Elias, a former soldier, lives as a ghostly scavenger in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, haunted by his past role in the nation’s sudden collapse. When ruthless warlord Eric Sawyer seizes control of nearby settlements to exploit their few remaining resources, Elias is forced out of his isolation and rescues a woman named Ella and her daughter, Beth. However, Sawyer is not willing to just let the girls leave and is willing to fight to keep them under his control and Elias must now choose to fight for his new friends and his home, or submit in order to maintain his isolated life.
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Chapter 1: The War Is Over… Or Is It?
The air tasted of dust and cold fear, a constant metallic tang that had replaced the familiar smell of exhaust and manufactured comfort two years ago. Elias pulled his frayed wool shawl tighter against the biting chill. There was no heat flowing into homes across the fractured landscape, just as there were no steady lights, and often, the promise of fresh water was a lie. The great nation, the United States, was gone, extinguished not by the terrifying flash of nuclear fire or the roar of traditional armies, but by silence—the silence that fell when the entire country went dark, plunged into chaos by an attack they had been arrogant enough to believe they were ready for.
Elias paused atop a ridge, looking down into a valley where a few struggling pinpricks of fire marked a settlement. These were the new territories, small islands of organization carved out of the ruins, where the population sought refuge and the possibility of survival. The land had reverted to a brutal simplicity, a time where law and order was nothing more than the cold calculus of survival of the fittest. The thought of finding a safe place brought with it immediate danger. Most of these new, independent towns were fiercely protective of their own citizens and viewed strangers with profound suspicion, often refusing entry. Survival had bred paranoia. Being alone meant living in constant, gnawing fear, knowing that the isolated rarely survived. He needed strength in numbers, but this was not something he could have… because he was once a soldier, and soldiers were not only unwelcomed, but in some territories hated, hunted and executed if captured.
Elias often found himself imagining the swiftness of the collapse. The history books—the few fragile, printed pages that remained—would one day struggle to explain how overconfidence had been the undoing of a superpower. The president and the government had managed to alienate every single ally, forcing the nation to stand alone just before the unseen enemy struck. And then came the betrayal. Someone within had turned, ensuring that before any preventative measures could be deployed, the final, lethal blow was delivered. The stock markets collapsed, currency was worthless as banks and businesses crumbled, ending capitalism as they knew it and ensuring the massive depletion of the natural resource reserves. The lights had flickered out, and with them, the promises of the modern world.
As he rested behind the cover of a large boulder with a rifle resting against his chest, his stomach cramped, reminding him of the new, harsh reality. Without currency, Trading and obtaining goods and services had reverted entirely to bartering. When tangible goods were exhausted, people were forced to barter the only asset remaining: themselves. They offered their labor, working on small farms or within the confines of small towns, diligently serving the leaders of those towns, some of whom were corrupt, ruthless and deadly. All of this servitude, all this degradation, was endured by workers, simply in an effort to protect and save families.
Elias once had a family, but to protect them, he had to go into hiding and to everyone who knew him, he was dead. Well, almost everyone. After his return he stayed clear of his family. He had but one friend he trusted and that friend explained how the new world worked. He sent Elias on a journey where he would be safe and could try and rebuild a life for himself. His journey took him from the far north near the Canadian border down through what was once the state of Idaho before settling on an Indian reservation in Wyoming. Along the way he encountered similar settlements like the one he was watching from the hilltop. Most sparsely populated and minimally fortified. Some were not as fortunate. Scattered throughout the settlement were the charred remains of small shelters and bodies.
To survive, Elias became a scavenger of sorts and ventured out exploring these nearby settlements, breaking down tents and other small man-made structures that had been abandoned or had been damaged by more powerful forces. He would bury the dead before removing any evidence a settlement existed, taking with him any supplies and equipment he could use.
He heard whispers, dark rumors carried on the wind, about certain towns that did, strangely, welcome strangers. These were not havens of refuge; they were, instead, places of the lowest form of depravity and corruption. They existed on the periphery, fueled by the desperation of a broken populace. Men traveled to these places frequently, either to gamble or to enjoy the company of a temporary companion. They paid not in gold or dollars, but in ration credits they had painstakingly earned working in other, more rigid settlements. The world was such a different place now, and Elias had to put his moral and ethical compass away. Burying it deep to avoid getting involved and drawing attention to himself. Elias knew the risk. To enter a ‘welcoming’ town was to risk succumbing to the moral decay that defined the era, but sometimes, desperation outweighed honor.
He made his descent into the valley, deliberately avoiding the main, well-guarded road leading to the protective settlement, ‘New Haven.’ Instead, he tracked the faint path of worn tires and footprints leading east. He was heading for a small settlement 10 miles east of New Haven. Rumors spread that the settlement had been overtaken by the New Haven forces.
As he walked, his mind returned, as it often did, to the accusations that had shattered the vestiges of the established order two years prior. The remaining fragments of the federal government and the US military had been brutally targeted. They were hunted, jailed, and, in far too many cases, summarily executed. The charges had been devastating: that the government had secretly entered an agreement with the victorious enemy, promising to eradicate certain portions of the population in exchange for a continued flow of natural resources. Elias remembered the fury, the speed with which the mobs had acted. The sources of the allegations were unknown, but the frenzy was absolute. Though those allegations would eventually be proven false, the damage inflicted was irreversible; the country was ruined, and trust in centralized authority was zero. Those who had served were now pariahs, forced to live in hiding or perish under the weight of mob justice.
He reached the outskirts of the settlement just as the perpetual gray dusk deepened. Unlike the careful fortifications of New Haven, the settlement was sloppy, defined by ramshackle buildings cobbled together from salvaged metal and rotting wood. As he walked through the settlement with his rifle at the ready, the scent of smoke and death was overwhelming. He began gathering tarps, blankets and broke down some of the small structures that were damaged in the pitiful fight. He went back to his horse and pulled a shovel and dug several shallow graves for the few bodies that were left for dead. After covering their bodies, he took one more look around, gathering food, medicine and ammunition and just as important, batteries which provided limited electric power for heat and communications. Before the sun rose across the valley, Elias climbed up on his horse and headed into the foggy forest. He travelled through the moist air, staying clear of New Haven and roving militia patrols until he finally arrived at his destination. A weathered farm house riddled with bullet holes and scarring from skirmishes that blew out windows and left gaping holes in portions of the roof. He climbed off the horse and walked around to the back of the house where he removed the supplies and the saddle and allowed the horse to rest and graze in the nearby field. He walked up on the porch and disappeared into the house.
Across the field, three men were watching from a distance. Looking for shelter and supplies, armed with an old revolver, they slowly moved in with the hope of overpowering Elias and claiming the house and its contents for themselves. They made their way to the front door and tried in vain to remain silent as they walked along the wood porch. They carefully pushed open the cracked front door that was not locked and entered with one man leading the way pointing the revolver forward. They managed to make it inside without a struggle and looked around the house, but Elias was nowhere to be found. They looked through the broken windows that looked out onto the perimeter of the house, but all they could see was wet empty fields and mud from the heavy rain that had been falling for over two days. The men remained vigilant for hours thinking Elias would return, but he never showed himself. Eventually, exhaustion, cold and hunger took their toll on the three men and after they started a fire in the fireplace and fell asleep.
The next morning, the three men were dead and Elias was out in the field caring for his horse in the stable, and a few yards away were three new piles of moist dirt.
Chapter 2: Under New Management
The wind through the streets of New Cody carried the scent of dry rot and lingering desperation, a sharp contrast to the quiet dignity Elias tried to maintain during his monthly visits. For years, he had operated on a strict schedule, staying no more than two days to barter and offer his labor to those who needed it, a rhythm that allowed him to move without the constant fear of capture. He was a man who lived on the periphery, yet he was bound to this place by the memory of John and Andrea Daniels, the elderly ranchers who had once treated him like family. Their passing had left a void in the town, but the respect Elias showed at their funeral—an event attended by the whole community—had earned him a rare, quiet trust among the suspicious citizens. Those maintained their suspicions about the quiet man of newfound solitude were outnumbered by the other townspeople, and while Elias appreciated their support and appreciation, he was a man who could handle himself and it only took one confrontation with one hot headed bully to prove that Elias was a man of his word but was also a man who was not to be pushed around.
Elias made his way to the far west end of town, his boots crunching on the dirt until he reached the old diner. This was his sanctuary, a place where he could expect a hot meal and the persistent, if well-meaning, pestering of Travis, the owner. In the past, the atmosphere had been lightened by Travis’s constant attempts to marry Elias off to his daughter, hoping to see her taken away from the depression that gripped the small town. But today, the diner felt different; the air was thick with a new kind of silence.
Travis approached the counter, his hands trembling as he set a plate of food in front of Elias. “You shouldn’t have come this time, Elias,” Travis whispered, his voice cracking. He leaned in, updating Elias on a new development that had paralyzed the town with fear: the arrival of someone new. A man who would appoint himself mayor of New Cody, Eric Sawyer.
“I know the name,” Elias said quietly, his voice a low rumble. Sawyer’s reputation preceded him; he was known for consuming small settlements, turning men into militia and women into “playthings” for those with enough credits.
Travis’s eyes filled with a helpless rage. “He didn’t come alone, and he’s already taken what I have. I wanted you to take her away, Elias, but it’s too late. She gave herself to Sawyer to keep him from killing me.” The old man’s shoulders slumped, the weight of his own perceived cowardice pressing down on him. He looked at Elias with a desperate, flickering hope, offering to put his life on the line if Elias would help him strike and get his daughter back. But Elias looked at the man’s shaking hands and saw the truth: Travis was no longer a soldier, and he was utterly incapable of facing Sawyer’s organized militia.
“You’re not a fighter anymore, Travis,” Elias said quietly as he took another sip of his strong, hot, horrible coffee. “You need more than one man to try and get her back.”
“I know that, but I don’t want people in this town disgracing her,” Travis said as his trembling hands turned into angry fists.
“Calm down, Travis,” Elias replied. “You’re forgetting one important thing.”
“What’s that?” Travis asked as he picked up a towel and wiped off the counter as he noticed the sound of a gas guzzling vehicle pulling up in front of the diner.
“Hey Travis,” Elias said as he regained Travis’s attention. “Your daughter made a choice. Getting her back is also up to her.”
The conversation died instantly as the diner door creaked open. Travis backed away in visible terror, his face paling as a man confidently walked in and took the stool directly next to Elias.
