by Tarah Benner
That isn’t something I’ve thought about since I was a teenager, but seeing the weight of it in her eyes makes me think about it now. I don’t want her to see this side of me, but it’s inevitable. And the more I can speed this up, the better chance we’ll have of getting out of this town alive.
Dragging in some air, she retrieves her own handgun. I peer out of the window, but there’s no sign of movement.
We don our masks again, and I open the door and lead us out onto the walkway. The boards creak underfoot, loud enough to attract the attention of anyone lurking nearby, but we don’t encounter a single living soul. The crumbling parking lot is completely deserted, and the only movement is the shredded state flag flapping in the breeze.
I signal Harper to keep going, and we press our backs against the building. This town is slightly larger than the ones I’m usually assigned to patrol but just as run-down.
The cluster of fast-food restaurants near the highway means it was probably some sort of hub before Death Storm. Now, the roads have been overtaken by brittle-looking tufts of weeds, and most of the signs are broken and faded from the sun.
As we approach one of the restaurants, the sinister dancing cheeseburger mascots follow us with their dead eyes.
Then I catch a flash of movement around the corner. I make eye contact with Harper and jerk my head toward the gaudy red-and-white brick construction.
With Harper covering me from behind, I sneak in for a better view. That’s when I see him.
There’s a lookout stationed on the corner, wearing faded jeans and a cutoff black T-shirt. He isn’t much older than me, but his skin is dark brown and leathery from spending too much time in the sun. Every inch of him is covered in dirt and grime, and he’s been stuck here so long that he’s grown bored and oblivious to his surroundings.
I move with such stealth that he never sees my chokehold coming. He only has a second to react to the blind panic before I plant the silencer against his temple and pull the trigger.
It happens in an instant, but the darkness that settles over me will last forever.
His dead weight crumples in my arms and feels impossibly heavy. I lower him to the ground, trying not to look at his face.
I glance at Harper. She’s staring at me as though she’s having an out-of-body experience.
I’ll never forget that look. I feel the weight of every kill I’ve ever made in her astonished gaze: the guilt, the horror, the emptiness that sucks you dry. It’s the worst feeling in the world.
She can’t believe what a monster I am, and she’s terrified she may have to become one, too.
I turn away as quickly as I can and lead us around the outskirts of town.
I don’t look back, and I don’t look at Harper. I can’t bear to see that expression again.
I try not to think about the man on the corner. I’ll replay that moment over and over back at the compound, but I can’t afford to dwell on it now.
It takes us about thirty minutes to reach the opposite end of town. We don’t encounter another living soul the entire time. I’m starting to wonder if they’ve all gathered elsewhere to regroup.
Then I catch a flash of movement outside an abandoned body shop. There’s a man pacing around the open garage, but he hasn’t spotted us yet.
I grab Harper’s arm and jerk my head in his direction. Her eyes grow wide, and she follows me along the side of the road to a filling station across from the shop.
We duck behind a dusty gas pump, and I zoom in with my interface to see how many men we’re dealing with.
I only see one guy pacing under the “Qual y Cust ms” sign and another moving just inside the garage, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more. Both men are older than the first guy I took down, but they’re on high alert.
I could take them both out myself, but if there are more I don’t see, we’ll be screwed. I don’t want to make Harper a killer on her first deployment, but I might not have a choice.
Fighting the wave of despair washing over me, I steel myself for the question I should never have to ask her.
“Do you think you can . . .?”
“Yes.” She doesn’t look at me, but her deadpan tone tells me she understands what she’s agreeing to.
“All right. I’ll go in from the front and take out the first guy. That will give you the element of surprise to go around back and take out the second. Got it?”
She nods, silent as she processes the plan.
“Shoot the drifter, not me. If there are more guys inside, get down before they start shooting. I’ll take out as many as I can. And if we’re seriously outnumbered, you run.”
“What about you?” There’s an accusatory look in her eyes that tells me she knows I don’t plan on retreating.
“Don’t worry about me.” I summon up my most commanding tone. “Retreat. That’s an order.”
She looks away without agreeing, but I just ignore her because we don’t have time to get into an argument. The man inside the garage just called the other guy over, and they’re both preoccupied. It’s now or never.
“Let’s go.”
We shoot across the street, and Harper tails me to a rusted-out pickup truck near the edge of the parking lot. I crouch down just under the busted window and get eyes on my target.
“They’re still inside,” I whisper. “Go.”
I don’t want to put her at risk, but this plan gives us the best chance at a clean escape from this town. No drifters, no surprises.
Plus, Harper is smart and clearheaded under pressure. If any cadet could handle this, it’s her.
I watch as she disappears around the corner of the body shop, praying she’ll stay out of sight until I have a chance to finish this guy.
I take the silencer off my gun and count to three. I need to wait until Harper lines up her shot so that when I shoot the first drifter, her target will be distracted enough to give her an opening.
Squinting to the far corner of the garage, I see a sliver of Harper’s face and the barrel of her gun.
This is it. There’s no room for screwups — no time to second-guess myself.
