Summer Lane tore down an abandoned alley with her stainless steel necklace bouncing off her chest. She glanced back to check her lead. It was down to half what it was a few minutes ago. Somehow the hunger gang had closed ground, increasing their foot speed as hers started to wane.

Faster! Faster! she convinced herself, pushing her feet close to their tripping point. Good thing she was young and in shape, her thighs still able to drive her rail-thin legs, even after a mile of this unexpected chase.

She tucked the keepsake inside her sweatshirt, not wanting it to shake loose. It was all she had to prove who she was and where she belonged, both of which might just keep her alive, depending on who might capture her or check her allegiance.

Trash from the abandoned metro area seemed to be everywhere, crowding her path like roving anti-personnel mines, if that was even a thing. She didn’t know. History wasn’t her strong suit; neither was following the rules.

The refuse blew around in clumps, nestling around other objects she had to dodge. Yet despite its abundance, its stench was long gone, as were the flies and maggots, much like the horde of citizens that used to occupy the city.

Summer made a hard left, angling her body to fight the inertia of her sprint as she raced across the frozen landscape, dodging the snow flurries smacking her in the face.

The sting in her legs grew with every step she took, but it still wasn’t as wicked as the pain in her chest. The frigid air seared her lungs with each gasp, burning with the force of a Titan II Missile.

Right then, her mind flashed a video from her childhood—something that stuck in her memories all these years—a fiery missile launch from an underground silo, shooting high into the sky to deliver its devastating payload on some poor, unsuspecting target.

When this chase first began, Summer only needed to take in air every three steps, adding distance between her and the gang on her heels. However, now her breaths were down to a single stride, meaning her speed would continue to fail. The uphill jaunt wasn’t helping either, not with a backpack strapped on and Mother Nature’s unrelenting howl thrashing her face.

Right on cue, the hoodie across her head blew back from another gust of wind. Her hands went up, yanking it back into place for the third time in the last minute.

She made a sharp right, turning down another corridor she’d never trekked before, her mind changing its focus to the neon scarf atop her head.

What a total screwup. Who in their right mind would choose a bright red bandana on a day like today, with a hunger gang in the area? There were plenty of choices in her backpack, all different colors and styles—what was she thinking?

Just bad luck, she thought to herself as she vaulted over a soiled cardboard box with the word U-Haul stenciled on it. The airborne feeling didn’t last long, but while it did, she felt like an Olympic hurdler, clearing the obstacle with precision.

Some might have plowed through the container, landing a shoe on its exterior, but she knew better. Any kind of object could be hiding inside, leaving her with a twisted ankle. An injury like that would mean death, as would most other failures that might occur during one of her Seeker Missions.

Summer peered back over her shoulder, catching a glimpse of the pursuers. Only a few hundred yards stood between her slender frame and those with knives drawn and bellies empty.

Experience had taught her that when starvation fuels adrenaline, a hunger gang’s speed and endurance increase, mostly out of necessity, but also from desire—two closely related motives.

Sure, some of her cohorts in the silo thought the ‘Scabs’ chasing her were no longer human, simply because frostbite had taken the ends of their noses. Yet they were, even with their ravenous eyes leading the charge.

Somehow, they’d locked onto her tracks. She’d gotten careless. Downright lazy. There were rules and those rules existed for a reason. Seekers like her must never assume an area was clear of predators. But yet, she had.

She knew those chasing her would eventually catch up. A slip away point was needed, and fast, just like she’d been taught. Something to conceal her escape and slow them down. Her eyes scanned the area ahead, looking for an advantage.

After two quick lefts and a long right, she scampered out from behind a string of abandoned homes. They were stacked together like clones, built only a few feet apart.

No privacy, she thought, her mind flashing a snapshot of her lumpy mattress in the storage room of the old missile silo she called home, just wide enough to lie on her side with her knees bent to sleep.

