Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 110757 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110757 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 554(@200wpm)___ 443(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
“And yet.”
“Yet what?”
“You manipulated me and let Virginia imprison me in a hole in the ground.”
“I should have rescued you. We could’ve run away together.”
My short, humorless exhale is my response.
“Where’s Marcus?” he asks.
“I’m not telling you that.”
“Have you forgiven him for lying to you?”
I cut a sharp glare at him. “We’re not doing this. Go get a shovel from the supply shed.”
“Isn’t it locked?”
I sigh heavily. “Fine, I’ll get it. Stay here.”
“I’m not going anywhere. You want me by your side all day, remember?”
Rolling my eyes, I say, “Not for the reason you seem to think.”
“We’ll see.”
If Marcus saw us right now, his jealousy would incinerate the ground we’re standing on. Pax is clever, and while I trust that he’s not going to murder me, I don’t trust him enough to let him out of my sight.
I can’t wait until Marcus wraps his arms around me again. I miss his salt and leather scent. His voice. The way he can communicate so much to me with just a look.
He’s okay. He has to be. And he keeps his promises. I just have to rely on my trusted friends for support until he gets back.
But I know for sure that Pax isn’t one of them.
28
“I fear my best operative’s fearlessness has gotten her killed. She’s been out of communication for nearly a month. What a loss this is.” - Decoded message from ILF handler Hiro Tanaka to ILF leadership
Three Years Ago
Briar
Carson City glows. I knew New America’s Capitol had electricity, but it’s one thing to be aware of it and another thing entirely to see it.
The aura of light around the city is visible before I get close enough to make out any details. I’m used to inky darkness at night. It’s impenetrable on dark, cloudy nights, and magical when the sky is illuminated by the moon and stars.
With every step I take, instinct tells me to turn around and run away. The virus didn’t just kill nearly everyone and rewrite Earth’s story. It also made civilization uncivilized.
I avoided large groups of people for more than ten months after leaving my parents’ house outside Seattle. There were plenty of homes to raid for food. I never took everything. Just enough to get me by. But in cities I’d pass through, staying hidden other than talking to groups of three or fewer people, there was organized looting.
Semitrailers, flatbeds, and pickup trucks were being loaded up with everything people could get their hands on. They went from house to house, store to store, leaving nothing behind.
That mindset—that essentials should be hoarded instead of shared—is part of the reason I’ve lived on my own in the woods for close to a year now.
I’ve seen a lot of evil in the past three years. My friend Ellery was shot and killed while on watch as I packed canned goods into my bag at a house in a small Wyoming town. The gunshot alerted me and I took out the man who murdered her.
But why? We were on a street where no houses had been ransacked. There was more than enough for all of us.
Anarchy brings out the worst in many people. They hurt others simply because they can. But I’ve seen remarkable kindness, too.
A man was having a seizure on a sidewalk overgrown with weeds and vines in Goldendale, Washington, and two men got to him to help before I did. They sat with him, gave him water, and put a small pillow under his head. One of them went to find the medication he needed while the other stayed with him, and I stayed, too.
It took three days for the man to return with the medication. He went from pharmacy to pharmacy until he finally found it.
There were two men in Idaho who died with their arms wrapped around each other because neither of them was willing to sacrifice the other to the band of raiders who held them at gunpoint. There were twenty-one of them, and while they laughed over the love those two men had for each other, I wept.
I encountered a woman in rural Idaho who had two young kids with her. They weren’t hers. When she found them hungry, alone, and scared a month after the virus, she started caring for them.
The best and worst of humanity are still out there surviving this hellscape. I just never know which one I’m going to meet, so I stay away.
Until now. The welt on my ass throbs with discomfort as I lie down in tall grass to view the city through my binoculars.
In the past year, I’ve killed and eaten snakes, which I used to be afraid of. I nestle my sleeping bag beneath pine trees and have learned to tolerate the cold that gets bone deep at night. I’ve survived on just berries and edible greens for weeks at a time when I had to.