Chapter Text
March 23, 2028
Sense Woods
It’s just the four of us now.
Mary and I spent the morning making sure our little shelter wouldn’t collapse if the wind so much as breathed on it. It’s barely more than a lean-to, but it’s home. Haylie tried to patch up a cut on Emmi’s leg—she got caught on some rusted fence when we were running last night. We didn’t stop moving for hours. I don’t even know where we are on a map anymore, but that’s probably for the best. If we don’t know, neither do the dead.
We’ve started wearing the masks full-time now. I found a fox skull weeks ago and tied it to my face with strips of cloth. Mary’s got a dingo one, all yellowed and cracked but still strong. It makes us feel like something more than human. Something untouchable. The dead don’t look twice when they pass. They don’t even slow down.
We’re learning how to live like ghosts—quiet steps, quick hands, vanishing before we leave a trace. Mary calls it hunting, but I think of it more like trickery. The dead can’t kill what they don’t see.
Haylie says we need to be careful, that staying in one place too long is a death sentence. I don’t disagree, but we don’t have many options. We need food. Water. Maybe even more people, though the thought makes my stomach twist. More people means more mouths to feed. More risks. More loss.
But we can’t be the only ones left.
Maybe we’re just the first.
I don’t know what we’re building here, not yet. But I do know one thing: the world took everything from us. We’re taking something
back.
—Juniper