I could come up with a million reasons why I said yes, but none of them would reveal the core of the mystery: I told Hutch I would go because I had a feeling.

  Yes, a feeling. A twinge in my core that made me decide between two roads. It was the same tug I felt when I had split off from the main highway and ultimately found Hutch, the first human I’d come across since I’d been hit in the head with a concrete slab after a Mastodon ship pelted the building I was in with plasma cannons. And I felt it again when I told him we needed to find an underpass to seek shelter, leading me to find Maggie and Eleanor camping out in the back of a hatchback.

  I’d always been good at hunches, some would call them. It was one of the reasons I became a cop: that, and law school was too expensive.

  So when Hutch said we had to check out that warehouse, I knew it would be a good idea to make sure no Bees were around us. Though that wasn’t the whole truth. I said yes to going because I felt it in my gut to do so.

  We parked the truck safely away from the main thoroughfare behind a grocery store, and locked it. Maggie stashed the keys behind one of the dumpsters—which I steered clear from, because they smelled like spoiled meat and I didn’t want to peek at what animal died inside—before we began to walk just in case any survivors came across it and wanted to steal our main mode of transportation. She refilled our water bottles from the gallon jugs we kept in the truck bed, emptied her backpack of everything except the essentials, and then stomped behind me for the rest of the block, upset that she’d lost our little eye contact battle. Her boots scuffed against the cracked asphalt with each irritated step.

  Hutch and I walked in lockstep, our strides matching without effort after weeks on the road together.

  “So if we do see a Bee,” I said after a while, “what’s your plan?”

  “Well, not to die,” he told me decisively.

  “Great.”

  “It’d be good for us to know what warehouse they’re around, and the cross-streets. We can figure out the rest later.”

  So that meant that he hadn’t thought of the rest.

  That was fine. As long as Bees were mapped out, I hadn’t seen them leave their posts. And I was also curious why two would be stationed in the middle of nowhere, Texas. We weren’t even very close to Waco yet.

  “Why are we just assuming Dex actually saw one?” Maggie said from behind us.

  Hutch grunted. “If he didn’t, then I can shit on him later during chow.”

  “That’s a big waste of time if we don’t see anything.”

  I glanced back at her. “We still get some time away from Eden.”

  She chewed on her cheek for a second and nodded. “That’s a plus.”

  It definitely was.

  When we first arrived, it seemed like a relief to get ourselves off our feet finally. I nearly crumpled in the medical tent as a frazzled med student named Tessa showed up out of nowhere with a clipboard and rattled off a series of questions. How much did we eat in the last few days? How many miles did we walk per day, estimated? Did I have any healing wounds? Her hands shook as she wrote down my answers. Tessa shoved a thermometer in my ear, wiped it down with a napkin—which looked used, I noticed—and then tested Maggie right behind me.

  Eleanor, at the end, grimaced. She was in her mid-fifties, and had worked as a nurse practitioner in the Memorial Hospital Emergency Room for twenty years. “That is not sanitary,” she said, stepping back to avoid Tessa from jabbing the thermometer inside of her, too.

  Tessa’s face flushed pink, then deeper red. “I’m sorry,” she managed to say, her embarrassment causing her to look away. “We’re running low on pretty much everything here, right now.”

  Eleanor turned to me. “Jack,” she said, her voice as sweet as a Texas peach, “can you please get the alcohol wipes from your pack for Tessa?”

  I did what she asked, dumping my med kit down on the cot beside me. The supplies spilled out—bandages, antiseptic, gauze, pain relievers we’d scavenged from a dozen different pharmacies. Tessa gasped in relief, snatching up the bandages with trembling fingers. “Where did you find all of this?”

  “Jack’s got a good nose,” Eleanor said. She patted my head like I was her loyal hunting dog. I couldn’t really complain. Eleanor kept us alive for weeks already, and she meant well.

  That was the first hint that things were not quite right at Eden. It was not just the medical tent that had no supplies. The mess hall lacked basic needs, like propane for their camping stoves. People were packed into tents so tightly you could hear people crying themselves to sleep, and probably even feel their tears against your back. Marshall and Alice, two neighbors who ended up in charge of the whole place, wouldn’t let someone even suggest that they break into their hoarded stash and loosen the rations for mandatory items. I was actually pretty sure they tightened their grip as a reflex.

  They had no idea the value that their backup supplies had. They would not let it go, and Hutch was able to summarize it succinctly the first night we’d gotten our tent: Alice would rather die than lose control. We had to work around her to help her people.

  We ended up splitting our duties across Eden in order to help the best we could.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Hutch and I were on guard duty, of course. We were both tall men with a bit of muscle and gun experience, so Marshall stole us immediately for perimeter patrol. Tessa experienced her happiest day since the Fall when Eleanor walked into the medical tent and announced she was there for her first shift. And of course Maggie, being Maggie, avoided her responsibilities with the ten or so children that populated Eden during the day, and went on supply runs with us whenever Marshall let us off our leashes.

  It helped to have us all together, but I missed Eleanor’s place beside us. She would never leave if there was a patient, and there was always a patient.

  The three of us ended up four blocks away from our scavenge site, and the buildings that made the town look nice and unassuming quickly turned into rows of warehouses. Corrugated metal siding, faded paint, loading docks with their doors hanging open or sealed shut. It had only been two months since the Fall, roughly, and weeds had grown up from every crack and orifice they could find, shooting up toward the sky in a way that would’ve taken years before. Between two warehouses was a giant alleyway, and it was populated with what looked like a hundred sunflowers, their heavy heads drooping in the afternoon heat. As we passed, I considered cutting one off with my knife for Maggie, but she beat me to it: “We can roast these for the seeds,” she said, grabbing onto one of the stalks to pull a flower down to her face. Pollen made her wrinkle her nose.

