The first thing Thorne Harlan registered was the taste.
It coated his tongue like pennies left out in the rain—rusted metal, burnt plastic, and something sharper underneath, like the ozone snap before a lightning strike. He didn't open his eyes right away. Instead, he lay still on the cold concrete, letting his body run its own diagnostics the way MARSOC had trained him: breathe slow, feel for pain, catalog injuries.
Nothing broken. A dull throb behind his left eye from the concussion wave. Ribs bruised but intact. The plate carrier had done its job again.
*Still breathing. That's a win.*
Only then did he open his eyes.
The bunker was darker than he remembered. A thin blade of sickly yellow light sliced through a jagged crack in the ceiling, illuminating drifting motes of concrete dust that hung in the air like fallout snow. The emergency lantern he'd left burning was dead—battery finally gave out sometime in the last seventy-two hours. Didn't matter. He could navigate this space blind if he had to.
Thorne sat up slowly, the weight of his gear shifting across his chest. The plate carrier creaked softly, mag pouches heavy with the remaining ammunition he'd managed to salvage. His M4A1 lay beside him where he'd placed it before collapsing into exhausted sleep, suppressor still attached, barrel pointed toward the door out of habit.
He ran his gloved fingers over the rifle's rail, checking for damage. Clean. Good to go.
The silence pressed in, thick and absolute. No distant rumble of aircraft. No chatter on the comms net that had gone dark three days ago. Just the faint whistle of wind through the breached ceiling and the occasional shift of settling debris.
Three days.
It felt like three years.
He allowed himself one memory—just one—before locking it down.
Reyes, face half-melted from the flash burn, pressing that blood-spotted map into his hand with shaking fingers.
"Eden's Reach… brother… it's real. Rockies. West. Geothermal… greenhouses… walls that held. Go. Don't… don't let it end like this."
Then the light had gone out of Reyes' eyes, and Thorne had been alone.
He folded the memory away like a knife snapping shut. No time for ghosts. Not yet.
Thorne stood, boots scraping grit across the floor. The bunker had been a maintenance facility once—pre-war military, judging by the faded stencils on the walls. Someone had retrofitted it with cots and supply crates during the panic, but whoever they'd been, they'd either bugged out or died screaming when the bombs fell. He moved to the footlocker he'd claimed as his own and began the ritual that had kept him alive since everything went to hell.
Inventory. Always inventory.
"M4A1, suppressed. One hundred twenty rounds 5.56, six mags total—four on the carrier, two in the pack. Glock 19 on the chest rig, forty-five rounds 9-mil across three mags. Benchmade fixed blade, sharp. IFAK fully stocked—two tourniquets, QuickClot, pressure dressings, chest seals. Multi-tool with fire starter. Water purification tabs, thirty count. Paracord, fifty feet. Signal mirror. Compass. The map."
He patted the chest pocket where Reyes' legacy lived, folded small and protected in a ziplock. Eden's Reach. A place that might not even exist anymore. But it was direction. Purpose. Something to walk toward when everything else had turned to ash.
The rest was minimal: three MREs, one partially eaten. A poncho liner for warmth. Spare socks—gold in this world. A small bottle of iodine. And the shemagh wrapped around his neck, already gray with fallout dust.
He'd need more. Soon.
Thorne shouldered his pack and moved to the bunker's crooked door. The hinges groaned as he pushed it open, revealing the ruined suburb beyond. The air outside hit him like a physical blow—colder than inside, carrying the chemical bite of lingering radiation and the faint, sweet-rot smell of bodies that hadn't been buried.
He stepped out into the wasteland.
The neighborhood had been upper-middle class once. Thorne could still see the bones of it: wide lawns now choked with dead grass, McMansions with vinyl siding peeled back like flayed skin, luxury SUVs overturned and burned out. A child's bicycle lay on its side in one driveway, training wheels bent, streamers faded to pink ghosts.
Fallout ash covered everything in a uniform gray blanket, softening edges and muffling sound. His boots left clear prints as he moved—prints that would fill in within hours when the wind picked up again. Good. No tracks for anyone to follow.
He kept to cover, moving from vehicle to vehicle, house shadow to house shadow. The training never left you. Pie corners. Check sectors. Listen for the absence of birds—nature's early warning system.
There were no birds today.
The first house he checked had already been hit hard. Front door kicked in, windows smashed. He cleared it anyway—slow, deliberate, muzzle tracking potential threats. The living room stank of mold and old blood. Someone had tried to barricade here: furniture piled against the door, now scattered like broken toys. Dried blood spatter decorated one wall in a high arc—arterial spray.
In the kitchen, he found what he was looking for: canned goods. Someone had missed a few in their haste. Two cans of peaches in heavy syrup. One can of spam. A half-full box of saltine crackers gone slightly stale but edible.
Gold.
