No one really knows who they are, or why they came. They are called the Horsemen. They arrived in a deranged mockery of Biblical fashion—the proverbial thieves in the night. In a wash of blood, fire, and death, they came, and were just as quickly gone.

The Month of the Devil. It was a sustained, pulsing blur of cities vaporized into dust, troops burned to cinders, Leaguers shattered like Matryoshka dolls when they moved to resist. Nuclear weapons detonating in retaliation, dropping the bleak, heather curtain of suspended animation over the thick, stifled earth. And now, none is above the grasping, skeleton claws of this dead world. There is no life. There is no immortality. There are no cheats. The al Ghuls were slaughtered for their Lazarus Pits, their heads tacked on pikes like gruesome pins on a bare, dusty cushion outside the crumbled ruins of their stronghold. Within weeks any users of the pools met the same death at the hands of the Purge, who bombed the pits into steam. This is our punishment, they said. It's the best we deserve.

Cold.

Always the dank, chattering, bone-penetrating chill.

The sallow, graying noon hangs filmy overhead, the rag of smog stretched like filthy cheesecloth over the muddled sun. Even curled against Wolf, I shiver in tectonic quakes that set my teeth to mimicking the quick-fire din of applause. The boy fares little better, balled up quivering into the concavity of my abdomen like a tartan-wrapped pill bug. I draw in a stifled breath through the scarf tied over my mouth and nostrils. There are two scarves, one for each of us, both enchanted against what soot there still is in the air.

There's a seeking in my abdominals, a sense of roving and shifting. Empty and clawing and weak, sending the accustomed wobbliness through my limbs. I've been dizzy with fatigue and undernourishment for weeks now. Today will be hard going if we don't find food. It will be hard going until then, too.

Exhausted to the marrow, part of me wants to return to sleep (and dreams), but I'm not quite ready to quit life yet, however poor a pass I might make at it these days.

"Come on," I murmur, waking the boy. "It's time to pack up."

He shivers. "I'm really tired, Dad."

"I know."

"And I'm cold."

"I know. But if we stay here, we'll only stay cold. At least moving around we'll be warmer."

"Five more minutes?"

"…Okay. Five more minutes."

"Thanks."

"Sure."

I lay a hand on his head, working my fingers in the messy, heavy tufts of thick, jet black hair that he's inherited from both parents. If not for the continued, brackish rain that's given it a good drenching since last night, it would be unspeakably scuzzy. He needs a haircut. I'm not good at those.

"I think I'm ready to get up now," he says, by and by.

"All right," I say, and try to will my aching muscles into motion. Wolf rises, stretches, and then sits next to the boy.

"Are we going to walk all day again?" he asks.

"Probably. Sorry."

"…It's okay."

"We'll be there soon. Promise."

"Where your friends are?"

"Yep, that's right."

"Dad, how many friends do you have?"

"I used to have a lot," I say. "Come on, let's get up."

Getting a fire going in the rain is a pain in my ass. I have to wrangle the tarp into submission, no easy feat in the determined wind, until eventually, I launch full-scale war on it. By the time I've finally gotten a small flame sparked in the small, portable stove we carry, I'm cursing a blue streak and overtly grumpy. The boy, unfazed, hatches some doodles in the mud with a stick. One night, we had thrown his sketchbook into the fire, one sheet at a time, to keep it burning. I had to fight tears, watching his drawings torched.

I sift through the regrettably lightweight knapsack, assessing what little food stores we have left. I feel like a total heel every time I see the fruit—I pinched those goods from one of the Light's greenhouses. I try to remind myself of Bart's words regarding scavenger rights. Finder's keepers and all that. When we came across the conservatory, I was still good for another day or two, but the kid was in bad shape, and needed to eat as in yesterday. Desperate, I left my son with Wolf, and broke in to raid that place like a lion on a field day in a sheep pen. I didn't feel all that bad, not at first, when I saw the look on my son's face as I showed him the plunder, and watched him as he happily plowed through the armfuls of fruit I brought out for him. But the guilt assaulted me later, really hard, enough that I even dwelled on returning the remainder of the booty to the greenhouse. I knew we were past that point, though, and at least my son slept more deeply and comfortably that night. I haven't touched a fragment of the fruit since.

A can of tuna, a cup of instant noodles, a container of pork and beans, and the remaining fruit is all we have left. We ran out of bottled water. I gnaw my lip, which is already chapped and chewed to shreds. We'll need food, but we don't have any credits left, and panhandling unsuspecting strangers leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. However, there's just no promise of well-gotten gain these days; at least, not for Sams.

