During a time when lies carry more weight than honor, war-survivor Reva Montgomery struggles to reconcile with her past before she can salvage what little remains of her life.
Chapter 1
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laster crumbled down from the ceiling, landing on the splintered wooden floor and on the grand dining table whose legs no longer supported it. We gathered along the table’s edge: me, the skinny rat, and the ghosts of the people who once lived here. Molly was outside foraging. It was a risky undertaking for a child, but there wasn’t anybody out there who could hurt her anymore.
The rat climbed onto the tabletop. I slid my dagger from its sheath and crept off my tattered backpack, my mouth salivating. The rodent scurried away, disappearing between the rotten wood sagging against the wall. Just as well. Although I had done it on occasion—out of desperation—eating rodent was a mortifying act I’d admit to nobody.
I shoved my dagger back into the sheath.
Small feet shuffled toward me, pulling my attention away from the prospect of breakfast. Molly stopped in the archway. Her frail body was bundled in a boxy woolen coat. She held out her hand. The holes in her knit glove widened, exposing her fingers. Several green sprigs drooped across her palm.
“I found food,” she said.
Making a mental note to sew her gloves the moment I could, I neared her and inspected her find. We hadn’t eaten in more than a day, unless gnawing on corn husks we found inside a ramshackle silo counted. It didn’t. The handful of dandelion leaves Molly presented would never sustain us. We were better off waiting for the rat to return.
“You’re amazing,” I said. “Why don’t you eat them.”
She entered the decaying dining hall, plopped upon my backpack, and sank her teeth into the greens as if they were savory flanks of meat.
My eyes returned to the rat’s escape route. I was patient. That was one virtue that hadn’t been beaten out of me through the years.
“Reva,” Molly said in a quivering voice. “Are we gonna stay here?”
I looked back at her. “Do you want to? We could use the rest.”
Molly kept her gaze on the floor. Sensing something was wrong, I approached her. “What is it, Molly?”
She licked her lips as if searching for flavor in their cracks. “It stinks here.”
“This entire world stinks.” Kneeling, I cradled her face in my hands. “Molly, look at me. What is it?”
She pulled off her red knit hat. Dark curls tumbled over her shoulders. “There’re bodies in the building next door.”
I soared to my feet. “You didn’t go inside, did you?”
“Uh-uh. I saw them through the window.”
“Stay here.”
I hurried through the empty hallway, slipped through the slack-hinged front door, and stepped outside. Snow spewed from the sky like thick pellets of wet fur. The chill coursed through my ragged coat as I tromped across the snow-speckled field toward the stone outbuilding.
Branches from an oak tree stretched outward along my path, revealing the thick woolen fibers from Molly’s coat she had tied to them, which guided me to a window. Breadcrumbs. It was a trick Molly used so I could find her if she ventured too far. I would talk to her later about using the fibers from her clothing. The days were getting colder, and my scrap material for patching the holes left behind was dwindling.
Clearing the fresh snowflakes from the glass, I leaned toward the broken window and peered inside. A familiar stench assaulted me. Old gardening equipment lay scattered along the dirt floor. Wooden planks rested against the far wall. To the left of it, highlighted in the dim light, lay the decomposing bodies.
I stepped away from the window. Remaining as still as possible, I looked out in all directions. When had the last person died, or were some of them still alive, watching me, waiting to see what I’d do next? The upstairs windows of the house appeared glassy dark. Anyone could be hiding there.
If the brain bug had killed these people, whoever stacked them inside the outbuilding was a fool. Bodies had to be burned. Anything less was a gamble with death. The bug spread fast, through skin contact, spit, and I suspected airborne particles from the clothing of a rotting corpse. I had lost my flint, and my stash of old matches was dwindling, otherwise I would set fire to the building. Besides, it didn’t matter anymore if the bodies were left as they were. Everyone was already dead.
I was immune to the brain bug, more commonly referred to as “the sickness.” That’s why I had been put in charge of the dying at Luchar, the place from which Molly and I recently fled. One by one I had watched my housemates slip into madness and die. One by one I disposed of their bodies the proper way. Then, when the last of them was gone, we abandoned Luchar.
