“I say we t-t-take it to them!” Vanessa said even as her teeth chattered, “Those damn authoritarian assholes have been sitting pretty in their compound all of the heavy winter and leaving the rest of us to rot. We’re already halfway through it now, it’s been six months already since the bomb dropped. We don’t have enough food to last the whole way through. We storm in there, we get enough food for the next few months. Make it through until things warm up again. We’ll make it easily, with how much those soldiers managed to loot before they pulled back from the city. They’re as good as Empire by now as far as I’m concerned. Doing everyone a favor by takin’ them out.”
“But the guns, Vanessa!” Frank said, “They’re too much. We’d all die for nothing. They get attacked daily by somebody looking for food. What do we have that they don’t?”
“Yeah, they try to sneak in and get caught. And that one mob got gunned down when they got rowdy. Bunch of idiots. But we got something none of them had. Something that’ll scare the soldiers good and let us take them out without losing anyone. And we’ll get enough people armed with a plan that we’ll be able to pull it off even without her anyways. If we get the other gangs to agree to it, do it all together.”
“And what’s that?” Frank asked skeptically before his eyes widened, “No! Absolutely not! You have no idea what she’ll do if we disturb her! You saw what she did when she came home to those boys threatening her brother.”
Vanessa went quiet for a moment.
“Some of them made it out of there alive, didn’t they? You’re overstating it. I’d do the same if someone threatened… would have threatened my brothers,” she said eventually.
“I listened to their stories first hand. She was like an animal, scratching and biting until they were gone. Ripped a man’s heart out of his chest and threw it at them. That’s not natural. I’m telling you, we can’t risk waking her…” Frank said with a look of abject fear on his face.
“Enough with your damn dragon nonsense!” Vanessa snapped, “This isn’t some fairytale. We don’t got enough food for the winter! So some of us got to die, or we convince her to help us. So which is it gonna be? Cause I don’t see you giving us any more options. Leader.”
Vanessa turned to Simon who jumped as the attention of the rest of the haggard gang turned to him.
“Simon,” Vanessa said, “You’ve been doing the… tribute runs of our valuable food to our resident dragon for a while now. Talked to her more than any of us. What do you think? Could you ask her? Convince her to help us storm the base? If she’s in, I’m sure most of the other gangs won’t hesitate to help with it.”
“Hey, she gave us that heater and electricity,” Frank protested, “That food was put to good use. You think all of us would have survived this long without any of the equipment she’s whipped up?”
Vanessa waved her hand, “Alright, alright. I get it. Doesn’t mean I have to like our precious food being given to her when we’re on the edge ourselves. Simon, what do you think?”
“I- I- I can ask her. I don’t think she’ll mind if I explain. She’ll just tell me if she doesn’t want to, I’m sure,” Simon stammered, “At least I hope so. Next delivery’s supposed to be in two days. I’ll ask then.”
“Frank?” Vanessa asked sharply, “That tame enough for you to not panic?”
Frank considered it for a moment. And although he still looked uncomfortable he nodded to Simon and Vanessa.
“Do your best,” Frank told Simon, “But if she isn’t open to it just shut up and leave. We need every person we can get. I don’t want her tearing out your heart too.”
Simon gulped, but then nodded.
— — —
“No,” Emily said flatly, “I’m not attacking anyone. And I’m not leaving my brother alone. Thanks for the food, Simon. I’ve nearly finished the water filters for you guys.”
Simon nodded reluctantly, “Thank you. It’s been no fun tasting ash in our water for this whole time after the bottled stuff ran out. All that ash mixed in with the snow when we melt it down now in those burners you made for us… Are you sure I can’t convince you? A lot of us will die without you.”
Emily hesitated, but then firmly shook her head.
“No, I’m protecting my brother. I… Good luck, Simon. I hope it all works out for you guys. Those soldiers did seem like assholes.”
Simon paused and searched her face for a moment before nodding.
“Alright, I’ll… just go then.”
Simon walked off into the dark hallway and turned on one of the flashlights that Emily had made for his gang. She let out a sigh of relief and shut the door behind her.
She saw Sean lying on his bed, staring at her intently.
“You weren’t going to talk to me about it?” Sean said after she locked the door behind her and approached him.
“No,” she said, “You almost died two months ago, Sean. I’m not taking a risk like that again.”
