The Aftermath

Prologue

Late May

Frigid air gasping against my skin yanks me awake.

"Wonderful." I climb off the sleeping bag I slept on top of the night before. When I went to bed, the heat was blistering, unbearable—the complete opposite of what I'm facing right now. "They screw with the weather right after we hit the jackpot."

A few feet behind me, someone snorts. I shoot a look over my shoulder at April. Blue-lipped and shivering, with wet strands of her flaming-red hair plastered to her forehead and around her shoulders, she looks as if she won't be able to manage a coherent word.

Instead, her calm, even voice surprises me. "We'll be fine," she says as she walks over to the pile of items we procured the day before on a raid and begins gathering them together. "I've checked the area, and the weather's not that bad. The important thing is we get back to our shelter so we can make all of this count. I wonder if Mia's been fi—" The rest of her sentence catches in the back of her throat as her eyes land on the row of sleeping bags across from where she's squatting.

"Where's Mia?" April asks.

Slowly, my gaze turns to where Jeremy, Mia and Ethan, the other members of our clan, lay down the night before. Jeremy and Ethan are sitting up on their sleeping bags, but Mia is nowhere to be found.

Where is Mia?

"We're better off without her," I say to April, feeling my heart sink at the bitter words I can't seem to hold back. "And you're right—we should go. Our shelter is waiting."

"Will she be replaced?" April demands, and my stomach hardens at the harshness of the question. Our friend has gone missing and April's already wanting to know how soon we'll find someone to take Mia's place, make our group stronger.

When did April—any of us, for that matter—become so cold?

"No." When I shake my head, she storms outside and into the cold. I somehow stay cool and collected as I finish packing up the bulk of our new supplies with the boys. When April returns a few minutes later, shivering twice as hard as before, she doesn't speak to me nor does she mention Mia again.

In fact, there's no more mention of her at all as our group prepares to leave the abandoned garage that was our shelter last night. Fear slivers down my spine as I think of the raid we'd gone on just before finding this place, where we'd ripped apart a flesh-eater den, freeing their living captives before making off with all the weapons and supplies we could carry.

Where is Mia?

Just before we venture out into the snowstorm, I face the rest of my group. "We'll be fine."

We walk through the blizzard for what feels like days, rarely stopping, until, finally, we return to our windowless safe room and sleep like the dead. In the months that follow, it seems we never have enough food, despite the constant raids for energy bars and water bottles that barely sustain us. Missions to free captured survivors from flesh-eater dens, and the fraying bonds between the members of our clan, are the only remnants of the humanity we'd once known—a time in my life I can't even remember because I had awakened in this world with no recollection of my past. 

Who was I before all this? 

Was I carefree and loved, a girl with a family and a real home? Or was I manipulative, like the person I've become, this person who has killed other people time and time again? Even though everything I've done is out of necessity—the need to survive—the longer we live this way, the less human I feel.

Sooner or later, there won't be any humanity left to salvage.

Some days, I can barely even bring myself to string together a coherent sentence, letting silence and barked commands take the place of the complicated emotions I feel. And other days, I awake unsure of myself. When was the last time I ate something? How long did I black out for this time? Who was I before this world became such a wasteland?

Our world went to sleep in the spring of 2036, when the sky opened up, releasing asteroids. Releasing blizzards and hailstorms and then a heat wave that blistered the land. Releasing death. When Nashville and her inhabitants awoke hours—maybe even days—later, we were all as good as dead. Our only source of food came from the few factories untouched by the storms—mostly there were protein bars, but sometimes we were fortunate enough to find other food. We prayed for water, for rain.

We hoped for a miracle.

We'd christened our new world The Aftermath. There are the cannibals—flesh-eaters. And then there are people like myself. Survivors. We possess honor and loyalty. We scavenge for food, not flesh. We're willing to die or kill for the safety of our friends. And we choose our clans with care because they must be prepared to do the same for us—because one must be so careful these days.

My group's changing, though. Mia, who'd been with me since I awakened in this world of tainted water and dry soil and chaos three years ago, has been missing now for months. I told the others that we'll be fine without her, but I was lying.

Mia's disappearance has left me disoriented and hopeless. Every time I think of her, I want to embrace the bittersweet darkness that swallows me when I close my eyes.

But sometimes I dream that I'm someone else. A girl with dark hair who doesn't worry about hunger or thirst or running from flesh-eaters.

In her world, those sorts of things don't exist.

___

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed meeting Claudia and her group. Love it, hate it, confused (you're supposed to be at this point but all will be revealed, I promise)? I'd absolutely love to hear what you think, so please leave me a comment below. I'll be updating this story daily, so make sure to check back for new chapters. <3 <3 <3

-Jena