Jeffrey Ricker's Blog, page 6

Flash Fiction Draw for May 2021

It’s May! That means the year is one-third over, and time’s a-wasting. So let’s get right to this month’s Flash Fiction Draw.

(If you want to skip the song and dance, click here to go right to the prompt.)

If you’re unfamiliar with this, here’s the deal: I draw three cards from a deck of playing cards, each from a different suit, and use those to select a genre, setting, and random item for a writing prompt. From there, you have a week from today (Monday, May 10, in other words) to write a 1,000-word or less flash fiction piece based on the prompt. Simple, right? Right.

To recap, here’s where we stand so far. The grayed-out items have been used already:

Card drawnGenreSettingObject1RomanceSpaceshipRay gun2Science FictionRestaurant kitchenKey3Fairy TaleStudio apartment in a big cityHairbrush4HorrorAuditoriumLength of rope5MysterySewerPendant and necklace6ThrillerHighway tollboothPotted plant7ComedyFarm fieldTablet computer8FantasyPawn shopFountain pen9Ghost StoryMarshDecorative pillow10SuspenseTulip fieldVacuum cleanerJCrime CaperTrunk of a carBouquet of rosesQAction/AdventureToolshed / Utility closetA stray sockKHistorical FictionShopping mallSuitcase

And here’s the prompt:

As always, if you want to get right to the good stuff, here’s the prompt:

Science fiction (“double feature“)…in an auditorium…with a tablet computer.

Remember, there’s no pressure here, so if you take longer than a week, or if your story turns out to be longer than a thousand words, or you only incorporate two of the three elements, or if you end up writing a breakaway pop hit instead of a story, it’s all valid! But be sure to email me, or tweet at me, or leave a comment below to let me know what you’ve written.

April Flash Fiction Draw: The Results!

For April’s Flash Fiction Draw, we have the following stories based on this prompt (action/adventure, set in a restaurant kitchen, including a stray sock). I’m always impressed how a single prompt can inspire such a diverse batch of stories in response.

Taste Explosion, by E H Timms

Raptors in the Kitchen, by Iara Warriorfeather

The Everything but the Kitchen Sink Incident, by Jeff Baker

Dropped Stitches, by ’Nathan Burgoine

and A Place to Land, by this guy

Thanks to everyone who wrote something! If I missed yours, drop a comment down below or send me an email.

April Flash Fiction Draw: A Place to Land

Well, it’s nine-thirty on a Monday night, and I’m just now getting around to posting this, which I guess tells you everything you need to know about how my day’s gone.

Actually, it hasn’t been that bad, as Mondays go, but I feel perpetually in a state of trying to catch up and am still at least two tasks behind schedule. Well, what can you do, other than stop complaining and get on with the next thing.

And that takes us to today’s story! To recap, the prompt I came up with last week was an action/adventure, set in a restaurant kitchen, including… a stray sock. Hey, I just draw the cards. OK, so I also made up the list of prompts, but I didn’t foresee this particular combination. Maybe I should have. The combos have started getting a little weird the past couple draws.

Anyway, the first thing I pictured was Miss Vida Greenleaf, the early twentieth century St. Louis drag queen, chasing a thief through a restaurant kitchen with her faithful gentleman companion Herbert close at her heels. Then I just had to picture why they were chasing the thief and just what exactly he’d stolen. But I imagined that maybe Miss Vida was growing a little weary of all their time-hopping adventures—even if she wasn’t anywhere near ready to go back home.

What happened after that? Only one way to find out….

A Place to Land

Looking back, Miss Vida figured it was probably in that restaurant kitchen when she started having doubts about traveling through time with Herbert.

She didn’t have doubts about their relationship—heavens, no. Herbert was the most faithful suitor she’d ever known in all her life. If anything, she adored him more than he venerated her, and that was saying something.

And they had seen so much together, glimpsed futures they couldn’t have even dreamed of. Met people beyond her imagination. Seen advances that staggered the mind.

They had also seen some of the worst of humanity. Borne witness to two global wars, assassinations of world leaders, disasters that would have been inconceivable in their time.

But she’d also seen the way society had evolved since their time, and it made St. Louis at the cusp of the twentieth century seem… hopelessly backward.

“Darling,” she said to Herbert as they raced down the alley in pursuit of the man who’d picked Herbert’s pocket and taken the key to their time cabinet, “I don’t know how much longer I can go on.”

