“Let me in! I need to use your power source!” The stranger thumped on the door of Hill 71, one of the few remaining bastions of humanity amid swarms of the Infected.

Tall, grim, and heavily built, with the long beards common among seasoned Infected fighters of the Wastelands, the stranger’s request–command, really–was honored. That the gatekeepers had seen him slaughter his way to their gates through a horde of Infected certainly didn’t hurt.

“I need access to your power source at once,” the stranger repeated once the gates had been opened.

“What for?” asked the gatekeepers, wary of outside interference with the solar storage batteries that kept their electrified anti-Infected barriers up.

“It’s important,” said the stranger, glaring at the Hill 71 denizens from above his wanderer’s beard and behind cracked polarized spectacles.

They let him into the House of the Sun to wander amid the storage batteries. He deigned to let them seize his weapons, but the Hill 71ers knew that such a seasoned killer of the Infected was dangerous even barehanded. The stranger moved with purpose through the batteries, some of the last electric power on earth, and knelt by an old-fashioned power outlet. He removed a dingy package from a knapsack, and plugged a frayed cord into the socket.

His Kindle powered up, displaying pg. 237 of The Da Vinci Code, and the stranger sat down to read.

  • Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!