They had met one evening, a few days ago, as she was getting ready to leave the town known as Basin. Out of the blue, he offered to become her friendhelp fend off the injustice and discrimination she has been a victim of due to her strange abilities, if that convinced her to stay. When she refused and chose to walk away anyway, he followed. He said that if a group of people would bully an eighteen-year-old girl to the point where she would simply leave the safety of the town and risk certain death, then those people were not worth staying around. He explained how he had been bullied himself. He understood her, he claimed.

He didn’t… not really. But she enjoyed his company so far. His lameness was sometimes heavy, but he was funny most of the time, despite how gloomy the world had become. And if it made him feel good to think he understood her, she would let him think that. She had the strength, but his wits certainly helped them both. She wanted him to have whatever happiness he could get, since joy was certainly in short supply these days.

She thought again about how he had decided to follow her. They had only known each other by name; they weren’t close at all back then. Did he think he was a knight in white, shiny armor? Coming to the rescue of a damsel-in-distress?

She chuckled.

“What?” he asked as he unrolled the yoga mat they used as a bed.

“Nothing,” she replied, smiling. She pulled two cans of spaghetti-o from the backpack they carried around with them. “You hungry?” she asked.

“Sure, the dead guy over there really whet my appetite. Kinda looks like a piece of raw steak, if you ask me. Ugh.”

She lightly punched him in the arm. “Stop complaining and eat already.” In response, he jokingly pretended that his other arm hurt. His comedy only lasted for a few seconds before he lowered his head, the memory of killing someone coming back to him.

She tried to change the subject. “When do you think your friends will get here?”

“I’m not sure. The Dark Lady said they’d come eventually. It could be a load of bull, but I have little reason to doubt her right now.”

“The Dark Lady? You’re talking about the rumored witch in the woods? You’ve actually met her?”

“Yes. A bit before we left. She also told me where to find you, that you would leave.”

“Don’t you think she could be wrong or have her own agenda?” she asked, a little incredulous.

“No… Well, yeah, I suppose. She helped me get a better understanding of my abilities and she explained something about fate. She said there’s no such thing as holy scriptures, that we do have freedom of will, so what choices we make matters. But what we choose can be predicted due to various circumstances, including our personality, our past and our experiences. The way I got it is that if we put enough effort into it we should be able to determine what is to come, like she did.”

“Oh, really?” she asked mockingly.

Matt looked at her, hesitant.

“You want to know what the future holds for you.”

“Who wouldn’t?” she asked, smirking.

He took a pause, looked at her in a strange way. “It doesn’t work like that, I think,” he said. But his words were not confident. He was lying. He knew something, or thought he knew something, and chose not to tell her. She opted to drop it for now, but his hesitation made her want to know even more than before.

They ate together, sitting next to each other, a blanket on their feet. Matt needed new shoes as his were worn out, each with a big hole in the sole. She doubted it was due to overuse: he didn’t seem like the type of guy that used to go outside much in the era before the Corrupted came. His skin was almost as pale as hers, and that was saying something.

As for her own clothes, or what remained of them, they didn’t offer much in the way of protection from the cold. She had left Basin in a hurry, only bringing what she had been wearing that day. And now, it was ruined. Her left breast was partially uncovered, offering just a little too much cleavage. She considered herself lucky that hers were rather small, otherwise it would have been very uncomfortable to walk around, or fight. Still, she caught him glancing at her there for a split second. When she crossed her arms over her chest, he turned his gaze right away. He’s probably not doing it on purpose, she thought. He’s trying to be polite about it.

“I wonder why the soldier came after us,” she said.

“Not sure…but I don’t know if he was military. He’s well-equipped, but there’s nothing to identify him as part of the army. No dog tags or anything of the sort.” A pause, then he shrugged. “No use getting a headache over it now. Let’s try to rest. We’re running out of food, so we need to find some tomorrow.”

And they went to sleep.

Amy’s slumber was plagued with terrifying, nerve-wracking nightmares. Yet every time she opened her eyes, her heart racing, her skin burning, she couldn’t remember in detail what it was about – she could only recall a few vague images of carnage where she was the perpetrator. She didn’t understand why she did it, but at the end, her little sister was there, bloodied and rotting, pointing a finger at her. She was being accused, blamed for something unknown. The child’s image then cracked and fractured, as if it had been made of glass and someone hit it with a sledgehammer.

Every time she fell back asleep, she had the same exact dream, always ending the same. She had enough; she got up and glanced outside the church. The sun was still up, but it was most definitely past noon. She guessed they had camped for about six hours. She went back to her friend, sat right next to him and watched him sleep for a moment.

He knew something, and she wanted to know it, too.