Novel Excerpt: As We Know It By Nia Carter

Chapter One

     If you asked Angela, she’d tell you all doors really should be automatic.

     It’d make life much more convenient. 

     You come up to your front door carrying a load of groceries and you don’t have to futz with your keys, standing around for five minutes trying to figure out how to open a door that feels like it hates you.

     This door definitely hated her.

Why wouldn’t it? She hadn’t used it in years. Only now, finally—stupidly—did she want to open it up and waltz on out of the place she’d been safe and stuck inside of, right into a world that for all she knew was filled with toxic waste, rats with human ears, and human flies? Did she want to avoid using it ever again that bad?

     Maybe. 

     She creeped her hand out towards the first door, jolting back like it had been doused in pure radiation for the past three years.

     She leaned back against the rusted steel walls—too tired to care about all the tetanus—thinking about the past for the millionth time that day. 

     Angela Weathers; top contract attorney at her firm, lover of parties, name brands, and biannual vacations to wherever the dart landed on the map, never used to think about the past.

      Angela; the last surviving human on earth, just sits in the dark talking to herself about it until she falls asleep. On a good day.

     “I should have just gone to the main office.” She grumbled out loud for the billionth time.

     “There were some important documents down here in the bunker. Some. Nowhere near enough to even warrant coming down here to check, Daryl mentioned switching to the web every other day, you’d think someone would have listened.”

     It was that time of day again. A special hour or three she took each day to practice one of her main hobbies; standing next to the door and pretending for a minute there was someone else on the other side of it.

     ‘Why did you?’ She imagined someone asking, ‘When you heard the sirens, you could’ve walked out, the door was closing slowly enough.’

     Groaning dramatically and banging the back of her head against the wall, wincing a bit.

     Her fresh retie—as pretty as it made her feel—raised hell on her tender-headed self.

     “I don’t know. Probably the same reason no one else came down. Maybe they panicked. Maybe they froze. Maybe their brain just made the smart decision for them.”

     She turned to face the door, half-heartedly reaching for it again, more so to fidget with it than anything.

     “You’d think a group of thirty-somethings would be able to either follow the nuclear war briefs we’d been getting since we were ten or make up our minds about whether or not surviving it would have made any goddamn sense.”

     ‘Well, of course,’ they’d say, ‘this place has everything you could need! Shampoo, jugs of water that tastes off even though they’ve only ever contained water, just enough spironolactone to last you up until sometime between today and next year…’

     “Canned peaches, canned chicken, canned ham—the perfect birthday dinner—shoes that are too big for me and super ugly,” she kicked the ankle high industrial combat boots she hadn’t even attempted to put on.

     She stared up at Pam Grier’s gorgeous from the wall. The third Calendar she’d picked out from the infinite dust-covered supply of them in a cardboard box she’d moved to the darkest corner of the room sometime last year, marking the date.

     April 26, 1985. 

     The third year. The third actress. The third time she’d spent her birthday in there.

     How many more could she celebrate here?

     Truth was, it didn't matter. It didn’t matter how much food or water she had left. It didn’t matter how well the shelter’d been built. It wouldn’t have mattered if the place was stocked with red velvet cake and Maine lobster.

     She’d never been alone. Even when she’d moved, she’d had her friends, she’d had her coworkers, she’d had a whole city of people just waiting to go from strangers to friends.

    There hadn’t been a single hint of static from the emergency two-way radio in three years.

     Living there, alone and scared was much worse than anything that could happen to her out in the open. 

     Right? 

     Right. 

     She knew that. 

     So why couldn't she open the door? 

     She stood up—a little too quickly—ignoring the dizziness from the familiar rush of blood. 

     She smacked her cheeks and tried not to think about how many times her girlfriends had fixed her makeup for her after she’d done it.

     She never forgot the code. It’d been conveniently hidden under the eighty-seventh can of beans and she’d stared at it so often she remembered it better than her mother’s phone number. 

     She pushed all the right buttons and heard a little ringtone that probably used to sound melodic. Or at least a little happy. Maybe a little annoying after a while.

     All that came out was a quiet rhythmic groan.

     She could've opened the door then. She should have, honestly.

     Why didn't she?

     Was she killing herself just by thinking of abandoning the only thing that's been safe and certain after all these years?

