END OF ALL THINGS - An Apocalyptic Fairy Tale & Love Story

Chapter 2

I lift my eyes from the wreckage of twisted steel and stare out at the long line of burned-out cars and trucks, stretching down a littered interstate highway. Now, it's a cluttered junkyard that makes for a treacherous crisscrossing trail for me as I stumble along the day after the white horse and its rider had left ruin in his wake.

The conqueror had conquered all. And for all I know, I'm the last living soul on the planet. But I have a feeling there are others.

I press on with an arm slung through one of the straps of my backpack. I've grown tired of carrying the bag the normal way on my back, so I switch it from side to side to give each shoulder an occasional break. A groan scrapes past my lips, staving off the pain from a wound I suffered a week ago in a tussle with a thief.

With the sun setting behind me, up ahead and around the bend of a mangled car, a sniffle and a slight sob carry on the wind to me. I grow quiet and tiptoe toward the sound and stop just before I reach the car's front bumper. The prospect of another person sends chills down my spine but also makes me ponder the possibility of not being alone. I had been without my family since my little brother was taken in the vanishing of the innocents, and since my parents were killed by the rider of the white horse.

I creep along the end of the car and stop once more, just before the other side of the wreckage becomes visible.

Another sob wafts through the air.

I'm not much for intuition, but I sense the person is a female by the higher pitch of the cries. It couldn't be an adolescent boy. They're all gone now.

I inch forward, daring to round the corner and come face-to-face with the person on the other side of the car. As I move, the toe of my shoe drags across the asphalt.

The sobs come to an abrupt halt.

"Who's there?" a voice says. "I'm armed... and I... I won't hesitate to kill you. Whoever you are."

I turn the corner with my hands held out cautiously, hoping to let the person know I mean no harm. I know they don't have a functioning gun; they were all destroyed by the first horseman.

"Don't come any closer." She swipes a blade at the air between us. "What do you want? I don't have any food."

"My name is Zeke." I set my backpack on the ground between us as the eerie last glow of twilight lingers for the next few moments. "You may not have food, but I do. I have water too."

"I don't know you. How can I trust you?"

She's sitting, leaned against the car door. Her glare follows my every move.

I kneel in front of her and open my bag, remove a canteen, twist the top off, take a sip. "I won't hurt you." I extend my arm. "Here, it's water."

She doesn't hesitate but lunges out and snatches the canteen from me, turns it up and chugs it like she hasn't had a drink in days. When she finishes drinking, she wipes her mouth with the back of her wrist and then returns the canteen to me.

"Thanks." She keeps the blade between us in a way that lets me know not to make any sudden moves. "Kindness. I haven't seen that from anyone in a while, especially since the second horseman appeared."

My gaze had drifted down to the knife in her hand, but at the mention of a second horseman, I glance up at her furrowed brows. Even though she seems to want to trust me, there's a suspicious gleam in her glistening eyes and a tenseness in her tear-stained cheeks.

She swallows a lump of nerves, and I watch it slide down her throat. "Anyone who gets close to him, who even glimpses him wants to kill everyone they see," she says.

"Tell me about this rider and his red horse."

She raises the knife between us, the sharp edge of the blade aimed at me. "I never said it was a red horse. How do you know what it looks like, unless you've seen it?"