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Claire

T he world was on fire, and no one could save me but him.

My Wastelander was near, but he wouldn’t make it to me in time to stop the man sitting on top of me from killing me.

As I lay on the hard ground of the trailer camp that had become a battleground, I looked up into the face of my killer: a black mask emblazoned with a golden eye that obscured his entire face.

Only a fine black mesh, fitted into the sclera of the golden eye, revealed the dim light of his eyes behind it.

The emblem glittered in the flickering light of the flames that engulfed the wooden barricade around our camp.

That eye represented everything I’d lost: my sister, my husband, my home, as well as the cultists who now hunted me for reasons I didn’t understand.

The masked man’s white-blond mohawk was his only defining feature, the only thing I remembered as I plunged my tiny blade into his neck.

I felt his life drain away as blood spurted out like a firehose. He clutched at his spraying throat, then collapsed on top of me, fumbling uselessly for purchase. Pinned to the ground, I was forced to stare at that hideous mask.

“Blood on your hands,” he croaked, his voice a death rattle. “You live on borrowed time, girl. Time borrowed for you by a man you’ll never belong to, in a world you’ll never belong to. The next blood on your hands will be his.”

A terrible dread gripped me then, as I somehow felt his grim prophecy coming true, burgeoning from his words like an angel of death spreading its wings. Only it was me— I was the angel of death.

The world shifted somehow, and my assailant removed his mask, only to reveal my friend Asha’s face beneath. Her dead eyes bore a hole through me, and her voice came as a death rattle, a groan from the void: “Have you forgotten me, Claire?”

A strangled scream tore from my throat, a scream of nature that seemed to penetrate and shatter a deathly stillness deep inside of me.

A stillness that had been there perhaps my whole life, a paralysis that had been gifted to me the moment I’d been born inside the compound, one that said don’t fight, don't resist, it’s useless.

But I didn’t want to be that person anymore—the one who sat in her learned helplessness and let life float gently by, trapped by chains that she’d never felt until they were gone.

“Hey, it’s okay,” a familiar voice soothed me, and I felt a hand on my clammy forehead. “You’re alright, baby. Wake up.”

My eyes fluttered open, and I became aware that I was lying on my back in my sleeping bag, inside the tent that we’d pitched in a copse of trees. John was lying beside me, propped up on his elbow and stroking my forehead, his expression concerned.

“John?” I murmured, reaching out for him.

“I'm here,” he replied, then bent to kiss me.

I clung to the kiss, wrapping my arms around his neck and pulling him deeper, urgent with the need to feel him close to me. He was the only thing that made me feel safe now after the destruction of the only home I’d known in the Wasteland.

“Another dream, huh?” John said when we finally broke apart. “Come here.”

He’d laid his sleeping bag next to mine. He rolled back on top of it, pulling me with him. He snuggled me in close, still wrapped up in my sleeping bag. It was the second time he’d rescued me from a screaming night terror since we left camp.

“You on watch?” I mumbled, still sleepy as I buried my face in his shirt.

“Just got off,” he said. “Kimmy just went out when you started screaming your head off. Scared the shit out of us.”

“Sorry,” I said, embarrassed. “I can’t stop them.”

He pressed a kiss against my hair. “Tell me about it.”

I did, recounting the bit about ‘borrowed time’, but omitting the appearance of Asha. Seeing her in the dream filled me with crushing guilt that I didn’t knowhow to talk about.

“I’m scared,” I said before I could stop myself, and I heard the edge in my voice. “I’m scared the cult will find me. I’m scared that they’ll hurt you and Kimmy. I’m scared it’ll be all my fault. And I still don’t understand why they want me. Why they cared enough to send people after me.”

I didn’t realize I was trembling until John tightened his grip around me. I looked up at him, and his soft brown eyes were determined.

“Hush,” he said as he raised a hand to stroke my cheek. “No more about this being your fault, you understand me?”

“But—”

“No more,” John said firmly. “You can’t help that these people attacked you. I’m doing everything I can to make sure it never happens again. I’ll keep you safe.”

I nodded. I knew that. He’d proven it too many times for me to doubt.

“I just don’t want you to have to,” I said with a sigh, relaxing against him.

