CHAPTER 1
THE BOMBING
Hannah's breath frosted the air in front of her. A chill, visible reminder of the looming onset of winter. She knelt, silent and waiting, at the base of a jagged boulder.
Food will come soon, she told herself. With any hope. She'd been telling the others that the area was picked clean, that they needed to move on. They didn't listen. Chariot was tired, Andrew said. She needed rest from so much traveling. Survival was hard on an eight year old.
Yeah, but they needed food, too. They all did.
She cupped her hands together and blew. She had no gloves, and the cold would hinder her dexterity, but she had to fight it. She'd lost her finger tab long ago, leaving only her bracer for protection. She could hear her father's voice in her ear as, years ago, he placed her small fingers around the shaft of her first bow, the same composite she still carried.
"A good archer makes sacrifices. You have to be able to overcome any discomfort," he whispered into her ear as he tried to still her quivering hands. "Focus on the target. Breathe in. Breathe out. Steady. Ignore the cold. Patience means accuracy."
But that was a million years ago. Before the bombs fell, before the Raiders stepped foot into America. Before the Rot.
Some leaves crunched to her nine o'clock. She swiveled, careful not to make any noise, and raised her bow.
A nutria was rooting through the leaves, sniffing out what little food might be available in the cold, hardening ground. As silently as possible, she slipped an arrow from her quiver and nocked it.
The animal was unaware. It moved slowly, almost laboriously, snorting gently as it ambled along. Plenty of time to get her aim right.
Breathe in.
Steady. Ignore the cold.
The string dug into her cheek. She held it.
Breathe out.
Release.
The arrow thrummed through the air and, with a dull thud, struck its target through the neck. The animal lurched forward with a startled grunt before collapsing.
She slipped down off her perch and strode over, a confident lift in her step. A nutria this size could feed all of them for at least two meals, maybe more.
But when she grew near, the perk in her step died just as fast as her prey had.
She felt a hard shiver, and not from the cold. From a dozen yards away, she could see it. Hell, she could smell it.
A bloody lather was seeping from the creature's mouth. Yellow, pus-filled boils swelled, one into the other, on its underbelly. Some had already exploded, giving way to the raw, bloody sinew beneath. Most of its sleek brown fur was still clinging to the skin, concealing the pustules at a distance.
"Fuck," she said, before kicking the nearest tree and yelling, again, "Fuck!"
Her cry echoed through the silent forest, sending a handful of birds scattering with alarmed cries from a nearby tree. The noise held the possibility of attracting a larger predator. A starving bear, a mountain lion. Or, hell, more probable would be a squad of Raider scouts or a group of Libs.
But she didn't care. She could feel her stomach churning as she kicked leaves at the nutria's corpse. They would go hungry, again. Even worse, she was down to four arrows. Retrieving the used arrow meant that the next animal she shot would be infected on impact. She'd have to make more.
Hannah sighed, defeated. It was getting too close to sunset to keep going. Burnt orange light was seeping through the nearly barren trees, casting dark shadows at every turn, and she didn't want to imagine what they could be hiding. She'd have to hope Diana found some edible berries or nuts. The Walmart they'd camped near, half destroyed by the bombs from the initial drop, had been picked clean long before they'd arrived. There was nothing, and her supply of arrows was dwindling, wasted on Rotten prey. They had to move on.
"Joder todo," she mumbled. Hannah slung her bow across her back and, empty handed, began the long trek back to camp.
Hannah was 16 when the world exploded.
When the first planes began to roar overhead, she had been walking to her car after school. Barbara, her best friend, was taking her keys from her pocket and talking about a fairly difficult test they'd taken in Biology class. She remembered the familiar flicker of light behind her pale green eyes when she told Hannah she'd aced it for sure (while Hannah, on the other hand, was quite sure she'd done poorly). The charm that dangled from her bracelet, a silver arrow that Hannah had gotten her years before, gleamed in the sunlight as she tucked her long dark hair behind her ear and grinned.
There were no warnings, no predictions of an incoming attack. The public alarm system, so meticulously circuited to sound throughout the entire city at even the slightest sign of trouble, was never even activated until it was too late for most of them.
The first explosion was so loud that Hannah could barely hear the screaming that followed over the deafening tinnitus that immediately shrilled inside her head.
She felt metal cave beneath the bone-crunching force of her body. Pain shot through her back, her legs. Her lungs seized and, for one brief, terrifying moment, she thought she was dying. But then she could finally choke back air, could finally feel warm blood trickling down the side of her face, and she realized she was still alive.
