After Everyone

Chapter 2: The Price of Hope

The road stretched ahead like a scar across the earth, cracked and broken but still there just like Morgan.

She and Jude had walked for days, guided by the pull of a distant idea more than a real direction. The Safe Zone. The name sounded like a lie each time it crossed her mind, like a fairytale designed to give the desperate something to cling to. But Jude… he clung. With his wide eyes and stubborn steps, he clung with a kind of faith Morgan hadn’t seen in anyone since the world burned.

The world hadn’t ended with a bang, not really. It ended with silence. One day, the news stopped. The satellites blinked out. The drones returned home those that still had homes to return to. Then came the sickness, the starvation, the madness. The people changed. Or they disappeared. Or they became something worse than gone.

Morgan had survived not because she was strong or brave, but because she stopped needing to be either. She just kept going, even when there was nothing left to go for.

Now, she walked for Jude. Or maybe because of him.

“Do you think they’ll have animals?” he asked, breaking the long silence.

She didn’t answer right away. The air was dry and hot, and the only sounds were their boots against the crumbling road and the occasional bird overhead if that even was a bird.

“Maybe,” she said eventually.

“I’d like a dog. A big one, like the kind that could carry stuff and chase off bad people,” he said, smiling faintly.

Morgan wanted to tell him that dogs didn’t last long out here. That anything soft, anything warm, was the first to go. But the way his face lit up at the thought made her stay quiet.

They reached a small rise. Beyond it, a cluster of buildings leaned into the horizon what was left of a rural town. Trees curled around its edges like they were reclaiming it inch by inch. Morgan slowed, scanning the space for movement. Anything that wasn’t ruins.

“Let’s check it out,” she said. “But stay close.”

The town was silent, but not dead. Not quite. Wind whispered through shattered windows, and vines climbed up telephone poles that no longer hummed. A toppled grocery sign lay half-buried in the dirt, the letters sun bleached and scattered.

Inside the store, Morgan moved fast, sweeping her eyes over the aisles. Most of it had been looted years ago, but she found a few sealed bottles of water behind a shelf, and one can of soup dented but sealed.

“Score,” Jude whispered.

Morgan allowed herself a smirk.

In the back of the store, a sound froze her blood.

Scraping. Shuffling. Breathing.

She raised her blade, motioning for Jude to step back. He obeyed, crouching near the window, eyes wide. Morgan crept forward, muscles taut, senses sharpened.

She rounded the corner and froze.

A young woman, maybe twenty, sat against the wall, her eyes hollow. She was thin, dressed in rags, her arms scraped and bruised. She didn’t move, just stared.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Morgan said carefully.

The girl blinked slowly. “You’re… not with them?”

Morgan tilted her head. “With who?”

The girl shook her head, lips trembling. “They come at night. Trucks. Lights. Take the strong ones. Use them. Kill the rest.”

Morgan’s stomach clenched.

“What’s your name?” Jude asked, stepping closer.

The girl flinched but didn’t answer.

“We’re just passing through,” Morgan said. “We won’t stay long.”

The girl’s voice came out brittle. “If you stay tonight… they’ll come. They always come.”

They left before sunset, following the road until the trees grew thicker and darker. Morgan set up a small camp near a stream, the water clear and cold. They ate in silence half the can of soup between them, the rest saved for later.

“She looked scared,” Jude said.

“She should be.”

“Are we going to find the people she was talking about?”

“Not if we can help it.”

Jude looked into the fire. “She didn’t have anyone.”

Morgan said nothing.

“I think that’s the worst part,” he added softly. “Worse than the ferals or the hunger or the silence. Just… being alone.”

Morgan exhaled slowly. “Yeah.”

She didn’t sleep well that night. Every snap of a twig or rustle in the leaves felt like a warning. Her hand stayed on her knife. The fire burned low, and the stars blinked overhead, indifferent.

The next morning, they followed the stream east until they reached the highway. The broken skeletons of cars lined the road, long since picked clean. Jude poked through one of them and pulled out a bent license plate.

“Ontario,” he read. “Think we’re close?”

Morgan didn’t answer. She was watching the horizon.

A sound low and mechanical rumbled in the distance.

They both froze.

Jude dropped the plate.

From behind a hill, the shape of a truck appeared military grade, armored, the kind that shouldn’t exist anymore. It rumbled slowly, deliberately, its windows blacked out. Behind it, two more trucks followed.

Morgan grabbed Jude and pulled him into the ditch, pressing him to the ground. They didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

The convoy passed. Dust rose into the air like a warning.

When the last truck vanished into the trees, Morgan exhaled shakily.

“They’re real,” Jude whispered.

Morgan nodded. “And they’re heading the same direction we are.”

They stayed off the road after that, moving through forest and brush, keeping their heads down. By late afternoon, they reached a small farmhouse, half-collapsed but still offering some shelter.

Inside, the air was musty and thick. A child’s toy lay in the corner a doll missing one eye. Jude picked it up, brushed the dust off.

“Someone lived here,” he said softly.

“Lots of someones lived everywhere.”

He turned the doll in his hands. “Do you think they made it out?”

Morgan didn’t want to answer. But she didn’t want to lie, either.

“I think most people didn’t,” she said honestly.

He nodded slowly. “But we might.”

She looked at him, surprised.

“We might,” he repeated. “We’re still here.”

And somehow, that felt like the bravest thing anyone had said in years.

They stayed in the house that night. Morgan barricaded the door with a shelf and kept her knife close. Jude curled up near the hearth, the doll tucked under his arm.

Somewhere in the night, Morgan heard him stir.

“You awake?” he whispered.

“Yeah.”

He hesitated. “Were you always alone?”

Morgan stared at the ceiling. “No.”

A pause.

“I had a daughter.”

The words surprised even her. She hadn’t spoken them in so long.

“She died?” Jude asked gently.

Morgan’s throat tightened. “She was taken. A group came through. Said they had food. Shelter. I believed them.”

Jude didn’t speak.

“I followed them for three days after they left. Found what they left behind.”

The silence was thick with grief.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice small.

Morgan closed her eyes. “Me too.”

By the time dawn broke, something inside her had shifted. Not enough to call it hope not yet but something close. A crack in the walls she’d built.

They packed up and started walking again.

The sun rose higher, casting golden light across the ruined world. The air smelled of pine and smoke, and somewhere in the distance, a bird sang.

And for the first time in a long time, Morgan let herself imagine something beyond survival.

Not because she believed in it yet.

But because Jude did.