Free Fireside by Brian Parker Page A

days without luck. They never found his body and assumed that he’d become the victim of some creature in the wasteland that drug him off to its lair.
    “He returned to San Angelo almost twenty years later,” Aiden continued solemnly. “Using his knowledge of the town’s defenses, he sabotaged the walls and led an attack that destroyed our city.”
    “Was that when Aeric moved here?”
    Aiden’s eyes glazed over as he stared off into the room behind the girl. “No, Aeric didn’t survive the battle for the city. It was… You know what? Let me tell you the entire story, it will make more sense for you that way. I was ten when San Angelo’s wall fell and the Vultures burned it to the ground.”
    “You lived there?” she asked.
    “Yes. It was a beautiful city. Most of the buildings were just the way they were before the war, not the ruins that the other places had become. Then, one day, the Vultures arrived and changed everything.”
    *****
    “Ah, my back is at it again,” Aeric protested as he stood up from the table pressing both hands into his lower back.
    “You’ve spent your entire life working hard for our family. I’m surprised that you haven’t already fallen apart,” Veronica chided while she walked up behind him and slid her hand under his shirt. Her fingers curled playfully in the tangle of salt-and-pepper gray hair on his stomach. “You’ve got to take it easy, you’re not a young man anymore,”
    Aeric reached behind him and held her close while he turned gingerly to face her. “I’m still young,” he mumbled. “Go to the bedroom and I’ll show you!”
    She giggled like a teenager and snuggled into his embrace. Then the front door opened and their oldest son, Mason, came in.
    “Oh geez, are you two at it again? You have grandchildren for heaven’s sake.”
    “Good morning, son,” Aeric muttered forlornly as his wife separated from him, going over to embrace the man that their oldest child had become.
    “Morning, Dad. I thought we had an appointment to go inspect the walls this morning.”
    “We do. Just because we’re hugging each other doesn’t mean anything.”
    “Do you need me to come back in thirty minutes?”
    “Yes,” Aeric said.
    “No,” his wife overruled. “You two go out and make sure no more of those nasty animals get inside the perimeter.”
    The animals that she referred to were known as demonbrocs to the San Angelians. The first known sighting of one of them had been by Tyler Nordgren on the mission when they found the engineer, Ted Winston. He’d seen a large badger-like animal chasing a pack of dogs. The creatures had continued to mutate and evolve in the thirty-five years since then.
    Now, they more closely resembled some sick, twisted artist’s version of a hellspawn than what a badger looked like before the war. The radiation had been the catalyst for the mutations and then evolution took over to help the creatures become some of the meanest sonsabitches in the wastes. Lately, there’d been several incursions through the walls by the animals, and they’d killed a score of the city’s residents. No one knew how—or why—they were coming inside the walls. However, before they could go out into the wastes to investigate further, they needed to ensure that the walls were secure from any more incursions.
    “Fine,” Aeric said with a final peck on his wife’s cheek. Then he asked Mason, “How’s the ash today?”
    “It’s good. Sun’s already made an appearance.”
    The environment had slowly been making a comeback in the last twenty years. They were able to grow crops to sustain the five thousand remaining people in San Angelo. A rash of diseases had halved the population about a year after Kendrick was born. Then, malnutrition and a few other epidemics had further reduced the population over the years until the sun finally began to peek through the clouds of ash, allowing them to plant crops for food. There weren’t many people left