Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

From THE UNDYING: SHADES by Ethan Reid. Copyright © 2015 by Ethan Reid. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

YEAR FOUR GRANADA, SPAIN

She dreamt of the past, of the old world, her world, when planes polluted the skies and the great machine of humanity cogged forward ignorant of the approaching doomsday—of sitting with her mother in the kitchen drinking coffee, neither speaking—when people took the train, currency still had meaning, and the dead stayed so.

A vision of being wrapped in a bathrobe, perusing friends’ updates as Mom read the morning news from a tablet—a time prior to the worldwide electromagnetic pulse, and Paris, before darkness spread from the mysterious epicenter in South America, before fireballs, the long winter, and her years of trudging through the ruins, scavenging in the dirt.

Instinct forced Jeanie awake. For a moment she held her breath and listened, in case something hungry fumbled about the gardens outside. Hearing nothing, she stared through the latticed shutter as her mother’s face melded into obscurity and the new world took hold. Hints of a nightmare failing to fade, of walking the highways for weeks on end, of a familiar evil lurking in the dark, wanting in, wanting them.

Nerves, she told herself—born from too many nights where the pale ones fought to scratch their way into her sleeping place. Nearly twelve months now, and no sign. Instead of rising, she pulled the covers tight, delayed fumbling about for a candle, worried stumbling to the latrine would wake—

With a start she felt the mattress beside her, expecting Rennie’s weight—the impression of his body, the warmth of his feet touching hers—and found nothing. Sitting up, she cursed. Moonlight filtered through the cracked-open door.

Swallowing panic, she reached for her blue jeans. Stupid, falling asleep so deeply. What had she been thinking? An extra glass of wine—again? Heart racing, she slid into her sneakers, noticing the clever kid had used a chair to reach the locks.

Pulling on a T-shirt, she rushed from the portico, searching the sprawling grounds for any sign of him. In the night, he could easily tumble into the nearby ravine. Or worse.

Don’t even go there, she told herself, and glanced for his small head darting behind the rows of dried-out boxwoods. Across the gardens, the Alhambra’s battlements had provided the best sanctuary for them since the castle in Bordeaux—undamaged during the fallout, a city of supplies within walking distance, and a view for miles—yet after so many months she had allowed complacency to settle in.

Stifling the desire to call out, she hurtled over a turnstile and rushed past the dilapidated ticket counter, toward the royal complex, where tourists had once congregated. Rennie loved the older part of the Moorish fortress, where the tiny birds darted about tessellated columns and its pool reflected the moon. As she took to the gravel pathway, a throaty clicking echoed high against the rising walls and turrets.

No, she thought. Not now.

With a gasp, she broke into a frantic sprint.

Rennie smiled in the moonbeams, craning his neck to study the swallows, twisting and slicing between pillars. Long tails, split in two. The birds, so gallant in flight, darted from stilted arches where their nests clung to intricate mosaics. He had seen few animals outside the ones in books and magazines read to him at bedtime. Most beasts stalled at the point of death, like people. But not birds. He didn’t know why, but he liked to imagine that the swallows went to someplace better. He liked that idea very much.

She startled him, stumbling through a row of dead shrubs at a full tear, skidding on the path, glancing wildly about the walls where the Nasrid structures met the older stone citadel. Her anxiousness confused him. Was he in trouble?

“Stupid,” she said, repeating herself as she jerked him off his feet. He fought to keep pace as they rushed past the parapets. Across the deep gorge, he caught a glimpse of the city’s ruined buildings. From below, the rushing sounds of the river. Río, she called it. Río Darro. Once, when they had walked the highways, she called such things rivières.

“What did I do?” he asked.

“Shhh!”

“What’s happening?”

“Must’ve followed us home,” she said, panting. “That means they’re hunting in the city. Pray it’s a loner.”

They rushed deeper into the fortress, through pillared halls where disturbed swallows darted about their heads. She pulled to a stop in the middle of an overrun courtyard, bent down, and brushed the hair from his face. Her eyes sparkled in the darkness. “You can feel it, right?” she asked. “In your head? Tell me you can feel it.”

“Yes, I—I think I can.”

She shook him. “Tell me!”

“Yes,” he replied. Scared.

“Good. Quickly now.”

As they ran he glanced behind, expecting to see a gaunt face trailing in the corridor, naked, loping on all fours, blind gaze seeking, bloodied mouth opened wide, blackened claws reaching for his flesh. A cry escaped his lips. He could feel the thing toying with his mind, coaxing him—begging him to call out. Pleading, so sweetly.

Wanting to consume him.

He stumbled and she lifted him—his legs circled her waist, his arms her neck—as the beast’s awful clicking filled the hallway. Echolocating, she called it.

“Just like when we play,” she said, huffing. “Blank slate, okay? No feelings.”

She set him on the gravel of an open-air square—Court of the Lions—glancing about as swallows flitted above. “I’ll draw it away,” she explained, winded as she placed her heavy knife onto his palm. “Get in that room and go silent, play hide-and-seek. Can you? For me?”

Tears rimmed his lids as she removed the pistol from her belt. Hands quivering as she checked the clip. The way she kept glancing at the tiled roofs frightened him. She noticed his tears and bent over. “Quiet as a mouse in the grass at night. I need to know you can.”

He stared at the gun. The weapon scared him more than the blade, but not as much as the moribund. The undying ones often called to him as he slept, with their dreams of insatiable hunger. He sensed them while passing buildings at day, their thoughts like tendrils seeking emotion, reaching out from their hiding places. Unquenchable. Thankfully unable to brave the streets when the sun shined.

“Hey!” She gripped his shoulders roughly. “Can you?”

He bit his lip. “I—I’ll try.”

“Good. It’ll have no idea you’re there. It’ll hunt me. Okay? Go inside and hide.”

She kissed his forehead and shooed him toward the room. He stared as she rushed around the court’s central basin, the slapping of her sneakers dying away as she slipped beneath the arches and disappeared.

The night sky opened, an emptiness threatening to swallow him whole. He backed into the low-ceilinged chamber, passing geometric patterns woven into the threshold—one tick, two—set the knife down, and curled into a ball beneath the ring of lion statues, hugged his knees, and shut his eyes. Surrounded by marble, his tears turned cold on his cheeks. Hers, the only voice he knew.

Silent as a mouse.

He forced himself to slide deeper into the shadows. Went inward and cleared his mind, purging all thought as she had asked. Anything, for Jeanie.

Blank slate. They’ll never know you’re there.

Rennie had spent one birthday and nearly another here, in the Red Castle, where she told him emirs had once kept their harems and sultans ruled. The cities from before were mostly forgotten. Ruined places passed on the highways, stories told to him at bedtime—Nantes, Toulouse, Madrid. Only her. Jeanie. Her voice. Her warmth.

This was his world, she often told him. Her world—the Seattle across the ocean—died long ago. Her America, where all had been green and happy and grand, with shining buildings reaching to the heavens, moving cars and bustling traffic, schools and laughter, football games, Internet and barbecues. Before the fires, the blizzard, and the undying.

