The two-lane blacktop was a faded gray scar through the choking green of the new world. It stretched, cracked and weed-choked, towards a hazy horizon under a sickly yellow sky. The only sounds were the whisper of the wind through dead grass and the scuttling of things best left unseen in the drainage ditches.

Lyra moved down the center line, her boots kicking up little puffs of ancient dust. One hand rested on the sling of her crossbow, the other hung loose and ready at her side. Her eyes, a flat and weary green, never stopped moving. They scanned the tree line, the rusted skeletons of Old World cars, the windows of a derelict gas station up ahead. Trust was a currency that had gone extinct years ago. Vigilance was the only thing that bought you another sunrise.

She was heading north, following a rumor so thin it was barely a breath on the wind. A place the scavs at the last trading post called "The Aerie." A supposed stronghold, high up, where the air was still clean. She didn't believe it, not really. Hope was a dangerous infection. But it was a direction, and in a world with none, that was enough.

A sudden, unnatural silence fell. The scuttling in the ditches stopped. Lyra froze, her body going taut. Her crossbow was in her hands in a single, fluid motion, the stock pressed against her shoulder. She didn't breathe. She listened.

There. A wet, clicking sound. Then a guttural rasp, like air being forced through a punctured lung.

Screacher.

It wasn't alone. The rasp was answered by another, farther down the road, near the gas station. A hunting pair. Her mind worked coldly, calculating distances, angles of attack, routes of escape. The open road was a death sentence. The gas station was a trap. The ditches were probably full of them.

She backed up slowly, keeping her weapon trained on the tree line where the first sound had originated. Her heart was a hammer against her ribs, but her hands were steady. This was the only language the world spoke anymore. She understood it perfectly.