     Her books—as boring as they were—she couldn't take them with her. If she didn't instantly pass out from toxic sludge inhalation, she'd need to be able to move. Carrying around fifty seven American classics in the hopes of finding a nice spot in the shade to reread them wouldn’t be the wisest decision. 

     “No,” she said “That’s not it, that’s not the problem.” 

     The quiet came back.

     The hatch was open before she realized her skin was touching metal.

     Something closer to a robot programmed to do nothing but keep taking one slow step after another until its batteries died than a human being walked down the short hallway. If she’d been conscious enough to realize what she was doing, it would have felt endless.

     The sensation of the brown leather boots meant for someone five shoe sizes bigger than hers squeaking against the floor would soon be the only memory she had of leaving.

     She wouldn’t have been caught dead in them before. 

     The reads she would have gotten from Tamara alone, she would have demanded she go change.

     ‘If you’re gonna die, you have to do it wearing something cute, you can’t just be in an ugly ghost outfit for all eternity. What am I supposed to say when we meet in the afterlife and all my friends see you have those things on?’

     Angela laughed now whenever she thought of her. Crying gets boring after a year. 

     She wouldn’t have wanted her to be a sad sack forever. 

     She wouldn’t have wanted her to be leaving the bunker either, but she couldn’t make everyone happy.

     She’d never really been concerned with that particular activity, to be fair.

     She knew she was brilliant. Her mom had about twenty trans pride flags and Harvard summa cum laude graduate bumper stickers on her car. Her first and last job she'd gotten straight out of graduation on the other side of the country at twenty-five, about twenty letters of recommendation were once waiting to be mailed out somewhere in her old bedroom drawer. 

     She’d crafted about two thousand contracts per year for the greater half of her adult life.

     She also got stuck in a baby swing at a playground. At age twenty-seven. While sober.

     That was it, that was the problem. There lied the reason she couldn’t bring herself to do any more than stand in front of the final barrier keeping her in and all of the fifty foot women and godzillas out once she’d come back to herself.

     She was thinking. Something Angela either did too much or too little of at any given point in time.

     The days she was really lucky—when everything always worked out for the best, were the days when she got to choose which one. As rare as they were.

     “Today’s as rare as any other. Not much distinction between them anyway.” 

     Angela made the decision fairly quickly to do a bit of both.

     If she was gonna live, not just survive but live and thrive, she’d obviously need to think sometimes.

     But if she was going to die—which she was fairly certain she was—she didn't want to realize it until it had already been good and done with.

     With both hands on the comically normal looking doorknob, she closed her eyes and tried and failed to empty her mind.

     She wanted to rip every horrible thought straight out of her brain and toss it into the brand new paper shredder she had for a solid two days back in her office. 

     She imagined shredding pictures of Godzilla. Pictures of barren and gray wasteland, of the horrible chill that comes with stepping out into a nuclear winter that everyone around her had been talking about for years, of the loudest sound she'd ever heard in her life. The sight, one she’d narrowly missed—of her family, her species, and the only world she'd ever known—now her favorite—die.

     But you can’t really shred most of those things, can you?

     She opened the door.

Chapter Two

     There was not a single person in this small group of elders—which they’d resolved to refer to themselves as before they’d even agreed upon a space in which they’d meet—below a thousand years of age, including Patience. 

     However, out of all of them, Patience was the only one who’d bothered to make an attempt at filing their discordant excuses of paperwork, responding to the concerns of the citizens of their colleagues, and trying to steer conversations to the policies they needed to approve or at the very least begin to discuss—and they had been stirred from their slumber one year ago.

    “Well what if we just let them loose?” 

     Terry, the queen of the spring court, spoke. He was a tall and spritely being who hadn’t done so much as read the pamphlet Patience had handwritten for each of them. His never-ending tirade of insisting on complete anarchy—not that he’d know that word as it was too hard to spell—for the thousandth time.

     “Terry, we have been over this. Not only would there be no use for these meetings if we made no effort to put a system of any kind in place, we risk conflict and bloodshed and the well-being of our citizens. The lack of unity between nations is what led to this in the first place.” 

     The leader of the Siromo tribe of mermaids, Amaka said.

     At least Patience thought it was her, she was the only person he could hear over the crowd of voices who all insisted the best moment to share their rebuttal was the exact same time as everyone else.

    They got out of their chair, one of thirteen golden thrones that rested around their egregiously large golden roundtable. Scratching their nails along the designs carved out of opal and lapis lazuli.