Pulling into a tighter ball, he briefly remembered the warmth of her lips on his forehead. Quickly, he pressed the memory aside, to slip away, into darkness. He went cold, blank slate, like she asked. Close down. Feel nothing.

Go silent.

Go dead.

Rennie’s eyes shot open at the sound of wheezing in the doorway. Although he had been taught to wait, to feel her touch before stirring, he risked a peek.

A figure panted in the threshold, its shoulders rising and falling in the gloom. From it, he sensed nothing. A terrible emptiness. No emotion. No…

“Mama?” he asked, his voice quaking.

“Thank God,” she gasped, and stepped forward. Slick gore covered her face and shoulders. Her T-shirt had been ripped in half, exposing a shoulder and a stained bra. Gun shaking in one hand, she reached out with the other to pull him up. She led them quickly toward the gardens, fingers entwined. “We go,” she said, breathless. “Now.”

As they hurried through the courtyards, she limped. Thrilled she had returned, he said nothing as they reached the gardens, fearful of upsetting her. She had not been angry with him for a long time. Their time in the Alhambra had made her softer. He loved it when they played hide-and-seek in the palace’s halls and chambers, tag in the Palace of Carlos V.

Inside their small room she wiped his face clean, then hers, lit a candle, and knelt, packing quickly. Two sleeping bags lay on a mattress covered with books, beside a tiny table and desk. He cried as he watched her. There wasn’t enough space in their backpacks for all of his toys. He did not want to leave them. Who would protect them, once he had gone?

“The thing wasn’t a loner,” she told him. “They’ll know where we are. More will follow.”

Eventually, she stopped rolling her sleeping bag and inhaled deeply. Her hands shook. “The Alhambra is not safe. Granada is not safe. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he blubbered.

“Good.”

“Where will we go?”

She shed her shirt, donned another, and kept packing. In the candlelight, deep scratches scored her back, red stains blossoming in her fresh blouse. “Farther into Spain. We’ll find a highway and head south like before. Someplace warmer. Someplace they don’t like. A small town. As defendable as the Alhambra and with clean water.”

“But I don’t want to leave!” he blurted.

“We’ll find someplace safe, okay? Somewhere you can—”

Her hands fell onto her lap and she cried, an uncontrolled sobbing that rattled her body, scaring him. Frightened, he went to her, arms out, hugging her like she would him.

“So sorry,” she muttered. “My fault.”

After a few moments, she squeezed back. “We’ll find a town with a bullring,” she said, and smoothed his shoulder-length hair. “You’ll like that. They have them in southern Spain. In Andalucía.”

“A bullring? Like in my book? The bull who won’t fight? The one who smells flowers?”

In the flickering light, she smiled warmly and wiped away his tears. “Like Ferdinand, yes. But you’re going to have to listen until we get there, okay? Keep listening until we find a new home. You’ll have to be patient. Think you can do that?”

He nodded and knelt, wanting to make her happy, filling his small pack with his clothes. “Will I see a bull?”

She placed a hand on his small shoulder and squeezed. Her flesh stuck to his, coated in moribund blood. “We’ll keep walking. Look for survivors. Like we always do.”

“Moving on?”

Her smile, sweet. Even with sadness in her gaze. “Yes, Rennie. On and on.”

After securing the door, she pulled her small watercolor painting from the wall, the old one of Paris’s Left Bank, with its sad clown dancing before the Seine, and slid the frayed canvas into her bag.

Grabbing the candle, she reached for her tattered tour book of Spain. She always kept it within arm’s reach, and studied its maps often. She loved books. He did, too. Loved listening to her voice when she read to him at night.

“Sleep now,” she said, and leaned back. “We have a few hours until dawn. At the first hint of sun I’ll wake you.”

“You and me?”

She smiled as she set the pistol on her lap. “Always. Now get some rest, kiddo. We have a lot of walking ahead of us.”

WEEKS LATER

Parched and beaten by the midday sun, Jeanie paused on the cracked highway and gripped Rennie’s shoulder harder than she should have. More black silt blew in a gust before settling on the road. With each step she grew more anxious about their dwindling water supply—they were down to two bottles—and worried over how badly she had miscalculated the number of miles between towns.

Epic fail, she thought. My fault.

They had ambled down the southbound lanes of the A45 for a day and a half, after their bicycle’s tires gave out on the A92. Rennie liked bike travel better—as Jeanie pedaled he rode on the pannier, gripping her waist, smiling into the wind. Now two toes poked from his right tennis shoe. The left one was frayed badly at the tip and heel, close to losing its battle.

Undoing the cloth from his face, he squinted through the whipping dust. The plastic sheet stitched to his hood unraveled, fluttering in the breeze. “Mama?”

She answered his stare with a raised finger. Lifting his sunglasses, he glanced toward the horizon.

Heat rose from the highway, bisecting the blackened Spanish plains. The fires had been bad here. Worst he had seen. Nonstop loess and biting dust. The silt fell in the beginning, Jeanie had told him, when fireballs rained from the skies. Ejecta. By-products of the endgame, when something either struck the earth or woke up after being buried beneath its surface, spreading darkness from the unspeakable ground zero in Brazil.

Four lanes dipped into the mountains of the south. Beyond the peaks, the city of Málaga and the Mediterranean. Waves, she said, as far as one could see. Farther south, they might even spot the tip of Morocco across the strait, if the coastline had not been too ravaged by the tsunamis.

Rennie followed her finger. The feet of the mountains were bright beneath the sunlight, but the hills fell under the shade of an approaching cloud bank. Coming in fast. Dark.

Full of rain.

She squeezed his shoulder and indicated a road parallel to the highway. Past a row of disintegrated stumps—palms trees, once—a burned-out villa sat behind a wire fence. Within the ruins, a storehouse. No windows. Corrugated metal walls. Large sliding doors, wide open.

“What if one of them is inside?” he asked, blinking nervously.

“We risk it,” she replied. The sulfurous, acidic rain would burn their skin and eyes. They had to find shelter. Now. When thunder boomed, a resonant crack rolling across the billows, she pushed him from behind.

Shadows consumed the highway as they hurried over the guardrail, racing against the rains, rushing past two words painted on a concrete wall.

HOSTAL. AUTOSERVICIO.

Halfway to the fence, the rain fell, engulfing them with its stench of sulfur. Rennie sobbed as she wrenched the wire upward. He wiggled beneath, coughing against the biting air, panicking when his backpack snagged.

“Hurry, kiddo.”

As he pulled free, she slipped under and hauled him to his feet. Raindrops blistered their skin as they ran. She pulled her pistol free as they neared the storehouse, alert for movement or the famished plea of a moribund, begging them to enter.

“Go flat,” she commanded.

He swallowed his fears as he hustled behind her, the droplets singeing his arms and necks, scorching his cheeks. Wherever the rain bit him, the top layer of skin would flake off before nightfall. Because of it, they would cough for weeks.

Daylight faded as night arrived, its incoming mist enough to sting Rennie’s eyes. Inside the warehouse his toys lay at his shoes—limbless action figures, a plastic motorcycle, a deck of playing cards—yet he remained fixated on Jeanie.