Sean sat up and stood, revealing the pencil drawing that he’d been working on for the last few hours was about half way done. He’d picked up the habit after she’d found an artist’s pad of paper only partially filled in one of the empty apartments and some drawing supplies. Sean was actually getting pretty good, sketching things from his imagination to break up the boredom of their apartment.
“It was two months ago,” Sean protested, “We can’t just hide in here forever. We’ll have to go out there eventually. You haven’t even left to scavenge for components even in our own building since that day.”
“I have enough for now,” Emily mumbled.
“No you don’t,” Sean countered, “I’ve seen you stop at least a couple projects half way through because you didn’t have this or that little thing available. If you went out there you could find something and finish them all.”
“No. I’m not leaving,” Emily said, “You heard him. There’s going to be a war, everyone fighting each other soon. You want to be dragged into the middle of all of that?”
Sean huffed and fell back against the bed.
“Yeah, well we should have at least talked about it first. Maybe it’d be better to support the people that we’ve been trading with and who’ve been getting us our food.”
“Your food,” Emily reminded him, “And we have enough for a while. A few months with rationing, enough to make it to the spring. I’ll go out and scavenge then after I’ve made some weapons for you so you can defend yourself better. I… What if I went and helped them fight and you were ambushed and killed while I was gone? I wouldn’t be able to stand that happening. All you have is a few knives. That’s nothing if a group attacks you like last time.”
Sean looked like he wanted to say something, but ended up just shaking his head, “Alright, fine. You win. Just until you finish the guns. Just next time we talk about it first.”
“Okay,” she agreed, “I promise.”
Emily went back to her workbench and continued her work on the water filters after Sean returned to drawing on his sketch. She was almost there, she had promised the gang ten of them and had already finished making eight. Just two more and she would be done.
Then she could keep working on the guns. She was sure that she was almost there. The last one she’d fired had only exploded and temporarily injured her hand after she fired ten shots. Although based on the damage, Emily thought it would have severely injured Sean if he had been the one holding it. So she would only give him it when she was sure that something like that wouldn’t end up happening again.
A few more attempts and she was sure she’d be able to create something more reliable. It was actually more of a nail gun versus firing bullets. Much easier to find nails than creating bullets these days. It was bulky and was halfway between a pistol and shotgun by its pure size despite only shooting the nails out of its nozzle rather than something more familiar from what you’d see in the movies.
But once it was more reliable she’d be able to finally give it to Sean and feel more comfortable leaving him since he’d have some proper protection. She’d be able to go out and scavenge some more components and maybe even food for him.
But until then both of them were staying put.
— — —
Three days later, Emily and Sean heard the explosions and gunfire on the other side of the city where the military base had been set up. The soldiers had pulled back from attempting to control the city by now and were hunkered down in their base.
The fighting lasted for hours, dying down for minutes at a time before starting up again.
Emily assumed that meant that the sides were somewhat balanced if the fighting was lasting for so long.
Both her and Sean were tense as the fighting died down over the course of the next day. No one approached their building in that time. The city was empty enough by now after all the deaths that there was plenty of room to people to spread out in. And no one wanted to be near Emily with all the rumors swirling around her from the soldiers and the gang that she’d been trading with this whole time.
Eventually, everything went quiet again. They kept waiting tense in their apartment. Over Emily’s protests, Sean had taken one of the nail guns despite the danger. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to fire it.
The brief period of calm lasted another day with no one coming near them. Then another round of fighting started. Scattered gunshots around the city, some only a few blocks away. In the afternoon of the day of renewed fighting across the city, Emily suddenly heard the sound of gunfire and battle just outside in the street. She and Sean left with their nail guns held at the ready and rushed to the apartment opposite them that had a better view of the street below.
There was a group of five or six people with machine guns fighting a crowd of over thirty or forty people armed with knives and the occasional pistol. The small group was crouched behind a large rusted out truck and in a depression in the foot of snow covering the ground. The truck was being torn up by the gunfire and the small group with the machine guns were being pressured as they fired their weapons and took out a few of the large group chasing them.
Emily stuck her head out of the window after opening it.
She saw that it was Simon, Frank, and the rest of his gang in the small group.
