Rose dropped the multiple sandbags he had been carrying in a pile at his feet before going about setting them up on the pre-existing wall.

“Figured grunt work was too good for you fancy suits?” A militia soldier that was piling mud on the other side of the sandbags to hide their location casually told Rose as they both worked.

“What the hell do you think Venators are? Just grunts.” Rose chuckled while setting another bag in place. The soldier grinned despite being covered in mud and freezing from the cold wind.

Another soldier was slogging up the snow-covered mountain trail with a handful of branches they were going to use to further camouflage the trench.

“Why we doing this if the BDF have thermal anyway?” The soldier said as he dumped the branches down and started breaking them down to size.

“Only drones and Venators have thermal, the regular BDF troopers are about as well off as you fellas. They’re the poor ones that live down in the lower castes.” Rose replied to the soldier who grimaced in return.

“So, we’re going to be killing the poor ones that don’t have a choice in all this?” The soldier asked.

“Would you rather die?” Rose said in return which made both soldiers shrug until the one covered in mud replied.

“Fair point.”

“It’s always the poor that die in war.” Mouse said as he walked down from the top of the trail, having been listening to the conversation.

“You get the rest of the blasting caps?” Rose asked.

“Yeah, one of the mechanics that works on the city generators had a bunch of rubber he melted down and let me use to waterproof ’em. Maybe they’ll blow after sitting in the snow for hours now.” Mouse said as he took a cloth satchel off and checked his supply of explosives.

Baron and Mouse worked on the upper portion of the mountain where the trail ended into the flat plateau that the city was built on. This would be the first fall back point when Moses’ harassment teams were overwhelmed and needed to retreat. The road was in such a state of disrepair going up the mountain that they couldn’t get the tank up it. Moses said he had a plan for it once the drones were sufficiently scared off and it had a little breathing room to work. Since the outpost in the wooded area at the foot of the mountain wasn’t in the best location for a fight, they pulled all manpower from it to the mountain trails where they wanted the skirmishes to cut away at Bastion numbers. The tank and Moses teams were the only ones that would be down at the foot of the mountain during the fight.

The plan was based on the BDF landing in the flat area a few miles to the South of the mountain and making their way on foot to the road. To make the area more appetizing for the BDF Baron had requested McBride have his men clear the snow from the bottom part of the road where they could see it. Once further up the road though, the snow would conceal it and the various markers the Militia used to keep people from falling off the old road would be removed. The BDF would be fighting uphill and on ill footing.

The Militia had warmed up pretty fast to Rose and Mouse who were in a sense, grunts like the rest of them. They worked with the regular line infantry to clear snow, cut paths through the trees, and carry equipment. Boot and Baron had a harder time getting the Militia to trust them since they didn’t talk enough which the infantry found suspicious. Moses they just hated; Rose had heard more than one soldier talk about Moses trying to kill him, but it was just ‘training’. If they made it out of this fight alive, they’d be thanking the old bastard.

Moses had other plans besides what was going to be happening at the base of the mountain. He had 3 Militia soldiers acting as scribes with him as he toured the city looking for points of ambush once the BDF made it inside the city. Most families and traders were quick to let him inside their homes and the ones that refused usually ended up having munitions that Moses was quick to ‘commandeer’ for the war effort, another reason everyone hated him.

The old prewar apartment building Moses was inspecting was a sore sight. He was amazed it was even standing upright from the foundation damage and the wood mostly rotted. Some scrap wood and metal pieces were welded and nailed around areas that were starting to crumble from the old brick structure, but it was too little, too late. Moses wouldn’t even walk up the steps to the second floor because he knew his armors heavyweight would send him crashing back to ground level. He examined a few windows facing the street where he might be able to post a few soldiers to slow the BDF but finally acknowledged that this structure would fall apart the moment a grenade was thrown in it.

“This one will be rubble before the BDF even get here.” Moses said to his escort of scribes who were keeping track of locations he wanted to use in the fight. As Moses was heading to the door he passed a mother and daughter standing awkwardly to the side. They were both dressed in ragged clothing likely salvaged or pieced together from pre-war items. The daughter had bright red hair that was a tangled mess covering her button cheeks.

Something the daughter was holding caught Moses eye and he stopped in front of them. The little girl was clutching a piece of paper with a drawing on it. It was a white horse on a black background. A moment passed where Moses and the little girl stared at each other before finally, the little girl spoke up first.

“I wanna be part of the Pale Horse soldiers when I grow up.” She proudly puffed her chest up and held her drawing out for Moses to see. The mother strained a smile, obviously nervous. “I showed her what a horse looks like in a book a long time ago and it’s all she’s been drawing since she found out you were here.”

