Chapter Text
Thirty thousand steps. That’s how many you’ve counted so far.
Thirty thousand steps since your last break. Five hours. Twelve point four miles. Twenty kilometers. A few thousand more and then you can stop before the temperature becomes unbearable.
Thirty thousand and two.
Thirty thousand and three—four—five…
You stop, briefly, to look at the map that was made so long ago the names on it no longer have any meaning. The places marked with those names have ceased to exist. You can faintly make out some landmarks that tell you that you’re on the right track.
You should keep moving. You’re out in the open.
You’re a target.
Six—seven—eight…
A gust of wind blows through the rolling hills, carrying sand, twigs and other unfortunate debris that ends up in your eyes despite the scarf that’s wrapped around your head.
Goggles. You need to find goggles.
You checked a few abandoned stores back in the town you came across some hours ago, but were shit out of luck. Not a pair of snowboarding goggles left on the dust-covered shelves. Both places must have gone out of business as soon as the snowcaps on the mountains melted for the last time. Ski resorts, you remember the name. They were called ski resorts. Entire towns, little ecosystems resting on the presumption that there would always be snow. People used to spend holidays there.
Fucking eons ago.
The dust makes you cough. It echoes out in the open, and you cringe. Someone could’ve heard that. So, you pick up the pace.
Nine—ten—eleven—eleven and—
“Shit! Fuck!”
You step on a rock that’s sharp enough to pierce through your boot. You jump aside with a yelp that is surely heard far and fucking wide.
“Keep one eye on the road, one on the horizon, one on the sky, and one on either side.” That’s what Dad used to say when you stumbled in your steps.
“How many eyes am I supposed to have?” You mutter as you spot something on the horizon that piques your interest. You squint.
A bridge. A viaduct? You check the map again. There is indeed a bridge marked on it. A rail bridge the trains used to cross the river back when there was a river. Or trains. The tracks are mostly removed, repurposed for making other things. The ground still faintly smells of creosote. You’ve encountered little shacks, fences, and other structures with that same distinct smell.
There was a time when buildings made with anything from creosote to asbestos would have been deemed unfit for humans to live in. But as of late, anything goes.
Absolutely anything.
The bridge looks intact. Weight-bearing, at least judging by the multiple train car carcasses still on it. Even stripped of all their usable parts, they’re still heavy. Heavier than you. It should be safe to cross.
Still, you take careful steps, counting them as you go.
It’s a way to make sense of the distance you’ve covered, but it also keeps you from losing your shit on your lonely journey. Repetitive counting, like a mantra, keeps you present. Grounded.
Thirty thousand, two hundred and seven steps.
Seven—eight—nine…
Ten—elev—
Wait.
You stop.
But the sound of the steps doesn’t. You can still hear the gravel crunching in a steady rhythm. Left, right, left…
It’s coming from the other side of the train cars.
The steps are heavier than yours, but equally careful. The person on the other side has either heard you or come to the same conclusion—it’s best to stay quiet, lie low, make yourself as invisible as possible.
You swallow, feeling your arms tingle with anxiety. You crouch down behind some rubble and hold your breath as the steps draw closer and closer.
A friend or a foe? A threat or a harmless passer-by? There’s no way to tell.
The footsteps are close, you hear the sound moving past the cars and then—
No, do NOT. Fucking. Stop. Keep, Walking. Asshol-
They stop on the other side of your hiding place.
They know you’re there.
“I have a gun!” You blurt out the first thing that comes to your mind. “I have a loaded gun.” A weirdly specific way to put it, but when in panic…
The Unknown Walker from the other side doesn’t reply.
The gun you had so boldly advertised is tucked neatly in your backpack. Not the best place to keep it while you’re traveling, but there’s no holster or anything to strap it on, really. You awkwardly rummage through your backpack and pull out the Beretta 98 that doesn’t quite settle into your hand right. But that’s all you have to defend yourself with.
