Cassie.
Cassandra laughed as her father slid the steaming bowl of stew along the surface of the table towards her. Her smile lighting up the room as the young woman's hand deftly shot out, stopping the dish as it skidded past. Some of the contents slopped over the edge, causing the girl to cry out as it scalded her knuckles, raising another laugh from the men sitting round the table in the old derelict building.
"You all packed again then?" Her father asked. Smiling as he spooned some of the meal into his mouth, the gravy spilling from the spoon and staining the gray hair of his beard.
"Yeess daaad." She replied, elongating each word and rolling her eyes as only a petulant seventeen year old girl can. "Everything I'm taking is packed and ready, I even had Charlie load it onto the cart for me already. When do we leave already? I'm booored. We've been here for days now."
Her father nodded his thanks to the one eyed guard who had helped his daughter before answering the girl's question. "We'll move out in the morning, we needed to resupply before we pushed on, otherwise we'd never make it to the boat. It's going to be a tough day tomorrow and perhaps for a few days after. We're heading into what's left of York and it may take us a couple of days to move through the city."
"We're going through?" The girl gasped, her blue eyes wide with fear. Her father smiled again, she wasn't the brightest girl, but Cassie was no fool either. She understood the risk they would be taking as they tried to find a route through the ruined city. Her father and the guards ran the risk of being killed and most likely eaten by the raiders who would be lurking in the ruins. If the girl was lucky then this would be her fate too, but the old man didn't believe that would be the case. He had been around for long enough to know what became of good looking young women who had the misfortune of being captured. Cassie would endure many years of abuse before the raiders would feel they had used her up. Suffering every depravity that her captors wished to visit upon her.
The old man nodded, his face turning grave as he did so. "We are," he quickly held a hand up to quiet his daughter's protests, "it's risky, God knows it's risky Cassie. But we don't know if there are any other boats left, or how long these'll stay for. You heard the broadcast on the radio, they're staying 'till it gets too dangerous to be in the docks then they are off to the new world. Who knows when the next one will come along? You just stay close to Charlie love, he'll keep you safe."
Cassandra glanced sideways at the guard in question. Half-hand Charlie, as he was known by the other guards, silently looked back and nodded. She knew that the man worked for her father and had for several years, but he scared her a little. The other guards stories about him differed, some claimed he had always been a guard and that he'd just been unlucky and gotten himself captured by raiders. Others claimed that Charlie had been born into a raider tribe and had somehow managed to anger the warlord. However they all agreed that he wasn't to be trifled with. He had been tortured by them, that was beyond question. His left hand was missing the ring and pinky fingers and a chunk of the palm had also been severed, the wound running in a straight line from the base of his middle finger to his wrist. Charlie himself had nothing to say on the subject, some of the guards claimed he was quite the chatterbox back in his youth, but obviously this was before his tongue had been cut out and his eye had been burned from his head. Somehow, so the story went, Charlie had managed to get himself loose and silently slaughtered the entire camp as they slept, slitting the throat of every man and woman there. Cassie didn't know how much of the tale was truth, but she knew she believed every word.
"Can we make it in time then Dad? For the boat? And if we can, then will it really be able to take us away from all this?" Cassandra asked, once more turning her nervous blue eyes to her father's face. "Are the stories really true? Did America survive? Will we really be able to cross the water between?"
The old man leaned across the table and ruffled his daughter's hair, earning a reproachful look from her as he messed up the curly auburn locks. He chuckled a little at the adolescent's glare before answering. "Of course it's true darling. In a couple of days we will be all loaded up on board and bound for greener pastures. I'd be questioning it too I suppose, if I hadn't seen it myself. I stood on the dock with your grandmother and watched as her brother, my uncle Allistair undertook exactly the same voyage. That was decades ago now, before you were born, back when I was younger than you are now. There was hundreds of them packed onto that ship. Land of the free they call it. So long as it's better than this shit hole I don't care what they call it."
"Dad?"
"Hmmm?"
"What about the stories the fishermen tell? The weird creatures living around the coast and the bigger things that live offshore."
"Those? Oh, they're just stories to scare the young 'uns like you darling."
"You're sure?"
"As sure as I am that my name is Alexander Tenpenny. Now come on, finish up your supper and get to bed. We've got a busy day tomorrow."