Free Knights of the Apocalypse (A Duck & Cover Adventure Post-Apocalyptic Series Book 2) by Benjamin Wallace Page A

working on that.”
    “You can’t save
everyone.” She hated herself for saying it. But wasn’t it the way of the world
now? People would always suffer somewhere. He couldn’t save them all. Every
time he did, things only got worse for them. She realized she could always
leave him. They wouldn’t be looking for her if she wasn’t with him. She could even go home. She could just walk away. But she wouldn’t.
He was too good of a person.
    “Right now I just
want to save us.”
    The town’s polish
faded as they moved farther in. Soiled toilers replaced the carefree strollers
near the gates and Erica could see a clear distinction between those who did
the work and those who enjoyed the benefits of the labor.
    Men and women hid
their faces between sunken shoulders as they worked in storefronts and in the
streets. Their shoulders sagged like the corners of their mouths and they said
little to anyone. Even their clothes were a stark contrast to that of those she
had seen earlier. Soiled and thread-worn, they were held together with scraps
of patches and different colored threads.
    Nowhere was this more
evident than the town square itself. The crowd that had gathered, or possibly
been corralled there, was larger than the one in the marketplace. Filthy men
that stunk of sweat and exhaustion massed at the center of the open area before
an ornate platform. It didn’t have the energy of the marketplace crowd.
Everyone stood silently. They didn’t mill or mingle; they stood facing the
stage, waiting.
    Erica looked around
at the crowd and leaned over to Jerry. “What are we doing here?”
    Jerry shrugged. “The
king told me to come here and volunteer. He wants it to look like I’m with
everyone else.”
    “I don’t like the
look of this. These people look so sad. Well, except her. What the hell is her
problem?”
    “Who?”
    “The one that’s
staring at you.”
    Her looks had
survived the apocalypse without a scratch or scarring or remote disfiguring.
The cold air colored her cheeks red in a way that would make Maybelline envious
and the jet black hair that hung from beneath a wool cap made the color that
much richer. Dark green eyes stared through the crowd at the couple and a full
smile grew across her face. Once the girl saw Jerry looking back, her mouth
dropped open and she pushed her way through the crowd.
    “Oh shit,” Erica said
as she turned away. “You made eye contact.”
    The woman weaved and
ducked through one last part of the crowd. She rushed toward them squealing.
“Jerry! Is it you!”
    With the vast
majority of the world’s population dead or mutated beyond recognition, running
into an acquaintance from before the apocalypse made for an awkward situation.
Family was often embraced at high speed with a running leap that usually ended
poorly for the smaller of the two family members. Once recovered, they would
catch each other up on what had happened since the end of the world. It never
took more than a couple of minutes, because, though events always seemed
harrowing at the time, in the end not much really happened worth sharing.
    Enemies, business
rivals, former bullies and shitty neighbors were also embraced, though less
emphatically and rarely with a leap. Almost universally, grudges were
forgotten, transgressions were forgiven and both parties would stand and marvel
at how fast bad blood could be destroyed by a nuclear holocaust. Finding a
familiar face within the fallout was enough to wipe the slate clean. Often,
these rivals ended up becoming the closest of friends since the relationship
was built on an unsteady foundation of mistrust and contempt. And, since
neither party trusted, or genuinely liked, each other, they were sure to keep a
wary eye on one another.  
    Running into old
friends and vague acquaintances, on the other hand, was almost always
dangerous. Though a person’s natural instinct was to embrace the familiar, few
things remained unchanged when the world ended. Friends were