Deception

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“What are you going to tell them?” Rachel asks. She sits beside me, her scuffed boots touching mine while long strands of her hair rise in the early morning breeze like fine lengths of copper wire. The dark bulk of the Commander’s compound crouches on the hill behind us, and the charred remains of Baalboden stretch out nearly as far as the eye can see.

“The truth.” My voice sounds stronger than I feel. The truth of the situation facing the tiny group of Baalboden survivors is a complex creature full of shadows and secrets. I don’t want to be the one to explain it, but I’ve done a lot of things I didn’t want to do. Including accepting the job of leading these people in the absence of the Commander, who ran into the Wasteland the day of the fires and hasn’t been heard from since.

I suppose it’s too much to hope that he fell off a cliff or got eaten by wolves.

“All of it?” She sounds strong too, but her fingers clench into fists as if she’s bracing herself. She looks past our camp—four rows of shelters made from cobbling together jagged slices of canvas, dead tree limbs, and bits of salvaged material that huddle beside the Commander’s compound like an outcast beggar too bedraggled to have any pride—and gazes south at the ruins of Baalboden itself.

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