“Who are you?”

A voice called from the darkness. Faint, barely audible above the screams and muffled pounding of gunfire.

A boy opened his eyes. Shivering, silent, watching. Waiting.

A white beam cracked through the dark. The harsh glare of a flashlight washed over dirt, mud, and concrete. Water, so polluted it was nearly black, dripped from above.

“Hey. Are you—”

The searching light landed on the child huddled in the corner, wedged between the curving wall of a sewage tunnel and a metal grate.

“We gotta go.” The flashlight flickered, and the boy heard an anxious breath through a gas mask. “We gotta—”

The sound of a nearby explosion cut off the words. More muted screams joined the cacophony above.

The flashlight beam traveled from the boy across the sewage tunnel. It surveyed the cracked concrete of the walls, the rusted metal grate blocking deeper passage, the trembling pools of water.

With the sound of shifting rubble, the flashlight holder descended into the tunnel, which ended in a bomb crater. The boy looked up past the approaching silhouette, seeing nothing but smoldering rubble and green mist outside.

“Come on.” A hand extended down to the child. Two fearful eyes stared at it, doubting, but before the boy could make a choice, the hand took him by the arm and helped him up. The flashlight-bearing silhouette guided him the short distance to the smoking end of the tunnel.

They emerged from darkness into the dim light of day. The boy gazed upward, heart pounding. His own breathing sounded close and loud in his ears, trapped in the confines of a gas mask. Dark, tumultuous storm clouds covered the pale sun. Light rain spat down from the heavens.

“Let’s move.”

The hand on the boy’s arm pulled him, and they both navigated their way up the slope of the crater to the street above. Vapor, green as emeralds, curled around their legs as they moved. The child glanced back down at the sewer tunnel, exposed by the explosion that had blown a chunk out of the street, as if wanting to return.

He heard the whistle of an approaching missile.

The hand on his arm squeezed tight, pulling him down, and he and his protector hit the debris beneath them hard, rolling back down the slope of the crater. The missile detonated on the road above with a deafening blast. The flashlight bearer shielded the boy as heat from the explosion ripped through the crater.

Head pounding, the child opened his eyes. The sound of the explosion rang in his ears.

His protector fought to get up, taking the boy along. The child squinted up at the person holding his arm, following up the crater and to the street.

The two stood up on the solid black asphalt. Smoke curled across the ground and through the air. It mingled with the fine green mist blanketing the town.

The boy’s protector set off at a run down the street, the child in tow. Rapid blasts of gunfire echoed from every direction. An explosion lit up a small building a few blocks away with plumes of fire and smoke.

Hundreds of metal canisters lay in the streets. The child caught glimpses of their reflective shells through the thin mist, sometimes stumbling over them. Each bore the same circular emblem of its manufacturer. Each was empty, its lethal contents spilled out in a green vapor. Each had rained from the sky, a herald of death.

The only thing more numerous in the streets were the bodies.

A ragged shout sounded from less than a block away, muffled by a mask, and the grip on the boy’s arm tightened, forcing him to run faster.

Up ahead, someone in white and gray camouflage came into view at an intersection, and the child’s protector fired from a gun clutched in one hand. The sharp crack of gunfire resounded through the street, and the person ahead shuddered and fell backward into the obscurity of the mist.

They crossed through the intersection, the gun in the protector’s hand sweeping the area. There was no one else in sight.

The boy and his protector slowed to a stop at the end of the road. A large, iron gate topped by barbed wire marked the edge of town. One of its two massive doors was ajar a few inches, the smoking wreck of a car crashed into the other. A body was slumped in the driver’s seat, unmasked.

The protector struggled to pull the gate door open, the metal groaning. When the gap was large enough, the boy was ushered through it. Heart beating hard, he slipped between the iron doors and stumbled out the other side.

The moment his protector was through, the child was taken by the arm again, and the two set off at a run away from the gate. Light rain, stirred in a vicious wind, whipped around the child as he ran. The sky flashed white with lightning.