“You let me worry about that,” he replied, cradling my head with a tenderness that made me ache. I’d never been loved the way John loved me—unreservedly and fully, without question. I wouldn’t have believed it possible had I not felt the same way about him.

John stroked my hair for a long while, soothing me back into drowsiness. I’d almost drifted off again when he spoke, his voice barely a whisper.

“That’s what family does for each other.”

“But I’m not…” I trailed off, too sleepy to finish my co ntradiction.

“Shh,” he murmured. “Coming home with me means you’re my family now. Argue, and you’ll be skinning the rabbits—blood, guts, and all—all by yourself for a week. And maybe a spanking to really drive home the point.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” I mumbled, and a low chuckle reverberated in his chest. “It’s been over a week.”

There was an unfortunate heat between my legs at the thought.

As much as I loved Kimmy, camping with her all the time meant zero privacy.

I missed being in bed with John. I missed his hot, naked body and the way his touch made me arch and moan with pleasure.

I missed watching his tight control snap when he came, and the way he groaned my name.

“I know,” John sighed. “Trust me, I’ve been…painfully aware.”

The bulge of his erection brushed against my belly, and I giggled. He grinned, then kissed the top of my head before readjusting, preparing to sleep. I exhaled slowly, and I could sense his smile as I fell back into a peaceful slumber in his arms.

Somehow, it’d only been a week since we’d left the camp.

It’d been a flurry of scavenging for supplies, covering our tracks, and foraging for food.

Our tent barely slept two people, and the city outskirts were dangerous enough that one of us always had to be on watch at night anyway.

We slept in shifts, which was tiring and left a weary ache in my bones that wouldn’t go away.

We hadn’t seen any major gang activity since we avoided the city centre, but we’d spotted a few lone scavengers who were looking for supplies just like we were.

We lay low, always choosing stealth over confrontation.

We’d been sighted in only one instance, by a man and woman who were painfully thin and, as far as I could see, unarmed.

They scurried away before we even had the chance to approach.

Nobody trusted anybody in the Wasteland. They couldn’t afford to.

October was upon us as we prepared for our trip northward to the Valley, the remote homesteading community that John and Kimmy were from.

In my head, it’d been built up as a kind of wilderness Eden, beautiful and safe, where they had things like running water and electricity that nobody outside the compounds had anymore.

First, however, we’d need to traverse over a thousand kilometres, all on foot, through dense wilderness and inclement weather.

By John’s best estimate, it was going to take us at least a month of hard travel.

Seven months ago, I’d lived inside the Cave, a walled compound that had been my home my entire life.

A brutal attack destroyed my home and forced me out into the Wasteland—our name for the outside world.

An insurgent cult wearing mysterious masks painted with a distinct gold eye had killed everyone in the compound, including my then-husband, Neil.

My dreams were still haunted by my mother and my sister, Holly, who’d revealed themselves as part of the cult that destroyed my world.

Holly helped me and my friend Asha escape the compound in secret, but I hadn’t seen her since.

Asha. She and I had been separated after an encounter with a pack of cannibals.

I didn’t know if she was even still alive.

I still ached at the thought of what might have happened to her.

More than that, I had a growing sense of what my father would’ve called survivor’s guilt.

It didn’t seem right that I should have a future with a man I loved, in a home where I might finally be safe, when she was gone.

Despite my fear and distrust of Wastelanders and utter lack of survival skills, John and Kimmy took me in after John rescued me from the cannibals.

Over time, John earned my trust and eventually, my love.

He’d protected me from the moment we met, and eventually, the heart of gold beneath his gruff exterior was impossible not to love.

I loved him like I’d never loved anyone, including Neil, who I’d only married because it’d been arranged for us by the shadowy leaders of the Cave.

I’d never felt like I would’ve died for anyone until John, but it wasn’t difficult when I knew he’d do the same for me in a heartbeat, and we’d been in situations where it was a real possibility.

The masked murderers had then resurfaced and attacked the camp where I’d lived with John and Kimmy until a week ago.

They’d come to find me and had tried to perform some sort of cult ritual.

We’d fought them off, but it was why we’d left with such haste: there were more of them, and they somehow knew I was there. It wasn’t safe anymore.