“It’s the gang,” Emily said over the gunshots and put her nail gun on the floor carefully behind her, “They’re the small group,”
“What? What in the world is going on?” Sean asked as he adjusted his own grip on his own gun. Emily grabbed her jacket and pulled it over her head and started wiggling out of her pants, leaving her only in shorts and a T-shirt underneath.
Stolen story; please report.
“Alright, I’m going to jump down,” Emily said, “Fuck, this is going to hurt. Otherwise they’re toast before I can walk down.”
She looked at Sean in silent permission as he stood there. After a moment, he nodded at her.
“Alright,” he allowed, “Go save them. But you’ll eat something after. A reward for being so damn selfless.”
Emily smiled slightly, even as her stomach twinged slightly at the thought. She hadn’t eaten in months and even though the sensation of her empty stomach never escalated beyond uncomfortable, the feeling was always there nonetheless.
“Okay,” she said, “Here I go.”
Emily dived out of the window and fell five stories to the ground. Despite her beating heart, she managed to angle herself so she landed leg first on the ground. Her legs crumpled and her tailbone hit the ground hard and sent a painful wave of pain up her spine as she landed in the street.
She fell back and another wave of pain went through her shoulder blades as her black slammed hard through the foot of loose snow on the ground and into the hard street below.
After letting a low groan, Emily’s body healed and she stood to her feet, her heavy boots still on her feet luckily.
The fighting had stopped, the large mob and the familiar gang both gawking at Emily as she stood there after splatting on the street only seconds before.
“What’s going on here?” Emily demanded as she looked at the larger group.
“We’re takin’ over this territory!” one man said from the mob, looking like he was the leader, “Who are you? After these fellas are dead, we’ll control nearly a quarter of this city! You’d best get out of our way before you get hurt.”
“Traitor!” Frank shouted from behind cover, “We were supposed to work together. After near half of my gang died in the assault you swoop in and claim it all? That food was supposed to be shared among all of us!”
The other man sneered, “Hardly matters now, does it? We’re on top, and we got everything. You’re a fool, Frank. Everyone was going to betray you after the soldiers were dead. We just managed to do it first and better than the others.”
“Is that the fighting that’s been happening recently?” Emily thought out loud, “Gang wars as you fight in the aftermath? You guys won against the soldiers?”
The other leader gave her a confused look, “Where have you been?” he asked, “Don’t know how you survived that fall. But you can still join us if you stand aside. Me and my boys have no business with you if you’re squirreled away out here on your own.”
“You look around to see where we are, Valentino?” Frank shouted out from behind her, “You can’t threaten her to do anything! She’ll rip your heart right from your chest and eat it!”
The leader of the other group, Valentino apparently, startled and looked around himself. His eyes caught on a nearby street sign that was drooping and tilted at a thirty degree angle from vertical from the cracked pavement at its base.
His eyes widened and Valentino’s head whipped back to Emily as she watched him.
“T-T-The monster! Demon!” Valentino stammered, “Run! Leave them, before she attacks!”
The whole mob of twenty five people all fled with their leader running the fastest, leaving the five bodies of their dead behind. In less than a minute they all disappeared into the distance around the corner.
Emily walked over to the five members of the gang. Her eyes lingered on Vanessa before looking at the other four men one by one. Frank, Simon, and two more that she didn’t know.
“You all okay?” she asked, “What’s happening?”
No one answered her for a moment, all of them looking intimidated as she stood there, “All the gangs came together for the assault on the base,” Simon said, “After all the fighting, we ended up winning. The soldiers had food that could last for years stored up in there. Machine guns, all sorts of equipment…”
Simon raised his machine gun, similar to an AK-47 like you’d see in the old movies sometimes.
“Then everyone started fighting over it all,” Simon said with a grimace, “We barely made it out with these. There’s three big gangs left fighting it out over the city. They’ve absorbed everyone else and the smaller gangs have all joined them. Willingly or by force. They’ve got all the food, equipment… It’s chaos out there.”
“What are you all going to do?” Emily asked in concern, “With the big gangs around gunning for you?”
Simon hesitated before glancing at Frank.
“Can we stay here?” he asked hesitantly.
Seeing her look, he quickly followed up his statement.
“Just across the street! Not in your apartment or building. We’ll steer clear, we swear. But if we’re close enough even the big gangs won’t dare to send anyone to attack us while you’re nearby.”
Emily relaxed and considered it.
