Page 4 of Juniper Unraveling

I try not to let the weight of that thought push down on me, because I know it’ll crush me. Not everything is gone, after all. I still have Abel. “Who are these people? Why do they kill only the women and girls?”

“Mercy, I suppose.”

“For what? Where are they taking us?”

He nods toward my book. “You like to read?”

I glance down and back, momentarily confused that he didn’t bother to answer my question. “Yes. I read and write stories.”

Being a well-read teenager is almost an oxymoron these days. No one has time to read, trying to stay alive out here, but my mother insisted I learn, anyway. I’m an anomaly—a word most of my peers wouldn’t know the meaning of.

“And in this book, does good overcome evil?”

I nod, recalling the final scene my mother read to me.

“The place we’re going … there is no good there.” He turns his face away from mine, and the crease of his brow, the grim expression on his face, stirs a sinking feeling in my stomach. “You hang on to that book. Hang on to your stories. Because in the end, they’re all we have.”

Chapter 2

Wren

I once read that a scorpion could survive a nuclear war. The thought made me laugh, imagining some displaced bug scampering across the ruins, trying to figure out what the hell happened to everyone.

I mean, one minute, you’re shoe bait, the next, you’re the only thing left with legs.

That same article postulated that humans wouldn’t live beyond one hundred days into a zombie apocalypse. The most skilled at survival would make it, but with major odds stacked against them for infection, or getting eaten alive, and there’d be no second generation because a pregnant woman trying to run from a Rager would be laughable, if it wasn’t so morbid.

Humans would pretty much be wiped out, leaving the world in the hands of the straggling flesh-eaters and some really confused scorpions.

Guess those scholars weren’t betting on a real estate mogul to exploit one of the biggest solar panel farms on the west coast and build an entire community out of it. One surrounded by the big-ass wall he eventually built to keep pretty much everything and everyone out.

In a month, I’ll celebrate my eighteenth birthday. Because I’m a second-generation survivor.

They call this the Rebirth Era—literally, trying to rebirth the population. Even though a good chunk of the world was wiped out by a single contagion, it wasn’t that one single thing that reduced us to a fraction of what we once were. Nuclear power plants leached, gas lines exploded, entire cities caught fire, as people were getting sick and couldn’t maintain them. Gangs and criminals rioted, trying to establish control over the fallen cities, killing each other off. Then there were the people who had terminal illnesses, ones who died of malnutrition, and countless others who committed suicide.

About a dozen catastrophes packed into a decade.

The dried, crunchy carapace sits in the palm of my hand, and I stare down at the fried scorpion, my tongue watering for the salty tang Papa seasons over them, and pop it into my mouth. The boys in my community say scorpions aren’t a ladylike snack, whatever that means. When the world goes to hell, everything becomes edible.

Sure, we have food, but scorpions are a delicacy—particularly as these ones come from the other side of the wall.

And they’re a good reminder that life isn’t always predictable.

Nabbing the bottle of water from my pack, I tip it back, washing the salty taste from my tongue. In the desert, the scarcity of water provides a means of trade—a way to feed your family, or get the supplies you need to defend them. Inside the walls, where I live, water is merely a perk of living in Szolen Farms. That’s what we call our little community, made up of about two thousand, give or take. It’s named after the founder, ironically, the son of what was once a billionaire oil tycoon before The Dredge hit. His father, apparently, disowned him for investing in the self-sustaining project.

Now it’s an oasis to the hellish world beyond the wall.

Here, we have clinics, schools, small eateries, bakeries, farms. Heck, we even have cars and motorbikes—all of which run on the electricity provided by a huge solar panel farm that happens to be heavily guarded, all hours of the day. Trade is our currency, and luckily for me, Papa is one of few doctors, which makes him a much sought after member.

The decimation outside the walls is a world we only hear about from the few brave enough to venture out for occasional supplies. Medicinal plants, for example, that Papa will sometimes gather during the day when the Ragers are most visible.

Those of us on the inside, we live a relatively peaceful existence, as violence could get a person killed. Well, any unstable behavior that could even remotely be mistaken for The Dredge could get a person killed.

It’s nice. A great place to live, I guess.

Still, for whatever reason, the other side calls to me.

It tells me that we’re too comfortable in a world that seeks to eliminate humankind. And that, one day? We’re all going to be in for an unpleasant awakening, when the Ragers, or some other threat, get smart enough to breach that wall.