“I can maintain the pursuit, light of my life,” he said, his breath heaving. “You wait here.”

But she kept pace with him. “That was not my meaning, heart.”

The pickpocket skidded around a corner and disappeared for a moment. When they rounded the corner themselves, Miss Vida saw a large white man in a stained apron sprawled on the ground, a metal door behind him clanging shut.

“In there,” she cried, slowing momentarily to look down at the man and say, “I’m so sorry about all this.”

The door opened onto a long, narrow corridor. They had to run single file down its length until they reached another door that was just closing. Herbert grabbed the edge of it and flung it wide. On the other side was a kitchen, brightly lit, full of wire shelving and men and women, all dressed in white, hovering over flaming burners, steaming sinks and knives clattering against cutting boards.

The thief threaded his way around them, nearly knocking one woman against a steaming stockpot before Herbert seized the back of her white chef’s coat and steadied her. The thief elbowed another cook out of his way, and the poor man dropped his burden, a heavy pot filled with something white and gloopy looking—mashed potatoes, it turned out. And Herbert, in his haste, stepped right in it. The heavy mixture sucked the shoe clear off his foot, leaving him hobbling after the thief, his wet sock slapping loudly against the tiles.

Miss Vida vaulted past Herbert and followed their prey into a dimly lit, high-ceilinged dining room, filled with tables draped in white tablecloths, surrounded by people more fashionable than she could have imagined.

He was tantalizingly close, but still out of reach. So she grabbed the closest thing to hand from a nearby dining table—a salt cellar, round and white with a clasped brass lid, and extremely heavy for its size—and she winged it at him with all her might.

Contact. The projectile struck him in the back of the head and he collapsed across a table. The couple seated there leapt out of the way before their meals and the table itself came crashing down in their laps. Miss Vida pounced on the man, pinning one of his arms under her knee while wrenching the other behind his back as she rifled through his jacket pockets until she found, not just Herbert’s keychain, but his pocketwatch and money clip. Laughing victoriously, she held them aloft like a prize.

“Thought you’d gotten away, didn’t you, you sticky-fingered scoundrel!”

He called her a foul name and said, “Get the hell off me.” She clouted him in the back of the skull one more time.

“Language.”

For a moment, when the hostess reached the scene of their collision, Miss Vida thought she and Herbert were going to be the ones thrown out of the establishment. Luckily, she was able to smooth things over with both the hostess, the diners, and the police who were called in due course and carted the pickpocket away. Fortunate too that, in the general confusion, Miss Vida was able to pocket the keychain, although the police did insist on retaining the pocketwatch for evidence, as well as the money clip. Miss Vida, however, carefully removed most of the cash from the clip before handing it over.

So in the end, once the debris was cleared and Herbert’s shoe retrieved from the mashed potatoes—the sock was a lost cause—they were able to enjoy a lovely dinner with the couple whose meal the thief and Miss Vida interrupted so spectacularly.

“Dearest,” Herbert said later, as they walked away from the restaurant, “what’s wrong? You’ve been uncharacteristically taciturn since we sat down to dinner. You’re not still bothered about the pocket watch, are you?”

“No, darling, it’s not that.”

“Because I can always get another watch,” and here he jingled the key ring, “but we can’t get another time cabinet. Without that, we’d have no way home.”

Miss Vida stopped. They were at a corner not far from Jackson Square, and the other pedestrians flowed around them as she turned to face Herbert.

“Herbert, I think I’m ready to settle down.”

He frowned. “You want to go home?”

She shook her head. “That’s just it. I feel as if I need a moment to stop and catch my breath, but….”

Miss Vida looked behind them, as if the past were something she could glimpse in their wake, something pursuing them. She shivered, though it wasn’t cold at all, and looped her arm through Herbert’s.

“But I don’t want to go back to nineteen hundred four. I’ve seen too much of the world to go back.”

Herbert didn’t say anything for what seemed like an eternity. She couldn’t look at him, instead casting her gaze downward toward the cobblestones, the feet of the people walking by. If she did, there’d be disappointment in his eyes, surely.

When he seized her hand and brought it to his lips, she was surprised. When he sank down onto one knee, she was terrified. When he took both her hands and gazed up at her with that same unfailing adoration, she was lost, and also found.

“Vida, marry me.”

Flash Fiction Draw for April 2021

Well, this one’s a doozy.

(If you want to skip the song and dance, click here to go right to the prompt.)