“Just wait here,” she said, “I’ll go discuss it with my brother. But that sounds fine to me. Be back in a few minutes.”
She walked to her building and went inside, feeling the slight chill on her bare skin fading slightly as she went back inside and out of the biting wind and snow.
She went back upstairs and spent twenty minutes debating the gang’s proposal. Sean didn’t seem opposed to it either, but he wanted to discuss all the options just in case. He was affected by the attack as well and she could see that he was just as uncomfortable with people living right next to them as she was. Despite their trade with the gang, Emily didn’t trust them one bit. Who knew what they would do if they grew desperate or they thought they could get an advantage by threatening Sean?
But they decided that they’d let them stay nearby. This group hadn’t done wrong by them yet, and Emily generally trusted them to not mess with them at least. Even if she still worried. She went back down and told the five shivering gang members the news. And after thanking her, they quickly went into the opposite apartment building and disappeared. Finding a place to stay presumably.
— — —
Their food lasted them through the winter. But many others’ supplies did not. Through unspoken agreements, the old burn pits had turned into the new graveyard. After the fighting between the gangs was over and the corpses had been stripped of their valuables by scavengers, the bodies were piled into the pits scattered around the city. And with the cold and fighting over the increasingly strained supply of food, the deep pits were slowly filling. Or so the nearby gang had told Emily and Sean.
But Sean, Emily, and the nearby gang had made it through. Some of the big gangs were giving the small gang food so they could ‘appease’ Emily and keep her uninvolved in the fighting. Emily and Sean got a cut, and the gang got enough to eat, so it all worked out. And as promised Emily stayed in her block, now feeling safe enough to at least go around and scavenge whatever electronics and components that were left in the abandoned apartments nearby.
Things were warming up. The snow disappeared from the ground. Emily started working closer with the gang to go out and scavenge for more food as the ‘spring’ arrived. Mostly through scavenging through the buildings to look for canned food in people’s pantries that hadn’t been looted yet.
Even through spring, it was still cold, but not enough that it snowed anymore. That was spring now. The summer felt like what fall used to be as everyone in their group started frantically searching for as much food as they could through the city. The ash in the sky seemed a little lighter than it had nearly a year ago when the bombs dropped. But only a fraction, so Emily wasn’t sure if it was her imagination and wishful thinking or if it was really happening.
Her high powered radio still hadn’t been able to contact anyone yet, only outputting static even as she worked all this time to improve its signal and make it more powerful.
Simon was dead. He’d scraped his hand on a rusty piece of metal and gotten tetanus while they were scavenging. Emily made sure to bury him and give him his own grave rather than throw him into the communal pits like for everyone else.
Winter was upon them again, and their frantic preparations of gathering food continued. Sean stayed with the remaining members of the gang with Sean. By now the groups had merged and Emily trusted the survivors enough that they all stayed together now. With the intense chill of the deep winter they were in, only Emily’s electric heaters and generators were keeping them all from freezing. Except for Emily of course. She was unaffected by it all, not needing a single bite of food or bothered by the temperature more than a mild inconvenience.
Emily waded through the snow in nothing but a one piece bathing suit she’d found a while ago. The snow was up to her thighs, and she didn’t want to ruin any of her other clothes when she went outside. Cold or wet, it was only slightly uncomfortable for her now. There was no use wearing clothes she liked on her scavenging trips. They would just get ripped and dirty.
The rest of her group were huddled around the heat and rationing their food supplies. But even with that, it would be close. So Emily went out every day into the city to look for food. Sometimes she found abandoned caches of food from the remnants of the large gangs, which could last them weeks in some cases.
The longer the second winter went on, the less and less living people she saw. The combination of the cold and lack of food was taking its toll and the large gangs had collapsed in on themselves after all their looted food had run out sometime over the summer.
Whenever Emily found a corpse in an apartment or in one of the alleyways, she took the time to drag them to the communal pits and throw them in. She thought they deserved at least that much.
By the time it was spring again, only Frank and Vanessa from the original gang were still alive. The other two had gotten sick and hadn’t recovered. Sean had gotten sick too along with them, but despite the resentment from the rest, Emily immediately took him off rations and fed him as much food as he needed. It seemed to do the trick, and he managed to recover as she stopped foraging and hovered over him and cared for him as best as she could until he was healthy again.