Eric Sawyer was a man who looked as though he had never known the grit of hard labor. While the rest of the town wore the grime of poverty, Sawyer was clean-shaven and meticulously groomed. Underneath his heavy parka, he wore clean and pressed clothes, a sight that had become a ghost in New Cody. He was followed by three armed men who took up positions behind him, their eyes scanning the room with practiced coldness.
“Good morning, Eric Sawyer,” Sawyer said as he introduced himself to Elias and extended his hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Sawyer’s voice was smooth and dripping with the unearned confidence of a man of privilege. He spoke of the townspeople’s trust in Elias, his eyes narrowing as he tried to peel back the layers of the mystery sitting beside him. Travis, moving with a mechanical stiffness after Sawyer gave him a silent signal, poured a strong cup of coffee and placed it before the new mayor.
Elias didn’t look at him. He simply sipped his coffee, his movements deliberate and calm as he finished the last bites of his toast. His pistol sat in its holster, only inches from Sawyer’s right hand, a silent invitation or a deadly warning. Sawyer stared at the weapon, tempted, but he did not reach for it. Instead, he continued his one-sided conversation, his tone shifting toward a dark proposition.
“You have the bearing of a soldier,” Sawyer remarked, leaning closer. “I could use a man like you. Or,” he paused, his voice dropping to a hiss, “I could have you executed just as fast. I know who you are, or at least what you represent.”
Elias remained unruffled, his face a mask of iron. He didn’t flinch at the threat of death, nor did he acknowledge the offer of power. After finishing his breakfast, he slid off the bar stool and stood to his full height, turning to face the man who had brought a new shadow to New Cody.
In a move that caused Sawyer’s guards to snap their weapons upward, Elias extended his hand. It wasn’t a gesture of submission, but a cold, formal conclusion to a meeting he had never asked for.
“Nice to meet you,” Elias said with an unfeeling and unemotional tone. “It was nice talking with you.”
“Think it over, my offer that is,” Sawyer said as he took the napkin and began wiping off his hand after Elias released it.
Elias said nothing else to Sawyer. He simply said to Travis, “Thanks Trav’ I’ll be at the Wilson’s place if you need anything.”
As he made his way to the exit, the militia members watched him go, their fingers itching on their triggers, but Sawyer remained seated. He didn’t look back as Elias stepped out into the cold. Instead, he signaled Travis for a refill, a subtle grin spreading across his face as if the interaction had gone exactly according to his design.
Chapter 3: The New Working Class
The dust of New Cody had a way of clinging to a man’s skin like a guilty conscience. Elias felt the weight of it as he led his horse toward the small, secluded stable behind the house. The animal was heavy with a fresh haul: supplies and small electronic equipment scavenged from the ruins of the old world, the kind of gear that kept a man independent in a world where everyone else was a servant. He moved with the practiced silence of a ghost, unloading the bundles and carrying them into his house, his mind still echoing with the cold threats Eric Sawyer had leveled at him in the diner. He needed rest, but the changes Sawyer was known for would transform New Cody into a place that was no longer welcoming or safe..
While Elias sought a brief sanctuary in the shadows of his home, the town itself was screaming under the weight of Sawyer’s announced economic plan. The transition would be difficult to say the least, but Sawyer confidently explained that it was in the best interest of every citizen in New Cody. Sawyer didn’t just want the town’s resources; he wanted its soul. He had implemented a system that ensured every able citizen was part of the working class, regardless of the moral or ethical cost. Men who had spent decades tending their own cattle were now being driven like the beasts they once owned, pushed to double their production for the mayor’s coffers.
“Keep moving!” a guard shouted at a man stumbling through the main thoroughfare. The guard was one of the few locals who hadn’t been sent to the fields. Instead, Sawyer had sifted through the population; those who weren’t fit for the grueling farm labor were trained as militia or guards for the new brothel, which, in a final act of irony, Sawyer had established within the walls of the old town hall.
Inside that repurposed hall, the atmosphere was a jarring mixture of perfume and fear. Ella, a woman of forty who possessed a sharp, ageless beauty that made her look ten years younger, walked the weathered wood floors of the upper level. She had been chosen by Sawyer to lead the women, tasked with convincing them to conform to their new roles as “hourly companions”.
“You have to stop crying, Sarah,” Ella whispered to a girl no older than eighteen, who sat huddled in a corner of what used to be the Clerk’s office. “If you don’t, the guards will report you. If you do what you’re told, you get the soap. You get the dresses.”
“I don’t want the dresses, Ella,” the girl sobbed.
“The dresses mean you survive,” Ella snapped, though her eyes softened for a fleeting second. Under Sawyer’s direction, the women were provided with lavish comforts—scented soaps, styled hair, and make up—to create a “pleasing image” for the customers. It was a gilded cage designed to mask the degradation of their reality. For those who resisted, Ella was the one who had to report any potential defiance directly to the mayor. It was a betrayal of her neighbors, but in New Cody, the only currency left was compliance and everyone was to conform. Everyone above the age of fifteen that is.
The “companionship” roles weren’t reserved solely for the women. Men who couldn’t cut it in the militia or lacked an “essential” role were subjected to the same fate to accommodate the few who preferred men over women. This had sparked a small, desperate revolt a week prior, a chaotic surge of fathers and sons trying to reclaim their dignity. Sawyer’s men quickly squashed it with an efficiency that suggested they had done this many times before. Indeed, Sawyer had already consumed seven other settlements in the same manner.
A few days after his encounter with Elias at the diner, Mayor Sawyer ventured out to inspect his recently acquired property. He walked the streets with the air of a king surveying a conquered province, his eyes scanning the sagging porches and shattered windows. He stopped in front of a general store where the roof was bowing dangerously.
“Why hasn’t this been reinforced?” Sawyer asked, his voice low and dangerous.
The shopkeeper, a man whose hands were blistered from his new shift at the local mill, didn’t look up. “We don’t have the materials. Usually, Elias is the one who comes in for that. He knows how to recycle the old junk, and he works fast.”
Sawyer’s jaw tightened. “I don’t care how fast he is. Find someone else. I want these buildings repaired immediately.”
His head guard, a man named Miller, shifted uncomfortably. “Sir, most of the men here are up in years. They’ve never done repairs like this outside of patchwork.”
“Then use the younger ones,” Sawyer commanded.
“The younger ones are in the fields or the militia, sir. And even they’re exhausted. New Cody doesn’t have the labor force that the other settlements have. Most of the men here are elderly and we lost three already.”
Sawyer shrugged, a cold, indifferent gesture. “Let them die. New Cody is an old settlement; it’s easy to take over, but I’m realizing it’s hard to maintain without muscle.” He looked toward the west, his gaze lingering on the horizon. His guards often whispered about why he had chosen this place, but Sawyer never gave a justification. He simply wanted it. To those who watched him closely, it was clear that New Cody was merely a stepping stone for his move further west, and he needed the town fully operational and populated to serve as his base of power.
“If this Elias is the only one who can keep the roofs from caving in, then we need him,” Sawyer said, turning back to Miller. “Find him and tell him we have work for him now and that I will make it worth his while if he can work for more than his customary two days.”
Miller hesitated. “And if he says no? He didn’t seem like the type to take orders.”
Sawyer leaned in close, his face a mask of refined malice. He didn’t speak; he simply struck Miller across the face with the back of his hand, a violent reminder of the hierarchy. “The mayor doesn’t take no for an answer,” Sawyer hissed.
Miller wiped a bead of blood from his lip and nodded. He took two men with him and rode toward the edge of town, where the silence was deeper and the shadows longer.
When they arrived at the small house, Elias was in the yard, sharpening a blade. He didn’t look up as the horses approached.
“Elias!” Miller called out, keeping his hand near his holster. “The Mayor has a job for you. A long-term contract. You’re moving into the town hall tonight.”
Elias continued to run the whetstone along the metal, the shink-shink sound the only noise in the yard. “I don’t do contracts.”
“This isn’t a request,” Miller said, his voice straining to maintain its authority. “The Mayor needs the town fixed up. He knows you’re the only one with the tools and the know-how to get it done quickly.”
Elias finally looked up, his eyes like flint. “Tell your Mayor that I don’t build cages. And I don’t repair them, either.”
Miller dismounted, his boots hitting the moist dirt with a heavy thud. “You don’t understand, Elias. Everyone works in New Cody now. You either pick up a hammer, or you pick up a rifle. Or,” he glanced toward the town hall in the distance, “you find yourself a different kind of work.”
Elias straightened up. He was a head taller than Miller, and the air around him seemed to thicken with a silent threat. “You remind your mayor that this, is not New Cody, and I take jobs from the citizens of New Cody, not from the mayor.”
“It’s the new order,” Miller said. “And you’re part of it whether you like it or not. Now, you can come quiet, or we can bring you in pieces. Sawyer doesn’t take ‘no’.”
Elias looked at the three men, his hand resting casually on the hilt of the blade. He thought of Travis at the diner,and his daughter, and of the seven other settlements that had already fallen to Sawyer.
“Then tell him he’s going to have to come get me himself,” Elias said softly.
Miller reached for his gun, but he stopped when he saw the look in Elias’s eyes. It wasn’t the look of a man afraid to die; it was the look of a man who had already decided how many people he was taking with him.
Chapter 4: Test of Loyalty
The office of the Mayor was the only room in New Cody that smelled of something other than dust and rot; it smelled of expensive tobacco and the sharp, metallic tang of a weapon recently cleaned. Eric Sawyer stood by the window, his gaze fixed on the town he had methodically dismantled and rebuilt in his own image. Behind him, the door creaked open, and the heavy, uneven footsteps of Miller echoed against the floorboards. Miller was not alone; the two guards who had accompanied him to Elias’s home followed closely, their faces etched with a visible, trembling anxiety.
“You wanted to see me?” Miller said as his voice cracked, knowing that Sawyer was going to be less than thrilled to hear about his failed mission.
“I do,” Sawyer said calmly, still gazing out the window. “Which building is Elias working on first?”
Miller swallowed hard and took a deep breath, his voice wavering as he attempted to explain the circumstances of their failure to bring in the man who had become a symbol of quiet resistance, “Elias isn’t like the rebels we’ve dealt with before. Most of them want to repel borders, Elias doesn’t seem to care about New Cody. He just wants to be left alone and I think we should leave him be.”
“Why?” Sawyer asked.
Miller replied with an excuse that showed his feeling of intimidation, “He’s far enough away not to be a problem and he knows if he comes here, he’ll have to deal with you and he doesn’t appear to want any part of that.”
Sawyer remained unnervingly calm, his back still turned to the room as he listened to Miller’s frantic explanation, which was reinforced by the two men who had stood beside him during the confrontation at the edge of town.
