Driving closer and closer to the city was becoming an education in current events. Being locked up in my own house for so long, being so cut off from everything, I hadn’t even dreamed of the extent of the damage.  As we drove deeper into the city it became harder to avoid the broken down vehicles that had been abandoned in the road.

Garbage littered the dried grass along either side of the road, growing thicker as the road turned into the highway. I rolled down the window a crack, and the truck’s engine seemed impossibly loud on the silent open road. I wondered about stopping somewhere. We’d have to stop sometime. Would the rattling engine attract soul suckers?

We passed a couple of ramshackle houses. Boards had been ripped off the windows, the glass shattered. A few of the doors were open, showing flashes of dark emptiness as we passed by.  I felt my fingers tighten on the truck door handle involuntarily as a pack of mangy brown dogs loped alongside us for a few seconds, then dropped back, distracted by a fresh piece of road kill.

Were the dogs so desperately hungry that they chased after humans now?

I shifted nervously in the seat, aware that Jai was looking at me. His voice was quiet when he finally spoke, “Bit of a shock, huh?”

“Yeah, just a bit,” I murmured, gaze still fixed on the side view mirror as I watched the dog pack grow smaller. “Everything is so…so different.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of a mess.” Jai grimaced as the engine made a sputtering nose, ducking his head to check the gas gage. “We’re gonna need to stop for oil. This old thing leaks like crazy and I don’t want the engine to seize up on us.” He glanced out the window. “That would not be good right now.”

My stomach twisted when I spotted what he was looking at. It was getting lighter now, as we entered the hours of twilight. The shadows were shrinking, revealing the stark ruins of the buildings we were passing. Here and there, black shapes slunk around the outsides of the houses. The  soul suckers' narrow faces whipped around to track our progress.

My fingertips were pretty much numb, I was gripping the handle so tightly now. I pictured the truck breaking down right now, the engine sputtering and dying. They would come at us, tentative at first, than more boldly, until we were outnumbered. Until they could pin us down and suck our souls out.

But the truck didn’t break down. The engine kept up its coughing and sputtering, and it got us all the way to a gas station, which Jai circled once before we parked, checking the area around it before we got out.

“Looks safe enough,” Jai said, peering out the dirty windshield.

“Safe,” I repeated the word dumbly, because “safe” was the last word I’d use to describe the gas station. Well, maybe that and “homely” or “inviting”.  The parking lot had two rusted out cars sitting crooked in the stalls, and one of the handles had been ripped off the middle gas pump. The convenience store windows had been punched in, and the door hung broken on its hinges. The windows were thick with dust, but from where we sat in the truck thes store seemed empty.

Jai parked beside one of the rusted cars and shut off the engine, and we both sat in silence for a minute. Of course, my stomach chose that moment to growl loudly, making Jai break into a smile. “Why don’t you go check for some twinkies in there or something, while I look over the pumps.”

“Alright.” I darted a nervous look at the store again. “I guess I’ll go check it out.”

“Just make sure to bring your scythe, and check it out before you walk in.” Jai swung the door open and got out, and I followed suit, grabbing the sythe from the back of the truck. Once the handle was in my grip again I felt my shoulders relax a bit. It made me feel better. Safer somehow.

I guess I was safer, carrying around a giant grim reaper blade.

Jai was heading for the pumps with a yellow gas can, so I turned and made my way over to the dirty store front, approaching it cautiously, trying to tread as silently as I could. It was really unlikely that the soul suckers would be lurking in there, since they liked a nice juicy human spirit, and not nacho chips or peanuts, but still. The wild dogs had been enough to set my nerves on edge.

Carefully I peered into the dark innards of the store, leaning in ever so slightly. My brief scan showed me a series of white shelving, almost empty save for a few plastic packages. The coolers at the back were still working, surprisingly, and the only noise from the inside was the low hum they produced. They lit the store in eerie blue, mingling with the faint orange light that was seeping in from the dusty windows. The sun was starting to come up.

It looked clear, so I stepped carefully over the wreckage of the door. My sneakers made soft shushing noises on the dirty cement floor. Gripping the scythe tightly I surveyed the shelves, and my heart leapt when I spotted a package of peanuts on the bottom shelf across the room.

Wow, I never thought I’d get so excited over a pack of nuts.

Excited about nuts. I snorted at my own terrible joke and stepped further into the store, striding across to reach down and grab the bag of peanuts. The crackle the plastic made when my fingers closed around it was loud in the dusty silence.

I turned. Maybe I could find some dill pickle chips if I was lucky…

My musings over junk food came to an abrupt halt. There was someone standing in the doorway. No. There were four people standing in the doorway, hulking figures, all dead silent. Bulky men dressed in army fatigues, faces deadly serious.

The peanuts made a loud “crunch” noise when they dropped out of my hand and hit the floor.

The man in the middle tilted his hawk-like face to one side and addressed his companion, “She seems to be carrying a large garden tool.”

“I think you should put down the scythe, miss.” The man nearest to me pulled something from his hip and leveled it at me.

A gun. The guy was pointing a gun at me.

Several things went through my mind all at once. They were army, right? Did that mean they were cleaning up the town? Did this mean things would get better? Why was he pointing the gun at me? How fast would I die if he shot me?

My body didn’t seem to be working properly. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.  My surroundings seemed to swim in and out of focus, accept for the gun. I was completely focused on the gun.

Did soldiers have handguns? That didn’t seem right. And the way they were looking at me…

“Put the blade down, girlie,” said the man with the gun.

The hawk-faced man leaned one hip against the doorway, pulling a squashed package of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. His eyes traveled over me from head to toe as he flicked his lighter, running the flame over the end of the paper until it glowed orange. “She’ll make a good one.”

This seemed to unhinge my jaw somewhat. “A good what?”

“Put the blade down.” The man with the gun repeated. “I’m not going to ask you again.”

Hawk man chuckled and sucked on his cigarette, blowing smoke out of his nostrils, making him look like some kind of demon in army fatigues. “He’ll want her intact. Can’t shoot her, can you?”

The man with the gun grunted. “I could shoot her in the arm.”

“He’ll still be pissed if you do that. It's obvious who she is, right?”

“Steve, if you keep arguing with me I’m going to shoot you. Girl, you put the blade down slowly and walk this way.”

I didn’t think I could move, but I repeated what I’d said before, voice shaking. “Who do you think I am? And who are you taking me to?”

One of the other men, a stocky redhead, leered at me. “Your new boss, sweetheart.”

“I’m shooting her if she doesn’t put it down,” the man with the gun said. “Thanatos can just deal with it.”

Thanatos.

Cold dropped down my spine. So Jai's story was true, and these men were definitely not soldiers, at least, not by proper standards. The man jerked the gun at me, and this time I relaxed my grip on the scythe, wincing as it clattered to the ground at my feet. Where was Jai? He couldn’t still be at the gas pump…

One of the men jerked around at that exact moment, and I saw a blur in the doorway. Jai hurtled forward, brandishing a red can of gas in both hands. The container sloshed noisily as he rammed it into the side of the man’s head. The soldier pitched forward with a strangled cry, and the gun skittered across the dirty floor towards me. I was frozen for a second, watching Jai crash to the floor, pinning his opponent to the ground. The hawk-faced soldier grabbed a handful of Jai’s shirt, yanking him off of the other guy, laying into Jai with both fists. Jai grunted as he was knocked onto his back, and the sharp crack his head made on the cement floor made me instantly nauseous.