Contributor: Amanda Firefox

It was almost nightfall when I found her, crouched up in the corner of a house that jutted from the rocky field like a shattered tooth. Dingy, starved and covered in dirt, I almost took her for one of them, almost silenced her at the speed of reflex, but there was something there that stopped me– a glint of intelligence, life.

I didn’t have much, she had less. We shared the last few day-old bites of canned tomato I’d been carrying around in my pack since the previous night, forged that kind of rough bond of trust that solidifies between survivors like a dirty scab, binds us loosely together. Maybe she’d been beautiful once, maybe it was the light, the mud and grease, the way the moon reflected white-golden at the edge of her eye, or maybe I had just been too long on the run, too long alone. I kept to myself after we’d eaten, picked a different corner and slouched into the closest thing to sleep anyone could manage in a rotten ruin with those things always lurking somewhere nearby, shuffling through the darkness.

I got most of the way through a loose, stumbling doze before the first crash woke us both.