“Is that what the two of you think?” Sawyer asked.
Miller looked at the two men behind him as they nodded their heads in agreement, afraid to voice their opinion.
The air in the room grew heavy as Sawyer finally moved, walking over to a rustic credenza near the window. He didn’t raise his voice or offer a word of reprimand; instead, he opened a drawer, pulled out a heavy pistol, and turned with a fluid, terrifying grace.
Two shots rang out, the sound deafening in the confined space of the office. Miller squeezed his eyes shut, standing in absolute fear as he waited for the heat of the lead and for his body to simply shut down under the impact. But the pain never came. Instead, he heard the heavy, wet thud of two bodies hitting the floor behind him. When Miller finally opened his eyes, he saw his companions slumped in a heap of wool and blood. Sawyer lowered the gun, his expression as placid as a lake before a storm, and calmly explained to a shivering Miller that he would not accept failure again.
“I want Elias working and under control,” Sawyer said, his voice a low, dangerous silk.
Miller, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird, very cautiously asked if he might pose a question as he watched Sawyer return the pistol to its drawer and take a seat at his desk. Sawyer allowed it, a small gesture of mercy that felt more like a stay of execution.
Miller swallowed hard again and asked if there was a problem with simply bringing in men from one of the nearby settlements to complete the building repairs. It was a valid question, one that Sawyer silently agreed with in principle, yet his response was layered with a complexity that only added to Miller’s confusion.
Sawyer leaned forward, his eyes narrowing, “The longer Elias is allowed to defy us, the more people around here will think they can defy us as well. Rumors are already starting to spread that we are afraid of him. I will not allow that rumor to be the reason we can’t keep New Cody under control.”
Miller started to understand, but didn’t know why he would why Sawyer didn’t just order his death.
Killing Elias will turn the townspeople against us and eliminating them may seem easy but it is not what we need right now. They look at Elias like their leader and savior. There can only be one man in charge here in New Cody,” Sawyer declared, his voice rising until he was shouting at the man across from him. “Bring me Elias, alive. I want to see that son of a bitch paraded down the street for all to see.”. Miller, desperate to escape the room and the stench of his dead comrades, quickly replied, “Yes sir,” and fled the office into the cool sanctuary of the hallway.
As Miller vanished, Sawyer’s focus shifted instantly. He stepped out of the office to meet with Ella, who had been waiting patiently for him, likely listening to the echoes of the gunfire. When he looked at her, he was pleased to see her as stunning as ever. Her long brown hair was styled with a precision that seemed impossible in such a desolate place, and her makeup was applied with a perfection that masked the exhaustion of her soul. Ella was visibly surprised by the summons, as her regular appointment with the mayor wasn’t for another week, but she arrived on time and prepared for whatever role he required her to play.
However, Sawyer’s interest today was not in her beauty, but in the logistics of his expanding reach. He explained to her that he was bringing a new group of youth to New Cody and that he needed her to handle the intake—to bring the new girls along and ensure they understood the rules of their new lives in town.
“Where are they coming from?” Ella asked, her voice steady but her eyes searching his.
Sawyer’s response was a name that made the blood drain from her face: New Bismarck. Ella immediately questioned why he would choose a settlement at such a lengthy distance. Sawyer’s eyes didn’t leave hers as he explained his rationale, “I want some young people here that don’t know the area but can handle the work that the old people around here can’t handle. I also want people who are already broken in and know the rules… my rules.”
While Ella didn’t push him further with words, the look of profound concern on her face was too obvious for a man like Sawyer to ignore. He leaned back in his chair, watching her intently. “I know it is near your home town,” he said, his voice dropping to a predatory whisper. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”.
Ella’s mask slipped for only a fraction of a second before she snapped it back into place. “No,” she replied quickly, “I’ll take the girls as soon as they arrive. Is there anything else?”
“You seem a bit nervous, are you sure everything’s okay?” Sawyer asked with suspicious concern.
“Of course,” Ella replied quickly. Trying hard to conceal her true feelings.
Sawyer dismissed her and watched her leave, his mind torn between the lingering affection he felt as he stared at her backside and the deep suspicion sparked by the concern she had shown at the mention of her hometown. After she left the building, Sawyer walked back to his office that was being cleaned up. One of the guards that was clearing the bodies, Victor, was given a new task to complete.
As he walked around the mess on the floor he made it around to his desk and calmly issued his instructions, “Victor, I want you to get me a list of all of the people we’re bringing in from New Bismarck”.
Victor acknowledged the order and left the room while two women were tasked to mop up the blood left on the floor. Sawyer sat at his desk and leaned back, his mind already weaving a new web of control. The list was now an important piece of information as he suspected that someone on that list was the reason for Ella’s visible fear.
Chapter 5: Take No For An Answer
The silence surrounding the old farmhouse was not the peaceful quiet of the country; it was a heavy, suffocating shroud that seemed to swallow sound and light alike. For several days, the world had remained frozen in a tableau of grey and brown, the only movement coming from the biting wind that whipped across the desolate fields of what had once been a prosperous homestead. Two men, huddled in the brush several hundred yards from the structure, had become fixtures of this bleak landscape, their eyes burning from the strain of watching a house that refused to show a single sign of life.
They were part of Eric Sawyer’s militia, tasked with keeping Elias under constant surveillance. To them, the mission seemed simple: watch the house, wait for a move, and report back. But as the days bled into one another, the simplicity of the task had curdled into a cold, gnawing dread.
“How is he still in there?” the younger soldier whispered, his voice cracking from the cold. He adjusted the collar of his coat, which offered little protection against the relentless chill of the twilight age. “No smoke from the chimney. No flickering of a candle or a lamp at night. It’s like the place is a tomb”.
The militia team leader, a man hardened by two years of survival-of-the-fittest logic, didn’t answer immediately. He was staring through his binoculars at the open stable. “The horse is still there,” he muttered. “I can see it moving from one end of the stall to the other. If the horse is there, he’s there”.
He reached for the radio at his belt, the static-heavy lifeline to the mayor’s office in New Cody. The device crackled to life before he could even press the button. Eric Sawyer’s voice, sharp and laced with a growing agitation, filled the air.
“Report,” Sawyer demanded.
The team leader sighed, the frost of his breath visible in the dim light. “Still nothing, sir. No movement in the house. We’ve been watching the perimeter around the clock, just as you ordered”.
On the other end of the line, miles away in the relative comfort of his repurposed office, Sawyer’s temper flared. “How can there be nothing going on there?” he barked over the radio, his suspicion bleeding through the speakers. “How is he keeping warm? Are you sure he didn’t just sneak away?”.
The team leader looked back at the farmhouse, its windows like empty eye sockets. “It’s possible, but I doubt it,” he replied, though his own confidence was wavering. “I don’t know how he’s keeping warm in there. We don’t see smoke and at night there aren’t any lights. If he has heat in there, it’s got to be battery powered”.
“Or you let him sneak off and you are looking at an empty house,” Sawyer retorted, his voice dripping with annoyance at his men’s perceived lack of focus. To Sawyer, who had systematically dismantled seven other settlements through sheer administrative and physical force, the idea of one man defying his plans by simply being invisible was an insult he could not tolerate.
The younger soldier nudged the team leader. “We can find out for sure,” he suggested, gesturing toward the house with his rifle. He was tired of the cold, tired of the waiting; he wanted to kick the door in and end the mystery.
But Sawyer was not a man of reckless impulse. He knew the reputation of the man they were hunting. He knew that Elias possessed skills that bordered on the preternatural—skills the men under surveillance would be shocked to learn of, if they lived long enough to tell anyone. “No, stay away from the house. Watch the perimeter only,” Sawyer demanded, his voice final.
The team leader acknowledged the orders with a curt “copy,” but the tension between the two men on the ridge had reached a breaking point. The inaction was wearing them down. In a decision that would prove to be their biggest mistake, the team leader decided to split them up. He believed that by covering both the front and the back of the house from different vantage points, they could finally catch Elias in a lapse of his “magician-like” stealth.
“I’ll take the high point overlooking the back side,” the leader told the soldier. “You stay here and watch the front. If he so much as twitches a curtain, I want to know.”
The team leader moved off, flanking the property until he reached a rise that offered a clear view of the rear of the farmhouse and the open stable. He settled into the dirt, his eyes fixed on the horse. The animal seemed restless, pacing the length of its stall, its breath pluming in the air. The leader felt a sense of grim satisfaction; from this height, nothing could leave the back door without him seeing it.
What he failed to realize was that the movement he was not aware of was happening directly behind him.
Elias had not been hiding in the house. He had been a part of the landscape, watching the watchers since the moment they arrived. He had waited with the patience of a predator, observing their habits, their radio checks, and their growing frustration. He had waited for them to give him the advantage, and the moment they split up, he took it.
The team leader never heard a footfall. He didn’t hear the rustle of dead grass or the snap of a twig. The first indication that he was no longer alone was the sudden, overwhelming sensation of a presence looming over him, and before he knew anything was happening, Elias had moved behind him. The “magician” had appeared from the shadows of the very ridge the soldier thought protected him.
The team leader felt the cold steel of a knife as it was plunged into the side of his neck. It was a swift, silent strike, designed to eliminate the threat before a single cry could be let out. Elias held the man as he slumped, his eyes cold and devoid of the “senseless bloodshed” of the old wars, yet filled with the grim necessity of the new one.
Elias didn’t pause to reflect. He immediately turned his sights toward the second man.
The younger soldier, still stationed at the front, was beginning to feel the weight of the silence. It had been too long since his leader had checked in. He shifted in his position behind a dirt mound, his focus flickering as he glanced toward the ridge where his partner should have been. The cold was making his reactions sluggish, his mind wandering to the warmth of the “hourly companions” back at New Cody’s town hall.
He lost focus for only a second, and a second was all Elias needed as he maneuvered with terrifying efficiency, staying clear of the house and using the natural contours of the land to mask his approach. He rose up from the very dirt mound that the soldier believed was his cover. The soldier turned, his eyes widening as he realized the “ghost” of the farmhouse was standing right over him. He didn’t even have time to raise his weapon before he caught a bullet in the head.
The silence quickly returned to the farm, more absolute than before.
Elias stood over the body, his breath steady. There was no joy in the act, only the cold calculus of survival. He knew that by killing these men, he had sent a message to Sawyer, even if no words were spoken, and the lack of a radio check-in would tell the Mayor everything he needed to know.