The person on the other side makes some kind of noise, almost like a… sigh? A chuckle? Something menacing, no doubt. Fucking fuck.
You force a breath in and out and in and get on your feet.
“Look, buddy, I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you don’t start walking,” you shout with the steadiest, sternest voice you can muster, cocking your head in the direction you came from. “Go.”
The person, a man, the tallest man you’ve seen in your life, doesn’t answer or make a move in any direction. He just stands there like a statue. Staring. Like he’s waiting for something to happen.
A mask obscures his facial features. It’s not that unusual. A lot of people cover their entire bodies now, from head to toe.
What is unusual and slightly disturbing is the skull pattern painted on the mask you don’t recognise. There are a lot of gangs out there that deck themselves out with all kinds of morbid symbols, but you haven’t seen this one yet. Maybe he’s a part of some underground raider crew or maybe he works alone, or—
You squeeze the gun in your hand, very poorly hiding how badly it shakes. The man doesn’t back away, despite your half-assed order. But he doesn’t approach you either. He hasn’t pulled out a weapon, assuming he has one, and turned the whole situation into a proper Mexican standoff. You would have the upper hand, in theory, if you followed through with your threat and fired a warning shot. Just to show him that you weren’t fucking around.
In practice, you don’t want to pull the trigger.
First of all, you don’t want to waste the only chamber of bullets you have left.
Secondly, your aim is shit. You wouldn’t hit him if you wanted to and the warning shot would ricochet back in your own face. The gun is best for pointing and shouting yourself out of sticky situations.
Lastly, you don’t want to kill him. Gang member or not, you do not want to shoot him. You don’t want to see him die. You don’t want to kill him.
Even the possibility of that makes you queasy.
The man still hasn’t moved a muscle.
Your breathing has become shallow.
“I don’t want to shoot you,” you repeat. The words come out thin and hoarse. “I really don’t want to. But if you don’t go, I’m going to do it. And I can’t aim for shit so it’ll hit your stomach or something, and you’ll bleed out. I—”
His head tilts, ever-so slightly. You’ve got his attention.
“Please. Just go. I don’t have anything you want. It’s not worth it.”
Slowly, he starts backing up. Two, three, four steady and silent steps. You realise he could’ve easily caught you by surprise if he wanted to. He walks backwards up all the way to the railing of the bridge. He doesn’t raise his hands, doesn’t surrender and makes sure you know that. He’s merely ignoring the situation and moving on.
It’s like he knew you would not shoot him.
Your legs wobble as you stumble into the opposite direction.
Whoever the hell he was.
Best of luck, you think. See you never.
The trees on the other side of the bridge offer some cover. The sun is at its peak, beaming down on the dry, barren land. You hike deeper into the forest and in the middle of it, you hear something that makes you think your luck has finally turned.
Water.
A narrow stream trickles down the hillside, buried beneath the only kind of plant that refuses to die. You see a cluster of creeping vines that tangle around everything, suffocating what’s beneath.
Knotweed. It grows everywhere and on everything.
You grab a handful of vines and start pulling. It’s a tedious task, and it takes forever to tear a tiny hole for you to reach the water. You fill a bottle and suddenly find yourself fighting the urge to take a sip. The water is cold, and doesn’t have any noticeable odour to it—but you know better. It’s not clean.
Boiling isn’t enough , you remind yourself as you stack rocks and twigs into a circle. This needs some filter tablets too. The twigs are bone-dry and catch fire easily. You pour the deliciously cold water into a pot and place it over the fire, frowning as you think how instead of the cool, crisp river water you get to enjoy it lukewarm and with an aftertaste of iodine powder.
You sit down, waiting for the water to boil.
Perched on the rock next to you is Dad.
“Could’ve used some help back there, you know?” You grumble.
Dad is silent.
You try a different approach.
“I met a boy today,” you huff. “Big boy with a skull face. Didn’t talk much. Didn’t talk at all, actually. I think I prefer them that way. You surely would.”