A chain link fence waited for her at the end of the decaying asphalt. It had to be at least twenty feet tall, with barbed wire across the top. It stood just beyond a frozen patch of prickly-pear cacti—part of some ancient landscaping plan, she figured—an entrance to a sprawling salvage yard, one that formerly welcomed paying customers on a daily basis.

Dozens of scrap metal piles towered beyond the fence, most several stories in height and capped with ice from the overnight drizzle and freeze. They were statuesque reminders of a civilization gone extinct. A wasteful civilization. So many cars. So many people. So much junk. All of it useless or dead. None of it relevant any more.

She scanned the barbed wire as she shuffled in a fast step. It looked intact and formidable. Not something she had the time or desire to defeat.

The owners obviously thought it prudent to protect the now-defunct business from would-be trespassers, but she scoffed at the idea, her eyes continuing their hunt for an entrance point.

She wondered if the owners back then had only known what the future would hold for them and everything else that drew in air for life, would they have changed their minds and spent their money on an underground bunker instead? Something formidable. Something buried deep and unmarked. Something to help them withstand the Frozen World that would come soon after.

Probably not, she surmised, just as she spotted a vertical slit in the metal lattice near its base. It was on the right—in the same direction she was trotting—ten paces away.

There’d been a breech. But when? No way to know. At least the gap was partially hidden and low to the ground, like her. Maybe the Scabs might miss it.

“Gotta chance it,” she mumbled, bringing her feet into a full skid, feeling like some soon-to-be-dead cartoon character running from Wile E. Coyote.

A quick peek behind told her she still had time—nobody there—but it wouldn’t last long. The hairs on the back of her neck were on alert. They were close. She could feel it. Closing fast.

Summer took off her pack, then bent down and pried the two sections of fence apart, making sure the sharp edges didn’t tear into her hands. Her tattered wool gloves only provided limited protection, especially with the cutouts for her fingertips.

The passage was only a few inches wider than her shoulders, but she was able to squeeze through after a couple of attempts. It took longer to slip inside than she’d hoped, but maybe she’d done so in time.

Another glance back told her the answer. The gang had eyes on, their faces locked onto hers.

Shit! They’d seen her.

Her legs were exhausted and so were her lungs, but she couldn’t give up. She put her hand back through the fence and grabbed her pack, then yanked it through and slung it on. Her sprint resumed, tearing around a rusted ambulance lying sideways in the road.

If she had to guess, she figured it had been rocked by a starving horde until it tipped over. Then whoever was inside became that night’s dinner. A bloody dinner, one filled with tissue tears and bones breaking.

That visual brought a whole new meaning to the word “crunchie,” a gory term she’d heard Krista Carr, the silo’s Security Chief, use many times.

It usually meant death by tank treads—an old military term, something that no longer had meaning in the new world. Neither did rules of engagement, another phrase Krista had mentioned during Seeker Training.

The back door of the ambulance was splayed open with a wind-blown collection of ice resting inside the threshold, protected by a northerly shadow. Summer wasn’t surprised. The burn of the sun hadn’t melted it yet after the nightly freeze, its surface just out of the sun’s reach.

The ground used to be perpetually covered in snow, but then the thaw started. Almost like magic. That change in temperature seemed to bring out the Scabs from wherever they’d been hiding after The Event took out most of the planet. The string of sightings since meant the cannibal problem wasn’t going away. In fact, it was getting worse—a problem that her boss, Professor Edison, said he pondered daily.

The next street took her into an old warehouse district, the kind that used to make assembly line stuff. Stuff the world needed back when it actually had a population.

Normal life, she thought, sifting through her memories as she ran. Populations need food, water, shelter, families, and governments. Summer still remembered what all that was like, even if the others in the silo couldn’t or wouldn’t.

“You can’t change the past” was the motto in her group. It was an optimist’s attitude—one she understood, even if she didn’t believe in what it meant.

The next building ahead was a multi-story parking garage. The structure had collapsed along the front, its foundation and walls in tatters. She cruised past the damage, breathing heavily, pumping her arms like a jackhammer.

