We continued sticking close to the shadows as we made our way in the opposite direction the hunter had gone. With the memory of seeing that shadowy figure smoothly move across the park faster than I would've thought possible burning bright in my mind, being in the shadows didn't really make me feel that much safer.

My mysterious savior, however, moved confidently in the lead. If she was scared by the assassin, she didn't show it. Instead she moved us through the neighborhood at a good pace, pausing only twice to make sure the way was clear before continuing on.

Then we were out of the houses and moving along Scenic Drive, which skirted the outer edges of the city.

"Stay low," she quietly instructed. "At least one of them watches the major roads all day."

"How do you know?" I asked in a hoarse whisper, snapping my head around to try and find possible spots for a sniper to perch itself.

Instead of answering, she pointed towards a distant intersection clogged with unmoving cars and trucks. Then she was moving towards it, staying in a low crouch in the tall grass as she did. Trying my best to mimic her crouch, I followed, silently thanking all my parkour for making me relatively flexible so I could stay hunched over for so long.

Still, it was slow going and in short order I found myself several steps behind her, my companion much more used to going forward in a crouch. Despite the twinge of panic it gave me to quickly give up so much space between her and me, it let me take a good look at her. Well, as good a look as I could get with her crouched over.

From what I could see past the black hoodie, hand-painted with jagged gray and blue lines to break up her silhouette, and baggy black cargo pants, she was athletic and lean, like a girl on the track team I had gone out with a couple times last spring. Last spring? Man, that felt like a thousand years ago. Back when the world hadn't yet seen the green dot of doom in their skies and I could play PS4 and listen to music whenever I wanted to.

That girl on the track team, with her red hair, freckles and killer smile. What was her name again? Damn, I couldn't remember. So much had happened since then to push aside memories of better times. Since the green dot became a laser sight aimed at Earth and we started taking shots from alien bad guys.

Then my reverie was disturbed by us moving into the intersection. Almost immediately my nose was bludgeoned by the smell of death, thick and bitter even through my hepa-mask. The girl swung around a stalled out truck and pressed herself against its other side before waving me forward. Carefully I followed, moving around the truck before sliding along the box to where she was taking cover. In doing so, what was hidden by the jumble of cars became visible.

Bodies. Lots of them, most in the dark blue and tactical equipment of cops in SWAT gear. I had seen bodies before. Hell, I had even made a few during the dark days of the third wave lockdown. But I had never seen this level of carnage before. I had to fight to keep from puking in my mask as I took in the untidy heap of limbs and torsos strewn about the space inside several of the vehicles. A space that looked almost, ... deliberate.

"From what I could tell, they were trying to escort a number of officials that had survived the plague out of the city in horse-drawn wagons," the girl said in a low voice, the dark brown eyes above her camo-painted mask narrowed in thought.

A quick glance to the side yielded two such wagons tipped over on their sides, the kind that they had used down in the river valley at the Fort Whoop-Up historical museum for hay rides for the kids. Beside one was a dead horse, which told me the escort hadn't gone so well.

"They got to this intersection where the cops had set up a checkpoint and got ambushed," she went on to say.

Ambushed? By zerkers?? Even those crazy bastards wouldn't be stupid enough to try to take on a whole company of cops in tactical gear.

As if she had heard me, the girl pointed through a gap in the ragged circle of dead cars to where more bodies could be seen. These were in hunter's gear, forest camo and utility vests, mostly. Regardless of what they were wearing, they certainly didn't look like the raggedy zerkers we had been fighting off.

"Anarchists, looking to eliminate the last elements of local government," she named them in a low voice, one that was filled with disapproval.

That earned her a quick look from me.

"How do you know?" I asked around another attempt to gag.

Instead of answering, however, she slid to the side of one of the downed cops.

"It wasn't much of a firefight," she said as she looked down at the cop. "The anarchists were relatively well-armed but poorly trained. The cops were cutting 'em up pretty good when they got hit again."

She pointed to the gunshot wound on the back of the cop's head.

"This time it was the hunters," she revealed. She then quickly pointed to several more bodies. "Pop, pop, pop. All in the back of the head." She dropped her hand and stared at the ground. "Of course the surviving cops thought they were just taking fire from more anarchists and really started to put the boots to the ones they could see. It wasn't long before they had killed the rest of them. Only to die themselves a few minutes later when the hunter finished its work."

"Damn," I breathed, not wanting to believe what she was saying. "It sounds almost like you watched it happen."

Again she didn't say anything, choosing instead to carefully flip the cop over. Already well into rigor mortis, the body was dead weight and difficult to handle. Still, she managed to get him over, revealing the ruin the bullet had made of his face when it exited. A ruin that was in the middle of seriously decaying and filled with wriggling maggots.

"Oh man," I breathed, swallowing hard to keep the vomit in my guts.

Ignoring me, she pulled the cop's utility belt off.

"Here," she said, holding it out to me. When I didn't move, she gave it a shake.

"Take it, Liam!"

Hearing my name from a supposed stranger was enough to jolt me into action. I took a couple steps towards her and grabbed the belt.

"How, ... how do you know my name?" I said.

Still ignoring my questions, she pointed to the gun in the holster.

"That's a Glock 22, an Austrian-made handgun that can fire both 9mm and .40 caliber rounds for flexibility and better hitting power. Easy to carry and maintain and a favorite amongst many law enforcement agencies." She then tossed me several clips of ammo, forcing me to juggle the belt and catch the clips one-handed before hastily stuffing them into a pocket so I could catch the next one. It wasn't long until my pockets were bulging.