Shortened from "Samaritans." It's what heroes are called now. It's not a good thing.

"Acid rain instant noodles," I mutter. "I do not like them, Sam I am. I am Sam, Sam I am, Sam on the lam, I am, I am…"

I crack up, and then think I might finally be losing it as I run rainwater into a cup through a filtering cloth. It's a slow, tedious, boring process, but after a time, we have a full cup of reasonably clean water. I remove the cloth and inspect the damage. Almost completely gray, black in places. I expel a breath. The boy has sat, resting his back against Wolf's form, watching this whole while.

"So we definitely can't drink the rain water without using the cloths," he states.

"Yep, that's right," I tell him, setting the water in a pan over the fire. I hand him an apple, then grab another cloth and set to filtering more rain as the cup heats. "You know, we couldn't do even this a few years ago. Levels of contaminants were way too high to be safe even after running the water through a filter. We'd have to sit here and boil it."

He pulls the scarf from his face. "And then we'd really be in for it because we can't stay in one place for too long."

"Yeah. And then before those contaminants, things were pretty radioactive still."

The boy makes a slashing motion across his throat. "Yep, and if we drank that, it'd be curtains."

"That's right," I mutter absently.

"That's why the water rations were so low for such a long time, even with it constantly raining and snowing and stuff."

I smile at him. "You're a smart cookie, you know that?"

He looks up at me, and startlingly resembles his mother in the pallid light. "Did I get that from you?"

I shrug. "Maybe. Your mom was smart, too."

"Am I like Mom?"

"Dead ringer."

"I thought everyone said I looked like you."

"Well," I tell him, "you do, but…"

I don't want to talk about this anymore. However, he looks at me expectantly.

"But what?" he prompts.

"I see pieces of her in you all the time," I say, as lightly as I can.

He smiles.

Yep. Dead ringer.

"I miss her," he states, pressing at the mud under his foot with his shoe.

I'm silent a moment, and then say, "Yeah. Me, too, kiddo."

The water is boiling. I prepare the instant noodles, oddly reminded of college. I hand the cup to the boy. He spoons some into his mouth, and gives a few handfuls to Wolf. After a few minutes of eating, he extends the noodles to me.

"Here, Dad," he says. "You should probably have some, too."

I shake my head. "I'll pick off whatever you don't finish."

He ponders the noodles, and then holds the cup back out. "No, go ahead."

He's right that I shouldn't go without. I eat, and try to remember to pace myself. I don't want to finish what's left in the cup without letting my son have the rest, but he and Wolf have polished off about three-quarters of its contents, and if I don't at least make some effort to keep my own strength up, I'll run every risk of going the same route as his mother, and he'll be left only with Wolf in this hostile place. Smart kid or no, that thought rots my gut.

We wrap up, and I tell the boy to put his scarf back on. Even with the significantly lower levels of ash, soot, and other pollutants in the air now, it's best to err on the side of caution. I draw my own scarf up over my nose, pack up our meager belongings, and we set out, heading west.

Savage enjoyed a meteoric rise to power, only we're still waiting for the equally meteoric fall that should follow.

Captain Atom absorbed such a vast quantity of fallout from the nuclear retaliation that he disappeared. Just transmutated into oxygen. Presumably to an unfathomably distant future, but there's no way to really tell.

The Light laid claim to that act of tremendous altruism. Their assertions falsely backed by fallacious documents and evidence. They were championed as Earth's greatest heroes in the wake of the Justice League's failure to protect the earth from the Horsemen, a flop that forced leaders the world over to turn to their nuclear arsenals and lay waste to the planet in a sweeping of fire and ash. Previous indiscretions of the Light, all apparently forgotten. All swept under the rug without a speck remaining when Savage implicated that the otherworldly visitation was a response to some botched League mission, elsewhere in the universe, long since disremembered.

Unrest. Disputes. Skirmishes. Finally, war.

The League, its ranks sparse and resources depleted, unable to do much more than subsist beneath the onslaught of attacks. Militaries ill-equipped to do battle with the Light, decimated and shamed. Countless more in cahoots with our enemies. Our sympathizers and allies outnumbered, overpowered, and finally, defeated.

The US president was targeted and assassinated as a League supporter in short order thereafter. Savage seized the States before a thundering ovation. He was a savior, they said. Barbara and I sat in our apartment in Bludhaven, where we watched the broadcast of what would cost us our last shreds of real freedom on television. Her face was white in the pale glow of the television, her chest unmoving with her detained breath.