The fire crackles in the pit. Steam rises into the air. The forest is quiet. No birds. No bugs—nothing.
“I really thought I’d have to shoot him. It was so much easier when that was your job.”
The water starts to boil and you wait, probably longer than is necessary, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. Now it has to cool down so you can add the tablets that bind the polluters. “And with just these three easy steps, you too can enjoy lukewarm, disgusting prison hot dog water,” you mutter, but your joke goes unheard. “Wow. Tough crowd.”
You check your belongings as you wait, sorting through the few things you have left.
“Take only what you can carry and then remove half.” Dad told you whenever you were packing for something. “You need less than you think.”
Solid advice. As always.
Something rolls out of your backpack and you catch it. It’s your most prized possession. A can of peaches that’s still good. You could probably trade it for a month’s worth of dusty lentils, but there’s no way in hell you’re doing that.
One day, you think, one, really good day, I’ll open this and devour this whole thing in one sitting. Syrup and all.
The water cools too slowly. You yawn and stretch.
“Red Hawk to Blue Sky,” you say, softly. You and Dad came up with those code names when you were little. “Do you think there’ll ever be a day good enough to open this can of peaches”
There’s no response. You yawn again.
Your body is no longer running on adrenaline from your little… encounter. It’s focused on survival now, trying to make you sleep to conserve energy. But you can’t. Not even if the ground feels surprisingly comfortable, with a tree trunk supporting your back and—
A sound that is too loud and too electronic to be coming from the surrounding forest snaps you out of it. The adrenaline comes rushing back into your system as the noise approaches rapidly.
Drones.
Shit.
You’re deep in the woods. The drones can’t fly in here. You should be safe. You, your belongings and Dad. It should all be alright. But you need to see to be sure.
Even if the drones can't locate you, nothing stops them from carpet-bombing the area if it's marked for that.
There shouldn’t be a reason for that, you think as you climb the hill for a better view. There’s nothing here.
But you need to be sure.
You reach the high ground and kneel between rocks. The distinct whirring of the drones is getting closer and you can finally see them in the sky. A whole swarm of them is approaching in a formation that… doesn’t make a lot of sense for bombers. They’re flying in a wonky formation, flickering lights in mismatched colors.
Your racing pulse becomes steady again.
Ads. Fucking sky ads.
The swarm forms shapes in the sky, but you can’t make out what they’re advertising.
Who sent these out at this time?
It’s too bright. Usually they’re launched at night. And in populated areas. This must be a mistake.
A mistake that almost made you lose your shit for the second time today.
Tomorrow better be so fucking excellent.
“Red Hawk to Blue Sky: False alarm,” you say as you reach your little camp again. “Not that you care either way.”
You glance at the coffee tin with Dad’s ashes inside it. You’ve placed it on top of a rock near the fire. You like having it— him —around.
“Rest easy, old man,” you whisper. “It’s just you and me.”
Like it always has been.
It didn’t happen in a day.
Someone might say that it took an entire year for the world to end.
Another might look at the bigger picture and point out that it actually took ten whole years.
It’s under debate whether it started earlier than that.
For you and billions of others, it started little by little, and you barely noticed it at first. The only thing that you paid attention to was the fact that every year, the cost of living became more and more expensive. You read the explanations from the news articles, and believed it was the inflation or stock market crashing or something other that caused it, something you didn’t know shit about and didn’t care. All you knew was that your rent took most of your paycheck and the rest went to groceries and bills and other things that kept you alive.
You remember it not making sense in your head that the farms were going bankrupt while the price of produce kept going up. You remember groaning at the headline announcing how all drinking water was now controlled by a single company. More and more businesses went down and the same few corporations were always there to buy them out.
In a few years, everything was owned by those few companies, run by a few billionaires. All the resources in the world were flowing into their vaults, in one way or another.