With the methodical calmness that defined him, Elias used his horse to drag the men to a secluded area by the stable. The horse, sensing the grim nature of the task, moved quietly as Elias prepared to bury the remains. He worked through the twilight, the shovel hitting the frozen earth with a rhythmic thud, ensuring that the evidence of the militia’s “biggest mistake” was hidden beneath the soil.
Back in New Cody, Eric Sawyer sat by his radio, the silence from the other end growing louder with every passing minute. He called out to the team leader again and again, but there was no response. The suspicion that had been gnawing at him all week solidified into a hard, cold reality.
He walked over and looked out the window at the town he had conquered—the people he had turned into servants, the economy he had rebuilt on bartering and depravity. He had thought that by controlling the resources, he controlled the people. But as he stared into the darkness toward the west, he realized he had encountered something he hadn’t accounted for.
Elias was serious enough not to be taken lightly, Sawyer realized. The ghost of the farmhouse was not just a scavenger or a holdout; he was a predator who had just turned the Mayor’s hunters into the hunted. The war for New Cody had shifted, and for the first time since the lights went out five years ago, Eric Sawyer felt the cold hand of doubt.
Chapter 6: Weathered Escape
The weather, which had been merely cold and blustery, turned deadly within a week as a heavy blizzard descended upon the region, blanketing New Cody in a suffocating layer of white. This natural fury slightly delayed the mayor’s plans for expanding the population, but it could not stop the momentum. From the east, four horse-drawn wagons slowly navigated the cracked, snow-covered pavement of the main street, their wheels groaning against the ice. Militia guards, still reeling from the mysterious loss of their scouts near Elias’s farm, stood at the ready to welcome the newcomers. While the men from the wagons were marched toward the old high school—now a grim dormitory—Ella stepped out into the biting wind to meet the new “recruits”.
“Okay ladies, please follow me,” Ella called out, her voice carrying a tough exterior tone that brooked no argument.
Among the shivering flock of women, a thirteen-year-old girl made it a point to move up the line, pressing as close to Ella as she could. When they reached the heavy front doors of their new home, Ella reached out, pulling the young girl from the line and holding her close as she led the group inside. Once the doors were shut against the howling storm, Ella leaned down, her voice a barely audible breath against the girl’s ear.
“Stay quiet,” Ella whispered. “I will explain everything later.” The girl, eyes wide with a terror common in this twilight age, simply nodded and moved away as Ella began the orientation.
The group gathered in a drafty common room. Ella stood before them, her gaze sweeping over the tired faces. “Most of you are experienced working girls, but here in New Cody things are a little different,” she began.
A woman named Cassidy, whose eyes still held a spark of the outspoken defiance that Sawyer usually crushed, stepped forward. “What do you mean by different?” she asked.
“Some of the men who came with you are going to be put to work quickly, so don’t be surprised if things are a little slow for a while,” Ella explained, her mind already calculating the risks of the night. “The other thing is, most of the men living here in New Cody are elderly and aren’t aggressive. They are depressed men that have lost their families and sometimes just need a shoulder to cry on”.
Cassidy looked around the bleak room, her voice laced with a desperate hope for autonomy. “Will we be able to move around the town?”.
Ella glanced toward the back corner where the pre-teen sat, trying to keep her explanation from being too graphic. “You probably won’t want to move around too much here. The weather is pretty bad and most of the people are old and just want to rest. You girls—and a couple of you boys—will be the primary source of entertainment”.
The room fell silent, save for the rattling of the windows. “Once you all have a chance to settle in and get a hot meal, you can start getting ready,” Ella continued. “Some of you will work tonight. I’ll introduce you to some of the regulars. For those of you who aren’t working, I would suggest you get some rest. You had a long trip and you’ll need it”.
As the women began to drift upstairs toward the barracks, Ella caught the young girl’s arm, pulling her into the shadows of the hallway. “I need you to listen carefully,” Ella said, her voice urgent. “Go with the others. Get something to eat and find some clothes that will keep you warm. After I take the girls to their shift, I want you to find the bed closest to the door. Lay down and try to get some sleep. I’ll come get you as soon as I can”. The youngster didn’t speak; she simply nodded and vanished into the stairwell.
Hours later, the lobby was filled with the low murmur of the “regulars” arriving for their scheduled time. Ella moved through the reception area with practiced ease, introducing the new girls to the men who sought a brief respite from the cold and the chaos. Once the guards and the regulars were occupied, Ella slipped away, finding the young girl exactly where she had instructed.
They descended the front stairs, reaching the lobby where a lone guard stood watch. He looked up, his hand resting lazily on his rifle.
“I need to take this one to find some clothes that fit her,” Ella said, her voice steady. The guard, nearing the end of his shift and accustomed to trusting Ella’s management of the ladies, didn’t question her.
Outside, the blizzard had escalated into white-out conditions, providing the perfect cover for their movement. They moved through the blinding snow toward the general store, where a seamstress was still working under a flickering lamp.
“Can you get this little one’s measurements and put something together for her?” Ella asked the seamstress, maintaining the charade of a routine task. “Nothing I have on hand will fit her”. While the woman began her work, Ella moved through the aisles, grabbing a small cache of food—just enough to sustain them through the night.
“It’ll take a couple of days to finish three dresses,” the seamstress noted, looking up from her tape measure.
“That’s fine,” Ella replied.
But as they stepped back out into the freezing wind, Ella didn’t turn back toward the center of town. Instead, she gripped the girl’s hand and headed west, pushing into the heart of the storm. They moved toward the outskirts, toward the territory where the “ghost” Elias had recently cleared the way by eliminating Sawyer’s scouts. They were running into the teeth of the blizzard, hoping the white-out would hide their tracks before the Mayor realized his most valuable asset had finally stopped complying.
Chapter 7: Silent Guardian
The blizzard was a physical weight, a shifting wall of white that sought to bury the world in a silent, freezing tomb. Ella struggled through the drifts, her breath coming in ragged gasps that burned her lungs. She had navigated the perilous path from New Cody to the house of the ghost. It was not the safest pace to go, but it was the warmest and a place they could hopefully hide out in for a single night.
As they made their way inside, they found a room upstairs that had a number of tattered and worn blankets. It was just enough to keep the little girl warm. Ella reached into her pocket and pulled out the food she took from the store.
“Here, eat something.” she said as she draped the blankets over her. “Now listen carefully, I need you to stay here. I need to get back before I’m missed, but I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“No, don’t go!” the little girl said.
“It’ll be fine, just stay inside. Don’t go outside for any reason.” Ella pleaded with a life saving tone.
The little girl began to cry and begged her not to go, but Ella had something that might get her to trust her. Trust that she would return.
“Here, I want you to look after this for me.” Ella said as she reached around to the back of her neck and took off a necklace.
“What is it?” the little girl asked.
“It’s something that is very precious and I want you to hang on to it for me until I come back. Can you do that for me?” The little girl agreed just as Ella put the necklace around the girl’s neck.
After a hug and a few minutes of massaging her head, the little girl drifted off to sleep. Ella carefully slid out from under her and made sure she was kept as warm as possible before leaving the house and heading back to New Cody.
Ella, exhausted from her journey, would make it back to the brothel without anyone knowing she was gone. Shivering from the cold, she came up to the guard working the morning shift. The guard showed her some sympathy as he opened the door.
“Ella, are you okay, you look like you’ve been out all night.”
“Feels that way. I’ll be okay, once I get some coffee into me.” Ella said as he gave the guard a flirtatious touch of his hand that was palming his rifle.
Ella got inside and headed up to the barracks where she got a cup of strong horrible coffee and made her way into the shower where she did everything she could to warm up. No one suspected a thing and no one seemed to notice the little girl was missing.
A few hours later, she introduced the second group of girls to the militia members that were off duty and wanted to warm their bodies as well. After they were preoccupied, Ella made her way back down to the lobby and met the same guard from the previous night.
“Where are you off to this time?” he asked with a more suspicious tone.
“I need to go back to the store and pick up some medicine for one of the girls. You know… women’s stuff.”
“Oh okay, but don’t be out too long, I hear the weather is gonna be worse tonight than it was last night.” The guard said with an almost disgusted empathy mixed in with some genuine concern.
“Oh I shouldn’t be long.” She said as she wrapped her scarf around her head and rushed down the street.
She kept up the ruse by going back to the general store and picked up some pain reliever before again turning west and heading back out to the ghost’s domain.
When she finally reached the old, weathered house, her heart hammered against her ribs with a force that rivaled the wind. The structure was damaged, its wood groaning under the onslaught of the storm, but it was the only shelter she had for the girl. She had left Beth there with a promise and a precious necklace, a token of her intent to return so they could find a place that was truly safe.
“Beth?” Ella whispered as she stumbled into the frigid interior. “Beth, I’m back!”
There was no answer. The house was a hollow shell, the air inside as bitter as the gale outside. Panic, sharp and icy, surged through her. She ran from room to room, her boots clattering on the warped floorboards, but the girl was gone. Her fear caused her to shake more than the cold; the thought of her wandering out into the white-out, or worse, being found by Sawyer’s men, was a nightmare to say the least.
She rushed toward the back of the house, her eyes scanning the dimness for any sign of a struggle. She saw the stable through a cracked window and turned to dash toward it, but before she could take a single step outside, a heavy hand was forcibly placed over her mouth.
Ella was whipped around with a strength that brooked no resistance. She found herself staring into the flint-like eyes of Elias. He glared at her, his expression a mask of iron that demanded absolute silence. He didn’t speak, but the message was clear as he slowly removed his hand: not a sound.
Ella gasped, her eyes darting toward the door. “Where is she? What did you…”
Elias didn’t let her finish. He held a finger to his lips, reinforcing the need for silence with a gaze that reminded her of the confident hero she heard about. He took her firmly by the arm and led her toward the large, cold fireplace that dominated the main room.
Ella watched in bewilderment as he reached into the shadows of the hearth and grabbed a heavy rope handle. With a grunt of effort, he pulled, and a hidden door in the floor of the fireplace swung upward, revealing a dark, steep staircase leading into the earth. He gestured for her to go down. Something in his steady, unwavering presence compelled her to trust him, despite the mystery that surrounded him.
As she descended the stairs, the first thing that hit her was the heat. It was a physical sensation she hadn’t truly felt in two years—not the weak warmth of a crowded room or a flickering candle, but a sudden, deep feeling of warmth that suggested a functioning system hidden from the world’s prying eyes. Elias followed her, pulling the heavy door shut and sealing them in a pressurized silence.