“My daddies a soldier in the militia, are you going to keep him safe?” The little girl asked while looking up at Moses who hadn’t moved yet.

A moment passed where the scribes following Moses weren’t sure if he was asleep since he hadn’t moved a muscle. He finally took a step towards the little girl and knelt on one knee beside her.

“That’s a good drawing you got there.” He calmly replied in a soothing voice the scribes hadn’t heard him use before. Moses took the drawing the little girl was holding out for him and inspected it.

“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure everyone is safe.” Moses reassured the girl in a warm tone. Before he could say anything else she jumped up and threw her arms around him. His torso was too large for her small arms to wrap around so she awkwardly hugged his neck and head. Which were just barely low enough to the ground for her to reach. Moses was stunned for a moment before patting her on the back in a fatherly manner. She let go of him finally and smiled from ear to ear.

Moses was a turbulent mess that wouldn’t have remembered to breathe if it wasn’t involuntarily. He stood up and turned to leave when the little girl spoke up again.

“Can I draw a horsy on you?!” Moses jaw dropped and he turned back around while letting out a sigh. He looked over at his scribes who were biting their lips trying not to laugh.

“We’re done for the day, you can leave.” He told them.

Grinch slid his body up a pile of concrete rubble covered in brown snow. He made sure to keep his silhouette as low to the ground as possible when he reached the top. He surveyed the wasteland that used to be a city, he had made good time. This had to be Twin falls, it was the first city he’d seen since passing Idaho Falls and he’d only traveled East. Initially, he planned on giving the ruins a wide birth since the old pre-war cities rarely held anything besides death. However, while going around the city he heard human voices, screams to be specific. Against his better judgment, he decided to investigate. Partially because he was low on nutrient cubes and hunger drove him to the hostile region. Since he wasn’t using the suits heater he had to rely on the insulating properties of his armor, which meant he was burning too many calories to stay warm.

The ruins offered little in the way of salvage from what Grinch could see from his position. He did notice a light source behind a toppled structure across the street from his current hiding spot. Looked to be fire from the way the light danced on the dark snow-covered ground around it.

He edged his way down the side of the rubble, keeping sure to stay as quiet as possible. As he reached the bottom, he quickly hugged a concrete chunk that was barely tall enough to conceal him. He heard footsteps in the snow. The gradual crunch grew louder, it had to be a human or at least a bipedal gray which wasn’t common.

“I found another one!” A man’s voice yelled from behind Grinch’s concrete slab.

“Please, we don’t have anything of value, but you can take whatever you want!” Another man’s voice pleaded.

“You’re too hard on yourself, your meat alone is plenty of value.”

“No, please. We can help you look for food! You don’t have to do this!”

Grinch heard the footsteps trail away and peeked around the concrete slab. The footprints looked like they went across the street where the fire was coming from. More screaming filled the night air, this time a woman. Grinch’s nostrils flared behind his helmet as he locked his jaw subconsciously. These were the people Baron wanted to save, the savages and the weak. Baron would sacrifice the Bastion for this kind of future, a lawless barbaric one, Grinch thought to himself.

Grinch pushed himself off the concrete slab and went to leave, he’d find no resources here, only death. As he navigated the rebar and rubble mess he heard the unmistakable sound of crying. He stopped in his tracks and stood still as a light snow flurry began to fall. He listened in the freezing night air to determine where the crying was coming from, someone screamed from the alley and it pierced the silence.

“Hello?” Grinch whispered as he walked towards the source of the noise. A piece of cloth was covering something that was moving in the rubble. Grinch carefully raised his rifle and used his other hand to remove the piece of ragged cloth.

“Shhhh!” Grinch whispered as two young children started to scream.

“Quiet!” He said as he knelt down beside them and lowered his rifle. They were confused by the man in armor, he wasn’t one of the others they were hiding from.

“We were told to stay here until it was safe.” An older boy said after a moment of silence. The other child was a little girl, probably barely 5. How they were surviving at all in this freezing weather was beyond Grinch.

“Stop stop!” A woman was screaming from back where the man had dragged her. The older boy wrapped his arms around the younger girl and covered her ears.

This is enough...Grinch gritted his teeth to the point it hurt.

“Stay here.” He ordered the pair as he holstered his rifle, he wouldn’t need it.

Ruthless and merciless, the roving bands of thieves, murders, cannibals, and rapists were, unfortunately, the hardest for the new world to kill. They survived by preying on the living in a worse manner than even the Gray.

