From a crouch, I ease my shoulders back and let my backpack slide to the dirty floor with a soft thud. I burst out of the building in a dead sprint, passing a raider to my right and clipping a loose wire fence to my left. Somehow I register the cold slick of liquid dribbling down my arm, but I feel no pain. My mind is set. I must make it to the woods. If I can lose them at the river, then I might have a chance.

Shouts of surprise and excitement sound off behind me, but I don’t slow my pace to glance over my shoulder. Gunshots boom. A smatter of bullets flicks the ground, nearly catching my heels. But they miss because I’m fast. Always have been. I was the fastest girl on the softball team in high school. Even got a scholarship to university.

The woods are about five blocks away when I feel my legs slow of their own accord and my lungs start to burn. My run from the swimming hole sapped my strength and exhaustion ebbs through my adrenaline-spiked mind. Horses squeal and their hooves thunder behind me, getting closer by the second.

I won’t make it.

I swerve left into an alleyway and at the end a weathered cinder block wall greets me. Perfect. I scramble up and over as two men on horses pull around the corner. The men curse as they realize they must follow on foot or find another way. The other side of the alleyway connects up to a street with a baseball field across the way and behind that, lie the woods.

I run for it. I’m fast enough. I can make it. But as my boots reach the grassy field, something catches my legs, pulling them together. I trip, falling forward. My momentum sends me sliding as weeds mixed with sharp gravel bury into my hands, shredding through several layers of skin.

My legs are stuck. I glance down. A mess of rope with stone weights on either end wraps several times around my ankles. In the distance, the man who threw it cups his mouth with his hands and lets out a howl of excitement like some kind of rabid wolf.

Then I see the others.

Animalistic sounds pierce the air as they all rush in my direction, cackling like hyenas.

My fingers fumble as I struggle to flip open my pocket knife. With it, I free my legs before they reach me, jumping up and turning to run, but it’s too late.

An enormous body collides with mine from behind, sending me back to the ground and crushing me with its weight. My lungs are robbed of oxygen and I gasp like a fish under a boot, squirming and twisting, trying to stick him with my knife. But I might as well have an elephant perched upon my back.

Laughter and hollering of all sorts erupt from the group as they gather around. A boot kicks my hand, sending the knife flying.

“Flip him over. I wanna see how old this one is,” a gravelly voice demands somewhere from the left but a younger one complains.

“Look how scrawny.” Something hard jabs at my ribs. “So weak. Let’s just kill him now.”

My heart stops. They don’t know I’m a girl. But the moment they find out…

“Naw, he’s fast. He’ll be fun for sure.”

“Not fast enough.”

They all chuckle at that.

Panic—raw and real—spikes through my body and I suppress a whimper of dread. I know what comes next. What they’ll do to me. It’s the horror ever-crouching in the back of my mind. The one whispering into my ear every time I hear a twig snap in the middle of the woods or catch unexpected movement from the corner of my eye.

Only now it doesn’t whisper—it screams.

The weight lifts. I splutter for breath, leaping forward. Something hard like a baseball bat whacks me across my back and I collapse to the ground, pain shooting everywhere. Tears spring to my eyes and I hear more laughter.

A boot makes contact with my side, and again I struggle to breathe. More splitting pain, and a strangled cry gurgles in my throat. I curl up into a ball to protect my head and vitals, preparing for more. But nothing comes. Instead, I hear a cry of surprise overhead followed by shouts of outrage and the frantic shuffling of feet.

Thud.

I crack my eyes open. The dead face of a raider greets me, his nose resting a hair from my own. Years of grime and sweat cake his skin like slime on an old fish tank. I can practically taste the scent of sewer and body odor radiating off him in waves. But it’s his expression—frozen in an eternal look of surprise—that steals my breath. The tuft of an arrow buried deep into his brain pokes through the socket of his left eye.

I scramble backward, the stabbing pain at my side a distant memory. A whizzing sound cuts through the air overhead. To my left, another man drops to his knees, moaning with three arrows protruding from his chest. I blink. Thwip! Another appears in his neck, gushing blood as he claws at his throat, collapsing to the ground.

My heart kicks into overdrive and I turn tail and run as fast as my legs can carry me. Gunshots ring through the air, but this time they aren’t directed at me. I am all but forgotten.