     “Excuse me, I am in need of some water,” he said, his words hanging ignored in the air. 

     He walked through the enormous halls of the castle, fighting the temptation to change his form to avoid the long walk to the castle door. 

     They were too big. The stone could be damaged and they would end up being responsible for reupholstering the walls. Solely because no one else would.   

     He shifted the moment he’d stepped out of the castle, allowing his skin to harden and the flesh of his back to lengthen to the size of a three story building stretching their leathery wings before flying the short distance to the lake. 

     Patience stared at their reflection for many more minutes than it would take to shift and take a sip of water.

     Who was he?

     He’d barely remembered his family.

     Their father was kind, they thought. They hoped.

     The last memory he’d had of him was the day he’d met his mother. 

     They were out hunting, Patience had been about to pull the trigger, to kill some kind of bird or deer, perhaps. 

     It didn’t matter, they had missed the shot when a sound rumbled through the air.

     Initially, both him and his father assumed rainfall would soon come and it was only a bit of thunder, but the more Patience thought about it—each time hearing the sound in his thoughts with the same clarity as his first listen—the more certain they were that it couldn't have been it.

     To say it was a sound felt disingenuous. It wasn't a sound or a feeling exactly. 

     Woefully simple as it was in their mind, it was just big.

     The calling heaved through the air with such a strength, they feared it would become corporeal and take them away from wherever they rested. 

     They couldn’t forget her, no matter how long they’d tried to. 

     With her wild red hair always in four braids that reached far beyond the floor in her tall and daunting human form.

     They were the main reason she preferred to stay a dragon, she’d told him once.  

     “Easier than detangling hair,” she’d said.

     She had been the one to hold him when he’d cried. They couldn’t remember why they cried so often. 

     They didn’t think they could forget the sensation of her cool scales as she nuzzled him the way a cat does a kitten, however.

     She had made many a night sleeping in the dark woods as a young lord feel safer than they ever had inside their stone walls. Wolves were not as frightening as dragons; there was never much reason to be fearful. 

     It was unwise of her to grow old. The one thing she did that infuriated Patience after all of the years they’d spent together. Her only unforgivable act.

     She said she hadn’t wanted to watch him die. She said that no mother should have to watch her child age and wither away. That she would instead gift him with what she had been gifted eons ago, leaving him to be the only dragon alive.

     She chose to die. She chose to leave him alone.

     Patience could not honestly say he’d ever stopped being angry.

     He mourned. 

     He slept his days away until the amount of time he spent awake and aware of the world shrunk with each passing year. By the time they were able to feel anything other than misery, they had realized that being aware hadn’t improved their days by any significant measure. 

     They were awake now, however. They couldn’t go back to sleep.

     These people were not suited for the title they’d adorned themselves with. He wasn’t either, but he had been once, he thought.

    If he did nothing—if he let the remains of what people had used endless amounts of magic and time rebuilding fall to ruin, she’d have given him this gift for no reason at all.  

     That would be unacceptable. 

     Their musings were interrupted by the sound of a door flying open from a mile or so away.

     Followed by the feral gaze of the vampire queen, binding him to the ground for one eerie moment before she barreled into the forest.

     They didn’t realize they’d been shaking until moments after she’d run off. 

     Their cool blood may as well have been frozen solid under her gaze.

     They did not like that woman.

     She definitely had a strong heart, for lack of a better word.

     Patience was a royal now. It was his job. He’d agreed to his position when the time came.

     Why she had agreed as well he would never understand.

     The vampiress had never spoken to Patience—or anyone for that matter—and yet, they found themselves consumed by either irritation, awe, dread or some deathly combination of all three at her every action, or lack thereof.

     Aside from her demeanor, she wasn’t extraordinarily unique. She’d behaved like every other ‘Elder’ had; with no real regard for the reason they were there.

     The humans were dead.

     As was their trade, their policies, and more of their animals than any creature left behind would like.

     The world—at least as every last semi-immortal being knew it—had changed beyond comprehension, and the entire remaining population had entrusted this too small room full of under-qualified individuals to come up with something resembling a solid plan.

     The few months immediately after the humans had died were horrendous.

     The fairfolk nearly went extinct from the lack of breathable air and foliage.

     Every being left behind had to work to bring the planet back. Despite the fights, trickery, and grief, they'd managed it. 

     And they'd be damned if they let them bring them to the point of destroying it all over again.