I feel like I might have said that last month, too. But that’s the nature of these Flash Fiction Draw writing prompts: they’re as random as the categories I picked for them in the first place.

Here’s the story (or stories) so far. The items that have already been used for previous prompts are grayed out:

Card drawnGenreSettingObject1RomanceSpaceshipRay gun2Science FictionRestaurant kitchenKey3Fairy TaleStudio apartment in a big cityHairbrush4HorrorAuditoriumLength of rope5MysterySewerPendant and necklace6ThrillerHighway tollboothPotted plant7ComedyFarm fieldTablet computer8FantasyPawn shopFountain pen9Ghost StoryMarshDecorative pillow10SuspenseTulip fieldVacuum cleanerJCrime CaperTrunk of a carBouquet of rosesQAction/AdventureToolshed / Utility closetA stray sockKHistorical FictionShopping mallSuitcase

And the prompt:

For the TL;DR crowd, that’s:

an action/adventure…in a restaurant kitchen…with a stray sock.

(Yes, really.)

So, your mission, if you choose to accept it: write a 1,000-word (max) flash fiction piece and post it online by Monday, April 12, and let me know! Drop a link in the comments below, send me an email, tweet it at me—you can try telepathy, but lots of people will tell you I’m not very sensitive. (You see what I did there, of course, because you probably are sensitive.)

Happy sort-of belated birthday to The Unwanted

I don’t know where this month went. I think I said something similar about last month, which, granted, was a short month, so it was bound to go by quickly. March always feels a little bit extra considering it has 31 days, and yet here I am at the very last day and just now realizing that seven years ago my last book, The Unwanted, came out.

I suppose I should call it my latest book, since “last book” makes it sound as if that’s all there is to my so-called writing career. It’s a long gap between books, though. And strictly speaking, it’s not the last book I wrote. I’ve written three more books since then. Publishing them, of course, is a different matter. Finishing them would help. (One is finished. Another is finished but needs to be redone. The third is a rough draft, for sure.)

That book never really found an audience, but I’m still happy with the way it turned out. Every so often (and some people are probably sick of hearing me bring it up), I think about doing a sequel to it. In fact, one of the three books I’ve finished since The Unwanted came out is a sequel… that didn’t really work. I’ve also got the concept for a third book in the back of my head—and somewhere on my hard drive—but if the first book didn’t really land with readers, I’m not sure it makes sense to put the time into two more. And at this point, I have a few other projects that I’m really excited about working on.

That’s the thing I’ve tried to remind myself I need to do more often: focus on the projects that I’m really excited about.

And one other good thing did come of writing that young adult fantasy novel: it’s a big reason I landed a gig teaching an intro to writing science fiction and fantasy class at one of my alma maters. And you know what? That’s pretty cool.

March Flash Fiction Draw: The Results!

Thanks to everyone who wrote a story based on this month’s prompt. And if I somehow missed your response, please let me know! I’ll add it posthaste.

Lakeside Counsel by Colin Colgrave

Tulips by E H Timms

The Calm, Quiet Whisper of Graves by Jeff Baker

The Keys to His Heart by Iara Warriorfeather

Tulips, in the Key of Philip by ’Nathan Burgoine

and The Haunting of Shaw’s Garden, by yours truly

March Flash Fiction Draw: The Haunting of Shaw’s Garden

The entrance to the mausoleum grounds at Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis.

A long time ago, I worked at the Missouri Botanical Garden. you may not know it, but it’s one of the top three botanical research institutions in the world and has the third-largest herbarium on the planet. It’s been around since 1859, when it was opened by a retired English businessman named Henry Shaw. In addition to being a global leader in the preservation of plant biodiversity, it’s a beautiful place, with 79 acres of display gardens, including a magnificent Japanese Garden, Seiwa-en, “garden of pure, clear harmony and peace,” the largest of its kind in North America.

It’s also haunted, according to many people. Why? Because in addition to being a botanical garden, it’s the final resting place of its founder, whose mausoleum is located on the grounds. It’s actually a beautiful part of the Garden that I enjoyed walking through, especially in the middle of summer, since it was always shady and a little cooler than the rest of the grounds.

All of this made the Garden the perfect setting for this month’s Flash Fiction Draw, which needed to be a ghost story, set in a field of tulips, including a key.

As always, I took liberties. I also brought back a couple of characters from previous Flash Fiction Draw submissions, because they fit both the place and the time.