She sat near the doorway, staring into the rain, her handgun in her lap. He coughed as he spooned from their last can of food. She insisted he eat the tangy-smelling fruit. Shapes in clear gel. Scent of cinnamon. Old fat.

For two nights the downpour had drummed on the roof, keeping sleep at bay. Grime coated them both, stringing and clumping her hair. She usually brushed his, but their weeks on the highways had left it bunching in places. At least the warehouse sat empty, without attic or basement for the undying to cluster. They were twice lucky. The monsters would not brave the rains.

“They used to ask me how old you were,” she said, smiling as he approached. “People on the roads, so amazed to see a baby. Not the French so much as the Spaniards. Oh, they loved seeing a child. Never another, young as you. Thankfully, most spoke English. My Spanish sucks.” She grimaced and held her side. “Stopped seeing them the year the sun came back.”

She used the barrel of her pistol to move the hair from her cheek. Rennie set the tin on the floor and pulled his knees to his chest. In her lap, the crumpled clown painting. Faceup. Dotted with raindrops.

“You were so sick that winter,” she went on, “colicky and teething at the same time. Jesus, that fever. Scared me so much, how you kept heating up. Sometimes I wonder if we should have stayed in Paris. If we should ever have tried to run.”

She placed her gun into her waistband, set the painting on the damp floor, and stood. “It’s high time I taught you something.”

She pulled out her pocketknife and the cell phone. He had discovered the mobile device in one of the vehicles when the rains stalled briefly yesterday morning. Thankfully these interiors had been free of corpses, although the vehicles held no water and none of the seats were leather. When times got rough, they could strip the leather to eat.

As he watched, she stacked pieces of a broken crate over a pile of dry wood shavings. Removing the back of the phone, she slapped the battery onto her hand.

“After you make the tinder, drive the blade into the teeth of the battery, here. See the metal connections? Drive straight in.” She pressed the blade into the battery and twisted. Sparks flew. Smoke sputtered. “Quickly now, mix the chemicals and create fire. They burn fast, so no wasting time.”

Without pausing she blew, set the sparking battery to the shavings, and leaned close. When the fire took, she sat back. They stared at the flames for a moment, together, until she dropped the spent battery. Her skin looked gray in the light. “Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You’ll find more of these batteries than you’ll ever need. More damn phones around than people.” She reached for the painting. “Carry as many as you can find. And make sure not to breathe the smoke, okay? It’s bad for you.”

He nodded.

“God, where the hell is everyone? Nobody for months. Not one person.” She turned to the ceiling, sighed, and shook her head. “Sorry, kiddo, I’m just tired. Get some sleep. As soon as the rain stops, I’ll wake you. We’ll have to risk a city.”

“But you said Málaga is days away.”

“You’re right, Málaga is too far. But we don’t have enough water. As soon as we can, we change highways, head west to Antequera.” She folded the canvas, slid it into her pocket, and led Ren to his sleeping area. “It’ll take us a day, maybe two. After that, there is another town. That’s our destination. An old town, ancient. Before the Spanish claimed it, Moors lived there. Before the Moors, Visigoths. Before the Visigoths, Romans, and before them, Phoenicians. Can’t get much older than that. If I can find enough food there, we should be able to defend it.”

“Town?”

“Ronda,” she replied, faking a smile as she fluffed his sleeping bag and motioned for him to slide in. “The town sits on a gorge, high above the plains. There is an old town and a new town, separated by a tall Roman bridge. One of the oldest bullrings in Spain is there. In fact”—she rubbed his cheek—“one of my father’s favorite writers loved the town—a man named Hemingway. Maybe we’ll find food. And survivors, if we’re lucky.”

“Who’s Hemingway?” he asked as she pulled the covers to his neck.

“I’ll tell you more after Antequera,” she said. “If moribund are there, they’ll have protected water. Hopefully we won’t have to enter the city. We may have to risk traveling at night, though, depending on the rain.”

“Will you read to me?”

“Tomorrow,” she said, and rose, checking the handgun before moving to the doorway.

Jeanie appeared ghostly as she stood, veiled, staring at the rain. Almost as if he could see through her wisp of a frame and into the downpour.

Something was wrong, he knew.

Inside her.

On the fourth day of rain he could not get her to stand up. She slumped near the doorway, crying, handgun in her lap. At least the acidic clouds had lessened, the rains no longer stung—almost as if they had purged the poisons they held. For as long as Rennie could remember, she had told him the clouds would clear, one day, and the rain would be normal. Whatever normal meant. Sometimes he found it better not to ask.

“Please,” he said, and tugged at her arm. “Mama?”

“I just want to go home,” she wept.

Her body too heavy, he too weak. Still, he worked his arm under hers. “Please, get up. Put the gun away. You’re scaring me.”

“Scaring you?” She laughed. “You know what happens when we die, right?”

He cringed as he pulled her.

“We turn into them,” she spat. Her damp hair clung to her face. “Like scorched earth and starvation isn’t bad enough. Or dying of thirst.”

His hands slipped and he fell backward, landing in a stagnant puddle.

“One bullet,” she said, crying as she stared at the pistol. “All this way and only one bullet left. Guess we’ll just have to deal with the cards we’re dealt.”

“Cards? Mama? Please, don’t leave me.”

She forced a crazy smile. Tears rimmed her eyes.

“Happy name day, kiddo,” she said wearily. “Happy New Year. Year five. Five.” She sobbed as she lifted the pistol. “I can’t. Not anymore. So tired.”

“Mama?”

She glanced up, angry, cheeks reddening. “What?” she barked. “What do you need now, Rennie? Do you need me to—”

“The rain.”

“Rain? Do you have any idea what—”

He pointed to the doorway. “It’s stopped, Mama.”

HIGHWAY A376

Pain.

Warm blood trickled down the inside of her thigh as she stumbled down the roadway, sun beating on her shoulders and neck, vision blurry, listening to footsteps trailing behind her. Every stride down the highway was harder than the last as they maneuvered around the rusted vehicles. Her limp, bad since Paris, had turned her left foot into a useless stump.

Slide, slide, step. Slide, slide, step.

The footfalls behind Jeanie were Death’s. The cowled bitch had been following, waiting for Jeanie to pause, stop, and peek over her shoulder. If she did, if she looked, she was fucked. Death would peel her hood back, revealing a white skull, a skeletal hand would reach out, and Jeanie would float above the highway, away from her body, and—

Pain.

Gritting her teeth, she staggered, barely able to keep her footing. Refusing to give Death any attention, she focused on the road’s cracked surface. On her tennis shoes, and on the cars, skulls and skeletons waiting inside the cabs. Children more often than not. The babes were the worst. Still strapped in car seats. Made her shudder and recall the catacombs in Paris, what she had done in desperation to Rennie, to keep them both alive. She had long suspected something unnatural happened. Uncanny, his ability to hide. Almost like—

Slide, slide, step. Slide, slide, pain.