This small band had been staying in Twin Falls for years now. Preying on survivors traveling to The Peak was easy work but fewer and fewer were coming from the West. They would soon have to move camp elsewhere as the Gray were growing to encompass the entire western portion of the states and take all the prey.

The fire was almost hot enough to sear the meat just the way they liked. They already had 6 captives which would surely be enough meat to get them to another suitable location.

“How much longer, we haven’t eaten in 4 days!” A man dressed in a blood-stained blue uniform with a BDF plate carrier asked.

“I’m almost done with this one, the meat was tough to cut down to size.” Another man replied as he chopped away at a torso with a machete.

“Bring me one of the men. We’ll keep the women alive until we’re out of food. They’ll be fun until we wear ’em out.” The one with the machete sneered at the captives were tied to an old playground monkey bar dome that had pieces of rubble and trash around it to keep them inside.

One of the raiders laughed as he walked over to the dome to grab one of the unfortunate men. He was laughing at the cries and pleas from his soon to be victims as they begged for their lives. They knew it was futile to beg. The camp they found themselves in was covered in discarded bones and skins that looked very human were piled on makeshift sleds. Snot dribbled from the man’s nose as he was drug out of the metal caged dome. His eyes were clenched shut as he cried and choked on his sobbing.

“Come on move!” The raider yelled and kicked at the crying man who was trying to lay down in the snow.

“I said move!” The raider screamed as he raised a spiked club over his head and prepared to deliver a fatal blow to the crying man on the ground.

The club fell to the ground beside the crying man who opened his eyes when he never felt the blow. He looked up to see the raider choking on his own blood as a blade stuck out from his chest.

Grinch threw the dead raider to the ground and looked at the stunned man still lying in the snow.

Weak, Grinch thought to himself as he despised the man crying almost as much as the raiders.

Grinch turned around and walked calmly to the fire where the others were busy chopping meat and tending to the fire. The fire was a wide pit of hot embers with a metal grate beside it they were using as a makeshift grill.

“If we head Southeast we’ll have to deal with more Gray, why not go North around the*” The man’s sentence was cut short as Grinch cleaved him in two at his waist with his gauntleted blade.

“Fuck!” The one standing beside the now disemboweled man screamed as he turned just in time to see Grinch retract his blade and push him into the fire pit. He screamed as he fell into the hot embers which ignited his thick coat into an inferno.

The raider that had been cutting meat ran at Grinch with his machete raised in the air, screaming a war cry. Grinch stepped towards the raider and grabbed his arm that was holding the machete. As he did, he placed his other hand under the raiders skull and unsheathed his blade. Which promptly forced its way through the man’s head, ejecting bits of grey matter from the top of his skull.

Another raider raised a pre-war rifle at Grinch and fired several shots, most of which struck the corpse still impaled on Grinch’s blade. Grinch tossed the corpse away from him and ran towards the raider. The raider was walking backward while firing at the armored beast coming at him. His face had fear written across it as the bullets pinged off Grinch.

A quick twitch of Grinch’s hand and the raider was a bloody pile like the rest.

“What the fuck is goi*” A raider walked out of a tent on the other side of the fire across from Grinch. The raider saw Grinch and started running.

Grinch walked over the burning embers where the man he had pushed in the fire was still burning but silent. He stepped on the man’s corpse as he strolled across the pit of embers.

The raider ran to the metal dome where the captives were and grabbed a woman before turning around to face Grinch with his new hostage.

Grinch’s pace didn’t falter as he walked to the man and hostage.

“I’ll kill the bitch!” The raider screamed as he shoved a pistol under the crying woman’s head.

Grinch still didn’t slow his pace as he walked to the pair standing in the snow.

As he neared the pair the raider started pulling the trigger on the old pistol.

Grinch pulled his sidearm from his leg holster and fired without aiming before the raider could finish.

The raiders lifeless body dropped to the ground. The woman screamed from the pain as pieces of bone from the raider’s skull fragmenting had lodged in her eyes.

The man that had been crying earlier ran to free the captives from the dome. Grinch stared at the screaming women who curled up in a ball in the snow as blood started running from her eyes.

They’re already dead, Grinch said to himself as he turned to loot the raiders. Hoping to find substance, not in the form of human flesh.

Before he could start though, he heard a sound. A guttural growl that echoed through the night over the screaming women sobbing in pain.

Gray...Grinch had wasted too much time here, it was a mistake to stop and try to help. The gunfire must have attracted a nearby swarm. He looked towards the captives who had just finished freeing themselves.

They looked back at Grinch, paralyzed with fear but a hope deep down inside of them prayed Grinch would save them.

They’re already dead, Grinch disappeared into the night. Leaving them to whatever fate was coming.