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Maddie shoved aside one of the bulging black garbage bags, sticking her tongue out at the awful smell. She’d never get used to how rank dumpsters could be. One of the bags wasn’t quite as stiff as the others, and with tired hope in her heart, she flipped open her pocket knife and carefully sliced through the plastic.
“Clothes!” she hissed upward, at the dumpster’s opening.
A moment later, her brother’s dirt-smudged face popped over the side. “Anything good?” he whispered.
It was still early evening, and not yet fully dark, though the gray sky made night come sooner. But the empty city was quiet, and in places where noise carried easily over glass and concrete, caution kept you alive.
She shifted through the folded up bundles, casting many aside. “Try this.” Maddie tossed a sweatshirt at him. He hummed, and she absently listened to the muted thud of his backpack hitting the ground. His arms briefly flailed in the air as he struggled out of his current sweater, which had been torn badly just a few days ago.
A couple pairs of socks and one of those fancy long-sleeved athletic shirts went into the meager pile of keeps on her lap.
“It’s big, but that’s fine,” Andrew said. “If you don’t want to head south this winter, we’ve gotta find warmer stuff like this.”
“Honestly, I’d rather go north,” she mumbled, standing up to dump her haul into his arms. Something caught her eye before she could climb out of the dumpster, and she quickly crouched back down to investigate.
It was a blanket, a huge, thick one. No holes, either.
“Jackpot!” she quietly celebrated, pulling it free from beneath the rest of the garbage. “Andrew!”
“Nice!” He took it from her and started to fold it. “You serious about heading north?”
Maddie paused after hefting herself onto the lip of the dumpster, her legs dangling inside. “I dunno. I just—” she swallowed and stared at a bug skittering around on the brick wall of the alley. “I don’t want a repeat of last year.”
She twisted to watch him tuck the blanket into the secondary bag that could clip onto either of their camping backpacks. He struggled with the zipper, given how massive the blanket was, and silently fist-pumped when he got it closed all the way.
Andrew turned to her and smiled, grim and serious and sad. “Yeah, me neither.” Stepping forward, he held his hands up to help her down. She swung her legs around and pushed off into his arms.
Her big brother caught her easily, like he always did, and lowered her to the ground.
“It’s a tough decision,” he continued as she knelt down to sift through the clothes she’d salvaged. Finding the athletic shirt, Maddie shrugged off her long windbreaker, tugged off her sweatshirt, and finally wrestled her way free of the too-small t-shirt beneath it. “Do we risk freezing to death or do we risk an encounter?”
She shivered, both from the chilly air and the images that came to mind. Their last trip south—they’d been spotted. Twice.
Maddie slid her arms through, but froze when her brother’s warm hand pressed against her back, just below the bandages.
“Do they still hurt?” he asked quietly.
Hesitant, but unwilling to lie, she nodded.
They stayed like that for a long minute, seconds stretching into a silent eternity. Maddie held her breath and resolutely stared down at the dirty ground.
It was only when she shivered again, a little more violently, that Andrew pulled back to let her finish getting dressed. The athletic shirt was kinda big on her, as most clothing was for a starving twelve-year-old, but it was comfy and smooth. It didn’t catch on the bandages, even when she wiggled back into the similarly oversized sweatshirt.
As she re-situated her windbreaker, Maddie looked at Andrew. Sitting back on his heels, he was staring blankly, unseeing, off to the side.
“It’s not that bad anymore,” she reassured him. “Only really when I stretch funny or something.”
His gaze drifted down to her right leg.
“Hey. I haven’t limped in ages.”
“We’ll go north,” Andrew suddenly decided, getting to his feet. “If we aim for the Great Lakes, we won’t have to worry about water.”
“And we can fish once the ice is thick enough to walk on.”
They grabbed their backpacks, buckling the harnesses into place to alleviate the weight on their shoulders. Andrew fished out an old map, given to them by a dying man they’d come across almost three years ago, and examined the hand-drawn additions while they left the alley.