She fell to one knee and her breath went out in a rush. At impact, hot blood poured from her wound and vision went dark at the edges. The sun cooked her back.

How did I get here? And where the hell is—

Antequera.

They had discovered the village, she and Rennie, from the highway outside of town, staring at buildings through her binoculars, starving and beyond thirsty. For the first time they had drunk their own urine that morning, pissing into a T-shirt and squeezing the liquid into their mouths. No food. No water. One bullet.

She remembered standing on the outskirts of Antequera, glancing at the windows, feeling no moribund toying with her thoughts, wondering if the town held a gas station or a convenience store, and when a single pop came out of nowhere, Jeanie sighed and dropped.

They shouted, their Spanish insults unintelligible, yet their meaning clear. Threats and a gunshot. She and the boy were not wanted.

Moving on.

Grimacing, she used pain to focus and wobbled to her feet, refusing to give in. She swayed, nearly toppled, bracing on a guardrail, frowning as she realized she no longer held her backpack. When, she wondered, did she lose their provisions?

Two tin cups, a backpacking stove, their last white gas canister, and her map. Always about the map. At least Rennie knows Andalucía’s highways by heart. But without the map, we may as well lie down and—

She stumbled down the road’s shoulder. From her buttock, the gunshot’s exit wound pounded—large, too, which meant the bastards had hollowed out their tips. When she grew strong enough, when she had healed, she planned to head back there and—

Wait. Rennie? Where’s Rennie?

As she paused, Death leaned close and exhaled—an awful, empty breeze on the back of her neck—Jeanie gasped and doubled her pace.

Slide-slide, step. Slide-slide, step.

Stay awake, damn it. Stay—

“Mom?”

Jeanie smiled when she spotted him, standing down the road. She tried not to imagine what a vision she must be, all bloody and filthy, crazy-eyed and barely able to walk. Rennie, her little boy, maybe the last boy, standing between two overturned trucks, his hazel eyes so concerned, his matted brown hair needing a comb. Round face so pale. When she realized he stood before a roadblock, she frowned. Who would place a roadblock way out here, in the middle of nowhere, where nothing but sunlight held court? Who would stop anyone from—

Pain.

This time he caught her. All of five, groaning against her weight, his head against her chest, pushing at her, refusing to let her fall.

“Mama?”

A smile so innocent, missing his first tooth, fallen out a week ago. Born to such a world, his world. She marveled at the sight of him.

“A town, Mama,” he said, and pointed. “Can you read the sign? Mama?”

She blinked, realized they stood at an off-ramp, and squinted at the road sign. Her legs trembled as he tried to right her. Her boy. She loved him so much.

His world. A terrible place to grow up.

“Mama? What does it say?”

She shook her head and blinked at the white sign. A blue roundabout circumnavigating a town with different highways as little arrows, sprouting away. They stood on the A367 highway. Another exited opposite the city, the A374, west toward Sevilla. The A397 pointed south to Málaga. One arrow headed into town.

Ronda.

Death reached out, tickled her ear, and blood rushed from the wound, drenching her leg.

“Go,” she commanded Rennie. “Leave me.”

As she began her ragged, stumbling turn toward Death, a small hand slid into hers. “Mama? Let me help. I think I hear a bell.”

Together, they took the off-ramp. Limping, dependent on a five-year-old to walk, leaving the broken highway behind and heading into the small Spanish town. As she stumbled, the pain faded away, consciousness slipped, and she realized she could just make out the ringing of a bell in the distance, light, airy. Bong, bong.

“Is that for us?”

She grunted.

“You and me, Mama. Right?” His voice broke. “Always?”

“Moving on,” she muttered, and tumbled, the ground rushing up to meet her. As she fell, she closed her eyes and smiled, awaiting impact. She had made it.

For him.

PART ONE THE WITCH

CHAPTER ONE Year Thirteen

Ren smirked as he stared into the stairwell, schooled in disappearing into the shadows. The crowbar clanged on the sidewalk as he gripped the security gate and pulled. Metal screeched while the gap spread, protesting years of inactivity. Letting go, he stepped into the light and elbowed his friend in the ribs, hard enough to draw a grunt.

“You first.”

“No way.”

Refuse cluttered the basement landing, congealed paper, possibly an animal carcass or two mixing with the garbage, no indication anyone had descended for a decade. The teens gaped at the storefront—Ren’s hood drawn over his head, Óscar’s hair stuffed beneath a ratty baseball cap—fixated on the door. Bright sunbeams filtered three steps before tapering into the gloom.

“Come on, chicken.”

“Cabrón, I don’t know. I don’t want any trouble.”

A dry wind blew down the narrow street, stinking of burnt rubber. Behind the gate, the glass door teased from below, plastered with signs from another time. One in particular made Ren antsy. White background, big green letters. ABIERTO. Open.

he building sat on the outskirts of Ronda, blocks past the failing barricades where the ruins—mostly apartments—had burned during the fallout. Tattered sheets blew from balconies as dust devils twisted about the lane, remnants of the recent sandstorms. Ren, the taller of the two, gripped the gate and spread the gap wider.

“Óscar,” he pleaded. “Vamos, amigo. I’ve been stuck at home for a week dreaming about this place. You’ve been doing the same since the storms hit, admit it.”

Óscar adjusted his glasses and stared appreciatively down at the broken barrier. “You’re getting pretty good at opening these things, you know? Real pro, Ren.”

“Busting old locks is easy. You’d know if you tried. Now see if that door is open.”

“No sé,” Óscar replied and shuffled, uneasily. “We should tell someone. If mi padre finds out—”

“You and your padre. No one’s found anything like this in forever. We’ll tell them, we just won’t say we searched it first.”

Slipping from beneath his hood, Ren brushed his unkempt hair from his ashen face—dark brown tips lightened by the year-round sun—and wiggled past, knowing his friend would have no problem following. Although Ren’s body had filled out, Óscar’s remained rail thin. One of many wonderful side effects of starvation.

“I don’t know, we’re supposed to be getting agua.”

“What’re you so worried about?” Ren said, shrugging as he took the stairs. “There could be shoes, amigo. Ones that fit. Wouldn’t you like that? Or new glasses? Maybe even batteries.”

With a chuckle, Ren wiped the glass clean. Peering through the door he spotted dusty aisles and shelves. His heart skipped a beat. Lots of shelves.

“Ho-lee shit. A market.”

Óscar’s stomach growled like a feral cat. “A market? Don’t tease me. I haven’t eaten anything but gachas for weeks. I dream of oats. See anything else? Anything…moving?”

“You stay right there. I promise not to eat all the candy. Or is that chocolate con leche?”

“But what about them? If one of—”

Ren snorted. “No one’s seen a walking carcass since that skinny thing in the fields last June and you know it. The moribund are all in the cities, wasting away like we are. Come on.”

“But what about the stragglers? The ones who remember?”

Ren peered inside, his hazel eyes—green leaning toward gold—gleaming as he reached for the doorknob. Óscar was right to worry, yet Ren would be damned before he let fear drive him. Unlike most of the adults, who either locked themselves up or slunk away at night, leaving the safety of town for the villas in the plains, lured by the hope of farming dead soil.

