The Pulse

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EMILY Rosen dropped the can of dog food into her backpack and shivered, her breath making little white puffs in the cold air inside the stairwell of her building. Her own apartment had gotten too cold to keep living in, and her systematic search through the other apartments yielded only a few cans of precious food. No one had a working fireplace, and without fire she’d freeze to death.

She’d have to venture outside her building and find someplace warm to squat in. Emily survived this long by avoiding the military camps and living off scavenged food—but she couldn’t live without heat, not in a New York winter.

The heat had been off since the power went out with the Pulse, followed by running water two days later.

Footsteps sounded in the hall outside the stairwell door. Emily gasped and paused with her hand on the doorknob to her floor. Soldiers.

The sound of spray paint hissing onto the building’s once immaculate white walls permeated through the thick stairwell door. She’d seen the mark before, like a big circle with an X through it. Something about how many alive, how many dead.

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