“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 light 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. Kid.”

The beam of white 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 beam flickered, and the boy heard an anxious breath through a gas mask. “We gotta—” The sound of a not-too-distant explosion cut off the words. More muffled screams rose up to add to the cacophony coming from 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 passage deeper into the tunnels, the pools of water.

There was the sound of shifting rubble. The holder of the flashlight stepped over the jagged threshold of the tunnel and walked inside, toward the boy hugging his knees at the back. The tunnel ended where it had been bombed out. The boy looked past the approaching silhouette, seeing nothing but smoldering rubble and green-tinted mist outside.

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

They both emerged from the darkness of the tunnel 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. The gray sun was covered by the dark, tumultuous storm clouds that filled the heavens. Light rain spat down on the two.

“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 level. Green vapor, like the ashes of 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.

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 hit the road above and detonated with a deafening blast. The flashlight bearer covered the boy, acting as a shield, as the heat from the explosion ripped through the crater in the street.

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

His protector fought to get up, taking the boy along, and put the flashlight away. 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 side. An explosion lit up a small building a few blocks away with bright fire and black smoke, accompanied by screams.

Struggling to keep up, the child followed his protector through the streets. They moved to cover beside a bombed-out shell of a house, then ran to the next building.

Metal canisters lay in the streets. Hundreds of them. 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 one was empty, its lethal contents spilled out in a green vapor. Each one 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 sound of gunfire resounded through the street, and the person ahead shuddered and fell backward into the obscurity of the mist, dead.

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 came to a stop at the end of the road. Barbed-wire fence on either side of a gate blocked off the entire street, making it a dead end. The large, iron gate marked the edge of the 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, unprotected by a mask.

The protector struggled to pull the gate door open a few inches more. When the gap was large enough, the boy was ushered through it. Heart beating hard, he slipped through the massive, 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.

The light rain, stirred in a vicious wind, whipped around the child as he ran. Lightning lit up the sky white.

He glanced over his shoulder. The wall of the town stretched on in either direction. A patchwork of scavenged materials reinforced the crumbling concrete wall—chain link fence, shipping containers, metal plates. On this side of the wall lay a desolate stretch of dark brown 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 with searing power, dirt spraying up behind them with every step, they raced through the trees and slowed only when they were a safe distance from the edge of the forest. 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 sealed 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. Inscribed on her white and gray camouflage army uniform were the words Colonel Vaile. She was dark-skinned, with a British accent and a perpetual look of hard determination on her face. Her prominent cheekbones and the smoldering, almost cocky gleam in her eyes added to her aura of ruthless resolve.

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, deeper into the forest. Before long, Vaile broke out into a run again, and the child struggled to keep up with her pace. He resisted the urge to look back over his shoulder at the town they were leaving behind.

The skeletal branches of the pale trees around them groaned and whispered with the wind. The boy thought he could hear calls, cries, voices in the distance, sounding like they were getting closer. He just focused on not tripping over his own feet.

The child had lost all sense of direction. He could only trust the woman leading him, hoping she’d find a way out of the forest.

He heard a shout from behind them.

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

Another voice rang out. Closer, this time. The child still didn’t look back.

Vaile and the child emerged from the forest, running out onto a rock precipice jutting out from a long cliff. On either side, the sheer face of the cliff stretched downward, the trees ending at the edge. Two stories below lay a shallow river, less than thirty feet wide, dotted with boulders and rippling from raindrops falling onto its clear surface. On the other side of the river, the rocky bank curved upward, joining the sloping base of a mountain range. Snow-capped mountains loomed in the sky above, eclipsing the sun and casting shadows over the forest.

Vaile slowed to a stop at the edge of the rock. She let go of the child’s hand, turning to face him.

As the shouts of their pursuers grew closer, steely resolve took over her gaze. “Go. Get past the mountain range. You’ll find safety on the other side.”

She looked back toward the forest, taking her gun into both hands and raising it. “Get out of here, kid. Now.” She gestured with her head toward the edge of the cliff. “Use the ladder.”

The child looked over the side of the precipice. They stood on a V-shaped section of rock jutting out from the cliffside. A rope ladder hung down from the side, stretching all the way down to the shallow river below.

The child looked back at his protector, and she gritted her teeth. “Go, now!” Glancing back at him, she took a sheathed knife from her belt and pressed it in his hand. “I’ll catch up if I can.”

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 climb down, the sheathed knife secure in his pocket.

Vaile disappeared from his view. He kept climbing down, faster.

Gunfire broke out above. Shouting from the forest.

The child splashed down into the shallow river, letting go of the rope ladder and running. He tripped on a rock in the stream and fell down, soaking his clothes, 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 began climbing 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, a story above the cliff on the other side of the river.

He turned and looked back down at the cliff. Vaile stood at the very edge of the precipice, gun clutched in both hands, firing into the forest. As the child watched, two soldiers clad in similar white camouflage sprinted out from the cover of the trees. Vaile hit one with a barrage of bullets, but the other, a muscular blond man armed with a pistol, shot Vaile in the shoulder.

The child rushed for cover, hiding behind a boulder perched on the mountainside. He watched, trembling, 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. His heart dropped like a rock into a pit. Then, as the soldier turned around, another figure stepped out from the forest.

The man wore a white fur cape draped around his shoulders. He carried a pale staff.

In a flash, he swung the staff and knocked the soldier off balance. He smashed the end of the staff into the soldier’s face, then drove it deep into the soldier’s stomach and shoved him backward. He spun the staff through the air and whipped it across the soldier’s head again, sending him falling over the edge of the cliff.