The chime rattled as he opened the door. “My bad. That’s not chocolate. It’s Coca-Cola. Red cans, right?”

Óscar’s hollow belly gurgled as he shimmied through the gate.

Standing in the aisle, Ren took a bite of dry almond cookie and grinned. Plucking a can from the shelf, he blew dust and squinted at the label. ANCHOAS. Anchovies. The fact that none of the adults had unearthed a store on the outskirts of Ronda, nestled between the burnt-out buildings and spitting distance from the barricades?

Amazing.

Ren handed Óscar a second roll of cookies and laughed. For months he had eaten nothing but oats. Dry. Difficult to swallow. He barely remembered the tang of gazpacho. Crunch of paella. At a party once he had tried sheep’s milk cheese with jamón ibérico—but that was years before rationing. Now only occasions like Christmas or birthdays afforded broth-soaked oats.

Mouth full of cookies, excitement seized him and he shoved Óscar into the shelves, cackled and took off, laughing as he sent pasta bags spraying into the walkway.

“Come get me, loser!”

Rounding the aisle, he slammed against the refrigerator doors, snickering so hard his ribs hurt. An undiscovered market?

Find of the effing century.

“¡Ay cabrón!”

With a hoot, Óscar laughed and loosed his slingshot. The rock whizzed past Ren’s ear, smashing glass. Launching the anchovy can from his hand, Ren turned before it struck Óscar, plucked a bottle from the shelf, and blindly tossed the thing over his head.

He shouted—spittle flying, loving the sound of glass exploding on the floor—reveling in the joy of letting go.

Taking the corner, he hurtled over the front counter, avoided a jar of olives, and crashed behind the cash register. Suppressing laughter, he scrambled for anything to throw—energy pills, fútbol magazines, packs of cigarettes—and glanced directly into teeth.

Ren cried out, backpedaled, and on instinct, froze.

A desiccated clerk was slumped in the corner, draped in a ratty smock, revolver resting on its lap, shrunken finger on the trigger. A hole cratered the man’s skull where the bullet had passed.

Ren wiped crumbs from his mouth and exhaled.

At least this suicide isn’t messy, he thought as he peered over the counter. Unlike the family the boys had stumbled across last month. Seeing the crispy mother leaning into the oven, her three children in their beds—decapitated heads left on pillows above their necks—had given Ren nightmares for weeks.

Grabbing a dried stick of chorizo from the counter, he pushed the corpse away, cringing as the body crumpled. With a shudder, he turned to the shelves. Some tins had distended, their contents likely spoiled, but most jars appeared in great shape.

If the townsfolk knew, he would get busted. Only forty-two people left in Ronda, and almost a third from different countries. During Ren’s studies he’d read that thirty-seven thousand had crowded Ronda’s streets before the EMP—even more during bullfighting season.

“What are you, scared?” he called out. “¡El padre que te parió!”

“Leave my father out of it!” Óscar shouted, his mouth full of food.

Ren plucked a bag of nuts from the counter. Wrapped, sealed, canned. Rice, dried cakes, almendras. Maybe, he thought, just maybe, they would keep the discovery to themselves for a day or two. A couple of candy bars, maybe a soda pop. The thought made his pulse thrum.

“I’m eating chocolate!”

“No you’re not!” Óscar scrambled, and rushed closer.

Ren dipped down, stifled a giggle as he went cold—stalling all feelings like his mother had taught him, slipping into darkness—his natural gift, she called it, his ability to hide from the moribund as they preyed on emotion—staring blankly as he waited for Óscar to get closer and shot up, whooping as he let the peanuts fly.

The jubilant shout came off as cocky—Ren liked this newfound bravado, rearing its head often as he neared his fourteenth birthday—turning into a gasp when he realized the bag of nuts was hurtling toward a figure rising from the gloom.

CHAPTER TWO

Seated on the curb, Ren tossed a pebble into the street, watching it bounce beneath a car. Beside him on the sidewalk, Óscar fingered a hole in his sneaker.

“Puta madre, Ren. Mi padre, when he finds out—”

“We’ll be fine. Let me do the talking. After they’re done, go peek behind the counter. I saw a fútbol magazine. Iniesta is on the cover.”

“Serious? Iniesta?”

Ren opened his mouth to reply and the sound of footsteps slapped around the corner. Their pace told him two things. One, she had rushed all the way from Old Town.

Two, his mother was furious.

He pulled his hood low as Jeanie rounded the building, coming to a ragged stop. She stepped forward, sleeves rolled to her elbows from doing laundry with the last of their morning water.

“Mom, it’s all my fault. I—”

“Mom-I-nothing. Dude, you are in sooo much trouble.”

She wiped her brow, winded as she glared. His mother had raced from Old Town, he knew, passing Ronda’s abandoned eastern apartments. He glanced away when she pointed to the staircase and raised an eyebrow. “Outside the barricades? Again?”

“We were just—”

“You’re lucky someone found you before you did too much damage. I’ll give you credit—no one expected a store out here—but when Hector hears you broke a bottle of olive oil? Really? When was the last time we had olive oil?”

Ren tossed another rock, knowing he should shut up, but not wanting to. “Get more water, Ren. Dig a new ditch, Ren. The old walls don’t mean shit anymore and I’m sick of doing stuff for other people. Look what we found—”

“Shit? What if you got hurt? Did you think of that?”

“Maybe the store will lift spirits for New Year’s?” Óscar added, softly.

Jeanie sighed as she turned. “Maybe, Óscar. Maybe. After Christmas, Ronda certainly deserves good news.”

“We could look for medicine on the shelves,” Ren muttered.

“There could be aspirin, yes. But no antibiotics. Not in a corner store.”

“And Selene?”

“Her fever is getting worse.”

Ren pulled his legs up and hugged them. He liked Selene. The only Greeks in town, she and her husband were always nice to him and Jeanie, unlike most locals. Dmitri had taught Ren to whittle and make small traps, and occasionally they played fútbol in the town square.

“You can’t keep pushing, kiddo. Bored or not. Not with rationing coming up again. You know Hector—”

Óscar groaned as his father rounded the corner, running without running, anger in each step. Stout and ruddy-faced, his button up shirt tucked into his slacks.

“Hector,” Jeanie interrupted, palms up. “See? Both boys are fine.”

His thick mustache curled beneath his nose as he towered above Óscar, forehead dappled with sweat. His finger went from Óscar, to Ren, back to Óscar.

“Papá, I—”

Hector cuffed Óscar across the face so hard his glasses fell off.

“Pick them up,” he commanded.

Ren stiffened and moved to speak. His mother shook her head once, sharply.

Not our place.

“Americana, this is a second time in a month your son has ignored el perímetro. We no longer guard the barricades, but Ronda still has rules.” He whirled to Ren. “Because you are the youngest, you think you can get away with everything. But you’re not special, you’re—”

“They’re just being boys, Hector. Look, they found a store.”

“A store? What if they died? Or woke something up?” He bristled over them, face purple with anger. Then he paused. “The Greek?”

