Twenty-five years after the world ended, and Route 30 is still littered with rusty cars, stopped or toppled from the blast. You'd think things like that would be gone by now, but I can always find evidence that once everything wasn't so hard. Once Prowlers didn't come at night to steal your life away. Once it wasn't dangerous to live.

Since it's just the two of us now, Mom and I make our way to Mountville, the nearby town of survivors where we barter supplies and food. Today we're hoping to trade some ears of corn for soap. We're all out, and the smell is getting unbearable. As we turn onto Main Street, the street lights' tattered American flags flap over plaques that read "United We Stand." Here the cars have been parked on the sides of the street and in driveways for twenty-five years. These people were safe in their homes when the shock wave from the blast hit, knocking our world into disarray.

Just ahead is the barricade between the Mountville community and the rest of us, but it's broken, smashed to pieces in the road. Something is wrong. I realize then that the town guard isn't at their usual post either.

"Mom?" I whisper, the first I've spoken since we left the house this morning. We're always quiet on runs, just in case the Nomads are still around. I've never seen any, but my parents and the Crowleys said they came once when Daniel and I were babies. They said the Nomads even searched our house, and took one of my baby blankets. Why anyone would only steal a baby blanket is beyond me. I always thought my parents just lost the blanket and made up a story about evil travelers, but every time I asked, they insisted it was true; even Eleanor, and she can't lie. Couldn't lie.

Mom unholsters her gun and orders me to do the same. My stomach churns thinking of the weight of a gun in my hand. I haven't held one in years, and I try not to think about that last time I did, when I nearly forgot who I was. I reach to my back pocket for my slingshot, the one Dad carved for me.

"Not your slingshot," Mom whispers, "not now. Take out the gun I packed for you in the bag." Her words carry fear, and they fill me with too much terror to press the issue further. Mountville is never unprotected, that's one of their community promises. She must see how scared I've become, because her face softens and she takes my hand. "I'm sorry, honey, but in case anything happens, you need to be armed. Trust me."

I nod, and she smiles in spite of the uncertainty and fear that surrounds us. She can always make a situation seem better, which I'm certain is the only reason we've been able to survive the past two months without Dad, Daniel, and his parents.

I hurry behind a car for cover and unzip the bag. There, between the corn we planned to trade and a bottle of well water, is Daniel's Enfield revolver. Over the years his sweat marks dulled the wood around the handle, and as I lift it from the bag, I remember how he used to twirl it like a gunslinger when he was bored. I take a deep breath and press my thumb into the indentation his made. It's as close as I can get to holding him again.

I zip the bag shut and throw it back over my shoulders, racing to catch up to Mom.

We cross the split barricade, our steps marked by impossible to avoid bits of broken glass that crackle under our feet. The windows of the cars and homes are shattered, and I dart my eyes around the scene to check for movement. Maybe people like the Nomads are still around, stealing supplies from survivors and murdering those who fight back, and if they are, this feels like a trap. All I want to do is run away, but Mom presses on, so I do too. She knows better, and between us both, she's the only one who knows what she's doing with a gun. If we were examining the pages of a book or gardening, I'd be set. But this is one of those situations Dad always told me I'd have to face one day, and he was right: Knowing how to use a gun is a survival skill I lack. Maybe this is his way of telling me, finally, to grow up and hunt, so I push the gun hammer down with a click and continue.

"Where is everyone?" I whisper.

"I don't know," she says, scanning the houses as we continue.

After a long strip of row homes, we reach a break where a Victorian mansion sits back from the road. It's the home of Mountville's Mayor. I traded with his daughter once. A necklace that belonged to my grandma for a telescope. I gave it to Daniel earlier this year for his seventeenth birthday so he could see the stars better. Astronomy was one of his favorite hobbies, and he kept extensive maps of the sky. That's how he found the new star.

The home's wrap around porch hugs its first floor, and an empty porch swing sways back and forth in the wind. Even from here I can see that the front doors have been kicked in. "Let's check there first," Mom whispers. I nod and follow her across the browning lawn, my finger slipping with sweat along the trigger's edge.

As soon as I'm inside the house, the smell of decay hits me. Somewhere in this home is rotting flesh. Mom lifts her collar to cover her nose, and yells, "Mr. Mayor? Hello? Chuck? It's Beatrice Blume from the farm."

Not a sound.

"I'm going to check upstairs," she says, her words muffled behind the fabric on her face.

I nod and follow the scent into a room to the left where books line the walls. I try my best to focus on the library instead of the chunks slowly creeping up my throat from the stench.

