Xenofall (The Wasteland Chronicles, Book 7) by Kyle West

life, each moment, at least until something goes wrong.” She paused again. “It was all snatched away in a single night. And everything changed.”
    Even though I was married to Anna, there was so much I still didn’t know about her. So much I wanted to know. When you were running and fighting for your life, it was sometimes hard to find the time to just...talk. Be still. Listen.
    “I remember always wanting to have brothers and sisters, growing up.” She paused. “But looking back, maybe being alone wasn’t such a bad thing.”
    “I thought the same thing,” I said. “After my mom died, my dad never remarried, even though I wanted him to.”
    “I think...my parents might have tried. But for one reason or another, it never happened. Such things can’t be explained. We had no doctors, and few knew how to use medicine. They were precious, always guarded. The property of the Wise.” She sighed. “You never realize when you’re happy. Until you aren’t. I was happy, until the Reapers came. They killed, they raped, they burned. The dream ended, and somehow, my mom and I were spared, but after the next few years of our life, death might have been preferable. We lived through hell, on the edge of starvation and sanity. I was only twelve. Twelve.”
    There were now tears in her eyes. I went over to her, and held her in my arms.
    When she had gained control, she continued.
    “Sometimes, I wonder how I made it. There were so many times I should have died. But I never did. Even when mom died. I’d survive, keep feeding myself for another day, and wonder why I was doing it. You ever have that?”
    I nodded, saying nothing. Julian was also nodding.
    “That house, right there,” Anna said, pointing past the crumbled wall. “That’s where Jason and Gwen lived. They were family friends. He kept an orchard, on the heights, in an old greenhouse. Gwen was a scavenger, like my parents.”
    “How many lived here?” Julian asked.
    “Two hundred, maybe. Of those two hundred, I don’t know how many died. I don’t know how many were taken as slaves. And I don’t know how many of those are still alive today. There’s me, so there’s that.”
    “You made it,” I said.
    “Yeah. I did. For the longest time, I didn’t believe it was worth it. Especially when mom died. Some disease took her life, but in the end, that’s not surprising. Finding food was hard, and when we did find it, a lot of the time it wasn’t good to eat. We ate it anyway, because we had no choice.” She paused. “We would read to each other, at night. It kept the darkness at bay. Books were the only escape. We’d find them everywhere. Of all the items we found, they were the most ignored, except when people needed something to light a fire. We never burned books. It seemed a travesty, to destroy all these words from a better time. A wiser time. And one day, they might all be gone.”
    “What did you do?” Julian asked. “When she died?”
    “What any of us would do. I cried. I cried until nothing came, until every ounce of my soul was emptied and dried on the cold, harsh rocks. And I walked. I ate. I did not smile. I did not remember. By that time, I’d found the blade, and books that showed me some basic forms. I practiced endlessly, moving only when I had to. I...killed my first man, when I was fourteen.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why I’m saying all these things, things I told myself I’d never relive.”
    “It’s alright,” I said.
    She looked at me in a way that said she wasn’t sure if that was true.
    “We are the sum of our experiences,” Anna said. “No more, no less. But I’d like to believe there’s something more to all of us. That we have the strength to defy our experiences and rise above them, to push back against the world that has treated us so cruelly. To hold out arms and make it a better place to live. Sometimes, all that gets lost in the madness. It all gets overwhelmed. Yet, here we are. Still