But with only the three people left to feed now, their food would stretch farther, probably another two weeks now that Sean’s food was being rationed again now that he’d recovered.
Emily went scavenging again, having to go further and further each time to find enough supplies to fully load her large camping backpack that she’d found a few months ago.
— — —
It was summer again, but despite that they were still struggling. A light dusting of snow covered the ground despite the time of year, and it remained just as cold. All attempts at farming that Emily had seen by other groups had failed miserably. Even those who knew a little bit about what to do hadn’t been able to make the crops survive long enough through the cold and dim light from the sky blocked with ash.
Vanessa and Frank were dead. When food had run low, Emily had funneled all of their food to Sean over his own protests. Despite crying, feeling like a horrible person, and enduring Sean’s and the other's resentment towards her, she always forced Sean to take a bigger portions than the others. To make sure that he always had enough to eat even at the cost of the other two. Sometimes practically shoving the extra food down his throat over his own protests
Vanessa and Frank had gotten sick and died. A combination of the lack of food, the inactivity as all of the others laid around not moving to conserve their energy, and the faint chill in the apartment despite the heater being hard at work in the apartment at all times now. And maybe cancer from the radiation that all of them had been saturated with for over two years now. Emily wasn’t sure about that one, but it made sense. But Sean had survived. He had recovered at least.
Both of the dead were buried alongside Simon and the other two men who’d died. Now it was just Emily and Sean again.
Emily didn’t see any living people when she scavenged the city anymore. Only more bodies that she numbly dragged to the pits and threw inside when she saw them.
They made it through the third winter, if only barely. But Emily was desperate, having to cross nearly half the city to scavenge any more stored food by now. Having cleared all the closest or most obvious spots that some preserved food would have been stored. Hidden caches left behind by the gangs, forgotten in the chaos as everyone who knew where they were died.
The city was silent around her as she walked in her snowshoes through the streets. The snow and ice had piled up nearly ten feet high now. It was so cold that it never stopped snowing anymore when there were clouds above. It was always cold enough for it, even in the spring and summer. Emily was now walking alongside the second story windows of the buildings, the rest buried underneath the layers of snow beneath her, carried on the top by her snowshoes.
It had been three days, and she’d finally filled her bag with food from her efforts on this latest foraging trip. Sean should have enough food to last this long back at the apartment. But only barely. Emily hurried back with her snowshoes as fast as she could. She was still wearing her one piece bathing suit to preserve all of their warm clothes left for Sean. wrapping him in as many layers as she could manage for warmth. The biting wind and deep chill was so familiar by now that Emily barely even noticed it until she returned to Sean’s apartment building again and felt the faint warmth again on her skin as soon as she went inside out of the biting wind mixed with snow outside.
She went inside the hallway to the apartment and felt a sense of dread as she saw the light over the outer door was off.
“Sean?”
She slammed open the door and burst into the apartment and gasped as she saw the still figure on the bed. The apartment was freezing, and the heater sat unused and silent when it should have been pumping out heat.
Emily dropped her bag and rushed over to Sean and reached out and felt for his throat with a trembling hand. His skin was cold and she didn’t feel a pulse with her finger on the side of his neck.
He was wrapped up in blankets like he’d gotten sick. His skin was untouched and slightly blue in the freezing room.
Emily gripped Sean’s dead hand sticking out from underneath the blankets and off the side of his bed.
“Oh, Sean,” Emily said as her tears started to fall, “Please, no. We’ve got each other. We’re all we have left. I… I can’t do this without you.”
Emily’s voice trembled as she kept gripping his cold hand and brushed his hair away from his closed eyes.
“Please… Please wake up.”
Emily bowed her head and sat there with her head bowed, not knowing how much time passed as she stayed there.
Sean was dead.
She was all alone in the world again.
She hated these powers, why couldn’t she just die with him?
She took the pistol from the cabinet nearby and put it underneath her chin. With tears running down her face, she pulled the trigger. The gun screeched and she heard a metallic snap from within the pistol. It had rusted through. Useless.
With a scream, Emily threw the useless pistol at the wall and fell to the floor limp as her pent up emotions washed over her.
It was useless anyway. She couldn’t even kill herself to join him. She would just heal again. All alone again, all alone… All of it was her fault. Everyone had died because of her.
Everything was her fault.