He added them to his pack, moving quietly. In the bathroom, he scored even better: a mostly full bottle of ibuprofen and—jackpot—a travel-size bottle of hand sanitizer. Alcohol content high enough to start a fire in a pinch.
*Multi-tool striker and sanitizer. Decent fire starter if the matches run out.*
He was turning to leave when he heard it.
Voices.
Low, male, carrying that particular tone that set his teeth on edge. Not survivors talking about rations or water. This was something else.
Thorne ghosted to the front window, staying low behind the shredded curtains. The cul-de-sac was fifty meters away, partially obscured by an overturned minivan. But he could see enough.
Five men. Reapers.
He'd heard about them from other survivors before comms went dark—gang that had formed in the chaos, marked by crude red scythe tattoos on their necks and arms. They didn't just take what they wanted. They made it ritual. Turned violence into religion.
They had a woman.
She was young—maybe mid-twenties—with dark hair that had come loose from its ponytail. Her clothes were already torn: jeans ripped at the knee, shirt hanging open. She was fighting hard, nails raking, kicking, screaming rage and terror in equal measure. But there were five of them, and they were laughing.
The leader was big—shaved head, thick beard, machete hanging from his belt like a talisman. He grabbed her by the hair and forced her to her knees in the center of the street, right where the ash was thinnest. The others formed a loose circle, starting some low chant in broken Latin or made-up words. Thorne couldn't make it out clearly, but the rhythm was wrong. Predatory.
The woman spat blood and curses. One of the Reapers backhanded her hard enough to snap her head sideways. She went down on her hands and knees, gasping.
That's when it started.
The leader went first, dropping to his knees behind her, yanking her jeans down with brutal efficiency. She screamed—a raw, animal sound that echoed off the empty houses and seemed to hang in the poisoned air. The others held her arms and legs, spreading her like an offering. The chanting grew louder, more frenzied.
Thorne watched from cover, body perfectly still, breathing controlled.
He cataloged automatically: five tangos, mixed weapons—two with rifles (AK variants by the profile), one with a shotgun, two with blades and improvised clubs. Open ground. No cover between his position and theirs. Unknown ammunition state. Unknown reinforcements.
The woman fought the whole time. Even when the first one finished with a guttural groan and stood, adjusting himself casually, she still fought. The second took his place, and her screams turned hoarse. Blood ran down her thighs, dark against pale skin, mixing with the ash to create muddy streaks.
Thorne's finger rested lightly on the trigger guard. Not on the trigger. Never on the trigger until commitment.
*Five tangos. Fifty meters. Suppressed shots would still make noise. Survivors would scatter. Possible reinforcements. Ammo expenditure: minimum ten rounds, likely more. Objective: Eden's Reach. Risk assessment: unacceptable.*
The third one was rougher. He slapped her across the face each time he thrust, timing it to the chant. Her resistance was weakening now—sobs replacing screams, body going limp in their grip. But her eyes... her eyes were still alive. Burning.
Thorne felt something twist in his gut. Not pity. Not quite. Recognition, maybe. He'd seen that look in mirrors after particularly bad ops. The look that said *I will not break*.
But she was breaking.
The fourth flipped her onto her back, pinning her arms above her head. The ash stuck to the blood and sweat on her skin, creating grotesque patterns. She managed one last surge of fight—kicked him hard enough in the thigh to make him curse—but it was over quickly. The fifth went last, taking his time, making it ritualistic again with the chanting.
When they were done, the leader drew his machete.
She didn't scream this time. Just stared up at the irradiated sky as he raised the blade.
The cut was quick. Professional, almost. Blood sprayed in a dark fan across the asphalt, steaming faintly in the cold. Her body twitched once, twice, then went still.
The Reapers stood around her for a moment, breathing heavy, some laughing. One of them wiped himself on her torn shirt before pulling up his pants. They left her there—body twisted at unnatural angles, eyes still open, staring at nothing.
Then they moved off, heading east, voices fading into the distance.
Thorne waited ten full minutes. Counted them off in his head.
Only then did he move.
He didn't approach the body. No point. She was gone, and lingering invited attention. Instead, he slipped out the back of the house, moving perpendicular to the Reapers' path. The wind was picking up now, carrying the metallic promise of acid rain. He adjusted his shemagh higher over his mouth and nose.
*West. Always west.*
Eden's Reach was still hundreds of miles away—through irradiated zones, Reaper territory, whatever passed for civilization these days. But it was something.
And in a world where most people had nothing left, something was everything.
He walked for hours, boots crunching through ash that was already erasing his footprints. The sun—what little made it through the perpetual haze—was setting behind him, painting the sky in toxic oranges and greens.
Behind him, somewhere in the ruins, a woman lay cooling in the street.
Ahead of him, the road stretched west.
Thorne adjusted his pack and kept moving.