Please be there, Tuck. At my parents’. I need to tell you I love you, even if you don’t say it back. I need you to know even if you decide to go.

It was all that mattered now. Love was more precious than food or water, more important than those chickens worth their weight in gold. And I hadn’t said it because I thought it mattered that he might not say it back.

If I rode fast and hard, even if I had to go around barricades, I could make it home by morning. Please be there. Please—

The dirt bike hit something as though I’d crashed into an invisible wall, throwing me backward violently as I screamed, and the bike came out from under me. For a moment I was airborne and then everything went black.

I woke with a moan, pain radiating through my head and down my spine. I sucked in a breath, and my lungs expanded, feeling raw and achy as though they’d collapsed, and I’d filled them too quickly.

What happened? Oh my God, what happened?

A man stood over me, the dirt bike next to him, and a rope hanging from his hand. “I’m real sorry,” he said. “But I need that bike.” Oh God. He’d heard me coming. He’d used the rope somehow to stop me. “I’m not a bad person. I’m a restaurant manager. Or I was. They—they looted it. Killed two of my employees. I hid under my desk. I—I just need to get away from here. To the ocean. Where there’s food.”

I wiggled my toes and then my fingers, relief trickling through me at the knowledge I wasn’t paralyzed. I still felt mildly numb though and couldn’t tell if I was in shock, or if a bone, or several, were broken. I couldn’t manage to find enough breath to speak. I couldn’t tell this man there were boats blocking any food that was in the ocean. Modern-day pirates that would kill him rather than let him fish.

“Please,” I said, wincing as another sharp pain stabbed at the place behind my eyes. “Please don’t leave me here like this.”

“I’m a good person,” he repeated. “But it’s kill or be killed now. That’s the way it is. I’m sorry. I’m a good person but I need that bike.”

He paused as he peered down at me, our eyes meeting in the starlit desert. “You’re pretty. And young,” he said. “And I am sorry but look up at the stars and it’ll be over soon.”

And then, as though he’d suddenly decided he wanted no part of this, he flew backward, landing on the ground with a thud and a shriek of shock.

“Get the fuck away from her.” Tuck. Tuck’s voice. How?