She wears a tattered lab coat that’s five sizes too big for her. It’s so stained with dirt and rust-colored blotches that it’s hard to believe it was ever white. She holds it closed as she gingerly steps across the rubble, looking as if she’s holding herself together.

The wind blows her hair in her face and she tosses her head to get it out of the way. There’s something odd about both her full hair and that gesture. It takes me a minute to figure out what it is.

When was the last time I saw an old woman toss her head to get her hair away from her face? And her hair is dark all the way to her scalp even though the latest post-apocalyptic fashion for older women is at least an inch of gray roots.

She freezes like a frightened animal and looks up at us as we emerge from behind the cars. Even with her dried-up face, there’s something familiar about her that’s nagging me.

Then a memory tickles my mind.

An image of two little kids hanging onto the fence, watching their mom walk toward the aerie. Their mom turning around to blow a goodbye kiss.

She ended up as dinner in the fetus tank of one of the scorpion angels. I broke her tank with my sword and left her there to fend for herself because I couldn’t drag her out.

She’s alive.

Only, she looks like she has aged fifty years. Her once beautiful eyes have sunk into her face. Her cheeks are so lean I can almost see the skeleton beneath them. Her hands are talons covered in thin skin.

She scrambles away in abject terror as she sees us getting up from our hiding places. She’s almost on all fours as she runs off, and my heart breaks to remember her health and beauty before the monsters got to her. She can’t get very far in her condition, and she hides, trembling, behind a post-office box.

She’s a tiny slip of a thing, but she’s a survivor and I have to respect that. She deserves to get away from the place where she was buried alive, and she’ll need energy for that. I dig through my pockets and feel the Snickers bar. I root around to see if there’s something less valuable but find nothing.

I take a few steps toward the poor thing as she cringes in her hiding place.

My sister has more experience with this kind of thing than I do. But I guess I’ve learned a thing or two from watching Paige befriend all those abandoned cats and damaged kids. I put the candy bar on the road where the lady can see it, then take a few steps back to give her some safe space.