  “Do you know how to roast a whole sunflower?” Hutch asked.

  She shrugged. “Doesn’t seem hard.”

  “Let’s come back for them.” I glanced around. It would be too much to carry for us right now.

  Hutch, Maggie, and I decided on a warehouse that was about two stories tall with a flat roof and fire escape. Maggie climbed onto Hutch’s back to look through the windows and gave us an all-clear. I broke the lock with the butt of my rifle, the rust having degraded it to the point where I could crush it with my hand if I wasn’t terrified of tetanus in the apocalypse.

  “Going,” Maggie said, entering first.

  Hutch jerked his chin, and I entered after her. He came in behind me and slid the door shut with a metallic groan, bathing us in darkness.

  My eyes adjusted slowly. The warehouse interior was caked with dust—decades of it, maybe—that hung suspended in the shafts of afternoon light cutting through the high windows. Each step we took sent up small clouds that caught in my throat and made me want to cough. The concrete floor was littered with debris: scraps of cardboard and broken pallets, but nothing I could take that wouldn’t be delegated to firewood. The air smelled stale, with an undertone of motor oil that had probably seeped into the foundation years ago.

  We walked through the empty floor toward the stairs at the back. Our boots echoed in the cavernous space. A management office on the second level held what we were looking for: another set of stairs going up to the roof, labeled OFF LIMITS—ROOF ACCESS in faded red letters.

  I rooted around the manager’s desk, my fingers coming away grimy. Papers were scattered everywhere—invoices and time sheets, a couple of resumes. I accidentally knocked over a framed picture of two kids, both grinning gap-toothed smiles at the camera. I found the key in the top drawer, attached to a keychain that read “World’s Best Boss.”

  “We scope from up high,” Hutch explained to us, circling the area with his finger on an imaginary map. “No Bees, and we’re all good.”

  “And if we see Bees?” Maggie challenged him.

  “Then we’re not so good,” he replied quickly.

  Maggie gave him a flat look. “Well, I’m glad I came along.”

  “I am, too. You would’ve been bored at the truck.” Hutch grinned at her as he caught the keys from me in mid-air.

  We clambered up the old metal stairs. Each step groaned under our weight, the sound reverberating off the plaster walls like war drums announcing our presence. The stairwell was narrow and dark, forcing us into single file. My shoulder brushed against the wall and came away with a streak of grime. Luckily, we had no need to be quiet anymore. The Mastodons had taken care of that—no one was left to hear us.

  The door at the top was unlocked. Hutch pushed it open and we were hit with a wall of heat.

  The Texas sun had been baking the rooftop all day, and it radiated up through the soles of my boots. The surface was covered in light gray gravel that crunched and shifted under our feet, making it impossible to move silently even if we’d wanted to. I could feel sweat already forming at the small of my back, soaking into my shirt.

  We spread out toward the edges of the roof, each of us taking a corner. I covered the two sides that overlooked our entrance, scanning the empty streets below. Maggie and Hutch flanked my back left and right. The gravel scraped and popped with each step.

  My side was just as boring as ever—we came in this way, so there was no danger for us to expect. I watched the sunflowers bob for a while, trying to count them up and estimate how many we could squeeze into our bags. I was about to give up on any further excitement for the day before Maggie let out a sharp, “Holy shit.”

  I turned and caught her gobsmacked expression as she instinctively ducked below the lip of the roof. My stomach dropped. I gripped my rifle tighter, the metal slick under my sweating palms.

  Hutch was already halfway to her, moving in a low crouch.

  “Dex was right,” Maggie admitted, her voice dropping to barely above a whisper.

  Down below, I heard a sickening crunch as a Bee’s metal foot stepped down onto something—a car, from the sound of it. Metal shrieked and buckled under its powerful hydraulics. I already knew how the car was probably buckling, because those robots had enough power to cut through metal like butter.

  I tried to be as quiet as I could, but it was hard with the gravel shifting under every movement. I dropped low, my knees protesting, and began to follow them. The heat from the roof burned through my jeans.

  Maggie scooted into the corner to allow me a better eyeline, her back pressed against the raised edge.

  Sure enough, down below us were two Bees. Massive things, easily twelve feet tall, their rotund bodies gleaming dull silver in the afternoon sun. They were currently guarding the building directly south of us, their sensor arrays sweeping back and forth in mechanical precision. Something had rattled a pair of nearby trash cans—probably a cat—and they’d been drawn to investigate. Their plasma guns crackled and hissed, the air around the barrels shimmering with heat distortion. But they hadn’t fired yet. I wondered what they were waiting for, if this was because of a protocol running through their alien programming.

  “Oh no,” Hutch said, his voice tight.

  Maggie looked up at what he was staring at. “No,“ she breathed.

  I tore my eyes away from the Bees and followed their eyeline. The warehouse next to us was abandoned, some sort of printing expo judging by the faded banner still hanging across the front. Its bottom floor was wide open, the large garage doors rolled up or torn off their tracks, granting each Bee easy entrance if they decided to investigate. But it was what was on the second floor that made my chest tighten.

  A face was staring back out at us through a grimy window.

  She was mid-twenties, like us. Long blond hair pulled back in a braid that had seen better days, strands escaping in all directions. Her face was gaunt, cheekbones sharp under skin that looked paper-thin. She was pressed against the glass, one hand flat against the pane, and she kept flinching every time the Bees moved below her. The fear in her eyes was visible even from this distance.

  She’d seen us. And she was begging us with that look—the universal expression of someone who’d run out of options.

  She needed help.

  She wanted our help.

  “Fuck,” I said.