     These meetings, exhausting as they were, were more than casual parties. They meant and would continue to mean the beginning of every decision yet to be made for the rest of the world. 

     They weren’t aware of it. They were preoccupied with trying not to listen to the echo of Khalida’s footsteps through the forest; but she was not simply taking a break. 

     They would, of course, be the one to see to her return. 

     She would be the reason they’d see a great deal of things they’d never imagined.

Chapter Three

     The thing you'll have to remember about Khalida, is that she's not selfish. Not in the true sense of the word.

     To be selfish, you’d have to be aware of the fact that you are a person. That you exist. That the people around you have lives and feelings and that this fact should matter to you.

     Most days, Khalida was not a person. She was a force. A force that used to need to eat.

     She still could. She thought about it sometimes. As much as something like her could think.

     Khalida was no longer one to think.

     When she was a child she thought constantly, even more so as a young adult.
Then the first century passed and she hadn't aged a day. All the time, all the money, all the vastly different lives; they added up.

     With the nine hundredth body and the millionth piece of gold, it became increasingly difficult to recognize whether those around her—or even herself—mattered.

     When Khalida was in the meeting, imagining how the leader of the good neighbor’s spring court would taste and what noise she’d make when she felt her teeth in her carotid—not the most ideal place, but beggars couldn’t be choosers and it’d be a great deal of work to find a better spot—and she smelled it, she was confused.

     ‘It’ being the scent, somewhere off in the woods. Sweat, dirt, and human.

     And the faintest hint of Guerlain Shalimar.

     Did she think before she ran after it?

     Yes. More than she should’ve.

Chapter Four

     When she saw the kids—kids? She still wasn't sure, they were way too small to be kids—standing at the very top of a tree and giggling to themselves about a joke she immediately knew she'd never get, Angela thought for a second that maybe things would be ok.

     This changed after she realized their size.

     And their pointed ears.

     And their limbs that bent at weird angles, and the thousands of colors on them that no human should be able to see, let alone have in their clothes and skin.

    One of them jumped straight down the length of the tree, catching themselves a millisecond before hitting the ground and using their deceptively strong dragonfly-like wings  to soar right back up to the top.

     She stared up at them, enthralled, unable to move. Realizing with each passing moment that she was allowed to stare at how their skin glowed, how their eyes were too wide, how some of them even had flat, horizontal pupils. 

     ‘Should I?’ She thought.

     She resisted the urge to turn around and look down the lush green path that led her here. She didn’t know how long it would be before they registered her presence, and she was certain she didn’t want to know how much time it would take for them to break the distance between her and the tree.

     Maybe their brains worked like dogs. Maybe if she backed away slowly and didn’t make eye contact they’d ignore her and she could start running at least twenty minutes after she felt safe. That was the rule for dogs. Or bears. One of the two. 

     She shook her head, keeping her eyes open so she could see anything other than the perfect mental replica of the bunker she had burned into her brain.

     Either she was hallucinating and her brain was really capitalizing off of that human fly thing or she was psychic. Both would mean something new. That was all she had and all she could afford to hope for, the universe would have to pry it out of her cold dead hands.

     In hindsight, she probably should have noticed they were staring back at her much earlier than she did.

     When the whispers and giggles stopped and eyes that were crinkled with smile lines turned cold and hard upon seeing her, it didn’t take long for her to become as hopeless as someone in her situation ought to be.

     The first one to confront her was neon pink; Angela couldn’t have recalled many other details about her because it hurt to look at her for too long. She landed directly in front of Angela before she could blink and asked a million questions before she could open her mouth to say “hi! I'm Angela, I apologize for staring at you like some massive freakazoid, I only did it because you don't look normal in any sense of the word.” 

     “Who are you? I've never seen you before. What brings you here? Are you human? You are, aren't you, oh I used to love humans, sorry about what happened, anyways, how are you holding up? How did you hold up? Where are the rest of you? What do you have in your bag? Why are you wearing those horrific shoes?”

     Was this what anxiety felt like? She couldn’t remember, it’d been so long.

     She guessed not being able to process a word the miniscule creature was saying because its eyes were bright yellow and it was just a little bit shorter than the length of her face wasn’t the worst reason to feel overwhelmed. 

     She got the feeling this was just how fast people—were they people?—talked now. Somewhere in the distant recesses of her mind, a small part of her hoped it was. She craved it. How nice would it be to not only live through this interaction, but have something to adjust to after? 