When I reach the tree line at the end of the field—panting and gasping—I stop and look back. Three men lay unmoving on the ground and another three have turned to fight an unknown attacker in their midst. My breath catches when I see who it is. The man from the swimming hole is a blur of black and red as he cuts down the raiders mercilessly. Even with their guns, they can’t land a shot. His movements are fluid and swift, shooting arrows from a distance and using two long, curved blades the moment he comes within reach.

A chill crawls down my spine. This man knows exactly what I am. What happens when he finishes with them? Will he come for me? What will he do to me?

I should run.

But my stiff, weary legs refuse to obey. My eyes are glued to the disaster before me as if it were a gruesome magic trick. Down the street, I catch sight of at least a dozen more raiders on horses. They charge his way but he doesn’t see. He ducks and thrusts his blade, plunging it deep into the chest of one man, and then twists—using the mans body to block a shot from the last man standing. As the last man fumbles to reload, he rips his sword free and crosses the distance in a flash, cutting him down the middle in one fluid sweep of his blade. The raider lets out a panicked-sounding howl before collapsing to the ground.

As he does, the gang on horses pulls up, circling the masked man. He stands, swords drawn, head down, eyeing them in a silent calm. It is a standoff. He, with half a dozen of their dead comrades at his feet, against the twelve of them. I wait for the bullets to go flying. He might be able to down a few of them, but not before they pump him full of metal in the process.

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A conversation of some kind ensues between them and he drops his swords. One of the raiders approaches from behind and clocks him in the head with a bat. The masked man falls to the ground, unconscious. I flinch and look away as they take turns kicking him, the sound of the thuds making it far enough to reach me across the field. When I look back, they’ve picked him up, heading back down the road.

Once they are out of sight, I let out a shaky breath of relief, one that’s shallow and full of pain. I lift my shirt. On my left side where my ribs are, the skin has turned a dark purple. Bruised? Hopefully just bruised. Each breath may hurt, but at least I can still breathe. If those raiders had discovered what I am…

I close my eyes and calm my trembling hands. But the masked man showed up just in time. I let out a pathetic, breathless laugh at the irony. If he hadn’t seen me at the pool he surely wouldn’t have intervened to stop them. And in the end, the raiders took him away, leaving me scott-free.

Hallelujah.

With stiff legs, I return the way I came, crossing the field and stepping past dead raider bodies. Thunder cracks overhead and tiny raindrops sprinkle the area. I glance at the dismal sky.

A wheezing chuckle greets me from somewhere below and on reflex I leap to the side as if dogging a rattlesnake. A man lies a few feet away with a gash across his chest and blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. He gives me a pained, hate-filled grin as he lies dying. Despite his state, his eyes still glower darkly as if he might kill me with his gaze alone.

“Your friend is about to suffer more pain than you can possibly imagine.” He lets out a gurgled sneer.

“He’s not my friend.”

“That’s the spirit.” He snickers more before a watery cough interrupts. Mouthfuls of blood sprout from his lips like a fountain. “You…you would have made a great raider if you weren’t so puny.”

I scoff and turn away. What an appalling, despicable man.

“Down the road, take a right at Johnny’s sign. I dare you—”

The man cuts off with more gurgling, and soon, silence fills the old baseball field. I stop and stare over the desolate space.

Chain link fences lie in rusty messes, their metal wires sprung free long ago, grasping their claws at whatever dares pass by. Aluminum bleachers along one side of the field are covered in twisted vines and weeds. A tree pushed up through the seating, bending the decrepit metal and making the space its own.

A soft breeze sends gooseflesh up my arms as trickles of sweat dance down my neck. A bird in the distance sings a happy melody as if to mock the dead surrounding me.

I refuse to look back at the raiders’ bodies, left by their own people to be food for wild animals. Discarded like refuse. What kind of humans do that? Even when one of their own still clung to life, they abandoned him to die alone. The dying man’s words float through my mind and I hug my throbbing ribs as new aches spring to life.

If this is how they treat their friends, what happens to their enemies? How long will the masked man suffer before they allow him to die?