At first, she thought she'd gotten hit by a car. The gravity of what was happening didn't register until she looked up, saw the planes. There were dozens, cutting in and out of clouds before diving low with the rushing roar of engine working simultaneously.
Instinct, plus the myriad of bomb drills they'd been running three times a week before lunch for years, told her to get down, take cover. She flattened against the pavement, rolled beneath the same car she'd slammed against. She could see Barbara a dozen feet away, sprawled out on the pavement on her back. Hannah watched as Barbara raised her head, her soft hair tumbling around her face, and slowly eased onto her elbows.
Hannah was screaming for her to come to her, to take cover, when the second bomb hit and the world exploded for the second time. She covered her head, feeling the ground shaking beneath her, aware of the spray of glass from the car's window across the asphalt. Another blast resonated somewhere in the distance.
She squeezed her eyes shut. A final piece of fragmentation zinged against the side of a car near her. All at once, she was assaulted with the metallic stench of blood, mingled with what she could only describe as gunpowder.
When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was the charm, sunlight glinting from the arrowhead. For one moment—one gleeful, fleeting moment—she thought Barbara had made it to her.
But only her arm had.
Splintered bone jutted from a mass of singed, bloody pulp. The leather strap of her bracelet was splattered with blood.
Shallow, ragged breathing echoed in her head. Explosions still rattled the surface of the earth, but off in the distance, farther away. She could still see a few planes zooming across the sky, turning into nothing more than tiny dots, a travelling constellation of destruction.
She crawled out from under the car, grotesquely aware of the blood and bits of flesh clinging to her clothes, and rose.
"Barbara?" she whimpered.
Barbara, or what was left of her, was lying in a pool of blood, chunks of flesh, and bone. Both of her legs were severed above the knees. A large fragment of car metal was jutting from her abdomen. Her eyes were open, haunting, staring up at the eerily empty sky. Blood seeped through her parted lips to trickle down her chin.
Hannah turned and spewed the contents of her stomach against the driver's side door of the car, grasping the side mirror in an attempt to steady her quivering legs.
This couldn't be real. It couldn't. Sure, the war had been heating up, and the CNN reports hadn't looked good and the bomb drills had really picked up—but there was no way. No fucking way. She was dreaming.
She fumbled for the pouch that was always strapped to her leg. It was still there. The respirator was still inside. She only hoped that she wouldn't have to use it. Blood was pouring hot down her face, but she didn't know where it was coming from. If it was even hers.
Finally, she swayed to her feet, swiped her lips with the back of her hand. A piece of charred flesh on the sleeve of her shirt made her retch again, but she had nothing left.
Hesitant, shaking, Hannah looked up.
The Glastonbury High School parking lot was complete carnage. Blood, limbs, death. Other people in a similar state of haze and disbelief, some missing body parts, some unharmed. Where there had once been the vibrant chatter of students getting ready to go home for the day, the shrieking and sobbing of her dying peers now echoed against what were on the walls of her splintered school and the sharp fragments of what was left of a lot filled with vehicles.
She retched again, letting the foaming white bile drip from her bottom lip.
"Hannah," a voice behind her called. "Hannah, are you okay?"
She turned, unsteady on her shaking legs, and saw Rita.
They weren't friends. Acquaintances, maybe, if she could consider someone in her class who she knew nothing about to fall under that category.
Her tan skin was covered in blood. It was even matted into her black hair, which, usually pulled back into a neat braid, was now wild, askew. She couldn't quite tell of the blood was hers or not.
"I'm not hurt," Hannah choked out, struggling not to look at her dead friend. "I think. Are you?"
She moved cautiously around cars, both wrecked and intact, feeling her stomach heave and throat constrict at the sight of blood and the remains of people she once knew.
Rita didn't answer. Instead, she was staring, slack-jawed, at the body of a boy nearby. But Hannah could see that she wasn't completely unharmed. A massive gash ran across her forearm, blood flowing from what looked like a curtain of flesh down her limp fingers.
"I'm okay," she said, jerking her head up to meet Hannah's gaze. Her light brown eyes were distant, hollow.
Hannah's shirt was splattered in blood, but she shed down to her white tank top and wrapped it around Rita's arm, staunching as much of the flow as she could, the way they'd learned in First Aid class. She could feel the hot tears streaking from her eyes, cutting down her cheeks. She clutched Rita's arm, applying pressure to the wound, trying to keep her focus on the survivor in front of her and not the death that surrounded them. Her knees shook violently, threatening to give, but she knew she had to keep standing.
She had to keep going.
"Muchos gracias, Hannah," Rita said. Hannah felt the hand of her other arm close over her shoulder and offer a gentle squeeze. "Thank you, very much."