I had made a promise to Molly’s father that if anything happened to him I’d get her to the safehouse she once called home. Well, something bad happened to him, but it took time before we could start our journey. I had hoped we would beat the late October snow, but the safehouse was taking us longer to find than we first thought. Stumbling upon this old homestead with its intact roof, sturdy walls, and wooden table we could chop up and use as firewood gave us hope we might have a place to rest for a while.
At least until the stars returned.
But the bodies killed that hope.
I hurried back to the house. It was still early morning. We had plenty of time to find another shelter. Molly didn’t object to leaving. I stuffed insulation from the walls into our boots, wrapped extra cloth around the top of Molly’s boots to keep the snow out, and draped her red scarf around her neck. Then I tied an old shirt around my own head and strapped on my backpack. And off we went.
The old homestead drifted from our sight as the snow encased it in a white tomb. I couldn’t help wondering if its occupants’ final days had been as terrifying as Molly’s and mine had been at Luchar.
People do horrific things when they think they might die.
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The snow fell throughout the day. Miles of emptiness filled our vision. We trudged onward, through graveyards and spent funeral pyres and spindly groves of trees. The wind picked up. Molly kept her arms tight against her body.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
My gaze roamed the surroundings. “We’ll find something soon.”
The Indo-Western War had struck the continent hard. When it ended, good, safe shelter had been difficult to find. Now, finding any place to rest seemed impossible.
Before the fighting, before the dark skies and the cold and the snow, the Midwest Province had been a great place to live with its eco-friendly towns, and spacious farms with fields laden with crops and livestock. The war ended ten years ago, and all traces of the life I once knew had disappeared along with the prolonged sunny skies that once filled my days.
Jagged edges of shattered buildings pierced through the snow near us, a cruel reminder of my past life. I pointed this out to Molly. Sometimes cellars filled with living supplies existed in ruins. We approached and stopped to assess our options. The ruins were vast. There was too much debris to dig through. But first we had to clear away the snow. We wouldn’t find any cellar opening without enormous effort.
With a heavy heart, I led Molly onward.
Empty land, shattered towns. It would make life easier if others were still here—the foraging, the strengthening of walls, having someone to hold at the day’s end—but Molly and I had been out here weeks, maybe months, and I was convinced everyone was dead. The war destroyed the country, and the sickness, it seemed, killed the survivors.
Maybe that was best. Now, there was nobody left to fight.
Molly lagged. Pausing, I waited for her to catch up. Her wispy legs lifted and fell, breaking through the snow like feathers as she neared me. I handed her the old flask I kept strapped to the side of my pack and let her drink her fill. Then I finished what was left and filled the flask with snow. I studied her face, making sure she was still there, and then took her small hand in mine and trudged onward.
“There’s nobody alive anymore, is there?” Molly said.
I sighed. Molly displayed unwavering strength despite her frail body, yet I suspected that if I said “enough,” she would drop in the snow and never want to rise, and I would be tempted to join her. How did you justify your own life when there were no others? What do you say to an eight-year-old who had witnessed what she had witnessed?
“Good people are right around the next bend, Molly.”
“I’m sorry we lost the stars.”
“Oh, Molly, that wasn’t your fault. Having the sun as a guide works as well. We’ll pick up the trail again soon, when the stars return. For now, we need to find a place to rest.”
Trying to stay positive, I swallowed my doubt. The truth was, even when the stars lit the night sky, my faith they would guide us to the safehouse had waned. Nothing could be trusted these days. Not the landscape, not the cold stars we followed on clear nights, and not any living soul who might still be roaming the land.
We trudged up a hill. The snow was to Molly’s knees now. She followed behind me in my tracks to alleviate the work needed to plow through it. We reached the top of the hill as my insides imploded from hunger pains, and I thought about the rat and wished we had stayed at the homestead a little while longer.
I stopped and looked outward. Molly lifted an arm, pointing it toward the sight in front of us.
Ahead, down in a shallow valley, sprawled a weather-glazed building. Smoke seeped from its chimneystacks. This wasn’t the safehouse we were looking for. I knew that the moment the men emerged from the front door.
I reached for my dagger.
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