     “I'm sorry, can you repeat…all of that?”

     Maybe she’d close her eyes for a second.

     If she clicked her heels three times, she'd open them and all the creatures would be people—recognizably human people who are seconds away from directing her to a fallout shelter away from whatever poisonous fumes were floating in the air. 

     She tried.

    There were no distinctly human people popping up in the squares of personal space the probably-not-humans were now occupying. 

     The first five minutes of her reintroduction to the world and she was already crying in front of complete strangers.

     Responding to the rapid-fire questions was the closest thing to a goal she’d had in three years. The idea of not being able to achieve such a small one made her nauseous. The tiny people flying in circles around her head were probably not helping.

     “Aww, pretty one, why are you crying?”

     They’d all swarmed her. Some tried to wipe her tears away, flying back and shaking like a dog upon realizing their leaf skirts were drenched.

     “Can you cry less messy?”

     Mumbling more to herself than to the small beings she guessed were fairies, she dabbed at her tears. Trying to avoid making her imaginary mascara run.

     “I’m alright, I'm fine, I'm sorry, I'm fine.”

     The faeries gave each other a look. They made quick eye-contact with each-other, frowning and smirking like they were asking a question or sharing a secret.

     If the body language of this version of the world was the same, Angela guessed the tiny neon pink lady vehemently disapproved either way. 

     Her lip reading was shot, but despite not being able to make out what they were saying, she knew that look very well. 

     That’s the look you get from friends and family members before you do something hilarious and stupid,’ she thought.

     She used to find that look funny. 

     “Well, if you're really sorry, you could come with us.”

     One of them, the mostly orange one, was covered in little green droplets. They looked like a leaf on the first day of fall. Or more like the first day it feels like the season’s changed. They flew directly in front of her face, forcing her to go cross eyed to focus on them. They rested their hand directly on her nose. 

     “What?” Angela asked, sounding and feeling so much weaker than she’d like to seem at this moment. 

     “Yeah! You could come with us! It's so much better where we're from. Oh! The food, the music, the clothes— imagine how good you'd look decked in this frock!” 

     A different one spoke. Its demeanor struck her as far less human than the others. It crawled through the air. She wondered if the disorientation clouding her mind was their doing or if the sluggish movements of such a small wispy body were too much to wrap her head around. 

     It gestured to its…dress? Skin? Whatever it was, it wanted Angela to picture herself in it.

     Unsettled as she was, she did.

     She saw herself. The picture—hazy and two dimensional as it was—reeled through her with just enough realism to keep her attention. 

     She sat in a chair staring at a vast array of every possible food she could think of. Everything from a hearty plate of ribs and some pecan pie to beef wellington and a deconstructed black forest tarte. On the table rested more food she could not attempt to identify than food she could, but they made her mouth water all the same.

     Like when a dream suddenly shifts in plot, in an instant she found herself waltzing on a pink glass dance floor. She wished she could think more about why the ground still moved under her feet like soft grass, but  a different person wrapped her in their arms with every beat change—never without a glass of some wine she also couldn't recognize in her hand.

     In an instant, she was tiny. A couple of inches—or probably millimeters—shorter than the others. She floated mid-air in front of a hollow in a tree. Inside the hollow, well-lit by the dull glow of the moon, were a crowd of them waving her in. They beckoned her into a roaring party, waving and calling for her but never using her name. 

     The first few minutes since she left—fractured and invigorating as all get out—became comprehensible again when the surreal visions dissipated before her eyes. The image faded and in its wake was the sight of all of the little things peeling off into the air far away from her seconds before she would have taken her first step off of a cliff she had no idea she was on.

     The abrupt rush of adrenaline from realizing she’d been seconds away from careening down into a rocky shoreline didn’t have long to set in. 

     She’d jolted when she woke up from it. She’d taken a few steps back. 

     She couldn’t say she sensed what was behind her, she didn’t think it would have been possible to.

     There are many things Angela could say would be her biggest nightmare.

     Things like being alone in a bunker for three years. 

     Like living with the knowledge that everyone she'd ever met, everyone she'd ever loved, everyone who she might have one day become great friends, lovers, family with; was dead.

     Things like beginning to forget the faces she's known her entire life.  

     The weird forest full of things she couldn't understand hadn't scared her all that much in hindsight. When compared to all of those things, at least.