The boy glanced over his shoulder. The town’s border wall stretched on in either direction. A patchwork of scavenged materials reinforced the crumbling concrete, resembling a barricade at points—chain link fence, shipping containers, metal plates. On this side of the wall lay a desolate stretch of dirt and, up ahead, a forest of pale birch trees.

The two didn’t stop running until they reached the forest. Raindrops spitting down on them, lightning splitting the sky, dirt spraying behind them with every step, they raced through the trees and slowed only when they could no longer see the town through the trees. The emerald vapor was nowhere in sight.

Exhausted, the boy rested his back against the pale, thin trunk of a birch tree. Raindrops fell on his exposed skin, finding a way through the mostly bare branches of the canopy above.

Finally, the hand let go of his arm.

The boy’s protector staggered back, glancing around the forest, heaving for breath. She took off her gas mask and met the child’s eyes.

“Consider yourself lucky,” she breathed. “The explosion that exposed the tunnel would have burned you alive if you’d been a few yards down. And you’re double lucky I found you before someone else did, or before whatever’s inside those canisters killed you.” She gestured to his mask. “You can take it off. Air’s safe here.”

The child, after slight hesitation, obeyed. His protector took the mask and stored both of theirs in a compact backpack she carried.

She leaned against a tree, wiping raindrops from her face, and took the gun from its strap across her shoulder, inspecting and reloading it. A patch on her white and gray camouflage uniform read Colonel Vaile.

Another flash of lightning lit up the forest. Vaile glanced up, letting the gun hang by her side on its strap.

“We’ve got to keep moving.”

She took the boy by the hand again, and they walked quickly onward. Before long, Vaile broke out into a run again, and the child struggled to keep up with her pace.

The skeletal branches of the pale trees around them groaned and whispered with the wind. The boy thought he could hear calls and cries in the distance. They sounded like they were getting closer.

Vaile ran faster, almost dragging the child through the birch trees, pants spattered with soil. The rain began to fall harder.

A voice rang out from behind them. The boy didn’t look back.

Vaile and the child emerged from the forest, running out onto a precipice jutting out from a cliff. Twenty feet below lay a shallow river, dotted with boulders and rippling with raindrops. On the other side of the river, the rocky bank curved upward, meeting the sloping base of a mountain range. Snow-capped mountains loomed in the sky above, eclipsing the sun.

Vaile slowed to a stop at the edge of the outcrop. She let go of the child’s hand, turning to face him. The shouts from the forest were growing closer. “Go. Get past the mountain range. You’ll find safety on the other side.” She looked back toward the trees, taking her gun in both hands and raising it. “Get out of here.” She nodded toward the edge of the cliff. “Use the ladder.”

The child peered over the side of the precipice. A rope ladder hung from the side, stretching down to the shallow river below.

The boy looked back at his protector, doubtful. Exhaling, she knelt, took a sheathed knife from her belt, and tucked it in his pocket. “I’ll catch up if I can. Go.”

One last look at his protector, and the child complied. He climbed over the edge of the precipice, finding footing on the dangling ladder, and began to descend. Vaile disappeared from his view.

Moments later, he heard shouting from the forest. Then gunfire.

He climbed down faster.

The child splashed into the shallow river, letting go of the rope ladder and running. Something caught his foot, and he fell into the stream, bruising himself on the rocks. He scrambled to get to his feet, dripping wet, ignoring the pain. The child ran up onto the bank of the shallow river, then started up the base of the mountain. Pushed onward by adrenaline and fear, he ignored the sounds of gunfire and shouting from behind him. The child slowed to a stop only after he’d climbed thirty feet up the mountainside.

He turned and looked down at the cliff across the river. Vaile stood at the very edge of the precipice, gun clutched in both hands, firing into the forest. She paused, and for several long seconds, there was quiet.

Two soldiers clad in identical white and gray camouflage sprinted out from the trees. Vaile hit one, who fell with crimson blooming across his torso. Before she could turn her gun on the other, a massive soldier with buzzed blond hair, he shot Vaile in the shoulder.