The Haunting of Shaw’s Garden

Miss Vida stepped out of Herbert’s time cabinet into a field of tulips.

At least, she thought it was a field at first. In reality, it turned out to be a garden, orderly beds of tulips in a profusion of pinks, purples, yellows with flame-tipped petals. She grasped Herbert’s wrist as he was about to turn the key in the cabinet door behind them.

“Darling, are we home? Is this Mister Shaw’s Garden?”

Herbert pocketed the key. “It is indeed, but I fear we are not quite home yet.”

He pointed over her shoulder. She turned to take in the view—and gasped. At the other end of a plaza dominated by a trio of reflecting pools rose a giant dome of metal and glass, looking for all the world like a cross between a bombe and a spider’s web.

Miss Vida clutched Herbert’s arm as if she might be overtaken by vertigo. “What is it?”

Herbert laughed and put an arm around her reassuringly. “Now now, it’s nothing to get in a fright over. But I must say it’s a remarkable example of a geodesic polyhedron. They must be using it as a sort of hothouse for growing tropical plants, if I had to guess.”

She tilted her head and considered the structure. “Do you think we could go inside?”

“I don’t see why not, but it’s not really why we’re here.”

Miss Vida leaned away and turned a haughty look on him. “I thought we were going home. Were you planning this little detour?”

“My dear, of course we were heading home,” he stammered. He adjusted his tie as if it had become a snake constricting his throat. “But I had hoped we might take this small… temporal excursion to investigate a most fascinating phenomenon that you would surely find engaging.” He leaned closer, dropping his voice. “They say that Mister Shaw haunts his Garden!”

Frowning in an almost patronizing way, she tilted her head at him. “Darling, really? Phantasms and ghosts? Do you really think that—“

“Excuse me, can I help you?”

Miss Vida and Herbert turned in unison to find themselves facing a beautiful blonde woman with a contraption in her hands that looked like it might have been a weapon. Also—and scandalously, in Miss Vida’s opinion—she wore a skirt that was much too short, practically above her knees!

Before Herbert could utter a word, Vida stepped forward, angling herself between him and the newcomer. She put on her best smile. “My dear, you could do me a great favor by telling my companion that this Garden is not haunted by Mister Shaw.”

The woman looked momentarily taken aback. “Oh, you know about that?”

Miss Vida’s smile faltered. “I’m sorry?”

The woman waved toward their left. “It’s becoming a more common story, that people have seen things in the Victorian District that convince them Shaw is haunting the Garden.”

“Um, excuse me,” Herbert said. “Victorian District?”

“That’s the area where the mausoleum and Tower Grove House are located. And the Museum Building, but that’s closed to the public.”

“Perhaps we should head in that direction, dearest,” Herbert said, taking Miss Vida’s arm. Vida, however, held her ground, and with her height advantage, Herbert couldn’t shift her.

“Just a moment more, light of my life,” she said, which was a diminutive she brought out only when she was not in a position to say cross me at your peril, Herbert. To the other woman, she said, “Is such a thing really possible? Surely, spirits and phantasms are simply fancies cultivated by the impressionable mind, are they not?”

The woman smiled. “Well, there are more than a few Garden staff members who would say otherwise. I’ve never encountered the ghost of Henry Shaw myself, but maybe he’s just not chosen to reveal himself to me.”

Miss Vida gave her an appraising glance. “I suspect any spirit of the other world would find you a formidable adversary.”

The woman laughed. “I don’t know about that, but you’re welcome to explore the Victorian District and see if you encounter him yourselves. Tower Grove House isn’t open yet, but you’ll be able to walk around it and through the mausoleum grounds.” Pausing, she glanced down at her wristwatch. “Actually, the Garden doesn’t open for another hour. Shaw’s birthday isn’t for another month or so. We usually don’t have the cosplayers on site until then. Did someone let you in early?”

Miss Vida wasn’t sure what “cosplayers” meant, but she grasped the situation quickly enough. They were interlopers but of the kind who would be expected sometime in the future. She took Herbert’s arm gently.

“We’re… new. We just wanted to get into the spirit of things as much in advance as possible.”

The woman smiled. “In that case, with few people around it should seem suitably ghostly.” She held up the contraption. “Do you mind if I take your picture first?”

A camera, of course. Much smaller than the ones Miss Vida was accustomed to, but if she knew anything, she knew how to pose.

