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2
The girl fled across the desert.
She had bloodstains on her hands and on her clothes. She was certain that those stains were on her heart as well. On her soul.
As she ran, the girl prayed that they would not find her, that they would stop looking.
But they would never stop looking. Never.
Not as long as her mother wanted her dead.
Somewhere, out beyond the heat shimmers that hovered over the sandy horizon, killers were tracking her. Reapers of her mother’s Night Church.
They would never stop because they believed—truly believed—that tracking her down was their holy purpose. She was the sinner, the pariah. The monster that they hunted in order to rid the world of a dreadful impurity.
The reapers.
With knives and axes and bladed farm tools they hunted her.
Wanting to find her. Craving her death.
And so many of them were her friends.
From them, and from who she had once been, the girl tried to hide herself in the vastness of a cruel desert.
3
She was hungry.
It was that deep hunger, the kind that made her sharp and quick for hours. A belly-taut ache that can’t be outrun.
When she was that hungry, she couldn’t be lazy. She couldn’t climb a tree and lash herself to a thick limb and let the day shamble past.
No, this kind of hunger made her go hunting. It shook her loose from the crushing depression she’d felt since leaving the Night Church.
Before she left, she checked her weapons—the fighting knife she’d carried since she was seven years old, the strangle wire, the throwing spikes, the sling with its bag of sharp stones. She looped the coil of rope across her body.
Her home for the last three days had once been something called a FunMart. She had no idea what that was. It had shelves like a lot of the stores she’d seen, but there was nothing on them. The floor was littered with the torn wrappers of bread loaves and cracker boxes, but everything of value had been scavenged by refugees over the last twelve years, and any forgotten crumbs had been devoured by insects and animals. But the place was dry, and it got her out of the desert heat.
Now it was time to leave. She knew that she wouldn’t be coming back here. The reapers were still out there somewhere. Maybe weeks behind her, maybe much closer. She had only stayed this long at the FunMart because of the gripes—a terrible storm that had raged in her intestines after eating a piece of questionable food. That lizard she’d caught and cooked must have been sick, or it had carried some kind of toxin. For two whole days her stomach felt like it was filled with razor blades and acid. She threw up everything she ate, which was also a terrible waste of food. Nothing of value went into her system. No proteins or fats or useful calories. No nutrients.
When the gripes passed, the girl was left weak and trembling. If even the weakest reaper came at her, she could not have defended herself.
The desert offered no obvious comfort. Food had to be caught, and there was very little water. So survival required movement. Hunger demanded it.
Even so, she lingered at the door of the FunMart.
The girl did not have a home. Not anymore. And the home she used to have was not a place she could return to. No way. To the people she left behind she was a disgrace, a lost soul.
A monster.
Places like this empty shell of a FunMart offered no real protection; it was not a home in any genuine way. It was a place to be sick, and if she stayed longer, it would be the place where she died. The reapers were coming. She did not know when they would find her, only that they would.
Beyond the door was the road that stretched through the endless desert. Beyond the door was the truth. The loneliness. The fear.
The hunger.
The hunger called to her. It yelled. It shrieked.