Chunks of cement and rebar slowed her pace, but she was able to sidestep the threats to keep pushing ahead.

She was almost to the end of the building when she heard the echoes of death behind her. It was the Scabs closing ground, with metal clanking, mouths growling, and lungs screaming.

Her panic convinced her to charge right, ducking out of sight, just past the end of the garage.

She was now in a narrow passageway with four piles of dirt in her way. Huge piles—twenty feet tall. They looked like a soiled version of ski moguls on a twisted obstacle course, only these had patches of brick and rock mixed in.

Summer slowed, switching from sprint mode to climbing mode, one that involved hand grabs and knee bends. It took extra effort and time, but she made it over the mounds, draining more of her energy than she hoped, especially the last one—the tallest—its downslope side the worst, taking her careening forward with off-balance foot plants and wild arm swings.

She fell to her knees at the bottom, struggling for air, her eyes surveying the area ahead. At first, she didn’t know what she was looking at, but then it came to her, from the deepest recesses of her mind.

An old skateboard park with curved ramps, rusted hand rails, cement dips and rises, and other useless inventions.

Before her next breath, she froze, hearing a clattering of noise behind, on the other side of the dirt mounds she’d just traversed. Damn it! The gang was close. Their gorilla-like grunts and heavy footfalls could be clearly heard.

Summer took one last breath to recharge her lungs, then got to her feet and brought her thighs into motion. It only took a handful of seconds to tear across the cement park, where she found a long corridor on the right. There was no light inside. Nothing she could see, except a patch of light at the far end—at least two hundred yards away.

The hairs on her neck tingled out of control as her feet found their way into the tunnel. She knew the decision to enter was a tactical mistake, but there was no choice. A reversal of course would take her into the teeth of the Scabs.

The cement inside the tunnel had been invaded by a stretch of ice down the center. Her feet slipped a few times, but she managed to keep them wide to maintain traction. She emerged at the far end, feeling lucky. Unfortunately, that feeling vanished when the sun landed on her face and exposed the next segment of her route.

The tunnel had led her to a cavernous spillway, the kind that dumped into a giant cement canal. Trash, tree limbs, and other debris littered the area, the recess acting like a natural collection point.

“More like a garbage heap,” she muttered, correcting her own logic. “At least there’s no wind down here.”

The left side of the spillway was awash in sunlight, its vertical walls standing fifteen feet tall and smooth. The few puddles of water were nothing to be concerned about, unlike the complete lack of ladders and handholds.
No easy way out.

The other side was angled, reminding her of the slope on an A-frame house, built high in the mountains somewhere. It was in the shadows, like the inside of the ambulance she’d passed earlier. No sunlight on its surface.

Damn it, more ice.

Summer ran to the slanted area and jumped. Her feet hit the surface exactly where she had aimed, but they flew out from under her, twisting her body around as she fell. Down she went, on her butt, like a grade-schooler on a water slide, hitting a puddle at the bottom of the canal with a plop.

She needed a new plan before the Scabs caught up. She got up and ran to the collection of tree branches piled next to the bank. They’d probably been blowing around for days, coming to rest here. She snatched a thick stick and broke it in half over her knee. The ends were jagged—hopefully sharp enough, she prayed.

Summer took a run at the angled bank again, this time launching herself headfirst with a broken tree limb in each of her outstretched hands. The pointy ends slammed into the ice. So did her stomach, taking her breath away.

The pain was tolerable, but the downhill grade wasn’t. The sticks she’d made couldn’t penetrate the ice deep enough to act as icepicks, sending her zipping down the bank once again, this time landing on her knees in a crack.

The Scabs tore out from the tunnel behind her, their feet pounding at the cold cement covering the spillway’s expanse. It only took seconds for them to arrive.

“Stay away from me!” Summer yelled, holding the sticks out in a defensive position as they formed a semi-circle in front of her.