Flash Fiction Draw for March 2021

(If you want to skip the song and dance, click here to go right to the prompt.)

It’s the first of the month, which means it’s time for another Flash Fiction Draw. If you’re new around here (welcome!), I build a prompt based on three cards drawn at random from three different suits: clubs for genre, hearts for setting, and diamonds for an object that must appear in the story. That’s where you take over and write a story, 1,000 words max (but no one’s really counting), based on the prompt. You can check out last month’s prompt here, and the stories people came up with here.

So, here’s where we stand so far. The items that have already been used for previous prompts are grayed out:

Card drawnGenreSettingObject1RomanceSpaceshipRay gun2Science FictionRestaurant kitchenKey3Fairy TaleStudio apartment in a big cityHairbrush4HorrorAuditoriumLength of rope5MysterySewerPendant and necklace6ThrillerHighway tollboothPotted plant7ComedyFarm fieldTablet computer8FantasyPawn shopFountain pen9Ghost StoryMarshDecorative pillow10SuspenseTulip fieldVacuum cleanerJCrime CaperTrunk of a carBouquet of rosesQAction/AdventureToolshed / Utility closetA stray sockKHistorical FictionShopping mallSuitcase

And without further ado, the prompt.

For the TL;DR crowd, that’s:

a ghost story…in a tulip field…with a key.

You probably know the drill from here: write a story by March 8, post it somewhere online, and drop a link in the comments (or tweet it at me, or email me—you could try semaphore or homing pigeon, but I don’t fancy your chances with either of those).

Remember, have fun with this, and if you don’t have time this month, there will always be next month, and the month after that. Unless time stops or something, in which case all bets are off. You can do this.

February Flash Fiction Draw: The Results

Thanks to everyone who wrote a story inspired by this month’s Flash Fiction Draw writing prompt!

A Stitch in Tāne by Colin Colgrave (note his CW: it’s a wee bit NSFW)

The Great Blackout of 1989 by Iarra Warriorfeather

The Golden Goose by E.H. Timms

Down by the River by Jeff Baker

Deceptive Expectations by ’Nathan Burgoine

And if you missed mine, it’s right over here.

If I missed yours, let me know! It’s never too late to add.

And by the same token, it’s never too late to pick up a writing prompt and run with it. They don’t expire, and you can come back to them whenever you’re ready. They’ll be waiting.

February Flash Fiction Draw: Out of the Woods

And here we are, right down to the wire yet again with February’s Flash Fiction Draw story. If you’ll recall (or if you don’t recall, you can go back and check the post), this month’s prompt called for a suspense set in a sewer containing a suitcase.

Suspense, sewer, suitcase. No, I did not plan the alliteration. This was totally random. A little bit like the story I wrote as a result.

This is a sequel of sorts to “Shufflers,” the Taylor Swift, Zombie Hunter story I wrote back in December. It centers on a different character, but don’t worry, she’ll need help from a certain singer songwriter before the story’s over.

Lastly, can I just say that a week is not a long time to write something? Hats off to everyone who attempts it. Also, this is pretty much unedited, which is not when I recommend showing anything to anyone, but do I follow my own advice? Oh, child.

Out of the Woods

Reine switched the suitcase to her other hand and looked behind her. The shufflers were getting closer. She faced forward and started running faster down the tunnel—

Sewer. Call it what it is. God knows I’m never getting this stink out of my nose.

It felt as if the funk of the place had seeped into her skin, even though the concrete floor beneath her was dry. There hadn’t been rain for weeks before… well, before. No rain since, either. She’d stayed indoors with all the doors locked, curtains drawn, windows already barred because her grandmother had always been a little paranoid. There was less and less of Nana “there” as the months drew themselves out, and before long Reine, the youngest grandchild and the one whose parents thought she needed “something to focus her attention,” was looking after a stranger.

Until the night before Nana passed, when she grabbed Reine’s wrist with surprising strength and caught her gaze with clarity.

“When I’m gone,” she said, “you need to get out of here.”

“Stop talking nonsense,” Reine said, “you’re not going anywhere. And neither am I.”

Nana’s grip remained insistent. “We both know that’s not true. And if you don’t leave,” she waved her other hand toward the window, “you won’t survive those things out there. They’ll find you in here. It’s only a matter of time. Do what the girl on the radio said. Head for the tunnels.”

The effort seemed to take the last of her energy out of her, and Nana sank back into the pillow and the blankets of her bed. It was the last thing she said to Reine. She died  that night.

