Souless, hollow eye sockets stare back at me. His bones are clean—practically sterile—as if carved from ivory and bleached white for good measure. It looks fake. Or maybe it’s my heart that thinks it looks fake. It’s nothing like those skeletons you pick out from the halloween store when October rolls around, the plastic, shiny ones made from molds. Those ones are smooth with soft edges—lacking detail and texture. Lacking the intricate lines of matte, real bone.

I blink, and the image vanishes from my mind.

I clench my teeth and hold up the revolver, aiming at a knot on a tree about twenty feet away. But my finger never pulls the trigger. I can’t really shoot. Not out here.

A gunshot in a world like this is like blood in shark-infested waters: you never know quite what you’ll attract, but none of it is good. Of course, that’s if the rusty thing even works. I only keep it on the off-chance it might save my life one day. Also, it looks scary, and in a world like this, intimidation matters.

I slide back from the center of the swimming hole, wading through chest-deep water back toward the rocky edge where my bag sits. I lean over, setting the gun just inside the flap. When my fingertips graze the soft leather cover of my uncle’s journal, I pause. His skeleton flashes through my mind again and I swallow a lump in my throat.

Even after all these months, pain still swirls in my chest. Like a wound scabbed over only to tear open again; eventually, you become numb to the pain. Only, I’m still waiting for that numbness to come—still waiting for that freedom.

It’s a familiar feeling—grief. The first time it hit me full force was when my parents died. The nights after the car accident were dark. I was fourteen and my little brother, Ivan, was only four. But I wasn’t alone back then. Uncle stepped in and saved us. He saved me. When my world turned upside down and the dark waters of life threatened to swallow me whole, Uncle reached in and pulled me out of it. He set my feet on dry land again.

I rub the worn leather journal cover between my thumb and forefinger for the millionth time. Two hundred and fifty-one pages flit through my mind. I could recite every word if I wanted to. They are signed forever on my soul. I suppose that’s what happens when you read the same thing over and over for eight months straight. Uncle may be gone, but at least I have his words—his thoughts. So long as I have that, he isn’t gone. Not really. Not for me.

I take a seat and ease my head against the swimming hole’s rocky armrest, letting my body sink a little lower in the water. My toes poke out of the crystal water, revealing grimy nails ringed with black that match my fingers. I should clean them—my nails. The thought floats lazily through my mind like the fluffy white clouds overhead.

A darkening horizon warns of rain, but I close my eyes, focusing on the warm afternoon sun instead. The cool spring water coaxes weariness from my bones.

Uncle would never approve of my skinny-dipping in the middle of the woods.

Too dangerous, he would say.

But if there’s one benefit to living in this barbaric world, it’s privacy. I’ve spent weeks trekking through woodland mountains without hide or hair of another living soul. I might be lonely if I wasn’t so relieved. Uncle warned in his journal about the dangers in this new world, this world without civilization. Without law.

Without women.

They don’t wake up, Natasha. Maybe it’s better this way. The men who survive here are no men at all, but monsters. Count yourself lucky that you don’t have to live among them.

Ah, yes. Lucky. That’s me. Like a broken mirror.

Every living human transformed into stone in the blink of an eye. But the apocalypse didn’t start then. It started when people began to wake. Only the men woke and even then, not all. In his journal, Uncle guessed less than one percent of the population had woken from the stone sleep. And from what he could tell, over one hundred years passed, leaving little of the civilized world intact.

It happened in a blink. I remember the burning in my lungs when it happened. Fire consumed my chest, like holding your breath underwater until that moment when every cell in your body screams out. Gasping and retching, stone flaked off me like the scales of a reptile, leaving me shaking like a leaf in nothing but my skin. One moment I’m laughing with my friend and the next I’m gasping, staring at the ruined remains of a world that was. A few feet away sat my uncle’s skeleton. I knew it was him because of the wedding ring. Even though my aunt died ten years ago he still wore his ring. His skeleton hand clenched an old journal tight against his rib bones.

