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Year Two after Impact

A caravan of vehicles arrives at the old Walmart late in the day as the sun is sinking low over the hills.

A midsize group. Two Jeeps, three large pickup trucks, and several ATVs of various size and quality. Mostly men.

Never a good sign.

I’m in my normal hiding place across the road.

It used to be a Burger King, but the building has completely collapsed.

There’s one sheltered spot where a piece of the roof fell on top of a larger counter and an overturned refrigerator.

It’s stable. It hasn’t budged even an inch in the year since we discovered it.

And amid the rubble of the old building, it’s completely out of sight unless you know to look for it.

The spot offers the perfect view of the Walmart, which is the most tempting target for travelers for miles in all directions.

Everything worthwhile in the store has already been looted.

Last year, Hal and I spent four days digging out all the remaining canned food.

But the building is in relatively good shape for being abandoned after Impact, so everyone passing through thinks there might still be worthwhile provisions to scavenge there.

That’s their mistake.

A man in the Jeep at the front of the caravan steps out and starts calling out orders to the others.

He’s got brown hair with gray in it, pulled back at the nape of his neck.

He appears competent and mature—not bad to look at—and younger than the gray in his hair would indicate.

He’s not huge or intimidating, but there’s something about him that makes me hesitate.

Like it’s a bad idea to cross him.

There are about twenty men and only four women, but the women aren’t captives. One is driving a pickup, one is on an ATV, and the other two are armed with similar weaponry as the men.

Trying to get the feel of this group, I watch a mountain of a man climb out of the bed of one of the pickups.

He was standing up as they drove, a rifle at the ready, but now he has it strapped to his back.

Physically he’s probably the strongest of the group.

He’s wearing a T-shirt with a sweat spot on the back and army-green cargo pants.

He looks kind of like Bigfoot joined the Army with his untrimmed hair and long, full beard .

When he approaches one of the women, I tense up, watching carefully. But all he does is lean over to pick up the gun cartridge she dropped and hand it back to her.

I let out a breath.

If the strongest man in the group behaves himself with the women, then it’s worth the risk.

I wait in my hiding place, growing still when Bigfoot scans my rubble. He can’t see me from where he’s standing, but it makes me nervous anyway.

He finally turns away, so I relax again.

The group spreads out to search the ravaged discount store, leaving only one guy to guard the vehicles. He’s up at the front, and my target is the Jeep at the back. It looks like it’s stocked full of supplies.

I move carefully through the ruins of the Burger King, making sure not to draw attention to myself. When the guard turns his back, I run from the rubble to the Jeep, silent and as fast as my (short) legs will carry me.

When Hal was alive, he never would have let me take such a risk. But he died four months ago from what I assume was food poisoning, and I’m entirely alone now.

It’s been a full week since anyone passed this way, and all I’ve had to eat in six days is a can of baked beans—one of the few cans remaining from our stockpile.

I need to get my hands on more food, or I’ll starve.

I’m small, both short and thin, but I know what I’m doing. I’m fast and nimble, and I’ve climbed into the back of the Jeep before the guard even turns his head.

As I hoped, the rear of this vehicle is filled with crates full of provisions.

I grab some packages of beef jerky and stuff them into my bag, one of my mom’s old ones with a drawstring closure that has managed to survive two years of rough usage, followed quickly by some cans of tuna and creamed corn.

I’d like to do some more searching. Some of these other crates might hold even greater treasures, but time is an issue here, and the delay is not worth the risk. I pull the drawstring and hook the bag on my shoulder as I climb out of the Jeep.

Just as I’ve turned to run back to my hiding place, I’m grabbed from behind by an arm like a tree trunk. It lifts me all the way off my feet.

It’s Bigfoot. I know it even though he’s holding me in a position where I can’t tilt my head high enough to see his face.

He has both my arms trapped by one of his huge ones, but my legs are free. I kick out instinctively, flailing for all I’m worth in the vague hope of accidentally landing my heel somewhere that hurts him.

I don’t. I’m entirely helpless, lifted off my feet and unable to do more than writhe futilely. I haven’t felt such perfect desperation since the months around Impact, huddled with Hal as our neighborhood, our town, our region, the country, and the world crumbled irrevocably into chaos around us.