Within days, the words we feared.

"All members of the Justice League, and its cooperative, Young Justice, including sympathizers of these terrorist cells, are to be handed over to the appropriate authorities with immediacy and extreme prejudice. Any assistance provided to known members and supporters will be regarded as an act of terrorism. All symbols, paraphernalia, terms, and names concomitant with any Justice League or Young Justice affiliates will be received as highly suspicious and subject to investigation. Failure to comply with these regulations will result in punishment to the fullest extent of the law."

Of course, telling a Leaguer not to suit up is like telling a shark not to swim.

So weird, I think to myself, as I help my son navigate a rushing, black-water river on slick, silty rocks in the rapidly fading daylight. I never saw myself as a father, biological, adoptive or otherwise. A big brother, sure, but father, no. And yet, here I am, and here I've been.

Traversing the stream in the water, using it to etch our passage, is slow going and cold, but necessary. Marauders are preceded by genetically enhanced, flesh-eating hounds. It's thanks to countless lucky stars that their enhancements haven't enabled them to pick up scents in running water. It's a profoundly risky business. The rocks are randomly dispersed across the river, with plenty of deep, quick-flowing water between. The temperature is only dropping—the rain is steadily evolving into sleet. Bits of ice travel over the surface of the water. My hands are numb, the fingers tingling painfully and burning at the tips. My hair keeps trailing into my eyes. I'm shaking almost to the point of convulsing. I think it would be nice to feel my phalanges again. I can't remember the last time we slept in a house.

"Dad, check it out!" the boy calls, apparently impervious to the crap-ass weather, leaping blithely to the next stone. His balance is good, his arms outstretched and steady, his posture straight and confident. If things change, he'll likely surpass me as an acrobat. "Dad, watch!"

"I am. You're doing great, kiddo," I tell him, smiling.

Wolf is a skilled acrobat himself, hopping securely from one rock to the next. His legs and undercoat are sopping, but his shoulders and back are only dampened from the rain. Occasionally, he shakes out his coat.

It's a good ways from the shore, and too far from the next potential stepping stone, when I get a perch on the last viable rock. I try not to swear, even though it's not like it's anything the boy hasn't heard. The part of travelling in water, the part I've dreaded, has come.

The general idea is to make the Marauders believe that we tried to cross the stream via the outcroppings of rock, then got sucked into the current to drown, or that we crossed the river downstream. Either way, we have to end up a good ways down in order for either one of those to be a plausible ruse, and tonight we'll set up camp without having actually crossed the water.

I'll have to wade with the kid on my shoulders. We're already wet and cold, but not soaked through, thanks to some of the garb we have on. I'd rather none of us goes hypothermic today, but given the sleet and floating bits of ice, it looks like that's not in the cards. We'll also probably have to camp earlier than I'd like.

Damn.

"Well," I say. "Time to take a bath. You okay with riding on my shoulders?"

"You're really getting in the water? You'll catch your death of cold," he says.

I turn, and give him a smile. "Like I said. Pieces of your mom all the time."

"…Will you be okay?"

"Oh, yeah, I'll be good. It's not like Popsicles have feelings or anything."

He looks quizzically at me.

"Just means I'll be cold," I explain, recalling that he's never had or even heard of Popsicles. "But it'll be fine, we'll just have to find a good, dry-ish place to hunker down for the night so I can defrost."

He makes a face. "You're so weird, Dad."

"Well, that's a trait you've inherited, along with my devilish good looks and charm. Come on, better get moving."

I wait for him to jump to the rock I'm standing on, and Wolf hops to the stone he just leapt from. There's just enough room for me to kneel down, and the boy climbs atop my shoulders. There's no easing into water this cold, so I just plunge in up to my neck. The shock yanks the breath right out of me and about fences every motion for a spell, although the violent current breaks this brief halt. Wolf lowers himself into the river, and vigorously starts paddling. I can't seem to get my lungs working as I laboriously make my way downstream, every movement pulling strength I don't have from my limbs. By the time I hit the first footfall that doesn't flirt with dragging my head, and my son, under the water, I'm past the point of shaking—not good. My fingers, aside from the prickly numbness born of the chill, have fallen asleep, along with the entirety of my left arm and the right fore. My heart sputters in my chest, then slows to a sporadic thumping, then sputters again.

