WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) Read Online Free Page B

something.”
                “Like what?” I ask her, trying to make a connection.
                “I don’t know what. But I bet it has something to do with the Ark.”
                I want to tell her to stop with the Ark, and with the tower being a post-Wipe construction, and with the mirrors. With all of it because now the danger is too real. First the wolf shadows and now this. I want to call her out on everything she’s deluded herself into believing over the past year. Tell her that it’s no worse than the Fatherhood’s scriptures.
                “I think we need to go back. We’re already missing service. What if they recognized my face?” I say.
                “Then you lie. I’m your alibi.”
                I can’t help but laugh. “You?”
                “Are you planning on going through the woods alone?” she asks me, dropping her tone to deadly seriousness again. “I didn’t think so. So you don’t really have a choice here. And we’re wasting daylight. Just keep an eye out for them in case they’re still hanging around.” And just like that, she’s taken my thunder again. I have no choice but to follow her deeper into the city.
                I give her my own rationale for the Fathers as we descend the groaning steps and cross the cracked glass and step out onto the fractured pavement of the street.
                “They’re looting. This is where they get all their metal. For all of that crap in the chapels,” I say.
                She doesn’t answer me, and for a minute, I think I might actually be selling her on an idea. Something that logically breaks her own confirmation bias and disproves part of her conspiracy theory. But then I find out—as usual, she is just figuring out a way to make it all fit.
                “You could be right,” she starts, almost conceding to me. “But that doesn’t make sense. They get all the idols and relics premade, don’t they?”
                “I have no idea. It just makes sense. They have a lot of trinkets. Have you seen the inside some of the Father’s houses?”
                She stops and turns and looks at me, her brow slanted down in an obvious show of disappointment that I’ve already forgotten her latest heist.
                “Sorry,” I say. She starts walking again, just a little faster now, and I keep my eyes peeled in every direction as I step on the high weeds that poke through the fragments of graying blacktop. “I forgot you were invading their homes.”
                “Look, it’s a good idea. I mean, you might be right. Even still, it doesn’t explain the mirror. Or the light on the tower.”
                “Well, what if what they say about the tower is true?” I ask her.
                “You mean the whole pre-Wipe, hubris of man story?”
                “Yeah,” I say, growing increasingly wary as we cross another alley between two slanted high rise apartment buildings with wide open foyers of smashed glass.
                “I have a feeling we’ll have some answers by the time we’re heading home tonight.”
                And when she says the word, that’s when the fear really dropkicks my stomach.
                “Tonight?” I say, almost gasping for breath.
                “Did you even look at the map?” she asks me, agitated, slowing a bit so I’m alongside her again. She hands it to me and starts glancing behind us, checking the road for any signs of movement.
                “I don’t like that they just disappeared like that,” she says. “But to be honest, I bet they were more scared of you than you were of them. I bet they come here regularly. And how often do you think they see people? Never. I bet you heard them running in the other direction Wills. Away from