“Rests inside Santa María with her husband,” Jeanie replied. “Luc stays with them, day and night. Without medicine, we run out of options. The pueblos are picked bare, Hector. Luc is right. We must send someone to Sevilla. Look for medicine, food, before—”

“No,” Hector said, ending the discussion with a swipe of his hand. “I will not risk the cities. We widen our search in el campo. Go further north this time.”

Hector pulled Óscar to his feet and shoved his son toward town. When he motioned for Ren to follow, Jeanie nodded.

Go.

“Los malcriados can spend the rest of the day gathering wood for a bonfire,” Hector added. “Pray the Greek does not die at night. If she turns, we should all be ready. Ronda has not seen such evil in some time.”

“I’m sick of this mierda.”

Ren tossed his wheelbarrow end over end as they reached the mid-span of the bridge, sending scrap wood tumbling onto Puerto Nuevo’s cobbled way. They crossed the gorge from La Ciudad—Old Wown—where foreigners lived in the Moorish buildings damaged during the fallout—toward El Centro, where the Spaniards resided in the finer apartments near the bullfighting ring.

“Por favor, Ren. No more trouble. Mi padre—”

“How long are they going to treat us this way? We’re not kids. But after we finish the pyre you know they’ll send us for more agua.”

The water containers grew heavy, filled at the cisterns near the Arab Baths. After fighting them up the streets, Ren would become so hungry his stomach would cramp. Sometimes the pangs were so awful he spent all night clutching his belly. Lately even his fingernails hurt. He hadn’t known nails could hurt.

He kicked a piece of wood and glared at Hector’s home. Nestled above El Tajo canyon, its faded HOTEL DON MIGUEL sign above the door. Across the Plaza de España, the grander Parador Hotel perched high above plains dotted with the skeletal remains of cork trees.

During the days after the electromagnetic pulse, half of Ronda’s residents had holed up inside the Parador, hiding in its lower floors. Now the luxury hotel stood as an empty testament, as his mother called it, to Ronda’s survival.

Raising his hand to shield his eyes from the sun, he stared into the ravine. A hundred meters below, Río Guadalevín trickled through the canyon. Dead plants were mixed in with a few living ones, mostly brown, struggling grasses. Sometimes, if he waited long enough, he would spot a bird in the underbrush. They reminded him of the swallows of the Alhambra. He often wondered if they still survived.

“What about the Bruja?” he asked, and flicked a thumb toward the Serranía de Ronda mountains. “Everyone says the old woman has medicine. She took army stuff from the garrison, right? Who knows what else she has stashed in her cave. Maybe food.”

“La Bruja?” Óscar fidgeted. “No one has seen her in months. Mi padre thinks she and her son died over the summer, or they would have come to trade.”

Ren spit off the bridge, and both boys watched it disappear into the gorge. “We should go,” Ren said, his wavy hair billowing in the breeze. “See if she has medicine for Selene. The adults—they’re too scared.”

“The cave is an hour away. We’re supposed to finish the pyre. We’d never make it back before nightfall. Ren, mi padre—”

“Rides you all day long, amigo. I think—”

“—says we grow lazy, that we neglect the barricades. That moving to the villas is dangerous. That we forget what it was like.”

“I’m tired of rules. Living like I’m already dead, afraid of every rusty nail I see. Let the old folks live that way. We get medicine, we won’t need a bonfire. Your padre can’t be angry if we bring back antibiotics. He’d be proud. On New Year’s Eve?”

“But what if one of them is out there? They’re—”

“—all in the cities and you know it. Likely shriveled up and dead, too. No, we ride to the cave and back before anyone notices we’re gone. The highway runs straight there.”

“You should have told the adults about that dead hombre.”

Ren’s eyes shined as he pulled out the clerk’s revolver. “Oh, I’d love to see their faces when they find that old bag of bones. Come on, compinche. Target practice on the way?”

“Compinche? Cómplice en crimen, you mean.”

Ren slid the heavy handgun into his belt, glancing over the countryside as the cork trees blew in a burst, settling as the wind died. “The whole town will thank us. All of them, afraid of their own shadows.”

“Yo no sé…”

He socked Óscar’s shoulder. “Hey, your stomach still growling?”

“¿Qué? It was my idea to try that neighborhood! You owe me for those cookies in your pocket. Don’t think I didn’t see you take them.”

Ren smirked as he flipped up his hood. “Come on, it’ll be a blast. You and me, the heroes of Ronda. Think of it as my birthday present. What’s the worst that can happen?”

CHAPTER THREE

Sweaty from their ride, the boys lay on the hillside, bicycles resting beside them as they stared into the valley. The baking sun had risen past midday, stretching the shadows of a nearby cork tree.

Beneath his hood, Ren squinted down the barrel of the gun, feeling uncaged and—for the first time in forever—full. Unable to eat another bite, he set the cookie down. They should hurry, he knew, find the medicine and return. Instead he imagined his mother and Hector in the aisles of the store, tallying foodstuffs. All the adults thought of—food and not dying. Never really about leaving, except to raid the pueblos. Gone for days, only to return empty-handed.

“Never been this far out of Ronda, have you?”

Óscar rolled onto his back and shook his head. With a smirk, Ren wiped the hair from his eyes and glanced down the gun sight to the opposite side of the vale, where the entrance to the cave cut the parallel slope like a gash in a sea of brown. A farmhouse squatted in the midst of the valley, flanked by a cropping of dead trees lacking the sense to fall over. Unlike most of the ruins in Ronda, the building appeared untouched after a decade of neglect.

Untouched by the last century, he thought. With sparse cloud cover, the temperature left him parched.

“Why don’t you admit it, Ren?” Óscar asked, as he stared at the sky. “You’re americano. Tu mamá is americana, that means you’re americano.”

Ren aimed, smiled wider at Óscar’s ignorance, and fired. The crack echoed through the valley, dinging the farmhouse a foot from a window. “Ridiculous. Do I suck or what?”

“Why not admit it?”

“Because I’m not.” Ren spun the chamber and—against better judgment—reached for another cookie. “My mom came from the States but I was born in Paris. I grew up on the highways between France and Spain. You, on the other hand”—he spoke between bites—“have been pueblerino since you were born.”

Óscar snorted and sat up. “Pueblerino,” he repeated, and grabbed the binoculars. Turning his cap backward, he stared past the farmhouse at the gravel trail climbing the hillside to an empty parking lot. Hewn steps led to the cave above. “Tu mamá comes from America, you’re americano. Don’t have the balls to be español.”

Ren’s grin faded as he stared at the cave. He did not keep many secrets from Óscar—they were the only two people in town younger than twenty-seven—yet no one in Ronda knew Jeanie was not his birth mother. Ren’s parents had died in Paris. Jeanie came from Seattle. The idea of revealing the true nature of their relationship left Ren feeling alone. Alone terrified him more than anything—the fear of waking up to discover his mother missing. Nightmares from youth, which sent him to sleep on her bedroom floor until she woke. She always held him until he settled. Even now. Another thing he wouldn’t tell Óscar.