When we finally break off from the current to reach the shore, it's all I can do to keep focused on the task at hand. My brain has gone stupid, along with my digits, and I stare unseeing at the blackened sand for a second as my thoughts try to catch up with our surroundings. I tilt forward, unable to keep fully upright. Thankfully, my son is on top of things, drawing me into the thicket of evergreens maybe a hundred feet from the shore, Wolf following close.

"Dad? Dad, you okay?" he asks, plunking me onto my butt under the sparse conifers.

I don't really have the wherewithal to answer, just to resist the drowsy cold that threatens to draw me into the hinterland of sleep, a dimension I might not return from. I'm dimly aware of the boy speaking, but I'm having a hard time picking up on what he says. I sluggishly realize he's dragging my soaked clothes off, then wrapping me in a tolerably dry blanket, and then setting up the tarp. I watch with intense concentration, keeping myself in the here and now, as Wolf shakes out his fur, then rubs up against the tree trunks, drying his soaked, heavy coat.

My son gets a bit of spit going by speaking some words and lighting one of our precious starter logs (regrettable, but admittedly necessary right now), then coaxes my immobile arms from their locked positions to nudge my tingling hands into my armpits. Things I've done for him throughout these weeks in the wild, copied now. Through the shrinkwrap that the cold has stretched around my brain, I feel a detached, sick sliver of guilt that my ten-year-old has been forced into playing caretaker.

"Dad, come on," he says, urging me to move toward the small, orange flames that crackle and flicker in the wet, frigid air. "Get closer to the fire."

I acquiesce, and notice that he's shuffled out of his damp threads, and has burrowed up beneath the blanket, his arms wrapped around me like the belts of a lifejacket. Wolf, now reasonably shaken out, trots over and curls his vast, furry body around us both. After some moments spent like this, I start to quiver again, then chatter, and then feel that I can at last cajole my arms into returning my son's embrace. Finally, much warmer, I reach up and squeeze a handful of his damp hair.

"Thanks, kiddo," I mumble.

"You know, Dad—you promised you wouldn't scare me like that," he tells me. There's levity in his voice, but it doesn't fully mask the little eddies of fear that churn beneath.

"I know," I mutter. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay." He draws back a little. "Umm… can we eat? Did you want to?"

I shake my head. "You go ahead."

I regret that we won't be finding food, and that we're officially down to the barest stores, but the wade through the icy stream has left me bone-tired and too weak to move much beyond reclining and shivering. Against Wolf's haunches, I feel intoxicated lying in the heat from his body, and from the fire.

"Can I have the tuna?" asks the boy, rifling through the pack.

I nod. "You should have some of the fruit, too."

"We won't have much left, though…"

"It's okay. We'll turn something up tomorrow."

"Okay."

"Get a dry shirt on and make sure you brush your teeth."

"I will."

"With toothpaste. I'm serious."

"I know, I know."

I drop off before he's even ventured out from under the blanket.

When I wake for a moment, I register that his warm, small body is pressed against my chilled, tired one, and I encircle him with both arms. I rest my face against his hair, now dry, as the rain dribbles against the tarp overhead. Wolf sleeps to our backs, his side rising and falling in a lullaby-like rhythm. Everything I have in this world is under this tarp. The lowering fire still burns, fueled by the starter log and, to my regret, one of the boy's books resting atop, burning slowly through the hardbound cover. One of us should keep watch, but it's too cold and miserable even for Marauders to put in more than a few sniffs to find us. Bad weather, for all its dangers, at least renders one moot. Secure for now, I'm asleep again in seconds.

Sams, they call us. "Good" Samaritans. Bad people who have hidden behind their good deeds. The sparks of anger and fear fanned into flames that dwarfed the firestorms that ravaged the globe.

There might have been a time that posters of us hung in the bedrooms and lockers of teenyboppers and fans, that people stopped to have photos taken with us, or to request our autographs after pleading with us to share with them a few anecdotes. That time folded rapidly beneath the advent of the hot, bloody mistrust of our kind, until it was forgotten completely. As though it never even existed, outside of emphasizing our growing universal letdowns.

And then, the Marauders appeared. Groups of twisted brigands with a particularly fiery hatred, handpicked and fueled by commendation from Savage himself. They prowl the planet even now, their enhanced hounds as big as small horses and the breathing illustration of every childhood horror questing for the tiniest traces of us left behind, penning us in hiding like rodents and reducing us to only the smallest and most secretive efforts to fight back in the wake of all of our blood they've shed.

Divide and conquer.

So far, it's a winning strategy.