At the bottom of the stairs, Ella gasped. The underground room was a marvel of survivalism. Tucked into a corner, the little girl was sleeping comfortably in a bed, her chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm of deep, safe exhaustion. Ella rushed to the girl’s side, checking her pulse and smoothing her hair, tears of relief finally breaking through her stoic mask.
Elias, meanwhile, ignored the emotional reunion. He walked to a desk at the end of the room, where the glow of several screens cut through the subterranean dimness. Ella looked up, stunned to see live footage from security cameras positioned around the property. In a world defined by resource depletion and a total lack of power, Elias was sitting in a high-tech fortress.
“How?” Ella whispered, looking at the monitors. “How do you have all this?”
Elias didn’t look at her. He sat at the desk, his eyes fixed on a screen showing the perimeter of the house. Outside, the blizzard was a chaotic blur, but the cameras provided a clear view of the approach. He remained silent, his refusal to speak a stark contrast to the performative cruelty of Eric Sawyer.
Ella stood and walked toward him, her voice trembling with a mixture of gratitude and the learned habits of her life in New Cody. “I’m sorry for questioning you. You saved her. I… I have no way to pay you for this. No ration credits, no tangibles.” She paused, her eyes dropping to the floor as she began to peel away the garments that were keeping her warm. “I can only offer myself as payment for keeping her safe”.
Elias didn’t flinch. He didn’t even turn his head. He simply continued to monitor the screens, his posture rigid. He was not interested in the transaction that defined the “lowest form of depravity” in the corrupt towns Sawyer controlled. To him, she was not a commodity; she was a refugee in a war that had never truly ended and from his perspective, should never have started in the first place.
“I don’t want your payment,” he finally said, his voice a low, rare rasp that startled her. “I want you to stay quiet and take care of her. You may want to try and get some sleep, you’re gonna need it.”
He pointed toward the bed where the little girl lay calm and safe. Ella realized then that this man was as much a victim as she was. He was the antithesis of the world outside. He had no interest in fighting a war, he had already fought one… and lost. He appeared to have lost the one thing in the world he cherished more than anything… hope, and without it there was not much for him to hang on to. This underground fortress that he used to save them both was also his prison. So she gave him as much space as the room provided.
Ella crawled into the bed beside the little girl, the warmth of the bunker seeping into her frozen limbs. The underground sanctuary was a miracle—a pocket of the old world preserved beneath the ruins of the new. Within minutes, she too was asleep, the first restful slumber she had known since the lights first failed and the country went dark.
Above them, the storm continued to rage, a symbol of the chaos that had consumed the nation. But in the silence beneath the hearth, protected by a man who spoke with actions rather than threats, they were safe.
Chapter 8: Making Friends
The low hum of the subterranean bunker was the only sound that broke the stillness of the morning. Inside the hidden sanctuary, the air was warm and smelled faintly of ozone and old parchment—a stark contrast to the frozen, resource-depleted wasteland above.
The next morning, as he began to doze off for the umpteenth time, a small hand touched his shoulder.
“What’s your name?” the little girl asked as Elias attempted to stay alert.
“Elias,” he said, meeting the young girl officially.
“I’m Beth,” the little girl said with a positive energy not customary for anyone from these parts.
While the two shook hands, Ella remained in a deep, restorative sleep—her first good night of rest in over a year.
“What are you doing?” Beth asked as Elias sat before the glowing wall of monitors, his eyes struggling to stay open as he continued tracking the silent, white world outside.
Elias explained that he had to keep an eye on the property outside and the cameras help him do that. Beth sat beside him, her legs dangling from a chair that was far too large for her. Unlike most survivors of the war that had plunged the country into darkness, Beth was a curious young girl who didn’t know much about the war. She had a pleasant and welcoming personality. She was friendly to a fault, which was a trait most people lost or chose to forget.
“Are you hungry?” Elias asked as he reached into a small chest beside his desk and pulled out a modest box.
With a rare, softened expression, he handed it to the girl. Inside were home made rations that he made. In a world where fresh water, heat, and consistent food were disappearing, the sweet bread was a miracle.
As she ate, Beth’s voice filled the room, her words tumbling out with a “chatty” energy that Elias hadn’t encountered in years. She spoke of her life before the move to New Cody.
“I’m from New Bismarck,” she said. “I’m an orphan. I was going to school when they told me that I was moving here.”
She then spoke of her sister, Ella, who had been forced to move away to work.
“She saved me,” Beth said as she looked over at her sister’s peaceful body. “I don’t know why I was brought here, but she made sure I would be okay.”
“This isn’t a safe place for little girls anymore.” Elias said.
“I know. Ella says we have to leave,” Beth explained between bites of bread.
Elias nodded grimly, his gaze returning to the security feeds. “Where was she taking you?”
“I don’t know, she just said we would go together and be safe.” Beth explained as she looked around the dark room.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll get there. Your sister believes you can make it, so have faith in her.” Elias said with growing empathy.
The girl tilted her head, her curiosity piqued by the hum of the computers and the man’s stoic nature. “Why do you live down here?” she asked.
“Because it is a safe place for me,” Elias said quietly. “And I am used to being alone.”
Beth’s tone shifted, becoming uncharacteristically sympathetic. “Why?”
Elias glanced back at the bed where Ella remained asleep, then turned to Beth with a somber, quiet tone. “Because a long time ago, I made a choice and a lot of people got hurt.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “Why did you hurt them?”
“I didn’t mean to. I thought I was saving people,” Elias confessed, his voice heavy with the weight of a past he could never outrun. He paused as Beth reached out, placing a small, comforting hand on his his. “I was given an order. Do you know what orders are?”
Beth answered with the simple logic of a child who had grown up in the shadow of authority. “Sure, it’s when adults tell you what to do and you have to do it.”
Elias offered her a small, sad smile. “That’s right, and it’s the same for soldiers. I was given an order and it turned out to be the wrong thing to do and people got hurt.”
“Did you get in trouble?” she whispered.
“Yes,in a strange sort of way, I did.” Elias replied.
Beth opened her mouth to ask for more details, her youthful inquisitiveness almost “annoying” in its persistence, but the conversation was abruptly cut short. On one of the monitors, the heavy snow was disturbed along the path up to the house. Elias’s body tensed instantly, the soldier replacing the man.
He stood up, his movements sharp and purposeful. Beth began to ask where he was going, but Elias turned to her, his voice firm but careful not to scare her. “I need you to stay here and stay very quiet. You need to watch those screens and protect your sister. Can you do that?”
Recognizing the gravity of the moment, Beth looked at him and gave him a child-like soldier’s salute.
Elias moved with practiced efficiency. He grabbed his heavy coat and his side arm, then reached for a rifle. He headed toward the back of the underground dwelling, pausing only to deliver a final reminder to the young girl: “Remember, stay here and stay quiet. Protect your sister and I’ll be back shortly.”
From the safety of the bunker, Beth watched the monitors. She saw Elias disappear into a dark concrete hallway, his figure a shadow against the grey walls. Another camera caught him as he slowly opened a door on the far end of the property, positioned on the opposite side of the stable to provide enough cover for him to emerge undetected. He carefully covered the door that came out of the ground with snow, erasing the evidence of his sanctuary, and then casually made his way toward the front of the stable.
As he rounded the corner, he saw the threat that had been haunting the region. Sawyer and four men were exiting a truck that had a snow plow fixed onto the front. One of these men… the guard that Ella lied to to get clear of New Cody. They stood in the middle of the yard, the engine of the plow rumbling like a beast in the frozen silence. It was the meeting neither would want, a collision between a man who lived by his own code and a man who sought to own everything left in the world.
Chapter 9: The Casual Confrontation
The roar of the snow-plow’s engine was a mechanical growl that echoed off the frozen walls of the farmhouse, a discordant sound in the muffled silence of the blizzard. Elias stepped out from the side of the stable, his movements deliberate and devoid of the haste that usually signaled fear. He walked out into the open and greeted the men silently, holding his rifle in his left hand while pulling his heavy coat back, exposing the holster where his revolver sat comfortably. It was a visual language Mayor Sawyer understood perfectly—a soldier’s warning that he was prepared for a fight he hadn’t started.
Sawyer and his men approached slowly, armed as well, but Sawyer didn’t come for a battle. He stood near the truck, his clean, pressed clothes a stark insult to the grime of the world around them. He hadn’t come to trade or to negotiate; he came to get what belonged to him and to deliver some bad news.
“You look like a man who values the truth, Elias,” Sawyer began, his voice cutting through the wind with chilling precision. “I’m sorry to tell you… that Travis is dead.” He paused, letting the words hang in the freezing air. “His daughter is also dead after she tried to leave town; she was found a few miles from here, frozen in the snow”.
The news hit Elias with the force of a physical blow, though his face remained a mask of iron. He remembered the old man’s shaking hands in the diner and the desperate hope that his daughter might escape the depravity of the town hall. Elias was saddened about the news, but Sawyer threw salt onto that wound by expressing the insignificance of their deaths. To the Mayor, they were merely broken cogs in his failing machine.
Elias’s heart became as cold as the weather, and he demanded to know what Sawyer wanted. The pretense of civility was gone, replaced by a visceral need to see this man off his land.
Sawyer leaned against the hood of the truck, his eyes scanning the windows of the farmhouse. He explained that two of his girls left town and he suspected they came here to seek shelter. He wanted to know if Elias had seen them.
“If I had, they wouldn’t still be here,” Elias replied, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. “Especially if they both worked for you”.
Sawyer’s eyes narrowed, a predatory glint appearing in his gaze. “Are you saying they were here?”.
“No,” Elias said, shifting his weight slightly so his hand was closer to his revolver. “I’m saying I want to be left alone”.
Sawyer didn’t move. He gestured vaguely toward the snow-covered mounds near the tree line. “I know that, so do the men that came out here not too long ago”. He looked directly at Elias, his smile thin and devoid of warmth. “I take it they’re buried somewhere here under the snow”.
Elias gave no response, but he didn’t have to. The silence was a confirmation that the hunters had become the hunted. Sawyer tried to be polite, his tone shifting into a mock-reasonableness that was more terrifying than a shout. He asked if the men could search the house for the missing girls.
Elias was unwilling and even suggested that the girls are most likely dead. He pointed toward the horizon, where the white-out conditions were at their peak. The trek on foot in the blizzard would be too much for one person, let alone two that don’t have the survival skills to brave the storm.
Sawyer then asked calmly, “So then, you’re not going to welcome us into your home?”.