     This thing, having its breath on the back of her neck made her remember every night she’d woken up to the sensation of falling despite her being safely tucked in around thin polyester sheets.

     She didn't know how to talk to those…bugs? Flower people? 

     The freaks that had tried to kill her. That’s all they deserved to be called and she’d remember that if she lived through this.

     There was no realm in which she could communicate with it. Let alone talk it out of killing her.

     By the time she’d started running—shortly after she’d turned around to see it, she’d realized two things.

     One, that it was nothing. Like, truly nothing. An empty space where something should be, the dead winter that suffocates a noise that should ring in your ears under the snow.

     Two, it wanted to kill her.

     The sudden onslaught of darkness didn’t register to Angela as she ran. She narrowly avoided tripping over her feet. Her breath made no sound.

     The clunking of her too big shoes thudded against the tall grass but anyone in the forest would not know that from the still, tranquil quiet that followed the predator and prey.

     The transition from when Angela remembered what it was like to be a human being and the moment her mind decided for her that she was nothing but a thing that needed to run or die was brief. The biting, isolated cold of a vacuum in space increased and her consciousness of herself and the world around her slipped the further she sprinted.

     The screech of some animal reverberated through the forest and she darted after it. The knee-jerk reaction to  follow any chance she could end up in a group overriding the distant area in her mind where she knew to question what exactly the group could consist of.

     She ran around a bend in the trees and locked eyes with a huge bear with three huge rabbits in her jaws and a dozen more resting in a bloody pile in the hollow of a tree stump. Drool cascaded down sharp white teeth that Angela hoped would dig into the thing chasing her, whether or not it meant she was next.

     ‘Much bigger than in the movies,’ she managed to think for half a second while she barreled towards it.

    Somewhere in an alternate universe where adrenaline wasn’t the only thing propelling Angela forward, she noticed the bear’s eyes widening in terror. This Angela wasn’t granted that clarity. All she noticed was how its teeth felt in her shoulder when it grabbed her and tossed her on its back in a smooth and quick maneuver that probably gave her whiplash. Not that she had the ability to fully process the welts wrapped around her shoulder  or the ache in her neck then. 

     She barely processed the dense and coarse fur she buried her face into in an attempt to not fall off and be left to whatever was hopefully now leagues behind her.

     Minutes or hours later, when she stopped relying solely on blind instinct and the fear and panic started to firmly set in, she realized they’d slowed down around the same time she’d started to sob into the furry back. Which she was slowly beginning to remember belonged to a bear.

     But it marched on in a dead silence. Leaving her to try her hardest to walk the tightrope of calming down for long enough to get off of said bear without getting eaten, but not enough to start thinking about how close she was to dying—for the third time in twenty minutes—and how much she missed her parents.

     ‘At least they won’t have to hear about me dying via horrific bear attack.’ She thought.

     A few minutes had passed before she noticed that not only was the bear not protesting by any means, it was carrying a weaved draw-string bag in its mouth. 

     Thirty seconds had gone by before she decided to talk to it.

     “Hello?”  

     Of course, she got no response in return, but why let that stop her at this point?

     “Listen, I don't know if you're…I don't really know what…do you know if there's a town nearby?” 

     Angela abruptly fell to the floor even though the bear had slowly tilted its body to the side in an attempt to gently angle her off. 

     She attempted to process the feel of the ground underneath her while the thud of the bear’s paws rumbled through the air after she dropped the weaved bag on the ground next to a tree and the rabbits that it had apparently been carrying the whole time and rhythmically trotted behind it. 

     The tiny human fly thing was weird, but Angela was not prepared to hear the twitching and squelching sounds that came from behind that tree.

     She was more surprised by her unchanging expression than she was to see a chubby, brown arm reach out from behind the tree and pick up the bag.

     A short black woman—who couldn’t have been much older than twenty—with a chestnut brown Afro that framed her heart shaped face trotted around the corner with the same jolly gait the bear had. She picked up the deceased bunnies and shoved them in a separate basket that she'd seemingly pulled out of nowhere. 

     She did not look as though she could lift a five foot seven woman up off the ground and give her a piggyback ride.

     ‘What, how, and who the hell is she?’

     “I think you can take a guess.  I don’t know—a witch could probably tell you though, I was never great with biology. And I’m Maggie, good to meet you! The circumstances could definitely be better, but it’s nice to see a new face.”

     She should work on that habit of saying things out loud some time.