When the asteroid approaching our planet was first announced, I had parents, a little brother, friends, a boyfriend, and a community I was born into to worry about, to fight for .

Now I have nothing worth protecting. Except myself.

No matter how much I’ve lost, I still matter to me. My body. My heart. My selfhood. I care about what happens to me, and I’ve fought too hard for too long simply to stay alive. I need to get away from this man and this group of dangerous strangers, and I need to do it right now.

But there’s absolutely nothing I’m capable of doing to make that happen.

I let out a loud, infuriated sound as I keep flailing.

“Deck!” The voice comes from the older man in charge. “Is she alone?”

Bigfoot—maybe named Deck—sets me down on my feet, keeping one big hand on my right shoulder. I jerk out of his grip, but he scowls and grabs me again, this time by the back of my shirt, an oversized blue Henley that used to be Hal’s.

I could pull away again, but it would rip my shirt to shreds. And it’s one of the only three shirts I own that are still wearable.

“Who are you?” The leader again. He’s walked over to stand right in front of me and Bigfoot.

I stare at him without answering. There’s no telling how he expects me to answer that question.

He moves his eyes to the man holding me. “What did she take?”

Bigfoot grabs for my bag. I resist—it’s a silly, futile gesture but one I can’t help making—until he scowls again and yanks the strap of the bag from my grip. He rifles through it, showing the other guy the jerky and tuna I snatched from their Jeep .

The older man gives me a sharp look before he focuses on Bigfoot. “There’s nothing else in there?”

Bigfoot searches the bag once more and then shakes his head. He’s clearly not much of a talker.

“Are you hungry?” the first man asks me.

“What do you think?” Strategically, I know I should play nice, but I’ve long since lost that ability. This world hasn’t been kind to me. I’m not inclined to be kind back.

“Are you alone?”

“Of course not.” That’s a lie, but a woman alone is entirely vulnerable. If he thinks I have people lurking around somewhere, he might hesitate.

“What’s your name?”

I give him that stony glare again.

“Tell me.” He’s not loud. Or angry. He’s entirely in control of himself—just as he’s in control of this group. It’s some sort of innate authority rather than physical force. Half the men who have surrounded us are bigger than him.

There are too many of them. And Bigfoot has moved his grip to my hair. I wear it in a braided ponytail to keep it out of my way, and that makes it easy for him to wrap his fingers around.

I might be always angry now, but I’m not utterly without basic sense. Complying is my only option if I want to survive until tomorrow. “Lilah.”

“Lilah. You live around here?”

I nod. It’s true and it’s the only thing to say.

“And you’re not alone?”

“I’m not alone. ”

The man scans our surroundings with those sharp, intelligent eyes. Then he asks Bigfoot, “Where did she come from?”

The man holding me gestures toward the ruins of the fast-food restaurant. There’s no way he could have known my hiding place unless he was watching me the whole time.

Somehow that makes it worse.

“Show me.”

I’m not sure whether he’s speaking to me or to Bigfoot, but the large man strides toward the rubble, hauling me with him by my hair.

He finds my little den so quickly it’s obvious he saw me sneak out of it.

The main man leans over to look inside. There’s nothing much there. A couple of old blankets and towels. The threadbare remnants of my wardrobe. And the few cans of food I’ve been living off for a month.

He straightens up, looking between me and my hiding spot for a minute. Obviously thinking.

“You’re not alone?” he asks at last.

“No. I told you.”

He mulls it over for another minute. Then he gives Bigfoot a nod.

I have no idea what it means, but the guy holding me obviously does. He pulls a gun out of the holster on his hip, clicks off the safety, and aims it at my head.

The wave of fear that hits me is so powerful I almost vomit. I sway slightly on my feet .

Bigfoot notices and grabs me by the waist with his free arm, holding me up.

“If anyone is out there,” the man in charge calls out, his voice loud and echoing in the gray, barren landscape, “come out now or she dies.”

In different circumstances, I would like the sound of his voice. It’s clear and resonant. He sounds educated—with a slight accent that reminds me of my college roommate who came from rural Missouri.

When nothing happens, he calls out again. “One more minute, and she dies.”

Ironic that this is how it ends for me, after scrabbling to survive for two years and watching all my friends and family die, one by one.

He waits the minute and then looks back at me. “Okay.”