And your rent went up, as did the price of your groceries. But you managed. You had a job as a graphic designer for products you weren’t able to buy with your salary.
Then, the richest of the rich started to buy land. Lots and lots of land. Entire cities. And with the money they had, there were few that would decline the offer. Soon, the biggest cities in the world were owned by a handful of people. Many still looked up to those billionaires. Many welcomed them as their new leaders, thinking they would bring peace and prosperity to the middle class.
The middle class failed to realise that those cities weren't for them. They were for the ruling class. The new royalty. The Oligarchy.
You no longer managed with your salary and had to take out loans to survive.
There were jobs, but they didn’t pay for shit. The people working those jobs were being used to cater the needs of the Oligarchs. Soon the cities were surrounded by walls. Checkpoints at the gates made sure the people didn't leave.
You got fired from your job as a graphic designer. They didn’t need a human for something a crafty, generative AI could do a million times faster.
You couldn’t afford to live in your apartment anymore.
So you left, escaping the city just in time before the gates closed and moved in with Dad.
Dad was an army veteran who lived alone in the countryside. When the companies started buying land, he declined their offers. Again and again, until they eventually gave up.
He took you in, and even though you tried to convince both of you that it would only be temporary, It had been clear from early on that things wouldn’t improve.
And they didn’t.
The world leaders were bought, one by one, at least those who would let themselves to be. Unsurprisingly, those that tried to stand their ground ended up disappearing. Along with the leaders, the national armies were also bought. They became toy soldiers for the Oligarchy to use in their petty disagreements. The lengths that money would go seemed absurd and every new headline was more baffling than the last. It didn’t seem to make sense: the super-rich had been living well and comfortably in the world all their lives, so why would they now build their own little city-states just to play house and occasionally fight with each other?
Apparently, in addition to getting their hands on all the resources in the world, they also had access to secret knowledge.
It wasn’t really a secret.
The effects of climate change were pretty common knowledge.
But only the billionaires knew just how fast it would turn most of the planet into an unlivable hellscape. They were given the data, the numbers, everything and even though many of them preached against it, they all knew it would happen and they all believed it. And when the vast majority of the population started to get more and more affected by it, it was too late to do anything.
There hadn’t been snow on the ground anywhere in years before you moved in with Dad.
The countries near the Equator became inhabitable a year after you moved in.
A new pandemic swept across the globe every year. Thickly settled areas became breeding grounds for viruses, bacteria, and the remaining independent, unbought countries declared an international emergency. The healthcare system collapsed universally, as the number of deaths reached so high no one cared to keep track anymore.
The housing collapsed, as the natural disasters replaced seasons.
Former middle class began dying of hunger.
The poor never stood a chance.
And the society collapsed, approximately five years after you moved in with Dad.
He woke up every day like nothing had happened, but the battle-hardened, former general had realised what was happening when you still struggled trying to keep your job. That’s why he had invited you to stay.
You were his only daughter. His only living family member. He wanted to protect you and teach you how to protect yourself. So he trained you like he would train his soldiers.
Or, at least he tried to.
He noticed pretty early on that you weren’t fit for that. You were too soft, too easily distracted. You refused to kill anything when he took you hunting. You had a horrible aim and you couldn’t get a throwing knife to hit the target board on your best day. But he never scolded you or blamed you for all the things you lacked. Instead, he adjusted his training methods. He made you run, climb, exercise in ways that didn’t require handling firearms or other weapons. He taught you how to forage instead of hunt. He showed you which plants and mushrooms were edible and which ones would make you hallucinate and which ones you should steer clear from. He taught you to survive.
It worked. You caught on easily. Thrived. And that was all he wanted.
All he wanted for you was to be able to survive as long as possible. You didn’t need to fight if you could stay hidden. You didn’t need to shoot for your meal if you could find roots and berries to eat.
“You’re smart,” he said, tapping your forehead. “And you're kind. It's a rare quality to have in this world. And it's the best thing about you.”
