Prescient (a time-travel dystopian romance)

Chapter 2

He was wearing all black and gray, but faded, like denim after it's been washed too much. A lot of jean and leather, but I could tell it had been ripped and patched up again. Imperfectly, like he'd done the repairs himself and didn't give a shit about how he looked. His cargo pants were baggy around the crotch but then tightened at the ankles, stuffed into a pair of black combat boots. There were far more pockets and extra straps than seemed necessary. His belt held a hunting knife on one side and a holster in the other. The gleam of metal told me he had a pistol in there.

He was wearing a black hood that kept his face in shadow, but I could tell he was young—less than twenty for sure. I could see the tips of his long dark hair poking out from beneath his chin. His hands and most of his arms were covered by what I suspected was a pair of socks with holes cut into them for his fingers, and he clutched a crossbow loosely at his side.

He brushed past me, ignoring my defensive stance and the rolling pin, and grabbed the arrow jutting out from the creature behind me. He twisted it out with a sharp pull and stuck it into the quiver on his back. The body twitched a leg. I shuddered.

He headed to the front door, which I could see was open.

"We've got to move," he said, gesturing behind him for me to follow.

I didn't budge. I was staring at the grotesque body behind me.

"What is this thing?" I asked. It was humanoid, but with leathery skin, almost no hair, and fingers like talons. Curved and edged with sharp, hard nails.

"Modifieds," the boy eyed me with surprise, "Have you been living in a cave your whole life?"

"Who are you?" I asked.

"The guy who just saved your life," he said. "Now shut the fuck up and stick behind me." He walked to the front door, raising his crossbow in front of him. The long grass and weeds of the front lawn came up to his knees, and shimmered like a wheat field in the moonlight as the boy crossed through them.

I hesitated on the front porch. I didn't want to leave the house. At least it was familiar. I followed him to the edge of the yard but stopped at the street. What if I was sleep walking or something? I didn't want to get run over. That's when I saw the cars. One had swerved into the curb just in front of Brett's house and crashed into a mailbox, which was bent downwards. The window was smashed in, and it looked like the driver had been dragged through the window and then left there. But all that was left of the driver was a skeleton, and some scraps of the clothes he'd been wearing. The bones of his left arm had been ripped off and fell a few feet away from the car.

That's when I noticed the figure in the passenger seat. From the strands of long hair still stuck to her gleaming white skull, and the remains of a purple dress, it was the remains of little girl. Her bony arms were still clutching a doll tightly, and the jawbone was unhinged and hanging at an awkward level. I felt bile rise up in my throat and stumbled back onto the lawn on my hands and knees, heaving.

The boy came up beside me. He smelled like pine trees, amber and musk. "Are you sick? I've got some meds back at my camp—"

I looked back at him, my brows knitted together.

"There's a dead guy, right there. And a little girl," my words caught in my throat and my eyes burned. "Can't you see them?"

"Yeah but that happened ages ago," he shrugged. "During the Modification. Those bodies will have been picked clean by now, nothing useful on them."

The world was spinning and I felt weak.

"Don't tell me you haven't seen a remnant before," he said. They're all over. In the city there are piles of them. Some people use them to make fences."