Aside from Daniel and plants, books are the only things that always make me feel at peace. They remind me of when we were all together, of sitting in the Crowley's living room with Daniel and his mom Eleanor, reading books and laughing. She was an incredibly intelligent woman—emotional, but intelligent—and Eleanor used the library in her living room to teach me and Daniel everything she could. Even now I hear her voice in my head: "Knowledge is power."

As I step farther into the room, I try to hold onto those memories and imagine it smells like the Crowleys' house—dusty paper and mint from their garden—but all I smell is hot decomposition.

That's when I see her collapsed body on the hardwood floor: the Mayor's daughter, dead and decaying. I wish I could remember her name.

Maggots and mice feast off her body, which is now bloated with heat. I grab an empty vase from the nearby desk and puke into it. The sound startles the mice away, leaving me free to see her face, streaked with blood stemming from a bullet hole above her eyebrow.

She was a survivor like me, and she didn't die of illness or starvation. She was shot, and not very long ago either or there would be even less of her now, especially in this heat. This is recent.

The shock paralyzes me, and even if I could move away from her, I'm not sure where I would turn for safety. It's a ghost town outside, and if Nomads did this, they could still be here. My thoughts are about to start spiraling out of control, when Mom walks in and gasps. "Is that...?"

"The Mayor's daughter, yeah. She was shot," I say, still unable to move.

She races from the doorway and searches the other rooms. When she returns, fear is painted all over her face. "Someone moved a bunch of them into the back."

"A bunch of who?" I ask.

"Mountville's townspeople. They're dead." She grabs my hand and pulls me from my trance. "We have to get out of here."

We sprint out the front doors and through the yard, but I stop in my tracks at the distant rumble of machinery, more constant than the pounding footsteps of Prowlers, but just as loud and ominous.

"We need to hide," Mom says, and I begin panicking, barely able to breathe. She grabs my hand and tugs me back inside the house. If something is coming, it will be from the street. "There's a basement back here," she says, leading me down the hallway.

We turn the corner into the kitchen and down a flight of stairs to the basement, but not before I catch a glimpse of what Mom told me about earlier. In the back sitting room are at least twenty corpses, stacked like bags of dirt around the piano, the sofa, the bar. I swallow more chunks.

Once we are in the basement, Mom and I duck beneath one of the storm windows, which I hope the Prowlers, the Nomads, or whoever is out there won't think to check.

The rumbling gets louder and louder until it's all around us. It continues steadily, and it sounds like its coming from multiple machines. Maybe hundreds. I lift my head to peer out the storm window, but Mom grips my arm to pull me away. She looks at me with panicked eyes. "I'll be careful," I whisper, and look back through the dusty pane.

Large, brown machines roll down the street, their wheels a continuous track of metal. I've seen these in books. I remember Eleanor teaching us about them. They're army tanks.

Then I hear the familiar stomping of metal feet. Walking beside one of the tanks is the unmistakable metal body of a Prowler. A giant robot with rounded steel plates for feet, silver beams strung together with thick tubing for arms and legs, a large scooping tool at the end of their right arms, and a sharp metal claw for catching trickier specimens at the end of their left.

No head.

Daniel first pointed out its headlessness to me after we saw them steal away the family across Route 30, the Beckers. Normally, red lights at the top of the machines trace over the land and blink twice at each living thing it finds, as if locking it into focus before snatching it. Once the Prowlers have stolen their find, they dump it into a hatch that opens from its center, but now the machine remains still. The light appears to be off. Just in case, I freeze so it doesn't notice me, and it continues to keep time with the rumbling tanks.

Another tank rolls by with a large gun on top. A man in a gas mask and a camouflage military uniform pokes up from the body of the tank, and surveys the street with the gun barrel. He's a soldier, at least, he's dressed like one.

The final tank passes, along with another two Prowlers, and the rumbling begins to fade.

"They're gone," I say.

"What was that?"

"It was a line of tanks. There was a group of Prowlers with them too, but they didn't seem to be working."

"Tanks? As in Army tanks?"

I nod.

"I always assumed the government collapsed, but... maybe there's a society out there, after all," she says. "Why would they be out patrolling now? It's been twenty-five years."

I shake my head in confusion. "I have no idea. Do you think they had anything to do with the people upstairs?" I ask.

"I hope not. If we can't trust them, then...." She lets her words trail off, but I know what she's thinking. If we can't trust the soldiers, then we can't trust anyone anymore. "We need to head back. Which way were the tanks moving?"

I hadn't even thought of that, and now my chest fill with worry. "Toward the highway."

"Okay, well, the good news is that we're behind them, so we can watch what they do. Hopefully, they just want to help." I want to believe that too, but the Prowlers walking beside them contradict any hope I might have had. "Let's go," she says.