Dad seemed to have an endless list of random rules for ensuring your survival.
Keep to yourself, stay away from crowds.
Boiling water isn't enough, always filter it afterwards.
Always have a roll of duct tape with you.
Never eat a white mushroom.
Some of them made more sense than others.
Things seemed fine for a long time. Even though the world crumbled around you, Dad made every day seem like it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.
Money no longer held any value, so people began trading supplies. Small communities formed here and there, but Dad was strongly against joining any of them. You would occasionally trade with them, but that was it.
“We’ll get by just fine. You and me. And the thing about groups is—someone always gets sick,” Dad explained. “Saw that on missions back in the day. A squadron standing by, waiting orders, hauled in a foxhole. Filthy and tired. And then a guy comes over and starts with Sir, I’m feelin’ a little… You know how that ends. Once someone catches it, it’s only a matter of time before everyone else does.”
He made a valid point. So you stayed in the house, tended the garden, and he took up the hunting while you still refused to do it.
“It’s not the dead or the shooting; it’s the dying, ” you explained. “It’s the moment that life leaves them. I don’t know why, but I can’t be there to see it. I can’t be the last thing they see. It’s too much.”
It sounded stupid when you said it out loud. But Dad just patted your shoulder and gave you a reassuring smile. It wasn’t brought up again.
Until he could no longer hide the sickness festering inside him.
It wasn’t one of those diseases that wiped out hundreds of people every day. It had nothing to do with pollution, he didn’t catch it from the water or the soil or the air. You had stayed isolated in the house for a long time.
It was in his genes, standing by until he got some minor infection that turned his white blood cells against him.
He was going to tell you. He always planned to, but he thought he had more time. More time to teach you, more time to keep you safe.
Once he stopped hiding the symptoms, the situation spiraled out of control.
You did your best to take care of him. All you could do was manage his pains. Help him eat. Take care of the house where you both had managed to live for so long in the world that was ending.
And you couldn’t watch him die. You turned away like a coward as he took his last painful breaths and left you alone in the world that was ending.
You tried staying in the house for a while after that, you even thought about burying his body in the garden. But the house wasn’t a home anymore; it was a tomb. So you bribed a crematory worker with everything valuable you found in the house so they’d burn his body separate from the others and you could keep his ashes. You put them in a coffee tin and began preparing to leave.
You weren’t leaving just for the sake of leaving.
Dad must’ve known the end was near when he, out of nowhere, gave you a box that he told you to keep, just in case. After he died, you opened it to find a stack of maps, a photo of a man you didn’t recognize, and a letter.
The letter was addressed to you. The rest was about something he was in the middle of planning before he got too sick to do anything.
So you took the maps, the photo and tucked the letter inside the lining of your jacket, packed everything you needed, put them in a backpack with Dad’s ashes, and left the house that had kept you both safe.
While the world was ending.
You must have slept for hours.
It’s dark now, and you’re groggy, disoriented, hovering above the little camp you made. Except the camp isn’t there, it’s gone. How can it be gone? Your fire pit has been stomped—and your backpack... Where the hell is your backpack?
And why are you in a tree?
The last bit of your sleepy haze disappears, and you flinch, losing your balance.
Something grabs you.
Someone grabs you, yanks you back onto the branch you were sitting on. That someone presses you against the tree trunk and you find yourself staring at a skull painted on a mask.
There’s no way it’s him. There’s no fucking way it’s the man from before.
He left in the opposite direction and you made sure he didn’t follow. Right? You checked, didn’t you?
He’s sitting next to you, perfectly still, holding onto your arm with a bruising grip. Your brain tries to formulate a response to the situation but instead of fight or flight, it defaults into freezing. You’re frozen, breathing shakily right into his face. He smells like dirt and copper.
He raises a finger to where his mouth is, signaling you to be quiet.
You want to do the exact opposite of that. You want to scream, kick, push him off the tree, but your body doesn’t comply.