Hannah gripped the straps of her rucksack until her dry knuckles turned white as she trudged the half-mile back to their camp. Nausea and hunger churned her stomach as she struggled to get the image of Barbara out of her mind. She looked down at her wrist, clenching her teeth as she stared at the orange sunset reflecting in the charm on her wrist.
"Stop it," she muttered to herself. "Nothing good comes from this shit."
In an ordinary life, years before the bombs and the Rot, this time of year would have been her favorite. There'd be pumpkins, and scary movies, and soon a giant Thanksgiving feast with her father, Andy, and her extended family.
Her mouth watered at the thought of so much food. There would be no such feast this year, or the next. Probably never again in her lifetime.
There would only be Rot and survival. Or, on an unlucky day, Rot and death, if the two could even be considered mutually exclusive. Perhaps that would even be a lucky day. Five years of growing up fast in a cold, dangerous world plagued with infection and spontaneous death had been easing her mind in the direction that dying would simply be easier.
Either way, Rot and war and the ceaseless grumbling in her stomach couldn't take away the beauty of autumn. They'd been in what Diana told them was called the Shenandoah Valley for over a month. The other girl's pre-Rot life hadn't been too far. It was gorgeous, more leaves and colors than Hannah had ever seen in Glastonbury this time of year, and the great Blue Mountains beyond only amplified the beauty of raw nature.
Hannah was spending so much time lost in her own head that she wasn't paying attention to the uneven ground beneath her feet. Her boot snagged a root and she tumbled to her knees.
She cursed.
But as she stood and glanced down, she quickly realized that it wasn't a root at all. It was a leg.
The leg of one of the Rotten.
His body, or what was left of it, lay slumped against the trunk of a tree. Clothes shielded her from having to see the state of his flesh, the boils bursting with pus and blood, but Hannah could tell he was far along in the stages of infection. The stench of decomposition, combined with urine and fecal matter, hit her nostrils in a barrage of filth. She suppressed a gag.
Blood had soaked through every fiber of his being. His skull was exposed, one eyelid peeled away to make his glassy, unfocused eye comically large. A swollen tongue hung limp from the corner of his mouth, dry and cracked. Hannah had seen plenty in the years to not be so phased by the gore, and so she simply took a shallow breath and stepped backwards, her hand automatically combing the thigh of her ripped and filthy jeans.
Her respirator had been stolen long ago. She was convinced that the infection couldn't be spread through inhalation—at least not after the initial stages—but she wasn't about to test how close she could get.
A large canvas bag lay next to him.
Hannah quickly knelt and began rifling through it, pocket by pocket. A few loose AA batteries. Who knew if they were good or bad or if she could even use them for anything, but she threw them into the front pocket of her bag anyway.
Two rolls of toilet paper? Holy fucking jackpot.
Just as she was getting ready to open the larger pouch, a rattle startled her. She leapt to the side, glancing up to see the man's unfocused eyes locked on her own. He gurgled, twitched his fingers. Pink froth leaked from the corner of his mouth, dripped over his massive, dry tongue.
"Hell," Hannah whimpered. "You're still alive? No way!"
His eyes were pleading. His lips cracked and bled with each desperate, unintelligible grunt.
Hannah reached back to her quiver, rolled her fingers over her remaining ammunition. Four arrows. Not enough to use one on him. Not enough to put him out of his misery. And her knife, hell no, that was used for skinning uninfected kills.
And she had no gun. She'd lost it long ago, somewhere back in the rubble that was once the capital of the United States. Even if she did, she didn't know if she had it in her to waste the bullet.
It was a cruel fate, but one she would play no part in.
"I'm so sorry," Hannah said. She inched away, pulling his tattered bag along with her. Sorrow and guilt stabbed at her like a fresh wound, but she couldn't help him. An arrow might mean another meal, another day of life. The Rot would take him, painfully, but it was life or death, and she was the one with the chance. He didn't have much time left, as it was.
The crunch of leaves and twigs beneath boots made her bolt upright, slinging the bag over her shoulder in one quick, defensive movement.
Hannah whirled.
A girl stood behind her. She was a little taller, in torn jeans and a tattered grey hooded sweatshirt underneath an oversized black leather jacket. Messy red hair fell in dirty tangles to barely above her shoulders, framing a gaunt face that told Hannah she hadn't eaten in just as long.
She said nothing as she pulled her pistol from her belt, aimed the barrel to the Rotten's forehead, and pulled the trigger.
Then, she turned on Hannah.