In one fluid motion, I fly out from behind the truck and dash across the parking lot. I stop in front of the garage and shoot the first man I see.
He collapses onto the ground, and I scan the rest of the garage for threats.
The second drifter wheels around at the sound of my gun. There’s another shot, but he doesn’t go down.
Harper missed. We hadn’t planned for that.
I catch her look of horror, and she steps out from her hiding place to line up a better shot.
What happens next happens so fast I don’t have time to react.
A third drifter steps around the corner where Harper was just hiding. He grabs her by the throat and sends her gun clattering to the ground.
I move closer to get a clean shot at him, but by the time I get into position, he’s got her in a tight bear hug with the barrel of his gun pressed against her temple.
“Drop it!” he yells in a deep, guttural voice.
I freeze. I can’t shoot him without putting Harper in jeopardy. This isn’t what we planned for. Harper getting killed wasn’t even an option.
The blood is pounding in my ears as I try to formulate a plan. It’s the loudest sound I’ve ever heard.
The drifter that Harper shot and missed bends to retrieve her gun and points it straight at my chest. It doesn’t matter, though. The only gun I’m worried about is the one pressed against Harper’s head.
“Drop it, or she dies!” yells the drifter holding her. He’s wearing a filthy white shirt and cutoffs, but with a gun in his hand, he looks capable enough.
Harper’s eyes are fixed on me, steadfast and fearless. She isn’t struggling. She isn’t panicked. Even with a gun pressed against her temple and a gun pointed at me, she still believes I can somehow get us out of this.
“Let us go, and we’ll turn around and leave your town right now,” I say, fig
hting to keep my voice steady.
“Yeah, right. Leave you to kill the rest of us on your way out?” says the drifter closest to me. He raises the gun a fraction of an inch. “I don’t think so.”
“We won’t. You can take us to the border.”
“You think we haven’t run into your people before?” he asks. “You’re like rats. There’s an endless supply where you came from.”
“I’ll tell them to leave this town alone.”
“Nice try. But if you were a general, you wouldn’t be here, would you?”
“This isn’t a negotiation,” says the man with the gun on Harper. “Drop it. Now.”
“What are you going to do with us?”
“Now!” he shouts, pushing the gun into Harper’s head. She lets out a tiny gasp, and fear flashes in her eyes.
“Okay!” I shout. I don’t need this guy getting trigger-happy so close to Harper.
“Nice and easy now,” says the man closest to me.
Slowly, I bend at the knees and lower myself into a crouch. I can see the man next to Harper watching me closely. This is our only chance.
Just as I predicted, his hand follows his gaze. He drops the gun ever so slightly and moves away from her by about an inch.
It’s a long shot, but there’s no other way out of this. I make eye contact with Harper, begging her to be ready to fight.
If this doesn’t work, she’s going to die. But if I don’t try something, she’s as good as dead anyway.
Moving with speed I never knew I had, I jerk my arm back up and shoot the man in front of me.
The sound nearly shatters my eardrums, and a horrible, gripping emptiness sucks the air out of my lungs.
He falls to the ground, his eyes glassy and lifeless, but there’s no time to dwell on that.
I jerk my gaze up, dread heavy in my gut, and see Harper struggling with her captor. I was too preoccupied to notice how she got from point A to point B, but she has her drifter’s wrist twisted painfully at his side as she tries to wrestle his gun away.
I aim at the drifter, but they’re moving too much for me to get a clear shot.
When the man shifts his weight and pulls Harper to the ground, my heart feels as though it might beat right out of my chest.
His elbow shoots out, connecting with Harper’s sternum. She whimpers but doesn’t let go. If anything, she becomes more ferocious.
I stand paralyzed with indecision. I don’t know if I should dive in to help or stand ready to shoot.
I never have time to decide. It’s over in less than two seconds.
Somehow, Harper wrestles the drifter’s gun away and pulls the trigger.
The sound reverberates through the garage, and a thick cloud of tension settles over everything.
When the ringing in my ears subsides, I expect silence, but the drifter is still alive. He’s gasping and choking like a drowning man begging for air, struggling body and soul to stay alive.
Harper must have missed his heart, and now he’s bleeding out slowly.
I’ve never been able to make someone suffer like that. I’ve never had the stomach for it.
I aim my gun to finish him for her, but Harper pulls the trigger again and sends him down to the dark depths for good.
More than anything, that’s the thing I wish I could unsee. Watching Harper take her first life is the only thing that even comes close to the agony of my first kill.
The hand holding the gun drops to her side, and she looks up at me with a frantic gleam in her eyes.
“It’s okay,” I croak, lowering my gun and moving toward her.
I recognize that expression. All the adrenalin coursing through her veins is overwhelming. The first life-or-death fight I ever engaged in, it felt as though I’d taken speed. My heart was racing, I couldn’t catch my breath, and my muscles were burning with enough energy to flip a car.
Harper’s enormous eyes go to the drifter’s face, as though she needs to reassure herself that he’s dead.