     Angela didn’t blink while she stared at the bear-woman for an uncomfortable amount of time. 

     There wasn’t much Angela had fully made sense of within the past half-an-hour or so, and she hadn’t had a full conversation in a few years. What would she ask? What could she possibly say? 

     “Your dress is cute. Is it Versace?” 

     She cringed the second she asked. It was as close to a verbal reaction as she would get.

     At least the dress was cute. She didn’t want to lie often, she couldn’t be sure she remembered how.

     “No, I don't know what that is. But thank you! I made it myself.” 

     Angela nodded, wondering for a second if she should run. The urge got overruled by the need to talk to something sentient with a swiftness. 

     “Wicked. My grandma always wanted to teach me to sew, but I just never really got into it.” 

     The bear—Maggie nodded, “That’s understandable. It can be quite frustrating when you’re first starting out. Let me tell you, I didn't have the slightest interest in it until they invented the machines. I'm so glad we were able to reconstruct them, half my wardrobe wouldn't exist if we hadn't.” 

      She reached down and offered Angela a hand, visibly struggling to hold back a laugh when she yelped a bit at the strength with which she hauled her up. 

      Angela brushed off her clothes without breaking eye contact with Maggie. Bears were one of the animals you were supposed to make eye contact with, probably. Hopefully. 

     “I feel you, if you want something done right you gotta do it yourself, you know?” 

     The bear woman smiled and nodded, “Don’t I know it? Everybody sings Laurel’s praises, but I swear, they still don’t know how to do a proper running baste stitch, and I just can’t trust that—” she interrupted herself with a gasp, “Oh, goodness, it’s pitch black out here for you! Are you still headed to town?”

     Angela nodded rapidly, “Yes! Yes, I am. I'm a little, well, actually, a lot turned around right now.”

     The woman sighed and gave her the most pitying glance and she appreciated it more than she should’ve. Being looked at at all felt like such a privilege, even being looked at by a possibly murderous bear woman.

     “Yeah. I can only imagine.” The woman hummed, looking down at the ground.

     Her eyes glowed for a second, a red ring around them like a cat’s eyes in a photo when she made eye contact with her.

     “Can I give you a hug?” 

     Angela immediately shook her head. “Later. Please. I can't right now.” If she hugged someone for the first time in years after everything that happened tonight she would cry forever. Whether or not that person could kill her. Plus her body’s lack of hydration was starting to make itself known, all of the running she’d been doing did not help much and she really didn’t want to cry in front of a stranger again when her body didn’t even have enough water in it to make tears happen. 

     Maggie nodded, “Of course. Come on, honey. You look like you could use something to eat. And probably a long nap.”

     “Thanks. I'd be fine with just some directions even. I just really don't know where I'm heading.” 

     She tentatively picked up a rabbit with her thumb and pointer, trying to touch as little of the corpse as possible while still helping. 

     “It's fine, hon,” Maggie said, taking the rabbit from her and shoving it in her basket, “you've had a rough night.”

     She trailed along after Maggie through the forest, making chit-chatting on occasion. The lulls in conversation lasting for long enough for her to be eternally grateful she still knew how to make small talk. 

     “If you don't mind me asking, how did you…get all the way out here?” 

     Obviously she meant 'how did you not die horribly?’ But Angela appreciated her at least trying not to point out the elephant in the room. Despite the elephant in the room being neon green and having a giant flashing ‘Warning: Nuclear Waste’ sign on its forehead.

     “Well, I was inside a bunker."

     "A what?" 

     "When everything happened, I was at work. I went down in the basement to look for some pens or paperwork, or something—I can’t even remember what. Everything happened all at once and the door was closed behind me and—" 

     Angela squeezed her eyes shut, trying to focus on the sounds of the leaves crunching under her feet.

     "Go on. If you want to, that is. If it's easier, maybe you can just tell me what a bunker is?"

     She shook her head, laughing awkwardly, "right, yes, that's what you asked. It's like an underground building created to protect its inhabitants from nuclear warfare. I was living in one. For the past three years."

     The woman whistled, "Damn. That's a long time without—" 

     "Yes, I know." Angela cut her off.

     Whatever it is she was going to say; good food, a real shower, a hug from a family member—it wouldn't help to hear someone say it out loud.

     The realization that she had been following a complete stranger through the middle of nowhere struck Angela when Magie suddenly stopped.

     "What's your name, by the way?” Maggie asked.