Hannah mad a grab for her bow, but a quick flick of the other girl's wrist and the cock of the pistol made her freeze with her hands up. She flashed her palms, sucked in cold air, and stared uneasily.
"I'm not Rotten," Hannah said, glancing at the body. Blood and bits of grey brain matter and yellow pus were sprayed against the bark of the tree and the damp leaves beyond. "I just found him. Swear."
She followed Hannah's gaze, pistol never wavering. "Bag," she demanded..
The ruck weighed heavy on Hannah's shoulder. There could be tons of stuff in there. Who knew how much food, who knew how many days of survival?
"Bag," the girl repeated. "Now."
"Come on," Hannah pleaded, shrugging the bag off her shoulder and letting it hit the ground. "I have a kid to feed. We haven't eaten in days."
Pistol lingering, she grabbed a strap and pulled the bag toward her. Hannah could feel flashing green eyes studying her face, her body.
"Kid?" She smirked, eyes running up and down Hannah's small, thin frame. Her stained and torn clothing. "Nice story, Brave, but I don't buy a word."
"She's not mine," Hannah grumbled. "But, I swear."
"Yeah, yeah." She lowered her pistol and knelt to begin digging through the main compartment. "I bet she holds the fucking cure for mankind, whatever, whatever, I've heard it all.
A few cans spilled onto the leaves. Hell! That thing had been loaded. Hannah let her hand creep around her backside as the girl began shoveling them back in.
And when she rose, Hannah's knife was at her throat faster than she could lift her pistol.
The girl eyed Hannah coolly, as if completely un-phased by the cold, sharp steel against her skin. As if she'd been there a million times before and it was nothing new, no fresh threat.
"Damn, Brave," she said with the same smirk as before. "You must really think I'm an asshole. Save your badassery for the Raiders. They're all over out here, in case you haven't noticed."
Her hand was outstretched. In it, two large cans of baked beans.
"One for you. One for the kid, real or not," she said. "Besides, I hate beans."
Hannah lowered her knife, took the cans. They were full in her hands and she turned them in her fist, relief flooding beneath her skin. "Thanks," she managed.
The other girl nodded, slinging the bag over her back. She turned on a dirty boot, but not before Hannah could choke out two final words:
"Stay calm."
The girl whirled, her expression molding into surprise before returning to the haughty confidence that had subsisted throughout their brief meeting. Pale, chapped lips parted, moving slowly as she replied with a quiet, "Stay alive, Brave," before turning and trudging off through the trees and brush.
Hannah watched. She could have chosen to be angry, to impale an arrow into the girl who had stolen sustenance that would have helped aid her small family, but she was much too fascinated by changing upon another survivor—a solo one at that.
Besides, Hannah still had more than when she'd left in the morning. She had food.
Stay calm, stay alive.
She shoved the food into her bag just as the girl was disappearing into the brush and turned toward camp. Unlike her, Hannah wasn't solo. She had people that relied on her.
Hannah's car was still intact, save for the windows that had been blown out. As Hannah and she swiped away the glass and scrambled inside, her mind went to Barbara. To her best friend, who she was leaving behind.
"Wait," she heard herself say.
Hannah leapt from the driver's seat and ran to where she still lay. Tears sprang to her eyes, blurring bodies, frag, and other survivors who were struggling to come to terms into bleary shapes.
When Hannah got to her, hot tears began to stream down her face, drip onto her chest.
"Barbara," Hannah murmured, kneeling. Her eyes were still open, staring, haunting. The gore was still too much. She felt bile rising in her throat and turned to retch.
"Hannah, what are you doing? We need to go. My family lives in the hot zone."
"I have family, too," Hannah snapped. Although, her family was far less of a priority, as her father had wisely insisted they live on the outskirts of the hot zone, the parts of Glastonbury that would not be a target in an attack. "But we can't just leave her."
Gathering herself together, she gripped under Barbara's one arm and started to pull. Blood was still leaking slowly from her torn limbs, but the flow had decreased as circulation ceased in death.
"Rita," Hannah panted. "Help me."
She hesitated, but grabbed the stump of her other arm and helped Hannah drag her to the backseat of her car, where they placed her carefully inside. On the one arm, the one Rita set carefully beside the dead girl's body while gagging into her bicep, Hannah caught a glimpse of the leather bracelet she'd made her years ago, the silver arrow dull with dust and spattered in blood. She took it off and pocketed it. "I'm sorry, Barbara," she said, cupping her already cooling hand in her own, unwilling to let go but knowing she had to. She had to get to her father. She had to survive.
She had to do what she'd been taught for years.
