The Survivors: Book One

The fear inside screamed it and Angela nodded, blowing out rings of smoke. They all were. These last weeks had been full of things she hoped never tell her man. Kenny wouldn't understand her having a gun, or helping these people. If he had been here, things would have been different, but she had been alone when the bombs fell, alone when the first desperate survivor had pounded on her door, and she had made her choice alone. The suffering was too great for her to deny them what little help she could give.

Kenny would have turned them away with icy looks and threats, but he was AWOL, and she couldn't sit by and let people die without at least trying to prevent it. She would face him with the entire list of rules she had broken when he found her, or when she found him, but for now, she wasn't done adding up crimes to be punished for. The two biggest transgressions, which he might kill her for, were still to come.

The storm flew by quickly, the threat disappearing as quickly as it had come, and Angela eased the car up Queen City's steep, narrow pavement, trying to avoid the big chunks of debris rolling through the ripples of muddy water. Cars and wrecks had been pulled to the side of this winding hill, looking like lined-up dominoes waiting to be pushed over.

As with the rest of this broken city, she saw no signs of life, no one trying to continue like normal as she drove through her own neighborhood, but she could feel the eyes watching her from the barely cracked blinds. She was disappointed by it. She had hoped people would come together, but these survivors wanted nothing to do with her, only desired her to be gone, and she sped up, more than willing to comply. She understood how they felt. She, too, hated going out; hated leaving the small security of her den, but Warren had cleared this hill so she could make the trip rather than forcing her to live with them. Saying no after that was not an option.

When they called for her on the CB, she always answered. Her Oath hadn't vanished with the War, but she sighed in relief when her three-story, yellow brick building came into view. Leery eyes swept the nearly identical rows of red brick duplexes surrounding her, their matching mailboxes and light poles beaten up, dented from enduring man and nature's fury. It all looked the same.

Parking in the back lot, next to the small flower garden, her sad eyes sought out the tiny grave tucked amid rows of purple violets. Grief enveloped her.