Elias didn’t blink. “I told you Sawyer, I want to be left alone”. He nodded toward the truck, the engine still idling and wasting the precious fuel that had become the world’s lifeblood. “I would suggest you turn that loud gas guzzler around and head back to New Cody”.
Sawyer’s response was curt, “Very well. Let’s go boys”. He and his men climbed back into the truck and did as Elias suggested, the plow clearing a path as they retreated back toward the town. But Elias knew the man’s nature; he knew this would not be the end of it.
After they were out of sight, Elias didn’t head for the warmth of the bunker. He went into the stable and prepared his horse for a day’s travel, checking the cinch and the saddlebags with a frantic efficiency. The clock was ticking. He then went into the house and down through the fireplace to find Ella and Beth sitting together, but the welcome was far from warm; Ella was pointing a gun at him.
Elias was not concerned, his military training taking over. “If you kill me you won’t make it out of here alive,” he said, his voice flat.
Beth, seeing the man who had given her sweet bread, pleaded with Ella not to shoot her new friend; she broke away from her sister and ran to Elias. The tension in the room snapped. Ella lowered the gun and begged Beth to stay away from him, but Beth remained by his side.
Elias dropped to a knee, his focus entirely on the logistics of the next hour. “We don’t have a lot of time. I need you and your sister to help me pack up so we can get you to a safe place”. He handed Beth a backpack and threw another one at Ella. “I need you to fill these with as much food as you can then put these coats on and meet me at the far end of the bunker”. He gestured toward the dark concrete tunnel that led away from the house. “Do not go back up the stairs”.
Beth ran over to the chest next to the desk and started grabbing boxes of rations and putting them in the backpack, her small hands moving as fast as they could. Elias didn’t stay to help; he went back up through the fireplace and then walked out of the house to scout the perimeter.
He suspected that Sawyer was not going to just let things go and would send his men to handle the situation. His suspicions were confirmed the moment he stepped into the light. As he walked out on the porch, he became an instant target. Sawyer’s men, who were carefully deployed, wore painted white camouflage to blend into the snow. They surveilled him from a hundred yards away, their rifles trained on his chest as he walked around the porch and disappeared as he made it around back.
Elias moved with the grace of a man who had built this fortress himself. He knew where every blind spot was on the property and managed to make it to the stable without drawing fire. There, he met the girls, who were bundled up and ready to go.
As they came into the stable, Elias reminded them to remain quiet, his finger to his lips. He helped them both onto his horse, the animal stamping its hooves in the cold, and gave them vague instructions.
“I need you to stay here until it’s time to go,” he said.
“When will we know it’s time?” Ella asked, her voice trembling as she gripped the saddle.
“You’ll hear gunfire. A lot of it,” Elias replied. It was a grim promise. “When you hear it, you need to go in that direction and don’t stop for anything”. He reached into his coat and handed her his side arm, the weight of the metal a final transfer of responsibility. “You should be able to get to the trailhead by nightfall”.
He leaned in close, ensuring Ella understood the gravity of the instructions. Once she reached the trailhead, she was to rest up and make sure the horse got some dry hay and plenty of water. Then, they were to head north and not stop until they reached the border.
“What about you?” Ella asked, her eyes searching for a promise he couldn’t make.
“Don’t worry about me. Just remember don’t leave this stable until you hear gunfire,” he repeated, his tone leaving no room for argument.
Beth was not willing to leave without her friend; she reached out for him, her eyes filling with tears. Elias took her small hand, his voice softening as he recalled the task he had given her in the bunker. “Beth, remember what I asked you to do? Protect your sister. I need to do this so you can get clear. If I can, I will meet up with you along the way”.
Beth wiped away tears and gave him a final, fierce hug. Elias looked at Ella, signaling her to pull Beth away. Once she did, Elias held his finger to his mouth to signal them both to stay quiet while he left the stable and stepped back into the white-out to face the men in the snow.
Ella watched him go, then pulled Beth close, whispering quietly to the girl, “Don’t worry, he’ll be back soon”. But as they waited for the first distant crack of a rifle blast echoing through the blizzard, they both knew the ghost of the farmhouse was about to become a storm of his own.
Chapter 10: Silent Assassin
The blizzard continued to howl around the farmhouse, a white shroud that masked both the hunter and the hunted. Inside the stable, Ella gripped the pistol Elias had given her, her knuckles white, while Beth huddled against the horse, shivering but silent. They waited for the signal—the gunfire Elias had promised.
Outside, Elias appeared on the porch with a calculated calmness that belied the danger. He set his rifle down next to a rocking chair, which he had carefully positioned to be in the perfect line of sight for the militia hiding in the tree line. For a few agonizing minutes, he simply sat there, a ghost in the swirling snow. It was a test of nerves. When the shots didn’t come, Elias realized the militia were either repositioning or under strict orders from Sawyer not to shoot until they were certain of his capture.
He stood up, left his rifle on the porch, and walked back into the house. This was the opening the militia had waited for. Emboldened by what they perceived as a lapse in his defenses, the men moved toward the house. The weight of their footsteps cracked through the weathered wood of the porch as they deployed, splitting up to clear the interior—one to the left, one to the right, while two remained to guard the perimeter and the stable.
Inside, the house was a hollow shell. The two militiamen moved from room to room, securing the space, but Elias was nowhere to be found.
Meanwhile, the man assigned to the stable approached the structure where the girls were hiding. He never made it to the door. An arrow pierced through his eye socket and exited his skull, killing him instantly and silently. At the front of the house, the second perimeter guard walked up to the porch and picked up the rifle Elias had abandoned. He pulled the bolt back and realized the weapon wasn’t even loaded.
The realization that they were being set up hit him a second too late. Before he could shout a warning to the men inside, Elias materialized behind him. With the cold efficiency of a shadow, Elias slashed his throat, slicing the jugular and puncturing his windpipe to ensure no cry for help could be uttered.
Elias did not re-enter the house to find the remaining two; instead, he remained patient and vigilant in the snow, waiting for the house to be confirmed empty. When the final two militiamen returned to the porch, they found their comrade dead and a set of tracks leading toward a large pile of snow a few yards away.
Before they could even raise their weapons, two silent shots rang out from inside that snow bank. Elias, buried beneath the snow and armed with a suppressed sniper rifle he had scavenged from one of the earlier kills, executed both men with “sniper-like precision”.
Elias rose from his snowy grave like a vengeful spirit. He walked toward the dying men, grabbing one by the collar to force him to look into his eyes.
“If you live long enough to see your boss, I want you to deliver a message,” Elias said, his voice a low, terrifying rasp. “Tell him he made a mistake and the men I killed today won’t be the last.”.
He disarmed the fallen and left them on the porch, turning his back on the carnage to return to the stable.
“Are you okay?” Beth asked, her voice small and trembling as he entered.
“I am now,” Elias replied. He took the reins of the horse and covered his face and instructed the girls to do the same as he led them out into the white-out, heading west.
Hours later, the silence at the farmhouse was broken by the crackle of a radio. Sawyer, growing increasingly frustrated that Elias had not been brought in, dispatched four more men to investigate. When they arrived, the bloody scene on the porch told the story.
“I want him found,” Sawyer barked over the radio, his tone aggravated and frustrated.
“There are tracks heading west,” one of the men reported. “Looks like he’s on foot with a horse”.
“That means he’s not alone,” Sawyer hissed. “Follow the tracks and I don’t want to see your faces unless he is standing with you. Is that clear?”.
By the time the second unit began their pursuit, Elias and the girls had reached the skeletal remains of a settlement once known as Wapiti. They sought refuge in an old barn, the heavy doors groaning as Elias led them inside.
Inside the barn, the girls climbed down from the horse. Elias led his animal to a stall, ensuring it had fresh oats and water, spending a few quiet moments showing his “friend” some affection as he prepared for a difficult goodbye. While Ella and Beth attempted to start a fire in an old blacksmith forge to warm their bodies, Elias moved to the back of the barn. He pulled several tarps off an old pickup truck equipped with a camper shell.
Ella walked over, watching as he popped the hood. “Do you think you can get this old thing running?” she asked, skeptical.
Elias looked at her with a sarcastic smile. “Go ahead and load up. We’ll get going in a few minutes”.
Ella soon realized Elias’s foresight. The truck’s original internal combustion engine had been replaced with an engine that was battery powered. Something out of science fiction, Elias managed to use his expertise and training from his days in the military and adapted the truck so it cold not only run for long stretches but run silently. Elias connected two large car batteries to the system, and when he climbed into the cab and turned the key, a silent hum filled the barn. He then grabbed four more batteries and stored them in the back of the truck.
Before they left, Elias returned to the stall. He draped a blanket over his horse and gave the animal one final kiss. He was visibly upset at the prospect of leaving his companion behind, knowing he had to leave the barn door open and the fire going so the horse could stay warm for as long as possible, eventually finding its own way in the frozen landscape.
Beth, seeing his grief, stepped forward and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Maybe you’ll see him again one day,” she whispered, her empathy cutting through his stoic defenses.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Elias said, absorbing the hope the girl offered.
He climbed into the driver’s seat, his eyes fixed on the directional finder mounted on the dashboard.
“So where are we going?” Ella asked as the truck began its silent journey out into the snow.
Elias didn’t look back at the farmhouse or the life he was leaving behind. He simply said, “North.”
Chapter 11: The Long Journey
The tires of the modified pickup truck crunched through the relentless white expanse as Elias navigated the frozen arteries of a dead world. He drove with a singular, grim focus, carefully avoiding any other large settlements and towns because he feared Sawyer’s reach was long enough to have contacted them to be on the lookout. This caution made the journey significantly longer, turning a direct route into a winding maze of backroads that required intense labor to clear snow from the roads and from the solar panels mounted atop the truck. Elias operated like a ghost, driving late at night without the betrayal of headlights and only allowing himself a few hours of rest as the sun began to bleed over the horizon. During these brief pauses, when he wasn’t sleeping, he would scout the area and scavenge what he could from abandoned settlements, while Ella’s only job was to protect herself and Beth. Yet, even in the silence of the cab, a persistent suspicion gnawed at Elias; something about the girls seemed off, and he hadn’t yet figured out the mystery of what it was.
They were a few hours from the border, closer to safety than they had been in years, but Elias knew the most dangerous miles were still ahead. He pulled the truck into the skeletal remains of an abandoned settlement he had scouted months earlier, driving deep into the cover of a cluster of trees. While the girls slept in the warmth of the cab, he worked with the efficiency of a man who didn’t expect to survive the winter. He camouflaged the truck with branches and started a small, controlled fire, his eyes never stopping their scan of the tree line.