He points towards the trees you can barely see in the darkness. Flashes of light move through them, blinking, sweeping. You count three.
They’re looking for something.
Are they after him?
The lights get closer and you see three people, two men and a woman, dressed in black gear with masks and goggles covering their faces. At first glance, you could mistake them for soldiers, but as they spot your camp and begin investigating, you notice all three are carrying improvised weapons: baseball bats, axes, crowbars… No firearms.
Which means they don’t have access to them. They're raiders. And those uniforms are stolen.
The grip on your arm loosens. You don’t dare to move. Whoever the man sporting the unnerving skull mask is, right now he’s your ally.
“Found something,” one of the men informs the others, squatting down near the remains of your fire. “A coffee tin.”
Fuck. Dad’s ashes. No, no—no…
He pops the lid open and smells it. You feel sick to your stomach.
“It’s gone bad,” he says, puts the lid back on and tosses the tin back on the ground.
“Coffee doesn’t go bad,” his partner argues.
“Give it enough time, and everything goes bad,” he insists. He gets up and you can hear your heartbeat pounding in your ears. “Probably why she left that shit behind.”
She?
They were looking for you?
“I told you this was a bullshit side quest,” the woman grunts. “Now we’ve lost the target and the little lady in the woods.”
“She might’ve had something!”
“Like fucking expired coffee?” She kicks the tin, and you hear it land in the stream. A whimper forces its way out of your mouth and all three of the raiders freeze.
“The hell was that?”
The man on the branch next to you turns his head towards you and for a second you almost feel like he’s about to scold you for making noise. The raider who found Dad walks over to the tree and looks around, his flashlight sweeping the forest floor. “Are there animals around here?”
“There aren’t animals anywhere,” the woman snaps. “I swear, if I get stuck with you idiots one more time, I’m going to—”
The wind rustles dead leaves in the tree, and the raider below turns his head to look up. “Hey—”
Your silent companion reaches down and wraps his arm around the raider's neck, throttling him up. He’s struggling for air. Holy shit, that man is strong as hell. The raider gargles and thrashes, kicks the air in a pointless attempt to free himself.
The man in the skull mask begins to twist the raider’s head, and the man gasps as his airways close. The head turns slowly, slowly, and you know what’s about to happen. There’ll be a pop and then the body goes slack. Dead. You lean against the tree trunk, squeezing your eyes shut and covering your ears. It’s dark, but still, you don’t want to see or hear it happen.
It’s not the dead, it’s the dying.
The raider falls down on the ground with a soft thump and it alerts the other two. The man abandons you in the tree and jumps down without a sound like a large cat. He stalks over to the woman and she reaches for the crowbar on her back while the other raider rushes towards them with his axe raised. The man dodges the attack and the woman lunges at him, but he keeps his balance and pushes her back. She lands on the ground, coughing, growling at her partner for help, but the other raider steps back, then flees, leaving her behind.
The man kneels, pushing his knee against her throat and you hear the woman beg. She’s trying to bargain with the man, but he digs something out of his belt— a knife —and you close your eyes and ears again.
When you open your eyes, he’s standing below you, wiping his knife. You wait. There’s no immediate danger anymore, so maybe he’ll leave.
He doesn’t.
When the knife is clean enough for him, he tucks it into his belt and looks up. He doesn’t say anything or make any other attempt to communicate. Just like before on the rail bridge, he stands there, staring at you.
You shimmy down from the tree.
“I—” you start, but then remember something.
Dad. Fuck.
You dash in the direction the raider kicked the coffee tin. Holding your breath, you hope and pray the lid has stayed on. It’s all you have left, besides the maps and the letter and the stupid photo that’s not even his. It’s of some random man in a uniform, holding a cigar.
The coffee tin has landed in a tangle of knotweed. You reach for it with trembling fingers.
The lid is still on and there isn’t a single dent that wasn’t there before.
