Page 5 of Protected

I almost—almost—laugh.

“Great.” I hook the strap of my bag on one shoulder and start walking toward the line of vehicles. “What the hell have I gotten myself into?”

Deck ignores the question, exactly as I expected. He gives me a little push to get me moving faster. When he lowers the tailgate of the truck and waves me in, I climb up obediently, moving out of the way when he steps up after me and moves into the guarding position he was in when the caravan stopped.

After a minute, Burgundy and her brother end their conversation with Logan and climb into the back of the pickup with me and Deck.

Burgundy gives me a little smile and lowers herself to a kneeling position in one corner. I do the same since it appears much more secure than trying to stand in a moving vehicle like Deck.

It doesn’t take long before Logan’s Jeep at the front of the line starts moving.

And that’s it. I’m leaving behind the Walmart, my hiding place, and the life I had before.

2

We’ve been drivingfor a few minutes—fairly slowly, it’s not difficult to keep my balance—when Burgundy catches my eye. “You’re Lilah?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m Burgundy. And that’s my brother, Micah.” She gestures to the big, pleasant-looking man who’s positioned near the cab beside Deck.

Micah gives me a brief, two-fingered salute, but his focus is obviously on our surroundings. He and Deck are both fully on guard, searching for threats.

As far as I can see, we’re the only people for miles around, but I understand the instinct to be wary. No one without that instinct would have stayed alive this long after Impact.

Violence erupted all over the country immediately following the announcement about the asteroid’s impending approach more than two years ago. At first theriots and looting were limited, occurring primarily in large cities and halfway contained by law enforcement and the national guard.

After I was sent home from college, my family and I would watch the chaos on the news every evening. My mother got real quiet, and my father tried to reassure us that things like that happened in cities but not in small towns like ours. People in our region of western Tennessee emptied stores of their stock of toilet paper and started buying more guns, but we all assumed we’d never have to deal with the same kind of violence as the big cities.

We were wrong. Of course we were wrong. People are people no matter where they live. And when they get scared, some will get mean.

A local militia group had always been holed up about thirty miles from our town. They were small and weird and isolated, and no one paid much attention to them. In the first month after the asteroid was announced, they tripled in size. And by the second month after Impact, they started raiding.

After they attacked and wiped out a nearby discount store distribution center, more people joined up with them. Those who opposed them—including my parents and seventeen-year-old brother who all took their hunting rifles to help defend the borders of our town—were killed. Hal’s family lived two blocks from mine. He went to defend the town too and barely got away. He came to find me.

Hal and I stuffed whatever food and supplies we couldfit into our backpacks and ran into the woods that bordered my family’s property just in time to avoid the group of militia who were hitting and looting every house on our street.

We ran and kept running.

For a full year we ran, squatting in any shelter we could find, scavenging food from abandoned houses, stores, and restaurants, and defending ourselves primarily by staying out of sight.

The main highways were too dangerous to risk traveling on, full of roving gangs and even larger groups that people called droves, so we stuck to hiking trails and back roads. Last year, when travel of any kind became too treacherous, we found the Walmart and stayed, scraping by on the remainder of our scavenged food and anything we could sneak from groups moving through the area.

It wasn’t much, but it was a life. There were some good times amid the bad.

But that life ended when Hal died, and all that’s left for me isthis.

“How old are you?” Burgundy asks. When I hesitate, she adds, “I’m twenty-two.”

“I’m twenty-four.” I glance up toward Deck for some reason, but he’s not paying any attention to me.

“Were you in college?”

I know exactly what she’s asking. “Yeah. Second semester of my senior year. I was almost done.”

“I was in college too. Majoring in education.” She gives a wry huff. “I wanted to be a first-grade teacher.”

It’s a poignant, bittersweet thought. A future that died with everything else.

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