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  “We can come back and restock tomorrow. I don’t want to be in town at night. That’s when they arrived last time. We could make camp near the river.”

  He nodded toward the direction she entered town. “There’s a trail—”

  “No!”

  He snapped his mouth shut.

  “Sorry.” She wrung her hands together. “Is there another one?”

  He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder in the opposite direction. “Yeah. About a kilometer down the road.”

  “That’ll do. I’m going to get a head start. I’ll meet you at the head of the trail.”

  “Give me thirty minutes.”

  She nodded and headed in the direction he indicated. Even if this town of death and ash didn’t unsettle her, she had no desire to follow John back to his home. Who knew what memories or loss waited for him there?

  Dust kicked up from her running shoes striking the dry road and ballooned around her. The sun beat down. The safety of the trees ahead beckoned to her. Safety from the heat and safety from Arkavians and survivors of the blue death wave. She stepped into the shade and waited for her new companion. Whether he ended up a friend or another foe remained a big ugly question looming over her head, but if she wanted to survive, she needed allies. She needed a community. She wouldn’t survive one winter without one and she’d never make the trek home to find out if her family survived. Right now, Pretty Boy with a good right hook was it.

  Chapter Seven

  Sacrifices Must be Made

  August, five days After Arkavia (AA)

  Taya hadn’t decided whether to trust John wholeheartedly, but they’d formed an uneasy alliance over the last three days and made a plan to gather and store supplies away from town in case the Arkavians returned.

  Taya whirled around at the sound of creaking wheels piercing the air and found a cloud of dust billowing around her fellow survivor. “What the fuck is that?”

  John glared. “A wagon.”

  “Why? Do you want to announce our location?” She pointed at the road with her staff. Yeah, she had swords, but her training sessions prior to the death wave didn’t focus much on blade work. At the time, playing with swords seemed so impractical and more of a novelty than a necessity. Now, she was just as likely to sever her own limb as an opponent.

  “You said you left all your friends’ gear at the campsite. We didn’t find any additional camping supplies in town that hadn’t burned along with the buildings.”

  Her stomach sunk, knowing where he was going with this.

  His scowl softened. “I can go alone if it’s easier.”

  “No…No. We should stick together.” Though it had only been a few days since he mistook her for an Arkavian death lord and punched her in the face, she found the idea of forced solitude devastating. Besides, if John could walk around town and the charred remains of his neighbours and friends, she could suck it up and do this. A post-apocalyptic Earth was no place for sissies.

  “I wish they’d left the soldier’s horse along with his swords,” she said, glaring at the wagon.

  “I don’t. Horses are noisy and need food and maintenance and love and I have no experience with those things.”

  “With love?”

  “As it pertains to horses, no.” He narrowed his eyes. “Is this when you tell me you’re a top-ranked horse master in addition to being a Kung-Fu ninja?”

  They turned toward the street leading out of town and started walking. The heat beat down on them. Thankfully, she opted for shorts and a T-shirt for the more exposed walking along the road. Silence fell between them. The creaking wagon crunched along the dirt road and tree branches swayed in the gentle breeze around them.

  Even though it took Taya two days to reach the town from the campsite, she’d followed the rocky and often-winding river. Since they left during the early morning hours and took the direct route, they’d reach the destination by nightfall.

  Hopefully, they didn’t have to camp there.

  Taya wasn’t weak, but she wasn’t stone, either. She mulled over John’s last words. Who was this guy? He answered most of her questions earlier with one or two words. Maybe she had to give a little to get a little.

  “I don’t think there’s such a thing as a horse master,” she said.

  John jumped and glared at her.

  She continued. “And if there is such a thing, I’m not one. When I was really young, I wanted to be a horse.”

  John focused on the road ahead, frowning slightly.

  “But I don’t think that counts,” she said. “When I realized that was never going to happen, I started asking for a horse every Christmas.”

  “No luck?”

  “I got riding lessons.”

  He smirked as if she answered some unasked question. What was his problem? Besides the whole end-of-the-world thing? Yeah, she came from a middle-class family that made sacrifices to provide her with training. She still had to work three jobs to pay her way through university and took twice as long to get her English degree.

  “How’d it go?” he asked.

  “Good. Until it came time to put the bridle and saddle on.”

  “Is it hard?”

  “Not really, but I didn’t want to hurt the horse’s ears so I couldn’t get the bridle on and Dawn, the horse, had a nasty habit of pushing her stomach out so I couldn’t cinch the saddle tight enough. My instructor told me to smack the horse so Dawn would release her breath and let me wrench the saddle strap tighter. I couldn’t do it.” Memories of Dawn’s light face and flicking ears brought scents of dirt, straw bedding and wood shavings.

  “What happened?”

  “I lied.”

  John kicked a rock from his path. “How’d that work out for you?”

  “Three trots into the lesson and the saddle slid to the side. I ended up eating a lot of dirt.”

  John chuckled and shook his head. They turned onto the gravel road leading to the campsite. The hint of campfire and hamburgers still lingered in the air and made Taya’s mouth water.