Seeing that, she shook her head in disapproval.

"Put those in your backpack, man, not your pockets. Ammo is going to be in short supply now. So, unless your dad can make some, you're going to both gather up what you can from these poor guys and conserve what you have."

Her spiel about ammo wasn't anything I hadn't already heard from my dad. Hearing her mention him, however, sent even more warning signals through me.

Instead of giving me the chance to ask more questions, she was busy shifting bodies around to get at their weapons and ammo. I found more clips being tossed at me, along with a few more handguns. Each went dutifully into my backpack, which I was supposed to use to carry fresh water from the still. But there was no denying this strange girl with her determined purpose and obliviousness to the death around her.

"No rifles?" I asked only half serious when she finally pulled back from the heap of bodies. Drawing free of the last corpse, she shook her head.

"Tough to carry in tight spots," she added in the way of explanation. "Sure, they hit harder, but they won't hit a thing if you get it jammed in a tree branch while running through a forest trying to get away from one of those hunters. Not to mention, I don't know too many guys that can fire a rifle one-handed, leaving the other one free in case you need it."

"I don't know if I could do that with these Glocks," I countered, looking down at the last one she had thrown me. She had pulled it free of its holster to toss it to me. So the gun was naked in my hand, safety on and, as far as I could tell, with a full clip. Apparently the cops caught in this ambush were still using their rifles and not their handguns when the hunter got them.

She glanced at me when I said that. Then she shrugged as she used a fallen officer's pant leg to wipe her gloved hands off.

"You'll learn. Not like you have a choice."

I fought the impulse to sigh as I stuffed the gun along with the others into my now overburdened backpack. I was starting to get sick of that little nugget of truth.

"So, you knew about this ambush but waited until now to come down and raid the bodies for their weapons and ammo. Why?" I asked, half expecting her to ignore the question like she had the previous ones.

"The hunter left the bodies here as a trap for the curious and the opportunistic," was her terse reply. She waved me back to cover against one of the trucks making a side of the makeshift fortress.

"It wanted people to come down here and check it out so it could take them out nice and easy without having to go look for them."

"Then why aren't we dead? I thought you said it watched the major roads."

"It can't keep an eye on all the roads at once, champ," she quickly fired back with the obvious answer. "Besides, you and me just watched it go through that park back there, heading in the opposite direction."

"That was the one watching the road? The one that took all these cops out?"

She jerked a confirming nod before she peered up at the hill looking down on the intersection.

"Yeah, and it won't be gone for much longer. So we need to get the hell outta here."

"No kidding. So what are we waiting for?"

Again she glanced at me, the eyes above her mask hard.

"Just making sure it isn't already back, dumbass," she hissed, not happy with my question or the tone I asked it with. "C'mon!" Then she was nimbly twisting around the end of the truck and out of sight.

Gritting my teeth in frustration, I tried following as best I could with a backpack stuffed to overflowing with guns and ammo, the combination weighing a ton. Thankfully it was so stuffed that the guns and clips weren't really rattling against each other, or I was pretty sure I would've gotten a comment about that, too.

From the back of the truck we went into the long grass we had already used to move up on the intersection. But, instead of heading back towards the house, she took a left and headed down into the river valley. I staggered when we hit the first fold in the ground, the first of many that announced the edge of the valley.

"What, ... what are you doing?" I said as I fought against the pull of the weighted down pack. "Why are we going down here?"

"The hunter will make a sweep along the road as it returns to its vantage point in the hope that something fell into its trap while it was gone," she said without breaking stride. "If we went back to your house, it'd see us. Besides, don't you have a still run to make?"

Okay. That was it. Yet another reference about being familiar with me, my family and what we had been doing to survive the waves from this complete stranger. With my frustration bubbling over, I pulled up short and dropped the bag, bending down to yank out a gun. Flipping off the safety as I came back up, I found her already waiting with her own gun pointed right at me.

That sent a thrill of panic through me. But I roughly shouldered it aside and kept a two-handed grip on the Glock I aimed at her masked face.

"I've had it with all these references to me and my family," I growled, trying to ignore the nervous sweat that had appeared on my palms. "You talk like you know us, or have even been watching us. But I don't know you. Who are you and why should I follow you another step?"

For a long moment she just stared back, the unwinking eye of her gun muzzle looking straight at me. Then, as abruptly as the situation had fallen apart, she was dropping her weapon to her side. With her free hand, she reached up and pulled her mask down, revealing the pretty features of a First Nations girl about my age.

"My name is Tasha Runningdeer," she said, her voice a clear alto now that there wasn't a mask getting in the way. "And it's true. You don't know me. But I know you. At least, I know about you." Making a show of flipping the safety on her gun back on, she held up her free hand in a non-threatening gesture as she carefully returned her weapon to a holster she had hidden under her hoodie.

"Has your dad told you about how he became a prepper while studying engineering at college?" she asked as she tugged her hoodie back into place and looked over at me.

"Yeah," I cautiously answered with a frown.

"And about how he and a couple friends got together one night and decided to start a prepper group?"

"Maybe. You going somewhere with all this, Tasha?" I asked, my gun still aimed at her. Tasha's knowledge of my family was starting to creep me out to the point where I was beginning to wonder if she was some kind of stalker. Or worse.

Seeing the doubting look on my face, Tasha folded her arms beneath her breasts, an eyebrow lifting at the gun still pointed at her.

"As a matter of fact, I am," she said somewhat tartly. "My dad was Terry Runningdeer. And he was one of the friends that started that prepper group with your dad!"