Rita was visibly unnerved about riding in the same car as a corpse, but she said nothing and seemed to understand. Or, maybe she was just in shock. Hannah couldn't tell and honestly wouldn't blame her if she was. Hell, she was operating on pure training, muscle memory. She knew that, sooner or later, she'd have to come to terms with what was happening. But now was the time for action.
The real effect of the bombing became even more evident as she slowly navigated the streets of Glastonbury. She saw no fire engines, no paramedics, no police cars. All she saw was destruction.
Entire buildings were collapsed, bodies strewn throughout the streets. A few people stride around as if in a daze. Some sobbed, some begged at the sides of their dead friends, family members. The alarm system was shrilling throughout the streets, the monotonous tone over the broadcast system repeating:
THIS IS NOT A DRILL. SEEK COVER IMMEDIATELY. STAY CALM AND YOU STAY ALIVE.
Someone came to the window, bloodied hands gripping the jagged edge of Hannah's door.
"Please, let me in. Please."
Hannah swallowed hard and pressed the accelerator.
Rita had been trying to reach her family through her cell, but it was obvious that the towers had been demolished in the attack. But she kept trying anyway, holding out hope, just like Hannah was clinging to the belief that her father and Andy were okay, that they'd gotten into the basement in time. Andy was in kindergarten, so he would've gotten home early, and her father worked from home and had kept their training and survival skills honed for this very moment. They're fine, Hannah kept telling herself. Father knew what to do.
But as they approached Rita's home, or what was left of the townhouses that stretched through center Glastonbury, she felt her hope dwindling. The entire span of buildings had collapsed beneath the power of a nearby explosion, causing the entire foundation to collapse. Furniture was littered everywhere, strewn across the block from the blast's negative pressure. Body parts could be seen beneath wood, steel, and layers of crumbled cement.
Rita leapt from the car before Hannah could even come to a complete stop and was clambering across the rubble when she stumbled out after him.
"Mama!" she was shouting. "Rosa! Donde estan? Por favor, Dios, por favor!" A painful pause. "Mama!"
Her voice seemed to echo through black noise, growing more desperate with each lack of response. An arm was jutting from beneath pieces of roof and ceiling. Rita began to paw at it, shrieking with fear. "Hannah, ayudame!"
Hannah felt a lump rising in her throat, a sense of dread as she began to lift pieces of Rita's home from the body.
It was her. It was her mother. In her arms, swaddled and whole, she clutched an infant, cared for and held lovingly even in death.
They'd been crushed. They'd stood no chance.
"Rita," Hannah started, but it was no use. Her knees crumbled beneath him as she covered her mother and infant sister with her body, shoulders shaking with sobs. She was screaming in Spanish, words that Hannah couldn't understand, jumbled prayers and pleading with grief. Hannah felt tears stinging her eyes once more. She placed her hand on Rita's shoulder, hoping that the presence of another survivor would help, if only a little. She thought about her own family. Father and Andy would be safe at home. They had to be.
Above Rita's screams, above everything, a low hum cut through the air. Hannah looked up. The sky still held the dust of destruction, but through it, she could see the planes.
"Rita," Hannah said. She ignored her. "Rita, we have to get to cover. They're coming back."
Rita made no movement.
Hannah tugged her shoulder. "Rita," she begged, more urgent as the planes grew closer. "Come on!"
Rita shook her head. "I'll die with them. Fuck this, Hannah. Fuck them. Joder todo!"
So Hannah ran. Alone.
A restaurant stood mostly intact across the street. The Last Wednesday Society, a small diner that she and Barbara often frequented after school for tea and a small meal. The front of the building had been shattered, splintered in the weight of a blast. Hannah dashed in, vaguely aware of other survivors crouching in corners, huddled together, some sobbing, some completely in control and trying to help any way they could. Hannah dove under the bar, where she met the familiar proprietor's stricken gaze, and waited.
The planes came and went, but no explosions.
Hannah rose and went to the edge of the restaurant where the wall had collapsed, stepping carefully over chunks of cement and rebar. A few people stepped up next to her, equally confused, equally curious.
Hannah had feared more blasts, destruction, chaos, a swift death. But the silence, followed by the slow fall of white powder, was far and beyond the most terrifying thing she had seen that day.
Her hand fumbled against the small bag that stayed strapped to her thigh. She could sense others doing the same. She'd lived with it there for most of her life but never imagined she would have to use it. She grasped her respirator, and in sync with the others, in the muscle memory that had resulted from countless morning drills, slipped it over her face.
Hannah watched as, against a backdrop of carnage and mass destruction, of what little remained of the place she called home, the Rot drifted slowly and silently into the lives that remained.