  “The instructor was furious. She said if I didn’t have the guts to saddle a horse correctly, I had no business riding them.” Though this occurred almost twenty years ago, the cruel words still cut. Her instructor had destroyed her childhood dream.

  “Sounds harsh.”

  She nodded. “Now that I look back on it, I think she was scared. I could’ve been hurt and she might’ve lost her job.”

  “Still. You’d think there’d be a more humane way to get a horse to exhale.”

  Taya shrugged. “If there is, I don’t know it. I still love horses though.”

  The birds grew silent around them. This wasn’t right. Normally, they chirped away, mocking Taya with their care-free happiness. She stopped and flung her arm out to halt John. Her palm smacked his chest. The wagon’s wheels squealed to a stop.

  They shouldn’t have brought that stupid wagon.

  The air buzzed with tension. Taya dropped her hand from John’s chest and gripped her staff. She waggled her finger back and forth at the wagon.

  John nodded and set the handle down in the dirt.

  They walked forward, each crunch of gravel making as much noise as an avalanche. The air continued to buzz. The sound wasn’t her brain freaking out like she thought. It wasn’t the cicadas, either. She followed the noise.

  Bugs. Flies. Insects of all sorts swarmed close to the ground of an abandoned campsite. Despite the heat of the day, ice flowed through Taya’s veins.

  Bodies littered the clearing. Not piles of ash and not decomposed enough to suggest they’d been here prior to the death wave. The smell of spoiled meat and churned barbeque surrounded them. Oh God. The hamburger smell.

  “Oh my God,” John whispered, echoing her unspoken words. He lurched to the side and puked violently.

  She gulped down her rising stomach contents and stepped farther into the campsite. If she let the nausea overwhelm her now, she’d hunch over beside John.

  The b
odies weren’t as disorderly as she first thought. They lined the large campsite in one giant circle. In the middle sat the charred remains of a campfire.

  “Are they…gutted?” John asked and heaved again.

  They were.

  With blank stares gazing at the exposed blue sky, mouths gaping, arms and legs thrown to the sides, the bodies resembled cadavers from the forensic investigation shows she watched on television.

  She wiped her sweaty palms on her shorts and stepped closer to one of the bodies. Blow flies coated the woman. When the gravel crunched under Taya’s feet, the flies dispersed to reveal an empty body cavity. No guts, no heart or liver. Just an open rib cage like some alien burst out after devouring everything on the inside.

  Her head grew light.

  Something or someone had removed all the internal organs.

  What had they done with all of it?

  The cooked meat smell still clinging in the air burned her nose. Stomach acid bubbled up her throat. Did they…eat it?

  Nausea surged. She swallowed and she glanced at the woman’s face and her horrified expression. Her final moments must’ve been awful.

  A memory flashed. The woman from the slave line. The one who’d turned to glare at the leader and spotted Taya hiding in the bushes. The pretty woman who kept quiet. The woman Taya couldn’t save without risking her own safety.

  Her stomach wrenched. She turned, doubled over, and spewed on the bushes lining the campsite. She continued again and again until nothing remained.

  Nothing left.

  Like their insides.

  Nausea rose again.

  John walked over, his feet shuffling along the gravel and kicking up dust. “Fuck. That’s Kaydence.”

  Taya turned away from the bushes. John stood over the woman she’d recognized, his face pale.

  “She worked at the post office,” he said. “We had a date at the river.”

  Taya placed a hand on his bare arm, his skin cold and clammy. He shrugged it off and went to the next body. “I recognize him, too.” John pointed to another body. “And that’s Tony.” His mouth flattened. “These were the survivors from town. The ones the Arkavians took with them.”

  Taya nodded.

  “Do you think…” John shuddered. “Do you think this is their plan for us?”

  She shook her head and forced her gaze away from Kaydence’s horrified expression. “I don’t think so. I overheard two of them talking and they made it sound as though they intended to use us as slaves, not food or sacrifices.”

  “Something interrupted their plans.” He walked around some of the bodies and paused by one of the men. “Is this one of them?”

  Taya joined him, carefully skirting the pools of dried blood. Too many. Too many faces and bodies to take in. They blurred together. She swallowed and forced her eyes open to study the body John indicated. Sure enough, he’d identified one of the Arkavian soldiers. “He’s the one who spoke to the leader.”

  What the hell happened to them? What else had come through the portal with the magic wielders? Monsters? If magic was possible, what else existed on this other planet?

  A cloud passed over the clearing, casting them in dampened light. She glanced up. They had at least four more hours of daylight, but not enough time to stock up and make it back to their camp by the town. Her vision swam as she scanned the area again.

  “I don’t want to sleep near here,” she said.

  John cast her an incredulous look as if she were evil for even entertaining the idea.

  She flung her arm out and pointed toward the river. “The campsite I shared with my fri…the campsite is a few plots over by the water. Let’s strip it. Rebottle and get the hell out of here in case whatever it is that did this comes back.”

  “I’m surprised these bodies haven’t drawn predators already,” John said.

  “That’s another happy thought.” All the more reason to run. “Should we dig them graves?”

