My vehicle ran out of gas. That’s why I’m walking alone through this ghost town with a pump shotgun in my hands and a long knife strapped to my left thigh. Unless you’re stupid or suicidal, you don’t go anywhere without some kind of weapon.

I live in a world where greyskins travel in herds, looking for anything that moves. Anything with blood. I carry these weapons with me because it’s always a question of
when
a greyskin will find me, not
if
. I know that I need to be prepared.

“You don’t have to go,” my little brother Jake had said to me. I kissed his cheek and gave my grandma a hug.

“Mora, you’re only nineteen,” my grandma added. “The youngest ones of our village are needed here.” But I couldn’t listen to her or Jake. They were worried about me, but I knew that if I didn’t go, we’d just be attacked again. So I left the village of Springhill with one of the few vehicles that still worked.

Someone has to speak out for my village. The people are vulnerable and running out of food. Sickness threatens them constantly. But worst of all, they are constantly vulnerable to attacks by the greyskins. Someone has to find those that can help us and convince them to do something. Since no one else was going to do it, I took action. I left. Then I ran out of gas and now I’m here.

Wherever here is.

I’ve rarely ventured too far out of Springhill, and when I have, it was with a group of elders from the village who seemed to know where they were going. Now I look at the town in front of me and I’m clueless.

There seems to be no sign of greyskins, so that’s good. The town is littered with overturned cars, crumbled buildings and almost zero plant life, but surely there’s an old fuel station somewhere. Then again, I don’t even know how long fuel can sit in a tank before it’s unusable.

My t-shirt and jeans bleed sweat as the scorching sun above me burns without mercy. I rest the shotgun between my legs and pull back my hair into a ponytail so the random strands won’t stick to my face. Satisfied, I pick the gun back up.

Grandma always tells me that I should cut my hair shorter so there’s less for a greyskin to grab hold of. I can’t bring myself to do it. It’s the one thing I get compliments on.

I jerk my shotgun around when I hear something moving behind me, and sigh in relief when I see that it’s just an old garbage bag flapping in the wind. I hate how isolated I feel, but then again, I hate the unshakable feeling that I’m not alone either. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but maybe it’s just the heightened awareness I’m forced to maintain in a world like this.

It hasn’t always been this way, or so I’m told. But it’s all
I’ve
ever known. It was all my parents ever knew. But my grandma knew the world before the greyskins. She was my age when the first of them started to surface out of nowhere. She said the world used to care about making people more comfortable. It was about advancing and making humanity better. Now it’s about staying alive and trying not to become a greyskin’s dinner. I often wish I could live in a world where I didn’t have to worry about these terrible monsters that used to be people. But that’s an impossible delusion. It’s all I know and probably all I’ll ever know. I’m used to it.

But I’m not used to being alone in an abandoned town.

The pthe="2em">roblem with greyskin herds is that they remain quiet until they’ve found a live target. I know I could easily walk up on one and give myself away. Of course, that’s when they get loud.

I walk past a looted drugstore, an old barbershop, and even a deserted ice cream parlor. From the looks of it, this town probably had a lot of charm before it was destroyed. The one fuel station I find has stripped hoses and rusted tanks. I check each of the levers to see if there’s any chance of fuel coming out, but everything’s bone-dry.

Sweat trickles past my eye and my dry tongue reminds me that I left the water bottle with my backpack in the vehicle. Stupid.

I make a left down a side street where several buildings must have been under construction before the first wave of greyskin attacks all those years ago. Rusty cranes and unfinished structures line the short street. Tucked between two larger buildings is a small grocery store. I don’t know what I’m thinking as I step toward it. I know there’s no food or water. Why would there be? Even if there was anything there it’s probably sixty years old and unfit to consume. The idea doesn’t stop me from going in anyway.

The sound of the bell clanging against the glass door makes me wince as I try to close it quietly behind me. There may not have been a greyskin here in years, but I still try to be careful.

It feels fifteen degrees cooler in here, but as expected, the shelves are empty. That’s okay with me. I’m just glad to get a break from the heat. It will take me thirty minutes to get back to the vehicle, so I don’t mind the temporary respite. I walk past the checkout counter, drawers now void of the worthless green money that people used to hold closely to themselves.