He shouldn’t have surrendered. It would have been better to go down fighting. Based on Uncle’s stories, death is quicker and the pain would be fleeting. I shake away the pointless train of thought. The masked man is not my concern. Men die every day, and if I’m not careful, I’ll join them. I must focus on surviving long enough to find my brother—a hard enough job without worrying about strangers.

I return to the liquor store for my backpack and search the surrounding buildings. But to my dismay, I find nothing. No food. No weapons. Nothing but some cracked cans—food long spoiled. After two hours of scavenging, I cut my losses and headed down the street.

I walk parallel to the interstate highway, just inside the treeline to avoid being spotted. It would be easier to take the crumbling, broken pavement but after today I find there is no such thing as being too careful. I would rather fight the shrubbery and climb over boulders than risk a repeat of earlier.

The setting sun pierces through trembling leaves and paints the bark all around a brilliant shade of auburn.

The birds surrendered their song to the impending night giving room for cicadas to pick up the slack with their buzz. In the midst of it all, an odd kind of roar catches my ear. Like the roar of the ocean but different. I freeze. It sounds like a hundred people all shouting in unison coming from deeper into the forest. Slowly, I turn to see an old faded sign.

Johnny’s B–Q.

The rusty paint flaked free in some spots leaving only Johnny’s and no BBQ, but without a doubt, it’s the same sign the raider mentioned before he died.

I hit the ground hard, my heart a tennis ball in a match against my ribs. My breath comes in shallow, strained gasps and I cram my eyes shut. Just how close am I? I swore the raiders headed in the opposite direction so why do I hear them now? I kick myself for not paying closer attention to my surroundings. What did that raider say? Take a right at Johnny’s sign? I should go left. No. I should turn back. No. Ivan is east. I must keep going east.

The distant rumble rises and falls, and nostalgia slaps me like a wall of fine mist. High school and Friday nights and softball games. The feel of the softball hitting my bat and soaring far, the crowd roaring.

The source of the sound must be a mile or so away. Up ahead, horse hoof tracks cut deep through long-dried mud, pulling off the interstate and leading deeper into the forest.

The roaring reaches a peak and then dies down again. Something has them excited.

Then it hits me.

The masked man must be down there. If they haven’t killed him, then maybe he is the entertainment. I shudder and look away. Uncle only came across raider victims a handful of times and only after they were abandoned to die or already dead—strung up in the woods or a in old city square. Every new story Uncle described seemed more horrifying than the last and now the masked man is at their mercy. Are they breaking all his bones? Taking turns carving him up? Burning him alive?

I try veering my thoughts away, but I might as well be playing tug of war with a pit bull. For every successful step back I get yanked forward two more. Horrible images pop into my mind like roaches in your bedroom. I cram my eyes shut and let out a loathful moan, wishing them to leave.

Stop it.

This doesn’t concern you. Just keep walking.

I rise to my feet, taking a miserable step forward. Just one foot in front of the other. But my feet are lead, my legs stiff as sticks. When I reach the tracks in the dried mud I stop. It’s like an invisible wall disconnects my brain and my feet. These tracks lead to the raider base.

What if I’m wrong?

The question sends my brain stuttering to a halt.

Maybe the shouting has nothing to do with the masked man. Maybe they killed him straight off. If he’s already dead, then there was never anything I could do and this horrible clawing in my chest can go away. The roaches—exterminated. This tug-of-war game—won.

The stupid thought is just that, stupid. Idiotic. But also incredibly enticing, and its roots grow fast and deep. Who knows why a base full of raiders is screaming like a bunch of banshees? Maybe they fight to the death with each other for fun.

The last few hints of sunlight slip below the horizon. I could be quiet. They would never know I was here. And it would just be a peek. Just enough to satisfy my curiosity and prove the sound has nothing to do with the masked man.

The thought draws me like a magnet and I take a step down the path but stop. What are you doing? Have you lost your mind? Did they hit you in the head back there? Did you forget about Ivan?

I can’t do this. I need to find Ivan. If I do this I might as well abandone my little brother to this apocalyptic world. I narrowly escaped capture from these savages and now I want to run right back to them? And for what? A man I don’t even know?

And a dead man, at that.

Unless, he’s not dead.

But he probably is. Most definitely, probably. Maybe.

I let out a frustrated groan and shake my head, stomping back down the ruined highway, away from the raiders. Away from the masked man.

And toward Ivan.