  “The two of us? We’ll be shoveling for days in the heat. As much as I hate to leave them like this, we have to be practical.”

  “I know, but—”

  “They’re dead. They don’t care.” He picked his way around the bodies and walked toward her. “And I don’t want to camp at all. I say we grab the supplies and keep moving through the night.”

  She sighed. He’d suggested they travel at night to get here, too. Although she agreed with him about the graves, she didn’t with this. “I don’t want to get caught on the road at night. We won’t see the attack coming and that squeaky wagon will draw attention and lead anyone looking right to us.”

  John glared at her.

  Fine. Glare all he liked, she wasn’t budging once the sun went down.

  He squeezed his hands into fists. “Fine.”

  She didn’t wait for him to sort through his feelings. Maybe she was wrong and he was right, but she didn’t see any benefit to travelling at night except to get back to another site of pain and loss sooner. She spun on her heel and marched out of the death camp. Cold pricked at her exposed back as if evil still lingered and watched her leave.

  She walked straight to her old campsite. If she stopped and thought about how she looted her dead friends’ possessions meters from a massacre after a magical death wave from another world obliterated almost every human and left her with a grumpy pretty boy who hated how she had an opinion, she might break.

  And if there was one thing Taya learned about this new world, it was it had no time for anything other than survival.

  Her father raised a warrior. She’d battle this weird, alien apocalypse. She’d persevere and live on so the memories of her friends and family would survive with her.

  Chapter Eight

  Know When to Fold Them

  December, four months After Arkavia (AA)

  Taya rolled the chunk of fresh snow in her mouth to cool her breath and prevent condensed air from rising above her like a giant “I’m here” sign for the approaching Arkavian supply cart. She waited, crouched in the treeline, shielded by bushes and shrubs. The cold ground pressed into her shin and the snow melted under her legs and soaked through her pants. The creak and groan of wooden wheels grew louder.

  After Taya and John left the slaughter site at the campground four months ago, the Arkavians returned en-masse. They wiped out the remaining food from the town where they’d met, and travelled farther south, hitting town after town for supplies and leaving nothing but ruin and waste in their wake.

  Taya and John followed, stealing from the Arkavian’s unguarded food and picked up survivors like them. Apparently, Arkavia wasn’t an alien planet from her own realty; instead, the world existed in an alternate universe and they travelled here through a magical portal.

  Fuck, we shouldn’t be out here.

  The Arkavians caught on to their scheme and the gravy train dried up. Now if Taya and her group wanted food, they had to scavenge for themselves or fight for it. Normally, they succeeded at both. Taya carefully selected supply carts with minimal guards, but it only took one Tarka to travel with the Arkavian group for utter disaster to occur.

  Taya shouldn’t be out here, none of them should, not so soon after their last haul. With their growing numbers, though, they needed supplies constantly.

  The wheels groaned and a horse snorted. Two guards flanked the wagon on restless horses. The young gazes of the soldiers darting erratically. For all the death-wielding might of the Arkavians, they struggled to find skilled and experienced employees for their supply chains.

  Just two guards? She had ten fighters in her group. Sure, not all of them were trained from birth to wield a sword or fight like her, but she made them practice daily. She drew from her experience of helping out with classes at her dad’s dojo.

  John turned out to have phenomenal bow skills. Apparently, he used to go hunting with his uncles a lot before Arkavia. They’d plucked a bow and arrow set from a house in one of the abandoned towns.

  One target for John and on
e for her. Yet… Something felt wrong.

  She withheld giving the attack signal.

  John’s head snapped to her. He frowned so hard his eyebrows might attack his nose. He still hated taking directions from her, as if her ideas chafed his skin. Since he found the bow and demonstrated his hunting prowess, he argued with her more and more and openly challenged her in front of the group.

  Honestly, she’d let him lead if he had good ideas, but he was hotheaded and impulsive. Her leadership bothered him. Her skills as a fighter bothered him. But as far as she could tell, the only reason those things dug under his skin and grated his nerves was her possession of girly bits. If she’d been a dick with a dick, he’d probably fall in line.

  She shook her head. After winter, she’d leave the group to his questionable leadership and take off to the south to find her family. She’d already delayed the trek to her parents’ place through forest and across the island’s mountain range. The trip was long and dangerous by herself, and she needed supplies and skills to survive the journey. After this winter, she’d hopefully have enough of both to go home and discover what remained.

  John glared and jerked his head after the supply cart.

  She shook her head again. They’d taken out three supply carts in the last four months. Their boldness hadn’t gone unnoticed. The Arkavians sent a Tarka with the last one. Taya noticed him right away.

  How could she not see him? A beautiful beast of a man with features more likely cut from stone than a living person. His stillness set him apart from the rest of the soldiers before she identified his platinum-blond hair. He matched the snow surrounding them. Even his silver and black armour with white leather lining differentiated him from the rest.

  Taya shivered from the memory. More lethal and devastating to behold than the first lord she’d seen months ago, his sharp gray eyes still haunted her dreams. After spotting him, she’d given her team the signal to withdraw.