There’d been a young woman on the radio, saying that the best way to get out of the city was to use the underground sewers and utility tunnels. She didn’t say what to do after that, though. Her grandmother was right, though. Reine didn’t have much choice.

She wrapped her grandmother’s body in the bedsheets and pinned them tight to her. Reine didn’t know if that’s what you were supposed to do, but it seemed the best she could manage. She wouldn’t let the things outside have her, didn’t even know if they would come after her, but they wouldn’t get her. Reine saw to that before she left by lighting every candle in the living room, blowing out the pilot light on the stove, and then turning all the burners to full. If there was an explosion, she was too far away and too far underground by then to hear it.

The bag she brought with her wasn’t big enough to be called a suitcase, more of an overnight bag. She’d packed it without thinking, grabbing whatever was close at hand in the bathroom and pulling clothes at random from her dresser drawers. She dumped the contents of Nana’s jewelry box in as a final thought, and wished her grandmother had collected something like handguns or axes instead of earrings and necklaces that she never wore anyway.

Most of the journey was uneventful. She’d pried up a manhole cover on a side street and climbed down beneath the pavement. She used her phone’s GPS to keep from getting lost, and followed tunnels that matched up with streets overhead. She kept her screen’s brightness as low as possible, and turned it upside down when she passed beneath other manhole covers in the street above. Occasionally, she glanced up and saw feet moving across the ventilation holes in the manhole covers—this was when she was still in the heart of the city—and she held her breath as she went by.

Maybe the stench of this place was covering her own scent, if that was how they managed to find people.

After a few hours, she was exhausted, her feet hurt, and it was getting late. Sunlight no longer came down through the holes in the manhole covers, and she hadn’t seen any feet shuffling past for at least a mile or two.

She couldn’t stay down in the sewers forever. She had to at least go up and make sure she was where she thought she was.

[climbs up the ladder to the manhole, opens it as quietly as she can, drops her phone, yelps, a shuffler turns and begins to approach her.

And another.

And another.

They seemed to come from everywhere, separating from the shadows and shuffling out into the middle of the street. She ducked down and dragged the manhole cover as much as she could to cover the entrance—maybe it would do a little bit of good—and then she half climbed, half fell down the ladder to the bottom of the tunnel. She didn’t know where her phone had landed. She couldn’t see it. She ran.

She looked behind her. The shufflers had climbed down the ladder and were heading in her direction now. There was nothing but pitch black ahead. Reine switched the bag from her left hand to her right—her fingers were starting to cramp—before she finally let go.She abandoned the suitcase. It didn’t matter anymore, if it ever had.

She ran into the pitch black ahead, knowing she was probably wasting her time. They would catch her. They would… they would eat her.

That was when she ran into someone in front of her.

Reine shrieked. The echo of it was deafening even to her. Hands grabbed her arms, holding her in place. She braced for the feel of teeth against her neck.

“Hang on, you’re safe.”

She recognized the voice. It was the woman from the radio. A flashlight clicked on, and when Reine’s vision recovered from the temporary blindness, she saw the voice belonged to a woman dressed all in black, and at least nine inches taller than Reine, only three of which were the heels on her boots.

Something about her looked familiar, but Reine didn’t have time to figure it out. The woman in black pulled Reine behind her and raised an arm to point at the shufflers. Did she—was that a gun?

Reine stumbled, her hands hitting the filthy concrete floor of the sewer as the air above her exploded with gunfire. It sounded like heavy sandbags were hitting the floor behind her. The woman raised her other arm—this time Reine could see clearly what she held in that hand, some kind of crossbow—and she fired again. A whistling sound buzzed over her head and more sandbags fell behind her.

Then the woman was helping her up. “Are you okay? We have to move quickly. More of them might be coming.”

Reine recognized that voice. She looked up at the woman, her heart-shaped face framed by a black hood that had slipped back, revealing blonde hair. She smiled at her gently. “It’s going to be okay.”

“You—you’re—”

She’d heard about the woman’s escape from Las Vegas, when so few had managed to get out. Her mad dash down the Strip to the airport, the way she’d made the helicopter that came to rescue her stop and retrieve another woman from the roof of a house. How she’d put an axe through a shuffler’s face.

The woman shook her head. “I’m just a survivor like you. Come on. I’ll take you to the others. We’re almost there.”

She held out her hand. Reine didn’t even think twice before taking it.