The child watched, shivering, as Vaile returned fire. The shoulder of her dominant arm had been hit, and her shots missed. The soldier grabbed her gun, wrenched it out of her grip, and slammed it into her ribs. Vaile fell to one knee, reaching for a pistol strapped to her belt, but the soldier kicked her straight in the face. Vaile’s head snapped backward, and she fell hard on her back, her head hanging over the edge of the precipice.

The child couldn’t move. All he could do was watch, and hope.

The soldier pointed the pistol at Vaile’s head and fired.

The child suppressed a cry. Trembling, he began to lose his footing, rocks slipping beneath him.

The soldier looked up. Almost instantly, his gaze locked on the boy. Completely exposed on the mountainside, with nowhere to hide. The soldier grabbed Vaile’s gun, slowly raised it toward the child, and looked through the scope.

Behind the soldier, another figure stepped out from the forest. A man in a white fur coat, carrying a pale staff.

In a flash, he swung the staff at the soldier’s legs, knocking him off balance. The man in fur slammed the end of the staff upward into the soldier’s face, then drove it deep into his stomach and shoved him backward. He spun the staff through the air and whipped it across the soldier’s head. Limp, the soldier fell over the edge of the cliff, plummeting to the rocks below.

The staff wielder stood calmly on the precipice, Vaile’s dead body lying inches from his feet. He looked upward through the rain. Black locks of hair cascaded around a dark, bearded face. For a moment, the man locked eyes with the boy.

Then he turned and strode back into the forest, disappearing without a sound.

It took the child a long moment to remember to breathe again. He felt rooted to the spot. But he couldn’t stay. He took one last look at his protector’s body, a stranger lying dead on the outcrop below, and turned away. He began to trek up the mountainside, gazing at the snow-capped peak far above, blinking in the rain.

The child tensed at every fall of a pebble or gust of wind in the trees below. Occasionally, he looked back down at the forest, fearing he would see more soldiers in pursuit. He started to move faster, running uphill when he could, climbing when he couldn’t.

The rain increased in volume, sweeping thick across the exposed face of the mountain. Lightning fractured the gray sky. Every thunderclap sounded like a bomb to the child’s ears.

At long last, he reached the end of the upward trek. The child had taken a circuitous route up the mountain’s slanted shoulder. The next mountain in the range loomed like the jagged point of a giant knife.

Stopping to rest, he looked back. The cliff where his protector lay dead appeared tiny, the forest a swath of snow-dusted needles. He could see his town beyond, peppered with explosions small as sparks, smoke rising in billows toward the sky.

The child turned and began the descent down the other side of the mountain.

A wasteland lay before him. Sprawling swamps, incinerated patches of forest, flat stretches of mud. Waste lay in heaps, some tall as hills. A choking layer of garbage made stagnant lakes look solid and turned the ground itself into a patchwork of debris. Bitter winds tore across the wasteland, stirring trash into a frenzy.

The child headed for a settlement near the bottom of the mountain. Large pieces of refuse had been dragged together and built up into a makeshift town, narrow alleys twisting through hovels.

As he approached, the boy could make out a few of the structures. An airplane cabin. A cargo truck turned on its side. A dumpster lying upside-down, the battered frame of a van without wheels resting on top as a second story. Large pieces of scrap metal affixed to wooden frames. Tents made from layers of weathered fabrics. Several train cars, standing end to end, their wheels and undercarriages sunk into mud.

As he descended the mountainside, the child saw movement. Two figures exited a shelter, walking through one of the winding alleys. He was still too far away to see what they looked like, but people were a promising sign. He could only hope they wouldn’t be hostile.

Hours later, as the sun began to dip toward the horizon, the child reached the base of the mountain. Hands raw from climbing, feet sore from walking, shivering from the wind and rain, exhausted and hungry, he stumbled from the rocky slope of the mountainside to the garbage-strewn wasteland.