With a sigh of relief, you head back to find the man still in your camp. The raiders' bodies are missing, but you spot a pile of items on the ground. The man must have dragged the bodies away and searched them in the short time it took for you to find Dad’s ashes. And you know you weren’t gone for that long.
You would be impressed if you weren’t so exhausted and reeling.
You’re not sure what to do next. You don’t know if he’s leaving, but judging by how he meticulously sorts the raiders' things, he’s not in a rush.
He still hasn’t said a word, you realise.
You clear your throat. He doesn’t turn to face you, but stops what he’s doing.
“Why did you follow me?”
The man doesn’t reply. He continues his task.
“Why did you—okay, first of all, who are you? And did you know those people? Are you in a gang? How did you know they were after me? What do you—”
He drops the item he’s holding and turns to face you. He tilts his head a little, but doesn’t speak.
Demanding an answer clearly isn’t going to work.
You need to switch tactics.
“Did you hide my backpack?” You ask. A simple yes-or-no question. He nods and points to a pile of rocks. The backpack is buried under leaves and dirt. You dig it out and open it.
You don’t have the slightest clue of how interrogation works, but you know how to trade. And you have something to offer. With bitter reluctance, you reach for the can of peaches you have been saving for a long time.
“Hungry?” You offer him the can. “They’re still good. I got lucky at a supermarket.”
He takes a step closer and snatches the can from you. You secretly wished he had declined.
The man sits down with the can of peaches you’d been saving for a celebratory meal and opens it with his knife. The sweet smell of syrup makes you regret you gave the thing away. It might have been a stupid move, maybe he’s unable to talk—what if his mouth is disfigured or his tongue cut out or…
The man lifts the mask, folding the fabric over his nose to reveal a mouth that very much isn’t disfigured. His features are sharp, pronounced, and he licks his lip slightly when he fishes out a mushy peach that’s soaked in syrup.
He is hungry. Malnourished.
But there’s nothing else wrong with his face, at least not with the part you can see. You shamelessly stare as he eats, watching him take careful bites of the fruit. The man licks his fingertips and then goes back for another peach.
He’s ravenous. And yet, he’s being very careful.
The man swallows and you see a faint red light blinking from under his jacket. There’s something around his neck.
“… What’s that?” You ask. You shouldn’t, but you can’t help yourself. The man stops his feasting. He pulls down his jacket just enough for you to see a dog collar around his neck, with a small black box and a red light that blinks.
What the hell…?
He pulls the jacket back up and returns to the can of peaches.
Suddenly, his precise and careful movements start to make sense.
“Is that why you can’t speak?” You ask.
He nods.
“What happens if you do?”
He shakes his head and gestures an explosion with his hands.
Okay, holy fuck. He’s wearing a jerry-rigged explosive dog collar.
“Were those raiders after you?”
He nods again and takes a sip of syrup from the can.
You stop to think. You shouldn’t push. He seems to be good at keeping his cool, but you don’t want to risk agitating him. If his head explodes, you might go with it. But you do need to find a way to communicate with him.
You have a journal with you. Something to keep your mind from sinking into the darkest depths when you’re lonely or bored. There’s a sad little nub of a pencil left, too. You open up an empty page.
“I guess you can call me Red,” you say.
“Don’t give anyone your name. Always use another, but choose one you’ll answer to.” Another one of Dad’s rules of survival.
“What should I call you?” you ask, placing the journal in front of him. He picks it up, studies it, scribbles something on the page and hands it back to you.
It’s a short reply.
Nothing.
You snort. Is he serious?
“Okay, um, sure, but… I don’t think that’s going to work.”
You push the journal back into his hand. “Let’s try this again. You can call me Red, and I can call you…” You did not give him the peaches to get Nothing in return.
The man makes as much of an exasperated noise as his collar allows. He scribbles something else and tosses the journal back.
Nothing.
Underlined.
"Have it your way, then," you grumble.
Asshole.
He did just save your life, though.
Still. Asshole.