Ara, the only woman left alive after a plague, is searching for a way to save humanity. She thinks there isn't a man she can trust, until she meets Kaden.
*****
A plague has swept...
I crouched below the dilapidated bridge and scrubbed the blood off my fingers. River rocks tinged with gray, ochre, and green wavered beneath the current, but I didn't reach for one. Instead, I rubbed my hands against each other, white and dismembered in the flow.
Like a dead man's.
Look, Kaos treed a squirrel. Wouldn't know what to do if he actually caught one. Crazy dog.
All around, the trees faded colors of blood and pus, as if no time had passed. But no traffic roared across the bridge, and the center had given way, the two ends stretched out like doomed lovers' hands. A camouflage backpack nestled between the eaves of the bridge, and below it, a squirrel lay spread-eagled on a river rock. He glared at me, his body laid open and his face crushed. Without my bow, I'd had to smash him with a rock. I couldn't risk lighting a fire and had eaten only the kidneys, liver, and heart. The salty taste and chewy texture only reminded me how long it had been since I'd eaten a real meal.
I needed a weapon.
It was the mantra that had pounded through my head the past two weeks; the sane reasoning which had led me to an insane plan.
One my father would never have approved of.
I stood and wiped my hands dry, then fished out my backpack. The squirrel's blood had dried beneath my nails, but I let it be.
My hands had been stained by worse.
I pushed through the tall weeds until I found the overgrown trail that ran beside the river, and the prints I'd found fresh last night. A group of four men, no carts or animals, heading deeper into the city.
There is no such thing as friendly men, Ara. Not in this world. Not for you.
I tightened the straps of my pack and followed the tracks.
The city grew slowly around me. A few gas stations and businesses pressed in between the encroaching trees. I passed an abandoned airship, the front half crumpled, as if it had lost power and fallen straight from the sky. My father had always preferred the older technology, steel and oil, but in the end, neither had brought salvation. Rusted cars lay abandoned in roads, windows now coated in grime. Vines and weeds smothered everything, but instead of masking the violence and death, it seemed to make it worse, like a white sheet thrown over a body.
The tracks moved West, and I kept the rising sun at my back, making them easy to follow. I guessed I was several hours behind. An hour in, I passed a dozen yellow buses stationary before a brick building. "FORGIVE US" had been spray-painted in red on the wall, some of the paint running down like blood. I stopped to stare, burying a thousand memories of the life I'd once had. If the bold words were meant to scare me, they didn't.
No forgiveness had been given, and I would not ask.
I walked again.
A fall breeze drifted between the abandoned houses, carrying scents of concrete and rot. Most were boarded over, though some had been gutted clean as a fresh kill. Only a few bore a red X painted across the door. These were untouched. The sun climbed higher, and I checked over my shoulder more and more often.
At noon, I found their second mistake.
A plume of smoke blackened the sky two miles West, dead on their current path. I scaled a pine and surveyed the area with binoculars. Nothing moved but smoke drifting into the sky.
Why send a signal to the whole world? Stupidity? Overconfidence? Both?
I crept closer. I was playing a dangerous game, one my father never would have approved of, but I needed to understand my enemy if I was going to steal from them. And no one else would be stupid enough to approach a burning fire in the middle of the day. I hoped.
The scent of burning flesh hit me well before I stood next to the bonfire, the warmth deceptively inviting against the chill of the day. It had been lit in the middle of a cul-de-sac, between a rusted Chevy and a blue mini-van with no wheels.
Buried beneath smoldering branches was the blackened body of a large animal.
I stared at it, a chill like a cold finger running down my spine.
The animal had been infected.
I glanced over my shoulder, and then rested my hand on my dangerously empty pistol.
I needed a weapon.
I forced myself around the fire, unable to resist tracking the kill. A split heart, splayed wide. An elk then, and a large one at that. The tracks were spaced close where the first shot had taken him, then wide where he had run, a pool of blood where he had fallen then surged upwards before the second shot killed him. I hadn't heard a gunshot, which meant they'd taken him with a bow.
Someone was one hell of a shot.
So, a group of four men, confident enough to light a bonfire in mid-day, armed and proficient enough to take down an infected elk. I rocked back on my heels, tracing the smoke rising like a black flag.
They were good.
But Father and I had been better.
Ara... I made a mistake, we all did... go back to the beginning... it's not too late.
I stood up and began to follow the trail. Maybe it was too late for humanity, but it wasn't too late for me. Stray leaves blew across the street, catching flame and burning dangerously close to the houses nearby. I didn't bother to stop them.
Let the world burn.
(So what do you think of the new beginning? Hope you enjoyed!! Thanks so much for reading! Please don't forget to vote and comment!
Also, if you want to read more about what happened before the story began, I have a free prolouge short story to The Last She, available exclusively to my author newsletter subscribers. Just go to my profile page to find the link to subscribe, or it is externally linked to this page.
Now, onward! -Hannah)
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