Ren glanced at Óscar and forced a smile. He had lived in Ronda for almost a year before Hector allowed the boys to meet. Kept in La Ciudad under the watch of his mother. Their first meeting happened only after her nonstop cajoling bore fruit. Holding his hand as they stood outside the hotel, watching Óscar in his second-story window. Unable to keep still as they waited for Hector to bring him out. To this day, Ren remembered Hector’s rules.

Los chicos can fetch agua. After, they may play in my garden for one hour. No longer.

Ren slid the pistol into his belt. “You get raised by an American in France and move to Spain—see how you do,” he countered. “Besides, most people spoke English on the roads, like we’re speaking now.”

Óscar let out a raspberry. “Come on, Ren. Let’s see if the old Bruja is in that cave. If not, it’s us gathering wood until the sun sets.”

“Like I said, tu padre will be—hey! Wait!”

Ren scrambled, grabbed his backpack and followed Óscar down the hillside. In the valley the wind sent a plume of fine black silt into the air—leftovers from the ejecta—and settled as storm clouds rolled in from the southwest.

He reached the shingled farmhouse first, grinning as he waited. Adrenaline surged through his system. Past a dilapidated fence and dank stream, the trail snaked up the hillside to the cave entrance. “Man, you’re slow. Like tortuga slow.”

“Tortuga?” Óscar wheezed as he leaned against the farmhouse. “Who just ate ten galletas?”

“Yeah? And how many Fantas did you drink?” Ren laughed as he pointed to the cave. “Cueva de la Pileta? What does that mean, anyway?”

Óscar shook his head. “Cave of the pool. The family who owned the caves used to do tours. Mi padre says there are real caveman drawings inside—fish, animals, made by el Cromañón.”

“Cro-Magnon?” Ren stepped forward. “No shit?”

“Neanderthals, too. But you’ll have to go slow for a change, if you can. Mi padre says sometimes the caves are so deep, you can fall and fall and…”

Óscar’s voice died as both boys turned to the farmhouse’s storm cellar doors.

Ren took an involuntary step back. A chill emanated from the shuttered basement, sending goose bumps along the back of his arms. As he stared hunger, rage, famine, flooded over him, thoughts scratching at the base of his skull like a mouse trying to escape a trap and—connection—delving further, an emptiness within the cellar, deep-walled and inescapable, a terrible yearning, hungry and weak, gnawing, always gnawing, awakened by their presence, the smell of sweet boy sweat and the thumpa, thumpa of two pumping hearts.

Ren gripped Óscar’s arm and they scrambled up the hillside to the cave, faces drained white, like the thing in the cellar had leached their lifeblood from afar.

The rusty gate stood wide open, beckoning the boys down a natural hallway so low they had to duck to enter. Inside the cavern’s first grotto, their heavy breathing echoed into the darkness. Óscar shivered in the chill. “Dios santo, Ren. Was that…?”

“You know it was.”

“A loner? But you said they were all dead. You said—”

“Probably can’t even walk anymore,” Ren replied. “Come on.”

One of them, Ren knew, shuddering as he squinted into the cave—the few who remember their past. Not like the moribund in the cities. Back in Paris, when his mom had brief radio communication with the Americas, she learned about monsters in the fog more horrible than the undying in Europe, spreading from a dead zone in Rio. A zone of silence, she called it, where evil issues from whatever fell from the stars, or woke up beneath the earth’s crust. Thankfully, the thing in the cellar felt decrepit—kept alive on dirt and worms.

“We should go back to town,” Óscar muttered. “Tell someone. Mi padre—”

“It’s still daylight,” Ren said, “we have plenty of time. Besides, what we need is to find that medicine. We tell them when we get back. They can burn the house, all I care.”

Óscar trembled. “But maybe they’re right. The last time I felt one, was the night they attacked Ronda. Before the barricades. The night mi mamá, she…”

Ren paused. He had been so focused on the antibiotics, he had failed to think about Óscar’s fears. “No one talks about that night. Do you think about your mom a lot?”

“Mi padre says they came like a wave at the beginning. Los moribundos killed nearly everyone in Ronda. Comida. That’s what mi padre says we were to them—food. The photos of mi mamá are digital, I don’t even have that. But I remember her warmth, if that makes sense. She smelled like soap.” Óscar glanced over. “Do you remember the cities? Skyscrapers? Luc showed me a photo of New York. So tall.”

Ren stared at a rusty metal sign bolted to the cave wall, covered with illegible tour instructions. Beneath it sat a row of ancient-looking lanterns. Most broken. Gripping the nearest, he unscrewed the container and took a whiff, cringing at the bite of old fuel. He recalled little before Spain. Since Ronda, Jeanie rarely spoke of their journey. She mostly taught him history, like how the Moors called the land Al-Ándalus before giving it to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Ren enjoyed Óscar’s tales of the time before the pulse best. The final bullfight of the season happened in town, he knew, when all of Spain descended on Ronda for the Corrida Goyesca—royals, movie stars, Ferraris in the streets.

“I kind of remember Granada,” he admitted. “And a castle outside Bordeaux. Walking the highways and the fires. I hated the smell. The cities, all burnt and melted. Full of moribund and crows. My mom won’t even talk about Paris. Not anymore.”

Óscar sighed. “You, her, the highway. All I had was our crap village. Can you imagine working cars? Refrigerators? Ice?”

Ren shook a lantern, listening to fuel slosh inside. Too many people focused on the past. On the roads, Jeanie had told him stories. Now she went days without speaking. The cavern yawned before him. Everyone either spent too much time not living, or living in the old world.

Moving on. Might as well be my motto.

“What’s the Bruja’s story, anyway? All the adults talk about her like she’s cursed.”

“Mi padre says she came to Ronda from a big city right before everything with her palsied son. They lived in a village near the garrison when the pulso hit.”

Ren squinted into the grotto. Far away, water dripped. “Shit, maybe your padre is right. Maybe the Bruja died. Maybe she and her son—”

Ren swallowed as a shotgun sliced the gloom, both barrels pointing at his pale face.

CHAPTER FOUR

At gunpoint, the withered woman directed Ren and Óscar deeper into the caverns, up and down limestone steps, her thin frame draped in threadbare gear. After forcing Óscar to light a lantern, she led led them along staircases slick with water. Stalagmites teased from the periphery. Ren tried Spanish and ended up with both barrels pressed firmly in his back. And more swearing.

“She speaks Catalán,” Óscar said. “Catalonian. La Bruja is from the north.”

At the word Bruja the hooded thing laughed, spat an obscenity and shoved the shotgun so hard between Ren’s shoulders he yelped. Her language sounded like Spanish, French, and Italian all mixed together.

Twice he slipped on the old metal railing, nearly plunging into the unseen expanse below, yet on they went, until the steps ended in the largest cavern yet.

