Page 1 of Sanctuary

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Year Eight After Impact

The school closedbefore Impact when the roof on one side caved in.

It was a small, rural elementary school built high on a mountain in West Virginia, and budget cuts plus local corruption led to constant disrepair of the building. After the roof collapse, the school board temporarily merged the students with those in the nearest town with plans to eventually repair and reopen.

Unsurprisingly, two years passed with no progress except more debates on costs and timelines.

Then the world learned about the asteroid on a trajectory to hit western Europe, decimating the continent and causing catastrophic effects on the entire planet, and the future of a tiny school in the middle of nowhere no longer mattered in any way.

All the supplies of value that remained in the old building were scavenged in the first year after Impact—the food, medication, and paper products, as well as the gasoline from afew abandoned vehicles. No one bothered with the other stuff, however. After all, for years our only priority was staying alive in a brutal, uncertain new world. No one cared about notebooks and mini-dictionaries and construction paper.

But it’s been eight years now. Most of the people on Earth have died, and those of us who survived have slowly adapted. Communities are starting to stabilize, and some have even opened schools.

Suddenly, leftover supplies from the old world actually matter again.

All this was explained to me yesterday when I was given this new job. Climb the mountain. Dig through the rubble of the old building. Retrieve as many salvageable school supplies as I can carry back.

For a successful completion of this job, the customer will give me a large sack of flour (something my town can really use) and a lovely wedding dress in my sister’s size.

My sister, Del, and her man are getting married soon. They want a traditional ceremony. She’s planning to make do with a simple dress several of the women in Monument have shared, but it’s way too big for her, and I want her to have something better. Special.

Life is hard enough now. For all of us. If I can help give her one perfect day, then that’s what I’ll do.

So for the past several weeks, wherever I’ve traveled, I’ve asked folks settled in small towns and communities about wedding dresses, and yesterday I discovered someone had one in a fortified town about twenty miles from this mountain. When I asked about jobs to trade for it, this is the one they gave me.

It’s a big one. For almost a year now, I’ve been traveling this region—formerly western Virginia and southern West Virginia—finding or trading supplies and delivering messages between communities. I’m good at it, and I’ve made a lot of contacts. ButI’m only one medium-sized woman, so I usually stay away from jobs that require me to haul too large a load. I do have a cart, however. If I fill it with usable school supplies, they’ll give me the flour and dress.

That’s why I’m currently approaching the mountain on a damp, chilly day in November, wheeling my empty cart along an old highway that’s now crumbling from years of hard use, weather, and disrepair.

Despite the fact that I’ve been walking since dawn and twice have gotten rained on, I’m in a good mood. Excited about the wedding dress. I like physical activity. I like being on my own, taking care of myself and the very few people in my close circle.

Our parents died when I was seventeen, after the world went to hell post-Impact. To keep me and Del alive, I had to do a lot of previously unimaginable things, including letting men fuck me so they’d feed and defend us.

Life has changed now. I’m twenty-five, and my sister is safe and has a man who’s more than capable of protecting her. So I’ll never be forced to let a man fuck me again.

Any day I can rely only on myself is a good one.

I reach the base of the mountain but have to skirt the perimeter to find the road up. As I walk, I notice what looks like an old hiking trail through the woods. I take mental note of it, observing that I could get up that way if necessary. It’s far overgrown with encroaching branches and half-dead underbrush, but the ground is packed and fairly dry from the trees and ground cover, even after a week of rainy weather.

I won’t be able to get the cart up that way though, so I keep moving until I reach the road.

It’s a disappointment.

The pavement is in much worse condition than the former highway I’ve been traveling. It’s barely passable, and even worsethan normal because the rain has turned the dirt underneath into mud. I make it about a quarter of a mile before I give up.

I can get up this way myself, but I’ll never get my cart up. The wheels keep sinking into the mud and snagging on crumbling chunks of blacktop.

Slightly less enthusiastic than before, I turn around and wheel my cart back down, returning to the hiking trail, where I can force the cart through the brittle undergrowth and leave it hidden from sight.

On foot, the road will be a quicker ascent than the trail, so I walk back around the mountain to the turnoff. I’ve only barely started up when I hear something behind me.

My instincts trigger even before my mind lands on what I’m hearing. I dart off the road and into the woods, hiding behind the thick trunk of an oak and pulling out my gun.

The roadways are mostly empty now. Most people ran out of gasoline a long time ago, so means of transport are almost exclusively bicycles and our own feet. Travel is always dangerous, so most stay behind the safe walls of their communities.

It’s certainly possible I might pass by a fellow traveler on the old highway, but not on this isolated mountain road.

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