The first few weeks were horrible. It rained. I sat shivering and starved, too scared to leave the crumbling remains of my friend’s old house. It was university break and her family had invited me over for Thanksgiving dinner since I couldn't make it back home to the East coast that year. Only now it wasn’t Thanksgiving, it wasn’t her house, and everyone I had ever known is dead or gone. I remember hugging my knees and just staring. I stared at Uncle’s skeleton as night turned to day and then back again. Maybe that’s why I still see it every time I close my eyes. I stared too long and now it’s seared into my corneas until the day I die. Until I join him and become a skeleton too.

That’s when Uncle saved me. Or at least, his journal did. When I finally mustered up the courage to pry it from his bony fingers and read a page my world came rushing back. I heard his voice in each word and suddenly, I wasn’t alone. It let me stop and catch my breath—pulled my mind back to the present. When I reached the end, I decided to continue where he left off. Only, I would write to my little brother, Ivan, instead.

I’m going east, Ivan. I’m going to find you.

Even if he is stone, I must find him. I have to know. And maybe he is awake. The thought brings dismay as much as it does hope; this world is no place for a thirteen-year-old.

I will protect you, Ivan.

I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with early spring-scented afternoon air and sink below the surface of the water. The scent lingers in my mind—warm and sweet, filled with cedar and pine. Underwater, the outside world is muffled, creating a silent calm. My exhale, long and slow, sends tiny bubbles jittering upward, tickling my forehead and catching on my eyebrows. The threads of my mind unravel like a scarf cut loose in a breeze. Empty lungs tug me back to the world of sound and I break the surface of the water with a gasp. Millions of maple leaves rustle in an ocean of green as birds add their voices to the symphony. Somewhere off to the left, a lizard scurries through the underbrush. Nature’s concert plays on.

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I start to sing. The song is a tragedy, warning of the dangers of hatred. My voice carries the mournful melody over bubbling waters for an audience of hundreds, each tree standing at attention. It reminds me of Ivan. It was one of his favorites.

I climb out of the water, squeezing handfuls of liquid from my long, blonde hair as it streams down my back and chest. Dust and tiny pebbles cling to my feet on my way to my clothes drying on a branch. As I reach for my shirt, movement catches the corner of my eye.

A person is crouching not more than twenty feet away. Silent. Head tilted, watching me.

Another human. A man.

My breath catches in my throat as it clamps shut, preventing the scream in my mind from reaching the real world. I blink once. Then again. He’s still there. He’s really there.

I yank a swath of clothing from the nearest branch, clutching it over my bare body. My antithesis stares with every inch of his skin covered. Dressed in black, with a face shadowed by his hood and a scarf masking his lower face, all I can see are his darkly tinted, red-rimmed aviator goggles fixed on me.

My heart stutters. My mind races to my revolver hiding inside the flap of my bag. Blood be damned, I’m staring down a shark right now. But before I can act the masked man stumbles backward, darting off into the woods out of sight. My heart beats a mile a minute as I try to register what just happened.

My worst nightmare.

A chill crawls across my wet, bare skin raising the hairs. Silence bears down on me from every side and then a crack of thunder rumbles overhead. The storm is here.

I rip my clothes free and fumble to put them on. Where did he go? Are there others like him? My eyes skitter across the woods as I hop, shoving my foot into a boot as panicked questions tumble over one another like a horde of zombies. I don’t see him anywhere. Maybe he is a scout. He must be running to get more of his group. How many men will be crawling around this mountainside?

He knows. He saw everything.

The thoughts hit like a lightning strike and my hands shake as I struggle to tuck my hair away into my baseball cap. I should cut it short. It’d be more manageable. And safer too—making me look more like a boy. But I love my long hair. It reminds me of Mom, plus Ivan always loved to braid it. Of course, cutting it short to obscure my identity is pointless now. Not when I go walking around completely naked.

Stupid, stupid!