Some shelves are tipped over; light fixtures dangle from the ceiling, shattered and useless. The scorching rays from the sun outside provide plenty of illumination in here. As I sit my butt on the ground and lean my back against the wall, I set the shotgun next to me. Another deep sigh escapes my dry throat because I know I must be a lunatic for coming this way without thinking about fuel.

My eyes travel back up to the bell at the top of the grocery entrance. Such a small slip up could mean the difference between living and dying. Greyskins will follow any noise that seems out of place. They never pass up the chance to feed.

I let my eyes close for just a moment as the heat escapes my body and the sweat begins to evaporate. The feeling is relaxing. Too relaxing. I feel myself begin to drift off, but I don’t stop. I know I need the rest. I’m going to have to walk many more miles if I want to get somewhere that can either give me some fuel or at least put me up for a night. Then I have to head off to speak to the man named Jeremiah of Screven.

Screven. The city is too far to travel by foot. It sits at a safe distance away from all the colonies it imposes its laws upon. Of course, it’s not like Screven just took over the colonies, though there are plenty of people who might claim that it did. Screven is powerful, and their leader Jeremiah is smart and greedy.

In exchange for eighty percent of any colony’s farmed goods, Screven offers its protection from the greyskins. Anyone under Screven control never has to worry about being attacked by a herd. If a herd comes too close, Screven guards will ride out and annihilate them. I’ve never actually seen this happen, but it’s what I’ve heard. But with such protection comes the huge price. Even though this year has been a tough year for crops and giving up eighty percent won’t feed us all adequately, my own village, Springhill must have the protection. That’s why I’m out here. My plan is to convince Jeremiah to bring us under the protection of Scrthection oeven, but for a smaller fee. At least for a while until we can establish ourselves better.

No one else in Springhill thinks it’s a good idea. All of them say I shouldn’t even go. But when I look at my little brother and grandma, knowing the next roaming herd could take them out, I know I at least have to try.

There are many other colonies under Screven’s control. I’ve never been to any of them, but I often wonder if they are going through the same hardships that we face in Springhill.

My eyes break open and my body freezes at the sound of the bell ringing against the door of the entrance. I don’t need to look up to know what it is, and I feel dumb for having closed my eyes for even a moment. When I do glance up, I can see the greyskin standing on the outside of the store, almost leaning against the glass. It looks like an older greyskin, one that has been dead for two or three years. Its clothes hang from its skinny, rotting frame, and clumpy streaks of dried blood mark up its entire face.

There are a few things I look at first when I see a greyskin: its eyes, teeth, and nails. Its eyes because even to this day after having seen hundreds of greyskins, it still gets to me that their irises have turned black and glazed, oozing with mucus. I always wonder what kind of virus could make a human turn into such a thing.

I look at their teeth and nails because I fear how deeply they can sink these into my flesh. This one has big teeth. And its skin – no matter what color the person may have been in life – the skin turns to a decayed shade of grey.

I’m pretty sure it hasn’t seen me yet, so I lie down on my belly and grab the shotgun. I shimmy across the floor until I’m out of view behind a grocery shelf that has remained standing.

The bell continues to ring as the greyskin pushes on the door. I don’t think that greyskins have any reasoning skills. I believe their only desire and purpose is to fulfill their need for blood and meat.

Rarely are there lone greyskins either. Most of the time they travel in small groups because they are all looking for the same thing. But over time those small groups will accumulate more followers until they reach the size of a herd. A herd can be anywhere from fifty greyskins to the size of an entire town. It is doubtful that this one is alone. If it is, I can certainly kill it. One pump of the shotgun, an aim to the head, and a slight squeeze of the trigger will finish it for good. But if that tiny bell at the top of the door caught the attention of one greyskin, a shotgun blast will get the attention of a herd easily.

I feel for the knife strapped to my leg, but I’m not brave enough to go hand-to-hand with one of those things. One bite or scratch that mixes the greyskin’s blood or saliva with mine and I’m done. It will take about twenty-four hours until my body shuts down and I die. Then I will eventually wake up as one of them.

I look down at the shotgun, knowing that I could never let it come to that. Damage the brain enough, and there’s no chance of waking up again.

With a final shove, the greyskin swings the door in hard enough to shatter the glass. I grip the shotgun tightly and try to control my breathing as the glass crashes to the floor with enough noise to call every greyskin around for miles.

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