Ella woke a few minutes later and ventured out to find him, her breath hitching in the frigid air as she pulled at her coat to stay warm.
“How much further do we have to go?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“A few hours,” Elias replied, the rhythm of his axe never faltering as he splintered pieces of wood. “There’s one more stop we have to make before we hit the border. Once we get past it, you guys will be safe.”
Ella hesitated, her eyes fixed on the flames. “Listen, I really appreciate—”
“Don’t,” Elias interrupted, his tone as sharp as the axe. “I just want to get you guys across and once you’re there you can go live your lives… and I can go back to living mine”.
“You know Sawyer is going to come after you,” she warned. “He’s relentless.”
“He’s also predictable,” Elias countered, leaning on the axe handle. He explained that while most saw New Cody as just another old settlement, Sawyer saw it as a strategic necessity to control the passages through the mountains. “He’s been moving west, and he knows the safest passage is through New Cody”.
“But he already has New Cody,” Ella replied, her brow furrowing as she struggled to comprehend the gravity of the situation.
“He needs it to be a thriving settlement,” Elias explained. He told her the town had been filled with elderly people, and Sawyer’s plan was to use Beth and the other, more younger people brought from New Bismarck to replace them as they died off.
“What does that have to do with you?” Ella asked.
“Nothing really,” Elias said, standing to his full height. “Except maybe for the fact that my house was the first place unsuspecting people would come to. If I tell them to stay clear of New Cody, that would get in the way of Sawyer’s plan”.
The conversation shifted as Ella asked about a specific territory: Canyon Village. Elias confirmed they had driven through the abandoned settlement hours earlier, noting it was a common stop for those traveling through the mountains. Ella’s tone became serious and strategic as she revealed she had overheard Sawyer talking about clearing Canyon Village and driving folks toward New Cody.
“Hmm, I wonder what’s there that’s so important to him,” Elias mused, but his thoughts were interrupted as the truck door creaked open. Beth stepped out to join them, and Ella immediately wrapped her arms around the girl, guiding her back to the truck to grab a blanket. As he watched them, Elias’s suspicions grew; he wondered if he was being set up or just being run out of town so Sawyer could carry out his designs.
“Come on, we gotta go,” Elias abruptly said, leaving the fire to burn itself out in the snow.
“I thought you said we couldn’t move this early,” Ella said, surprised.
“The sooner we get you across the border the better,” Elias replied. As the truck lurched forward, he broke the news that they had to pass through Kalispell, and there was no way to avoid it. He told them the only way through was to have something of value to trade, looking pointedly at both of them.
“They can have me,” Ella said without hesitation. “But she needs to get across”.
“No, Ella you said we would be together,” Beth cried out from the back.
“That’s admirable, but unnecessary,” Elias said as he stopped the truck. He reached under his seat and handed Ella two pairs of handcuffs, ordering the girls to put them on. While the girls watched in confusion, Elias stepped out and moved the food and supplies to boxes in the truck bed, removing the camper shell. He then took the butt end of his axe and began pounding into the side and back of the truck, denting the rusted panels and tailgate so it appeared the vehicle had survived multiple skirmishes.
He climbed back in, his mood shifting into that of a ruthless and unfeeling man. He forcibly told the girls to secure their hands to the roll bar that stretched across the roof.
“Give me your hand Beth,” Ella said, her voice small as she complied with what she hoped was a charade.
They reached the old, rickety bridge at the entrance of Kalispell, passing a weathered sign that warned: “If you have nothing to trade, you are not welcome and should turn back now.”. Elias drove the truck across the bridge and pulled up to a gate surrounded by stacked shipping containers where three men with rifles watched him from a high perch.
“I am just passing through. I have supplies and food to trade!” Elias yelled.
“Get out of the truck… slowly,” a guard commanded. Elias stepped out as two more heavily armed men approached the vehicle.
“What do you got?” one asked, peering inside.
“I have car batteries, food, medicine, and a few tarps,” Elias explained.
“What about them?” the guard asked, gesturing to the handcuffed girls.
“They’re not for sale. I am taking them up to Elko,” Elias lied, explaining they had broken the law and he was being paid to return them. He added that the payment wasn’t enough for the “bullshit” he had endured getting out of New Cody.
The mention of New Cody and Sawyer made the guards hesitate. “We don’t want any trouble with Sawyer,” the man said. “Maybe you should turn back.”
“Listen, all I want to do is get these bitches where they belong. What’s it gonna take?” Elias growled. The guard eventually negotiated for the food, medicine, and extra batteries, telling Elias he couldn’t stay in town.
As Elias got back into the truck, he softly whispered an apology to Ella.
“About what?” she asked.
In an instant, Elias turned and back-handed her across the face. “I told you to knock it off, didn’t I!” he shouted for the benefit of the watching guards. Ella dug her head between her arms, playing the part of the broken prisoner.
They were escorted through town, stopping only once in front of a general store to unload the trade goods. One guard sarcastically asked if he could have a “taste” of the younger one.
“My orders were to bring her in untouched,” Elias said with a dark, subtle laugh. “Believe me, I would have tore that bitch up if it was worth more than the bounty”.
After being escorted to the far gates, Elias gave the men a serious stare and drove away as fast as the terrain allowed. Once they were out of sight, he handed the keys to the cuffs to Ella, asking with genuine concern if they were okay. Ella realized the performance had been necessary for their survival, but she said nothing as they rubbed the feeling back into their arms.
As the sun went down and the weather turned even colder, the girls eventually fell asleep. Elias drove through the night, finally stopping in front of a diner in a quiet little town. The sudden silence of Elias turning off the engine woke Ella, who looked out at a town unlike anything she had seen in years. The quiet little town appeared to have things that her old home hasn’t had for years. In particular, electricity. She watched Elias pull a box from a concealed compartment in the floor of the truck bed. He removed his sidearm and two knives concealed inside his coat and along his right thigh.
“Where are we?” she asked, stretching.
“Sparewood. You’re safe now,” Elias replied. He told her to wake Beth and come inside while he went ahead to greet the owners. Inside, Ella found Elias hugging an old man and a woman named Miriam.
“Come on in, ladies,” Miriam said warmly. “You girls must be famished”. She directed them to the bathroom to clean up, where Ella wiped the dirty makeup from their faces. When they returned, Miriam escorted them to a booth and placed menus in front of them.
“I’m sorry, we don’t have any money,” Ella said, her face flushing with humiliation.
“Oh honey don’t worry about it. Any friend of Elias is a friend of ours,” Miriam replied, offering hot chocolate and coffee.
While the girls ate their first good meal in ages, Elias and the old man, Wesley, caught up at the counter. Wesley confirmed that Sawyer was moving west and noted that Canyon Village was a strategic point; if Sawyer took it, the western territories and Sparewood would be in trouble.
“You’re out-manned and out-gunned,” Wesley warned.
“Then the only thing to do is make sure Canyon Village is no longer of any interest to him,” Elias suggested. He told Wesley he would need supplies and a route to Canyon Village that avoided Kalispell.
Elias returned to the booth, asking Miriam if the girls could stay with them until they found a place of their own. Miriam insisted they stay at her house. Elias then turned to the girls, telling them he had to take care of something and would meet them later.
“Are you coming back?” Beth asked with fearful concern.
“Everything will be fine. I’ll see you later,” Elias promised.
As he walked out the door, followed by Wesley through the back exit, Ella watched him go. She suspected their chances of seeing him again were minimal, but her true concern was how she would eventually reveal a difficult truth to the man who had risked everything to save them.
Chapter 12: Difficult Encounters
The morning air in Sparewood was crisp, carrying the scent of pine and the promise of more snow, a stark contrast to the suffocating, dusty tension of New Cody. In the quiet warmth of the town’s diner, the rhythmic clinking of silverware provided a backdrop to a conversation fraught with unspoken truths. While Beth, showing the friendly and industrious personality that had survived the war, diligently wiped down empty tables, Ella watched her with a mixture of pride and a gnawing sense of guilt.
“He’s not a happy man, is he?” Ella suggested, her eyes following the steam rising from her coffee as she spoke to Miriam.
Miriam paused, her expression softening into something protective. “I wouldn’t say that,” she replied gently. “He’s just very guarded and tries not to get too attached to others”.
“Why not?” Ella asked, her concern for the man who had risked everything to save them deepening.
Miriam gestured toward Beth. “Let’s just say he lost something you have”. The implication hung heavy in the air; Ella realized she couldn’t conceal the truth of her bond with Beth from Miriam, and she began to wonder if Elias had already deduced the nature of their relationship.
“I’m just trying to protect her,” Ella whispered, a confession of her desperation.
“Of course you are,” Miriam replied, her voice echoing the protective instincts of a parent. “And that’s what Elias was doing during your trip”.
While the women spoke, Elias and Wesley were at the detached garage behind Wesley’s house, a place that served as a silent testament to Wesley’s preparedness for the next war. The garage was an arsenal, filled with the tools of a trade Elias had hoped to leave behind.
“The truck won’t make it to Canyon Village,” Elias noted, his eyes scanning the rugged terrain of the map spread across a workbench.
Wesley nodded, tossing a heavy set of keys to Elias. “Take the snow plow,” he said. “It may take a little longer but you’ll get there. Come on, let’s get you loaded up”.
The two men worked in a practiced, silent rhythm, moving weapons and crates of supplies into the back of the massive vehicle. Under the dim glow of a small lamp, they scrutinized the route. “If Sawyer is moving west as you suspect, he’s going to have to go down this road to get there,” Wesley pointed out. “You’ll be going down the same road, so if Sawyer sees it cleared, he is going to get suspicious”.
“I’m planning for that,” Elias replied, his voice laced with calculated seriousness. “I just hope I can get there before he does. By now, he’s probably cleared the house and knows I’m not there, and if I’m not there, there’s no stopping him”.
Wesley looked at his old friend. “I thought he just wanted you under control”.
“I did too,” Elias admitted. “He wanted me to go into town and make building repairs in New Cody. But I think he’s worried that people in the area who know me will stay clear of New Cody if I tell them it isn’t safe”.
“And if he gets his hands on Canyon Village, people around the area won’t have a choice,” Wesley confirmed. Recognizing that the proximity of the girls would make it difficult for Elias to focus, Wesley suggested he spend the night at a motel on the southern end of Sparewood. With a firm handshake and a rare hug, Elias thanked his old mentor for everything and headed for the motel.
The motel room was sparse, a temporary sanctuary. After a long, hot shower—the kind of luxury that felt like a relic of another life—Elias stepped out and wrapped a towel around his waist. A sharp knock at the door broke the silence. He opened it to find Ella standing in the cold.