Maddie dutifully kept her hand on his arm, maneuvering him around obstacles while he squinted in the dying light. The layer of smoke only made it worse.
“Flashlight?” she offered, her voice as quiet as she could make it while still being heard. Out in the open, it was a death wish to speak loudly this late.
He shook his head. “Not taking any chances. It’s a few days’ walk out of our way, but if we head northwest, we’ll reach one of the entrances to the tunnel that leads to the outskirts of Chicago.”
“Worth it.”
“Yeah. You cool with going back to the basement we stayed in last night?”
“If we have to…” The memory of the pitter-patter of rats made her shudder.
Andrew opened his mouth, but they both froze in abject terror when the ground suddenly trembled faintly. Again, and again.
Leaning up on her toes, and with him hunching over, Maddie whispered straight into Andrew’s ear, “Who would be near us?”
He slowly shook his head, turning in a circle as if hoping to see anything in the dark. They were in the former Kansas City, Missouri. There shouldn’t have been anything big enough to make those loud, vibrating footsteps nearby. And yet…
Maddie forcefully bit her lip to keep from making a noise of surprise and grabbed Andrew’s arm in an iron grip. He turned to follow her line of sight, and there above the crumbling buildings, was a faint red glow.
She snuck a peek at her brother. His jaw was clenched, swallowing down all the curses on the tip of his tongue.
A horrible, mechanical creaking noise filled the air. The ground continued thudding as it gradually made its way through the streets. It wasn’t facing them, thank goodness, but that could change so, so quickly.
Last winter had proven that.
They both held their breath as they took one careful step after another, not placing their feet down until they’d made sure there was nothing in their way. Broken glass, bits of concrete and metal, random objects—the street was a minefield.
Maddie went completely still when she felt her brother tense. With effort, she tore her eyes away from the monster to look down at his hands.
“We’re being followed,” he signed.
In a silent stream, the air emptied itself from Maddie’s lungs. “Where,” she signed back.
He nodded behind her, on her left, back in the direction they’d come from. A large Beast was slinking along the edge of the buildings, the faint, sickly green glow of its eyes just barely visible at this distance. No, the thing that made it noticeable was its white body.
It was the only silver lining when it came to the twisted creatures that haunted the night: all the mutated animals bore bleached white fur or scales or feathers. It made them stand out in the dark.
On an ordinary night, they would’ve been able to run. The Beasts were hobbled and slow. It was their bites that were feared. No matter what animal it had been before, the Beasts’ bites were venomous. Lethally so. Letting one get close was a death sentence, and they had to put more distance between them and it. But with a monster so close by, silence was imperative.
They couldn’t afford to rush, or they’d risk being spotted.
Andrew nudged her, drawing her attention back to him. He started to sign, “If we split up—”
Maddie sliced her hand through the air, stilling his hands. “Together,” she signed, glaring up at him. “Or not at all.”
It’d been their promise to each other from the beginning. Neither wanted to acknowledge the inevitability that someday, one of them would break it.
She took a deep breath. The monsters didn’t usually go after the Beasts because the Beasts were so good at staying silent and hidden. But if a Beast drew a monster’s attention, it was as good as dead like any human.
There was a car nearby, flipped on its side, but it would be a good enough hiding place. They just needed to not be seen. Maddie gently pushed Andrew in its direction, ignoring her racing heart and the way she knew the Beast was growing closer and closer behind her.
He didn’t protest or resist, and they hastened their pace by a tiny amount to reach their destination before it could catch up to them.
It was terrifyingly close when Maddie turned to face it. She crouched down, Andrew at her back, and slowly reached into the side pocket of her backpack. Her fingers shook as she drew out one of their most valuable—and most dangerous—possessions.
A flare gun.
She felt her brother’s sharp intake of breath as he probably realized what she was planning. The gun made a slight click as she readied it. Maddie held her breath as she raised it and pointed it at the Beast.