The staff wielder stood calmly on the rock, Vaile’s dead body lying inches from his feet. He didn’t look over the edge to see what had happened to the soldier, but instead looked upward through the rain. Black locks of hair cascaded around a young, dark face. For a moment, the man locked eyes with the boy.

The man turned and strode back into the forest, disappearing without a sound.

The child couldn’t breathe for a few seconds. But he couldn’t stay. He took one last look at his protector’s body, lying dead on the rock precipice below, and turned around. He began to trek up the mountainside again, gazing up at the snow-capped peak far above, blinking in the rain. Lightning split the sky close to the mountaintop.

The child looked back down at the forest of birch trees. More soldiers could be in pursuit. He started to move faster, running uphill when he could and climbing when he couldn’t.

The child lost track of time as he went, constantly in fear, tensing at every fall of a pebble or gust of wind in the trees below. The rain increased in volume, gusts of droplets sweeping across the exposed face of the mountain. Lightning cracked in the gray sky above, flashing white across the child’s surroundings.

At long last, he reached the end of the upward trek. The child had taken a circuitous route, ending up on the left side of the mountain. A nearby mountain loomed like a jagged knife’s point.

The child stopped to rest for a moment, gazing up and sideways at the peak of the mountain that brushed the dense storm clouds above. He was traveling over the mountain’s slanted shoulder; going straight up to the peak and down again would be too hard and dangerous, and there was no way to go around the mountain from the bottom.

He looked back. The cliff where his protector lay dead appeared tiny, the forest beyond it a swath of snow-dusted needles. He could see the town, explosions small as sparks, smoke rising in billows.

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

A wasteland lay before him. For miles, stretching on into the distance, sprawled a land ranging from swamps to incinerated patches of forest to flat stretches of mud. Waste lay in heaps across the land, some tall as hills, some scattered into a choking layer of garbage that made stagnant lakes look solid and the ground itself a perilous minefield of debris. Bitter winds howled and tore across the wasteland, stirring trash into a frenzy, making the garbage-covered ground seem to stir and move.

The wasteland was far from dead. It was a living, dangerous beast of an ecosystem, writhing with wind and crawling with garbage of a past world not long gone.

The child headed for a settlement near the bottom of the mountain. The largest pieces of refuse had been dragged together and built up, narrow alleys twisting through the shells that had been made into shelters.

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 wheel-less car resting on top as a second story. Large pieces of scrap metal built up as walls and a roof. Tents made from layers of weathered fabrics. A bare and battered toll booth. Several train cars, standing end to end, their wheels and undercarriages sunk into mud.

The child saw movement below, and watched as two people exited a makeshift shelter, walking through one of the winding alleys. He was still too far away to see what they looked like, but at least he knew there were people down there. His protector had wanted him to cross the mountain, and must have known this was here. He had to trust they wouldn’t be hostile.

Finally, the child made it to 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-covered ground of the wasteland.

The settlement lay less than half a mile from where he stood. The child began to walk again, wind whipping the trash around him. Smaller pieces pelted his legs. He looked around. He was walking through a long stretch of muddy terrain, broken up by the occasional cluster of weeds or rocks, completely covered in a layer of junk. Broken bottles, plastic containers, cardboard boxes, metal scraps, vehicle parts, pieces of furniture, bones. A steel beam, a pizza box, a chunk of an electric Open sign, the rotting skeleton of a large mouse, a lamp, a punctured tire, a splintered skateboard, items discarded and forgotten.

The child slowed to a stop, looking around for a moment.

The sheer size of the wasteland made the boy feel incredibly small. Miles and miles in every direction, a landfill of indeterminate length and width, unrestrained, becoming one with the natural landscape. In the distance, the child saw a thicket of blackened trees, their spindly branches loaded down with garbage caught mid-flight in the strong winds.

As he neared the settlement, he could see a barrier surrounding the entire area. Even more haphazard and handmade than the wall at the border of the town the child had come from, it was made of chain link fence, patches of fabric, stone, brick, metal plates, and car doors. Barbed wire, iron spikes, glass shards, sharpened rocks, and wood pikes lined the top of the fence, tied in place or merely resting on any available surface area.

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 barrier. To make up for the variety and inconsistency in tone, someone had spray-painted a large serpent symbol in dark blue across it.

The child slowed as he approached, the wind whipping around him and stirring his hair into a wild mess. On the left of the gate, protruding from the fence, stood the half-destroyed shell of what had once been a small toll booth, the one the child had seen from the mountain. A man stood in the darkness inside, the barrel of his rifle pointing out at the boy.

The child didn’t stop walking. He knew other weapons were trained on him.

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. Slowly, cautiously, but not stopping.

The man moved forward quickly, crossing the distance between himself and the boy. Before the child could move away, the man shoved him to the ground. The child fell on his back in the garbage.

He squinted up in the light rain at the man standing above him. The rifle moved to point 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. He watched the man adjust his grip on the rifle, tense with silent fear.

“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 in anger and pulled the rifle away from the child, holding it in both hands across his body. The boy remained on his back in the garbage, heart racing. He pushed himself to a near-sitting position, looking at where the voice had come from. A red-haired woman in jeans and a dark brown leather jacket ran out from an open door in the fence on the right of the gate.

“Don’t just stand there, Joseph, help him!” The woman shook her head as she approached. The man didn’t oblige.

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

The woman glanced around at the rain. “Sorry for the introduction,” she said to the child. She had an Irish accent, and a faded scar streaked 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. Do we need to rotate guards again, Joe?”

“No,” Joseph growled.

The redhead 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 be on 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 I need to know if I can trust you, if you want to get in. Are you safe?”

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

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

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