“How did you find me?” he asked, holding the door open.
“You’d be surprised what a good listener I am,” Ella replied, walking past him to sit on the edge of the bed. “I overheard Wesley and Miriam talking”.
Elias, still wary and concerned for the child’s safety, asked, “So, how’s your daughter?”.
The words hit Ella like a physical blow. Her composure shattered as she realized he knew the truth she had been trying so hard to hide. “How did you know?” she gasped.
“A father knows just as much as a mother does,” Elias said simply.
“I wish that were true,” Ella replied, her head hanging in shame.
“I take it Beth was going to be trained to take care of the men of New Cody,” Elias suggested, his voice low and dangerous.
“That’s why I smuggled her out,” Ella confessed, the words pouring out of her. “I would never do that to my daughter”. Then Elias dropped the bombshell that had been looming over their entire journey: “Now for the million-dollar question… Does Sawyer know she’s his daughter?”.
Ella sat in a stunned silence, struggling to find her voice. “I wanted to tell him as soon as I heard he was bringing them into New Cody. I’ve watched him bring in young ones before, but he didn’t seem to care and to be honest as long as it wasn’t Beth, I didn’t care either”.
“Is that how you were brought into the business?” Elias asked.
Ella shook her head, recounting her life in Chicago before the war. She had been a retail store manager by day and an escort by night, trying to make ends meet. She met Sawyer when he flashed enough cash to buy his way into her life, promising her an escape from her double life. Before she knew it, he had complete control over her. When the war began and he went off to build his militia, Ella had given birth and handed Beth off to her parents. When they passed away, she placed her in an orphanage, moving her constantly to keep her hidden from Sawyer’s world.
“But you couldn’t keep her hidden forever,” Elias surmised.
As Elias dressed, Ella began to cry—a torrent of embarrassment, humiliation, and profound gratitude. Seeing her distress, the stoic soldier softened. He knelt in front of her, his hands steady on her shoulders. “Look, the important thing to remember is that your family is safe and together now,”.
In a moment of overwhelming emotion, Ella moved in and kissed him passionately. For Elias, it was a sensation he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in five years. Though his instinct was to pull back and maintain his guard, Ella’s need to release her emotions was stronger than his need to control his. In the quiet of the motel room, they found a brief, desperate connection, making love with a passion that made Elias feel like a different man.
The next morning, the bed was half empty. Ella woke to find Elias gone, his side of the bed already cold. She looked out the window to see the snow plow was no longer there. After a solitary shower, she stepped out to find Wesley waiting for her, busy replacing a battery on Elias’s truck.
“I had a feeling I’d find you here,” Wesley said, his voice neutral. He offered to drive her back to the diner for coffee, sensing that she needed to hear the truth about the man she had spent the night with.
At the diner, once Miriam had served them and moved away to tend to other customers, Wesley leaned in across the table. “I don’t have to tell you that Elias was a soldier,”.
“I figured that much out,” Ella replied with a faint, sarcastic smile.
“What you don’t know is that he was the trigger that started the war,” Wesley said, the revelation hanging between them like a shroud.
Ella stared at him, shocked. “What are you talking about?”.
Wesley explained that Elias had been given orders by an enemy spy. In carrying out those orders, the world had gone dark, and men like Sawyer had risen to power in the vacuum. Wesley had been Elias’s commanding officer at the time; they had received their orders from the same man. While Wesley had been hunted and forced to run during the fighting, Elias was in a place that was untouchable. He finally returned home only to find that the world had changed and he was dead.
“He came home to learn that he was proclaimed dead. Killed in Action and yet there were people looking for him,” Wesley recounted. He and Elias had eventually reconnected via a HAM radio and met in Cheyenne, where Wesley explained the full extent of the betrayal.
“What I don’t understand is how he didn’t know about all of this while it was going on?” Ella asked, her mind reeling.
Wesley declined to share the classified details of the mission, focusing instead on the personal cost. “That’s in the past and doesn’t really matter any more. What is important is that he gave up everything important to him when he returned. A wife and a family. All because they thought he was dead. If they ever learned that he was alive, they would be in danger too”.
“He’s a good man,” Ella whispered with profound empathy. “I bet he was a great father”.
Wesley’s expression hardened, his voice becoming a stern warning. “Hey, you need to listen to me… and listen real hard. Elias is no longer a family man. He’s an angry man who can’t even take revenge on the spy who gave him his orders. He lives with that every day”. He reminded Ella that Elias’s only goal was getting her and her daughter to safety. “Put your faith in making a great life for Beth, not in saving Elias”.
As Ella looked out the diner window, she realized that Elias was already miles away, driving a snow plow toward a confrontation at Canyon Village that he didn’t expect to return from. He had saved her family, but in doing so, he had remained a ghost, haunted by the very war he had unintentionally helped to ignite… and he was about to ignite a fuse that could start another one.
Chapter 13: Canyon Village
The silence in Canyon Village was heavier than the four days of snow that had accumulated since Elias left Sparewood. He brought the heavy snow plow Wesley had gifted him to a halt, the engine’s low thrum the only heartbeat in the abandoned settlement. He peered through the frosted windshield, noting that the heavy snow had not been disturbed. He had beaten Sawyer to the prize, but the victory felt hollow in the biting chill of the mountain air.
Stepping out into the waist-deep drifts, Elias didn’t head for the buildings. He moved with the practiced efficiency of a man returning to a familiar nightmare. He stepped to the back of the plow, arming himself heavily with the weapons Wesley had helped him pack. He suspected Sawyer wasn’t far behind; he had already positioned cameras along the road to monitor any approach, their small lenses hidden in the frozen bark of dead pines. Once he reached the center of the settlement, he planted two more cameras, his fingers stiff despite the gloves. He had to work fast.
He trekked toward a specific hillside area, searching for a ghost. He found it: an old marker from years past, nearly swallowed by the thick layers of snow. Elias swung his shovel, clearing away snow and layers of frozen dirt until his blade struck metal. With a grunt of effort, he forced the hatch open and stared down into a dark void. This was the secret Wesley had whispered to him in Sparewood. Elias climbed down a ladder that seemed to descend into the very core of the earth, running down hundreds of feet until his boots hit a concrete floor.
At the base was a short, dark hallway that led to a control room. As he stepped inside, motion detectors lit the room up, revealing the staggering gravity of the installation. Row after row of cold, grey machinery hummed with a dormant power. Elias didn’t stop to marvel; he walked straight to the primary terminal and pressed the spacebar. Eight screens flickered to life, each displaying a massive cylindrical object—missiles—with a different number on each. A secondary display showed a yellow status, indicating they lacked sufficient power.
“Come on,” Elias whispered to the empty room. By activating the terminal, he had triggered a charging sequence; in a matter of hours, the missles would have the power they needed to change the world again. He pulled a hand-written piece of paper from the inside of his coat—Wesley’s instructions—and began to type. His gloves came off quickly, his scarred fingers dancing across the keys as he worked to dismantle the installation before Sawyer could arrive.
He watched the monitors intently until each status bar changed to green, indicating the weapons were disarmed. He was about to finalize the sabotage when his handheld device let out a sharp, rhythmic chirp. He checked the screen: Sawyer’s plow was visible on the perimeter cameras, several men huddled in the back.
“You’re early, Eric,” Elias muttered. He had less than an hour.
He ran across the silo to the primary communication system. Sawyer’s plan, to reprogram the missiles to detonate along the San Andreas fault line, forcing survivors to flee east into the bottleneck of Canyon Village, where he would be waiting as their sole provider and god.
Elias’s fingers flew over the keyboard. He couldn’t just turn them off; Sawyer might have someone who could turn them back on. Instead, he reprogrammed the system to launch but added a devastating override: he maintained the lock on the silo hatches. If the sequence triggered, the missiles would ignite, but with the doors welded shut by his commands, they would incinerate everything inside the silos without exploding on the surface. He set the countdown on his mobile device and bolted down a secondary hallway toward a different silo exit.
He was halfway up the ladder of the distant silo when he heard the heavy thud of the main hatch opening far behind him. Sawyer and two of his men were heading down into the control room.
High above, Elias reached the top of his exit silo. He braced his shoulders against the hatch, pushing with every ounce of strength until it popped loose. He scrambled out into the snow just as his mobile device hit zero.
Deep underground, the silence of the control room was shattered by a mechanical voice announcing the final seconds. Sawyer realized too late what Elias had done. As the launch sequence began, the Mayor’s face twisted in a mask of pure, impotent rage. He screamed out Elias’s name just as the engines ignited.
On the surface, the ground began to heave and shake. Elias took cover as flames shot through the closed silo hatches, the intense heat instantly melting the steel doors and welding them shut. The silos had become a fiery grave for Sawyer and his inner circle. The remaining militia guards along the perimeter, seeing the earth vent fire and realizing their leader was gone, didn’t stay to fight. They rushed back to their plow and fled toward New Cody.
Elias stood in the cooling embers of the hillside, the silence returning to Canyon Village. The threat was neutralized; the missiles, intended as a short-range deterrent against Canada or Mexico, would never be used to shatter the fault lines of the west. He walked back to his plow, his movements slow and weary. He sat in the driver’s seat for a long time, staring at the charred ground. It was a small consolation for the role he had played in the country’s end years earlier.
He looked at the road ahead. He could have gone back to Sparewood, back to the warmth of the diner and the family Ella was trying to build. Instead, he started the engine and turned the plow toward the east. He chose a different path. He went home.
The drive took four hours. To his surprise, when the weathered farmhouse came into view, it was still intact, untouched by the militia or the roaming scavengers. He did a careful security sweep of every room, his boots echoing on the floorboards where he had once killed Sawyer’s scouts. Finally, he made his way down to his underground bunker.
It was exactly as he had left it, a silent tomb of the old world. But as he reached the desk, he saw one thing that was out of place. A half-eaten box of sweet bread. He touched the cardboard, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips as he remembered Beth’s chatter and her child-like soldier’s salute.
He powered up the computers and sent a signal to Wesley, letting his old friend know the job was done. As he checked the perimeter cameras one last time, a movement in the stable caught his eye. He rushed out of the bunker, through the dark hallway, and into the cold air of the barn.
Standing in the center of the stall, his coat shaggy and his breath pluming in the air, was his trusted horse. The animal nuzzled his hand, having managed to find his way home across miles of frozen wasteland. Elias leaned his head against the horse’s neck, the war finally over, even if only for today.
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