Torches sputtered about a camp where makeshift rooms, storage areas, and sleeping quarters had been constructed from wooden slats. A dozens crates sat close by, adorned with the letters FFAA — Fuerzas Armadas Española. A smoldering pit fire cast light across a large painting on the wall, of a fish or a seal. Far above the flames, thousands of ancient hash marks filled the walls. Cro-Magnon marks, he realized, so far up that whoever made them had to have used ladders, or the ground had simply been that much higher, centuries ago.

From beneath her shroud, the Bruja directed the boys to sit around the fire. She shoved the shotgun barrels deep into Óscar’s cheek, whispered a threat, and disappeared behind the crates. Ren cringed as the bitter stench of piss wafted from the far recesses.

The hell? he mouthed.

Óscar shook his head. Yo no sé.

“Let’s get out of here,” Ren whispered and moved to stand. “Before the—”

The old woman laughed as she reappeared, carrying an iron pot she could scarcely lift. With a grunt, she dropped the kettle on the embers, sending sparks flying. She smiled as she sat, placed the shotgun on a rock, and withdrew her tattered hood.

Ren stared. In the flickering light, he at first thought the bald woman disfigured. Then he realized her flesh—nearly every inch—was inked with tattoos. Colors swirled about her temples, snakes on her skull, black wings about her neck, thorns about her wrists and ankles. Agile for her age, her wrinkles melting around eyes so blue he momentarily lost himself in their depth. The false impression of youth was cast away when she opened her mouth and revealed three rotted teeth. One high, two low. He covered his mouth before he caught a whiff.

“Barthelona,” she croaked, and touched her chest softly.

Her Spanish came out so thickly, her C rolling into a thick TH, it took Ren a moment to register the meaning. “You’re from Barcelona?” he asked. She nodded and spun the ladle. “She shave that head,” he mumbled, “or did her hair fall out?”

The Bruja smiled as she ran a hand over her skull. “Shaved.” Almost a hiss.

Óscar glanced up, surprised. “Anglès?”

English?

She laughed and slapped her bony knee, pointed to the kettle and mimed eating motions. Ren winced. In the dimness, he could not be sure what lumps floated in the mess.

“Perdoni,” Óscar asked. “Bona tarda, eh, parla anglès?”

“Sí, sí, sí,” she replied, laughing as she pointed a gnarled finger at them, and the food. Tattoos of Roman numerals covered her knuckles. When Ren glanced up, her glee made him quiver. “Molt de gust,” she said. “El teu nom? Seu nom?”

“Catalán is an old language,” Óscar explained, forcing a smile as he accepted a bowl. “A language of the north. Mi padre uses it sometimes. She’s asking our names.”

“We’re looking for medicine,” Ren added. “Antibiótico. A friend in Ronda is sick.”

The Bruja stopped ladling and shifted closer to the fire. The scent of burning wood mixed with the reeking brew, causing Ren’s stomach to tumble. “Sick? We all sick. How many bebés in Ronda these days? Laugh of girl, sound of boys’ feet on stone?”

“None. Some still try, but babies die before they come out. Mi padre thinks—”

The Bruja nodded knowingly. “Sí, sí. El infierno kills fetus. The black dust. No woman no more. Humans done. Me know, me know. Me Gitana,” she said proudly, and tapped her chest. “Me know.”

Ren knew that one. Gypsy.

“How old?” She handed Ren a spoon and motioned for them to eat. Ren’s belly rolled as he took the utensil and tried not to glance at the floating pieces.

“Quince,” Óscar answered.

“Small for fifteen, eh? And you?”

Ren tucked his hair behind his ears and hesitated, as if revealing his age gave her some power over him. “I turn fourteen at midnight,” he admitted. “On New Year’s.”

Her eyes went wide. “December thirty-one?”

“At least that’s what my—”

“Morta…” With a hiss, the old woman scrambled to her feet. She jabbed a finger at Ren and stood, backing out of the light. “Americano! Born during the pulse? Sí?”

“I guess. According to my mom, I—”

She clapped her hands, gleeful. “Absolute! Especial, you. From me dreams. Me dream of you, you different. A light in dark, bright in dark. Sí, sí, sí. Me give antibiotic”—her smile rose in the light of the fire—“for pistola.”

Ren sat back, confused. “What?”

Her grin spread as she extended her hand, palm up. “Pistola.”

“She wants your gun,” Óscar explained.

“I know that. But how does she know I have a gun?”

“You shot up the whole valley, Ren.”

The Bruja picked up the shotgun, pointed both barrels at the ceiling, and pulled the trigger. The boys cringed as the click echoed impotently around the room.

“The world done,” she said, and threw the weapon to the rocks. “Son, gone.” She pointed to Ren. “Your world now. Me dream of boy born in darkness. Severed from all.” She cackled. “What comes for you, different than all other.”

“Óscar, let’s go. She can’t stop—”

He rose, she hissed and knocked the bowl from his hand. Stew sizzled in the fire. “Estúpid, me want pistola to end my dreams. End suffering. Nothing more. Take what you want.” She pointed to the boxes. “Me know what comes for you, from my dreams—call to water, to blood. Tall buildings, long boat. Shadows before and behind…”

“Give her the damn pistol,” Óscar demanded.

“She’s loca. I’m not doing anything she says. Dude, I—”

She gripped Ren’s arm. “Must leave them, in the end. A Noruec, me see. Ros Noruec.”

“Noruec?”

“…dreams of a boat, big waters, dark depths, the devourer eats all, eats us…”

“You have to,” Óscar demanded. “Christos, if she gives us the—”

“…face a darkness like no other, leave her, grow tall, to stand before the devourer as a man, all alone…”

Ren pulled free and took a step away, all sense of adventure fading. The old woman’s chanting made him sick. Her tattoos mixed with her wrinkles, creating a nauseating effect. About her, the shadows swirled as if they craved release. He wanted out of here, to run and keep running, out of the cave, past the farmhouse, to his bike and straight to Ronda.

“…even now, too late. Foscor, foscor comes…”

“Mierda,” Óscar pleaded, “give her the damn gun.”

“Fear will draw them,” she said, and smiled. Her hand remained out. “Dimoni nearby. Be careful. Me feel them at night. Estúpid even before they try to die.”

“Fine.” Ren placed the handgun on her palm and, without a second glance, hurried to the nearest crate. In the third box he found sheets of unused pills. Hundreds. He pawed through them until he found ones labeled PENICILINA. Near the fire, the Bruja kept laughing. “Fill your pack,” Ren shouted. “I’ll grab a torch.”

“No hide,” the Bruja called out, laughing, a brittle laugh. “All will die. Everyone around you die. Leave you alone. All alone…”

All alone.

Ren shuddered at the thought.

With the lantern held before them, Ren led Óscar up the slick staircase, his pockets full of the pill sheets, needing to get away from the old woman. Behind, the painted fish danced on the wall, undulating with the flickering flames.

“Good luck, Americano,” the Bruja called out, cackling.

Ren tuned her out and hurried, up and down the slippery stairs. Needing to get back home, see his mother’s face—halfway through the caverns when a single retort clapped in the darkness.

The muffled gunshot bounced off the cavern’s walls, repeating until the echo, like sunlight at dusk, faded and was gone.