I try to squash the hellish images popping up, but it feels like one of those carnival games where you smack the little rodent with a hammer as it comes out of the hole. Only, there are a million holes and hundreds of rodents and only one hammer. I race down the game trail, my backpack thumping wildly against my spine as thunder cracks behind me.

A ruined road of crumbling asphalt crosses my path leading to the remains of a small town. Brick buildings with broken roofs, missing walls decorated with rusty cars, and leaning light poles testify of a time which now only exists in the mind. A few giant oaks stand tall amid the decaying old world and tufts of grass encroach into every crack and crevasse. Time has stolen back the space in nature’s name.

I veer off into the town in a split-second decision. I need to hide. The masked man is surely spreading word, gathering more like himself. I could try to outrun them but it’s too risky. If they have horses, dogs, or simply a man faster than me, they’ll catch me for sure. But I passed through this town on the way to the swimming hole once before. If I can find a place to hide then maybe I can slip past them in the dead of night.

Broken glass crunches underfoot as I catch my breath, jogging lightly past ruined shops. I need to find something worth holing up in.

I pass statues—stone people frozen in time. One man sits in an ancient broken-down Mercedes. Another stands at a street corner. Others have fallen over, eaten up by earth and vines. Will they ever wake? Maybe, if they’re lucky—or unlucky, depending on how you look at it.

A thundering of hooves in the distance raises the hairs on the back of my neck. I duck for cover inside an old liquor store and crouch beside a stone man with a missing shoulder, peering through shards of glass sticking out from what used to be the front window. A gang of probably twenty men pull up on horses across the street.

Raiders.

Out of everything Uncle warned of in his journal, raiders were top of the list. At least grizzlies and wolves just want to eat you. Raiders want to have fun. One time, Uncle stumbled upon a man barely alive, strung up in the woods left to die. He’d been skinned alive by nearby raiders. Eyes gouged out, fingers and toes cut off, and most of his face missing. Apparently, it can take hours, even days, to die from that, depending on how it’s done. Uncle wanted to help him but the man just begged to die. It was the first time he'd ever taken a human life.

I’ve never seen raiders this close before and my heart pounds. They are a mismatched bunch with lots of muscle, missing teeth, excessive body hair, and—I imagine based on their grimy looks—not a bath between them. Do raiders even bathe? Their ages vary from maybe twenty to middle age, but each holds a weapon. Many have guns. I watch as they mosey around, a few of the younger ones goofing off with each other, feigning punches. One man with a baseball bat swings at a statue, taking the head clear off. Like a stone over water, it skips along the decrepit sidewalk, rolling to a stop against a fallen lamppost.

I swallow, my mouth dry, as I stare at the stone head and remember Uncle’s written words.

Statues are still people, Natasha. A broken statue is a broken person.

Statues may not be susceptible to illness, or disease, or the ravages of old age, but they are still vulnerable to death. Even if every unbroken statue woke up today, the population would be decimated. With raiders around, it’s a miracle anyone still wakes up at all. Could these men be with the masked man from the swimming hole? No. Probably not. If they are, he hasn’t told them yet. They are oblivious to my presence. I’ll wait until they pass.

“Check the liquor store for something good this time. I’m sick of Jake’s homemade stuff,” a gruff voice says from the back.

The liquor store.

My brain splutters to a stop.

But I’m in the liquor store.

I creep out of sight and find a door leading to the back. Already I hear footsteps approaching from the front. I ease the door open. The motion sends glass and debris on the floor scraping against the tile and I flinch—freezing in place.

Footsteps stop and an eerie silence falls over the space. They heard me. I know it. My heart picks up speed as I sneak through the opening and make my way down a hallway leading to an office and a door marked Exit.

I place my hand on the knob as voices on the other side make me stop. The tone is easy. Relaxed. They don’t know I’m here but if I open the exit now they will see me. A crunch of glass under someone’s boot comes from behind and panic squeezes my lungs.

Can’t go forward. Can’t go back. And there’s nowhere to hide.

Another crunch, this one closer.

I’m out of time. I see only one choice.

Run.