“Don’t look at him,” I order.
But she can’t tear her eyes away.
“We need to move,” I say. “Somebody will have heard that. They’ll send backup.”
Harper doesn’t give any sign that she understood. She’s still staring at the man, simultaneously relieved and horrified by what she’s done.
I want to say something to comfort her — something to erase the last ten minutes — but there’s nothing I can say. Even if she never saw the drifter’s face, he’d come to her in her sleep.
It’s over for her. She can never come back from this. She’ll always know what it’s like to watch a bullet pull the life from another human being.
You never forget your first kill.
five
Harper
As Eli leads me away, a single thought is running through my head on repeat.
I killed someone. I took a life. Someone is dead because of me.
I thought I would feel a horrible, debilitating guilt the first time I killed a drifter, but I just feel sick and numb all over.
If I hadn’t shot that man, he would have killed me. But we ambushed them.
I could have walked away, but I didn’t.
The image of his empty expression is seared into the back of my eyelids. He was a person — just trying to survive like me — and I ended his existence.
It’s eerily quiet as we complete our circuit around the edge of town. We don’t encounter any more drifters, but Eli is still tense and alert. His shoulders are stiff, and I can see the rigid lines of his back through his shirt where every muscle is clenched. He’s still coming down from the fight.
I’m not sure how he maintains that intensity. As soon as we killed the drifters, the adrenalin burned through my body, leaving me completely drained. I’m not sure I could defend myself again if I had to.
Eli checks every building as we make our way toward the center of town. The shops and restaurants are more concentrated here, which makes it a painfully slow process.
I try to help by covering him, but my body is running on autopilot. My brain can’t seem to muster up the instinct to care whether I get out of here alive. If a drifter jumped out and shot me point blank, I would certainly deserve it.
The longer we walk, the louder the silence becomes. That’s all it is out here: death and silence and emptiness.
In the compound, I never felt truly alone. There was always someone breathing on the other side of the wall or talking down the tunnel. Here, we’re on our own.
Endless miles of desert stretch in every direction, reclaiming the roads and buildings. Dust obscures the pavement, and little tufts of desert grass line the parking lots and snake their way under car tires.
I want to lie down on the ground and let the dirt suffocate me slowly so I won’t have to feel anything ever again.
Eli leads us into a dilapidated little building that’s connected to several other businesses. I can’t tell what type of store it used to be. The dusty shelves are completely empty, and the cash register is smashed into a million pieces.
He gives me a concerned look I’ve only seen a handful of times and pulls me down behind the counter. Watching me carefully, he tugs my rucksack off my shoulder, and I go limp as he checks me for injuries and rummages in my pack for an energy bar.
“You need to eat and rehydrate,” he says.
I don’t feel like doing anything, but I take a sip of water anyway. The energy bar tastes like gravel in my mouth, so I just put the other half in my pocket for later.
Eli finds some food for himself and starts chowing down, but he never takes his eyes off me.
I wish he’d stop staring. I just want to disappear.
“I’m sorry,” he says finally. “It shouldn’t have gone that way. I should have been more careful.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“It is my fault. I didn’t see the other guy. I shouldn’t have sent you in there, but you . . . handled it.”
Handled it.
I shudder. Because of me, that man is gone. Because of me, the people he loved will never see him again.
Eli is still talking. “We need to get to the center of town and find their bunker. We need to know what technology they have access to out here. They’re advanced enough to disable our land mines. Who knows what else they can do.”
I nod, trying to refocus on our mission. One of the reasons Jayden sent me to do this was because she knew I’d be able to report on their setup accurately. Even if we survive, it won’t be a total bust for Constance. At least they’ll get some intel out of it.
I’m not sure whether it would be better to bring back a full report this time or not. If we tell them everything they need to know, they may decide to kill us and be done with it. But if we don’t, Jayden will send us out again.
Normally, that thought would give me a jolt of fear, but I just feel empty inside. And when you’re empty, fear has nothing to latch on to.
“We should at least find out everything we can,” says Eli, reading my mind. “Once we know, we can decide what to do with the information. If we find what we came for, at least we’ll have a bargaining chip.”
“Okay,” I say in a flat voice. “Let’s go.”
He looks worried, but I pull my mask back on before he can argue. We creep out of the building, and I cover him as he darts around the corner.
Each business we pass looks more run-down than the next. Most of the windows were shattered long ago, giving us an unobstructed view of the enormous interiors. It seems ridiculous that people once lived in houses large enough to fit ten compartments.
It didn’t do them any good once the bombs started dropping.
This place wasn’t a direct target during Death Storm, but it must have been one of those towns people fled to in the weeks that followed. They left the cities, but they couldn’t outrun the nuclear fallout. Most people here died slowly of radiation poisoning, but some of them didn’t.
I only learned about the drifters when I joined Recon, and I still can’t fathom how they survived. Our enemies had been threatening nuclear war for decades. And while the U.S. government was confident no nation would initiate war and risk ultimate destruction, the compound’s founders weren’t.
