her mouth, "how?"

Lex shrugged, "I don't know. Something weird happened to me in London, and a lot of pain followed. I found out my body is a lot tougher after some scavengers tried to attack my father and I awhile back."

"Are you okay? Really?" She asked, not quite believing that he was perfectly healthy.

"I'll have some bruising, but nothing worse than that. What did you shoot me with anyways?"

She held up a small pistol, something likely from the second World War, "It was my nana's."

He nodded, "I see. Well, are you planning on using it again?"

She shook her head slowly.

That brightened him up a little, "Great! What's your name?"

"M-Maria."

Lex held out a hand, "Nice to meet you, Maria. What do you call that place down there?" He said, pointing down at the town filled with people.

"We call it The Last Refuge."

"That's fitting. Let's go down shall we?"

Without turning to look at her, Alexander Lewis began to walk down the hill. A moment later a nervous girl loosely holding a small pistol followed him.