The settlement lay less than half a mile from where he stood. As the child walked, wind whipped the trash around him, smaller pieces pelting his legs. He was passing through a long stretch of muddy terrain, broken up by the occasional cluster of weeds or rocks, blanketed completely in junk. Broken bottles, plastic containers, cardboard boxes, metal scraps, vehicle parts, furniture, bones. A steel beam, a pizza box, a chunk of an electric Open sign, a lamp, a punctured tire, a splintered skateboard. Remnants of a more civilized time he could still remember.

Ahead, a barrier surrounded the settlement. Even more haphazard than the wall at the town’s border, it was built with sheet metal, cinder blocks, steel beams, wooden pallets, car doors, chunks of concrete, even a fridge. Barbed wire, iron spikes, and wood pikes lined the top of the fence.

When the child reached the settlement, its inhabitants were waiting for him.

Only yards from the fence, the boy could see eyes watching him from the other side. The only visible entrance through the barrier fence was a wide gate. Overlapping metal plates of all shapes, sizes, and colors had been fused and nailed together to create the fifteen-foot-tall door. Someone had spray-painted a large serpent symbol in black across it.

The boy slowed as he approached, the wind stirring his dark hair into a wild mess. On the left of the gate, protruding from the fence, stood the battered frame of what had once been a small toll booth. A man stood in the darkness inside, the barrel of his rifle pointing out at the boy.

The child noticed, but didn’t stop walking.

A door in the side of the toll booth opened, and the man inside stepped out, keeping the rifle steady on the boy.

“You there!” he shouted. “Stop right where you are.”

The child took a shaky breath and kept going.

The man walked forward quickly, crossing the distance between himself and the boy. Before the child could move away, the man shoved him to the ground.

Trash digging into his back, the child squinted up in the light rain at the man standing above him. The rifle was pointed straight at his head.

The man stared down at the boy, jaw clenched, finger on the trigger. A tangled gray beard lined his face.

“Give me one good reason not to blow a hole through your head, kid.”

The child trembled. Paralyzed, he watched the man adjust his grip on the rifle.

“Hey!”

The bearded man grimaced, keeping his eye on the child. Responding to the call from the fence, he said, “Leave him to—”

“Get that gun away from his face, right now.”

A low growl rose in the man’s chest.

“Right now, Joseph!”

The man gritted his teeth and pulled the rifle away from the child. The boy slowly sat up, heart racing. A red-haired woman in jeans and a brown leather jacket ran out from a gap in the front gate, which had slid open a few feet.

“Don’t just stand there, help him!”

Joseph acted as if he hadn’t heard, only staring down at the boy with transparent distrust.

The redhead, in her mid-thirties, reached the child and extended a hand. He took it and rose to his feet, glancing sideways at Joseph, who glared back at him.

“Sorry for the introduction,” the woman said to the boy. His eyes were drawn to a faded scar across the left side of her forehead. “You can never be too careful around here.” She locked eyes with Joseph. “That said, shoving a kid to the ground and putting a gun to his head would qualify as excessive. We need to rotate guards again, Joe?”

Joseph shook his head sullenly.

The woman nodded and slapped him on the arm. “Okay, then. Get back there. You’ve got a job to do.”

“But—” Joseph protested, gesturing to the child.

“I’ll handle this.” The woman waved him off. “You’ve done enough already.”

As Joseph trudged back to the toll booth, the woman looked back at the child. She crouched down to his eye level, close enough to whisper. “We’re not supposed to let just anyone through those gates. Our town is a special one, and it’s the job of people like me and Joseph to keep it safe.” She smiled. “So if you want to get in, I need to know if I can trust you. Can I?”

The child stared into her eyes for a long moment. Finally, he nodded.

“Good,” the woman said. “I’m Linn.” She pushed a strand of red hair back and swept her hand toward the settlement. “And that’s my home. It’ll be yours now, too.” She smiled again, with a warmth that comforted the child.

“So, I just have one more question.” She looked deep into the child’s eyes, wondering, searching. “Who are you?”