4

I don’t know how long I lay there, staring at that dog tag. Long enough for the blood on my face to dry and my muscles to start aching with exhaustion. Long enough for the numbness to set in, pushing the pain down into some deep place I couldn't reach.

Ben Cross.

The name was burned into my brain now, seared into my thoughts like the image of Chloe’s face the last time I saw her. Ben. The man I had heard about on the radio, the one who was supposedly dead. The one I hadn’t seen since The Burning.

I wanted to throw the dog tag into the dirt, to forget I had ever seen it, but my fingers clutched it tightly, as if it was the last solid thing left in the world. I didn’t know what it meant—whether Ben was alive, dead, or something worse—but I knew one thing for certain: I had to find out.

The next few days were a blur of walking and survival. The road south stretched out before me, an endless ribbon of cracked asphalt and choking dust. I had no real destination, just a vague rumor I had overheard from a group of scavengers a few weeks back. They had mentioned a safe zone near the border, somewhere untouched by the worst of the fires, a place where people were rebuilding.

Maybe they were lying. Maybe it was just another false hope, like so many others I had chased since the world fell apart. But I had nothing else, and the thought of staying in one place, of just *waiting* for the raiders or the ash or the loneliness to catch up with me, wasn’t an option.

So I walked.

The world around me was dead. Entire towns had been erased, replaced by miles of blackened trees and the occasional burnt-out car. The ash hung in the air like a curse, and the silence was so thick it pressed down on me, making every step feel heavier. There were no birds, no insects, not even the wind. Just me, the road, and the suffocating quiet.

I used to hate the noise of the city—the constant hum of traffic, the blare of car horns, the endless chatter of people. Now, I’d give anything to hear another voice. Even if it was just for a moment.

But solitude was safer. I knew that. Every time I tried to help someone, every time I reached out, it ended in blood. Chloe. The family. Even that mother and her little girl. Dead, all of them. And here I was, still standing, still breathing, still alone.

I didn’t deserve to be alive. Not after everything I had seen, everything I had failed to do. But there was some sick, cosmic irony in this world that kept letting me live, kept forcing me to move forward.

I thought about Ben as I walked. About the man I had known before The Burning. He had been stationed out west, somewhere in California. Smart, quiet, the kind of guy who didn’t say much but somehow managed to make you feel safe just by being there. We hadn’t been close, not yet. But there had been something there, something unspoken, something that could have been… more.

And then the bombs fell, and everything burned.

I had heard rumors about his unit—how they had been wiped out in the chaos, how no one had survived. I had accepted it, pushed it down along with everything else I had lost. But now, with his dog tag in my hand, I couldn’t help but hope. Hope was a dangerous thing. It made you stupid, made you weak. But I couldn’t stop it. Not now.

On the third day, I saw the figure.

It was just a flash at first, something at the corner of my vision as I crested a hill. I froze, my heart skipping a beat, and squinted against the glare of the setting sun. A lone figure, far off in the distance, moving slowly but deliberately along the road behind me.

I ducked behind a crumbling wall, my breath shallow, my pulse racing. I watched for a few minutes, trying to make out any details, but the figure was too far away. Whoever it was, they were following the same road I was. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe they were just another lost soul, wandering the same path to nowhere.

But something about the way they moved set my nerves on edge. They weren’t wandering. They were following.

They were following me.