     She wore her most professional smile. The one she used to greet potential clients, or to convince the girls to join her for an impromptu brunch, or at a bar when she wanted a free drink.  The smile she hadn’t been able to use for three years. 

     "Angela Weathers, a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” 

     She reached into her pocket to pull out a cream business card that used to be white and handed it to her.

     Maggie’s brow furrowed while she smiled and stared at the card before shrugging a bit to herself and pocketing it.

     "It’s a pleasure to meet you as well. It seems like you've had a rough go about things so far, Angela. I’m sorry to say you don’t have many options, but if you’d like, I can offer you some."

     Immediate relief flooded her at the idea of being able to use logic and make an actual decision again.

     "Alright, shoot."

     "What?"

     "I mean, tell me the options."

      Maggie frowned a bit, then nodded, "alright, right now we're walking to the village. We're calling it Noman, but we're still workshopping titles."

     "But it's been three years?" Angela said, taken aback.

     Maggie rolled her eyes, "I know. Write the elders and ask them about it, supposedly they'll answer, but not sooner than twenty hours after it’s sent.

     Or twenty days. Or weeks, or months. Or,” she paused a bit while she looked at Angela briefly, “years.”

     Angela opted to ignore the look, for her mental health’s sake and because she wanted to know everything about whatever system of government was in place.

     “The elders?”

     Maggie sucked her teeth, “Yes, that’s what we’ve been calling them. Though they haven’t been doing much to earn the title. We’ve written to them about what was chasing us just now countless times.” 

     “Don’t bring whatever that thing is up again. Please.” 

     Maggie nodded. “There’s not many of them, if that helps.”

     “It doesn’t. But maybe it will soon.”

     Maggie smiled back at the young woman, “I hope it does.”

     Angela nodded, coughing and looking straight ahead to avoid whatever emotion this was, “Anyway, the options?”

     “I run an inn, nobody’s come by the village in years and everyone has their own homes, so I have a few spare rooms. If you wish to stay there for a couple of nights, you're more than welcome."

     “You would do that?” Angela stared at Maggie and got a look in response that could only mean that statement had broken her heart. Her face brought her back to every moment she’d turned down a cookie from her grandma. 

     She just nodded.

     “Maggie, I don't know what to say, or how to repay you, like, at all. I don’t have any cash on me.” 

     Maggie shrugged, “you don't have to say anything. And you definitely do not have to repay me.”

     Maybe Angela stiffened when she heard her say it and didn't realize. Maybe her smile faulted a bit, maybe Maggie smelled the fear of saying and doing nothing for longer than a few seconds at a time on her breath.

     “Well,” she drawled, “if you're really looking for something to do, you could help me make the stew for tonight. Can you cook?" 

     The first time she'd invited her parents and sister over for dinner at her first apartment, she'd lost a month's worth of rent on her security deposit after the burnt and overcooked pasta noodles started a fire and left a permanent stain on her ceiling.

     She tried and failed to imagine the horror of someone having her handle the knives and body parts of some poor, innocent rabbits. 

     "In a manner of speaking."

     Maggie squinted at her, "if that's not your prime skillset, you can always wait tables or help me and the kids clean rooms."

     Angela nodded, trying to hide her shock at the idea that such a young woman/bear had kids.

     ‘Hey, who am I to judge, it's the eighties,’ she thought—not saying it out loud this time! She was learning!

     “Alright, what's option two?"

     "The town isn't big, word gets around. You could ask around and see if you can apply for any positions. Tomorrow though. Maybe even next week, alright? I won't hear any word about you going off in the middle of the night to find work. If you're really stubborn, I'll show you the safer areas to rest in the woods until you're able to build a house.”

     Sleeping alone in the woods was not an option. 

     "So, option three?"

     "I could give you some new food and some fresh clothes and take you back to your bunker."

     "Option four?"

     "That's it, I'm afraid. Or it's all I can think of, at least."

     Well, she wasn’t going  back to the bunker.

     It would have been her safest bet. Stay there for a while, get some food, maybe dip into a little of option two and start looking for a job while she stays at home base.

     But she really didn't want to.

     She wanted to wake up stressed about work again.

     She missed the sounds of people running around. Arguing, partying, talking to themselves about what excuse they’d use on their boss when they showed up fifteen minutes late with a latte in hand. 

     She needed the city.

     Always had. 

     “Alright, let's try option one.”