It was so close, barely a block’s worth of distance away. She could see the way its mouth foamed.
She pulled the trigger.
The red light that burst out was almost painfully bright in the dark, and it shot straight at the Beast, making it howl when it burned against its face.
For as loud as its cry was, it was drowned out beneath the piercing shriek from the monster. The ground shook and there was a deafening, crashing rumble of another building being leveled. Andrew pulled her tightly back against him, holding her sidewise against his chest to accommodate her bulky backpack, and they huddled against the car as the monster stomped closer.
The Beast tried to run, but a long, sharp appendage shot down before it could get away, impaling it straight through to the concrete. Maddie clasped her hand over her mouth and turned her face away, eyes clenched shut.
It didn’t die instantly. For a long few seconds, it whined and whimpered—it’d probably been a dog, once—before it finally fell silent.
Andrew buried his face in her hair. If they were lucky, if they stayed quiet, if they didn’t move—the monster wouldn’t notice them. They were just another dark pile of something in the street. Nothing of interest.
Tears leaked out of Maddie’s eyes as the silence continued. The monster wasn’t leaving yet. Did it suspect something? Could it suspect something?
They trembled against each other, neither daring to look. Maddie’s legs had gone numb by the time the ground finally, finally shook with massive footsteps. It started creaking again, all jagged and mechanical and nightmarish.
It took a long time for the sounds of it, the vibrations of it, to grow faint and distant. She and Andrew cautiously separated at the same time. With its glowing eyes facing away from them, they couldn’t tell where it was, just that it sounded far away.
They picked the nearest unbroken building to hide out in, both shaking and exhausted. Inside, they got lucky and stumbled upon a mostly-intact couch. The room was trashed, so they couldn’t tell what it’d been originally, but there were no windows to worry about and it was easy enough to barricade the door with a heavy wooden table.
Maddie set out their little lantern that could connect to a portable USB solar charger. It was one of their most useful belongings, though they used it sparingly since the smoke made it take longer to get a full charge. Andrew produced a few energy bars and bottles of water, and while it wasn’t the sort of dinner they usually tried to scrounge up, Maddie was far too tired to even suggest something more filling.
They ate in silence on the couch, pressed as close to each other as possible. Andrew, after finishing first, grabbed their new blanket and shook it out. After discarding their wrappers and turning off the lantern, Maddie allowed herself to be partially wrapped up before lying down against the back of the couch.
This way, when Andrew joined her, his chin just above her forehead, the blanket completely surrounded them, like a burrito.
He sighed and relaxed, his back to the door. “Good night, Maddie,” he whispered, voice croaking and tight.
“Good night, Andrew,” she replied. Hers was no better. “Sleep well.”
A humorless laugh puffed out of him. “Yeah, of course,” he lied. “You too.”
Only the release of tension and adrenaline would get them to sleep that night, as it always did after such close calls. They were usually more careful, but they really hadn’t expected a monster to be practically on top of them.
She would probably dream that it had caught them. Impaled them like it did to the Beast, or perhaps bite them in half, or crush them into the street. It wouldn’t be anything she hadn’t seen in her dreams before.
Maddie had had many nightmares since the world first ended. Sometimes, they were of her parents dying. Other times, they were of the days she and Andrew had been hunted by an entire pack of Beasts. Or of when they’d both gotten so sick, they could barely move. Of the whip-thin vines that had lashed over her back and wrapped around her leg, crushing it. Of the crazy human who’d almost shot Andrew. Of the haunting screeches that echoed from above the layer of smoke. Of the cities that were only melted lumps of metal and ash.
Of the bright blue light that started it all. That started the war. That summoned the monsters, who had crawled out of the ground around the world and laid waste to humanity.
It, the blue light, was a lot like her flare, setting monsters upon smaller creatures who couldn’t run away fast enough.
Maddie curled up tighter beneath the blanket, pressing against her brother’s warmth. They’d have to find more ammunition soon.