It had been twenty months since I’d carried on a conversation with another living person. I might be an introvert by nature, but listening day and night to the voice in my head had been maddening, leading to the creation of these recorded journal entries. But seeing her … she was a thunderbolt, a goddess. I knew I had to find her, even if it meant risking an encounter with the SS.

Pausing at the edge of a clearing, I retrieved water and an apple from my knapsack, consumed a quick snack, buried the evidence, and continued my trek up the mountain.

After three hundred feet the woods began anew. The shadows of pine trees were closing in, dusk coming fast. For half an hour I wandered through a maze of trees, until the night was upon me and I accepted the fact I was hopelessly lost.

Hearing men’s voices, I quickly hid.

There were a dozen of them, more in the cave.

The dogs had found the woman’s lair, its small entrance concealed by brush. I figured now they would stake out the area, waiting for her to return.

I smelled her as she moved through the shadows to join me behind the bushes. I felt the gun press firmly against the left side of my ribcage. “I need a place that’s safe.”

“Get me back to the main road.”

*   *   *

The motorcycle was hidden in a ravine behind mile marker thirty-six. Six months ago, I had replaced the engine and fuel tank with an electric motor and rechargeable truck battery, rendering it fast yet whisper quiet. We waited another hour before heading south, my night-vision visor illuminating any nocturnal predators that might venture near the highway.

My family’s suburban neighborhood had long since been abandoned. Our house stood alone among burnt-out foundations on a cul-de-sac. I had cleared the surrounding terrain to expose anyone who approached. Every window was bricked up, the house and matching eight-foot wall that surrounded the backyard’s concealed acreage painted to appear like charred cinder.

The lawn was covered in sheets of metal—hundreds of car trunks and engine hoods, planted flat into the grass and welded into a giant jigsaw puzzle. Climbing off the motorcycle, I instructed the beautiful huntress to follow precisely in my footsteps, my night-vision glasses revealing a preset path that turned and twisted to tall shrubs that camouflaged a subterranean side entrance. Once we were inside the house, I bolted the steel door behind the woman, shocking her by turning on the lights.

“You have electricity? How?”

“While other people were searching for food and water, I was busy collecting car batteries and solar panels.”

“And car hoods. What’s that all about?”

“Security. Step onto my property and you get zapped with ten thousand volts of electricity. By the way, my name’s Eisenbraun, Robert Eisenbraun. Most people used to call me Ike.”