We race alongside the road, careful to stay a safe distance behind the tanks and the Prowlers, which we follow down Main Street, left toward the highway, and east onto Route 30, heading toward our farm. The tanks plow over cars in the road, and I wonder if that's how the barricade broke to begin with. I shudder at the thought.

We stay to the right of the road, where a thick brush conceals us from view and where our farm will be once we reach it.

The convoy stops, and we throw ourselves to the ground. My leg muscles pulse, and my lungs strain for air.

Across the road from where they've stopped is a small, single story house. The tanks stay motionless, except for the first, from which a soldier emerges, and hops down to the road, gun in hand. His massive body moves in and out of view behind the tanks until he reaches the yard and continues to the front door. He shakes the knob—it's locked—so he takes a few steps back and kicks it in before disappearing inside. Then, two gun shots ring from inside the house. My heart stops, and Mom and I are suddenly two fawns frozen in place, waiting for the danger to pass.

After a few minutes, the soldier emerges from the home empty handed. The man behind the mounted gun shouts down to him: "Anything?"

"Nah, just some skeletons."

"You shot skeletons?"

"Yeah, got to practice for when we find Isla Blume."

My heart stops. He just said my name. He just said he fired his gun to practice for when he finds me. His words have me on the verge of crying or screaming or cursing—I can't tell anymore—so I wrap my hand as tightly as I can around my mouth to keep from making a sound, and Mom clutches my arm.

"We aren't killing her, we've been through this," the soldier behind the gun says. "Gunther Quail wants her alive."

Who? I've never heard of that person before.

"But at least those skeletons can't join the rebels now, right?" the soldier jokes. "C'mon, let's keep moving."

The soldier on the ground runs back to the first tank and sinks inside. The rumbling starts again, and the tanks continue forward. Those soldiers were the ones who went through Mountville, I know it. But that means they were looking for me when they killed those people. Why?

"What the hell?" Mom spits once they're far enough away. "They're not getting their hands on you, don't you worry." She paces through the brush. "Why would they even want to find you?"

I know it's not logical, but my thoughts immediately jump to the new star. Daniel and I wished on it a few nights before he was taken, but it seemed too eerie, too bright, and too sudden. Still, we wished on it, and of all things I could have wished on a creepy new star, I wished for everything to stay exactly as it was in that moment, with Daniel's kiss fresh on my lips, our hands clasped together, and our parents unaware. But then they were taken, and now strangers with guns are killing survivors in search of me. It's all my fault.

"Isla," she says, stopping my thoughts, "how do they know your name?"

"I don't... I don't know," I say, tears falling from my eyes.

She helps me up and brushes the dirt from my shirt. "We need to keep moving. We'll stay hidden so they can't see us. No one is going to hurt you, I promise," she says. I nod my head and wipe the tears from my cheeks, but I'm too frightened and angry with myself to even try to seem convincing.

Mom pulls me into a sprint and we continue running through the trees. My legs feel like giving out, but my mind keeps them strong. We can't stop here, no matter what the soldiers are looking for. We have to get home, or at least to shelter before dark. That's when the working Prowlers come out.

***

By the time we near our farm the sun is already close to the horizon. Our house is set back from the road with an entire field separating it from the convoy, and I've been praying they don't care enough to check it out.

As we've watched them inspect other homes for survivors, I've imagined what could happen if they find ours. I've imagined the soldier going into our home and destroying everything we love to find me. I've seen him going into my parents' closet and tearing out Dad's blue button up shirt, the one he wore during his wedding ceremony, the one that still holds the last of his scent—sweat and pollen, mixed with some third element belonging only to him—and I've imagined him ripping it along the seams until it's nothing but rags. I've imagined him knocking all the books from the shelves, tearing at the couches and beds, and pulling up the plants from our makeshift greenhouse. I've imagined him finding my favorite book from my room, To Kill a Mockingbird, and discovering all the dog-eared pages, and laughing at my favorite quotes before burning it. I've seen him emptying out the safe room, our underground bunker where we've been sleeping to avoid the Prowlers, and stealing all our stored supplies.

The safe room!

He'll see the safe room—the canned foods lining the walls, the freshly washed blankets and pillows on the floor—and know there must be survivors. Then he'll go into the kitchen and see the tub of well water and the dishes from this morning. He'll know people live here.

The Mayor's daughter's face bleeds in my mind. She was my age. That could have been me, or even Mom. I could lose my mom. Then I'd be alone. Really alone, and nothing is scarier than that, not even the thought of the Prowlers snatching me in their cold metal claws.

I'm breathing deeply to calm down when I see the convoy stop, and I know why: They are in front of our house.