Her body heat’s gone!

Ray jolted awake. Where is Samantha? He scrambled from bed, eyes quickly attuning to the dark. His wife snored below a mishmash network of antiquated lead pipes, interwoven to form a makeshift barrier against the radiation. Their enemy paid little attention to the borderlands nearest the nuclear desolation; humans couldn’t survive inside the irradiated wastelands for long.

He spread his senses out: noises of his sleeping eight-year-old son in the next room. Little Samantha wasn’t upstairs where she belonged. He needed to find her, though he knew she probably stood in front of the microwave.

As soon as Ray’s feet touched the cold, wood floor, a crash echoed in the main level of the farmhouse they’d commandeered. His arms snatched the sawed-off shotguns he always kept near. He snapped on the utility belt that held his extra shells and Geiger counter.

Heart pounding, Ray crept downstairs. Samantha knew enough not to make noises like that, and Deathsquads never made those sorts of errors. Cyborgs made few mistakes.

Creeping through shadow, Ray spotted two mangy human intruders, half-starved and as unkempt as John the Baptist. Ray whistled and they spun to find a short barrel in each of their faces.

“Whoa, there, friend,” the taller one offered. “I’m Jimmy-boy. This here’s Wizard.”

Ray returned a steely stare.

“Wizard, like from Oz. His name’s Osbourne.”

Eyeing the wild-eyed, shorter one, Ray demanded, “Get out of my house.”

“Sorry t’intrude,” Jimmy nodded, as if tipping an imaginary hat. “We had no idea this place was occupied.”

Wizard glared back at Ray, a deranged glint lit behind his eyes.

“We’ll be on our way then… Wizard. Wizard?”

Ray’s finger twitched against the trigger.

“Hello, little one. What’s your name?” Wizard asked, suddenly shifting his demeanor, crouching to one knee. Ray’s gun followed him the whole way.

Ray didn’t glance back. “Samantha. Get out of here. Go now.”

“Oh, wait,” Wizard said, words warm and friendly. “You’ve got popcorn! I love popcorn.”

Samantha, only four years old, clutched an old bag of unpopped kernels. “I can’t get the microwave to work, Daddy.”

“Samantha…”

“I can’t get them to pop.” She was still sleepy. She frequently sleepwalked since the first nukes dropped a year ago, when the cyborgs seized control. They’d fled their suburban home during family movie night. Their lives had been forever shattered.

“Popcorn’s my favorite,” Wizard continued. “My mommy used to say it’s not the microwave that makes ’em pop. It’s the love between two people. We always shared some when I was little.”

Something changed in Wizard’s eyes. Ray almost believed him, then he caught an evil twinkle as the vagrant’s hands slipped inside his pocket.

“Run!” Ray screamed to his daughter, smashing the deadly barrel into the intruder’s faces. He heard her feet scamper away.

“Just take it easy,” Jimmy said, as the hazy morning-light crept in the window. “We’ll be on our way. We meant no harm.”

Sweat beaded Ray’s brow. “Not so fast. Outside, right now!” He waggled a gun to express his sincerity.

Forcing his hostages to strip shirtless and pantless, Ray barked orders under a red morning sky and hot wind. “Turn those pockets inside out.”

“Please, let us go.” Jimmy verged on tears. Wizard’s face set like concrete.

“Do it!” Ray threatened. “So help me, I’ve seen everyone and everything I love annihilated by those soulless monsters! Don’t think I won’t pull this trigger! Now empty those pockets.”

Jimmy quickly complied. He’d brought nothing.

Wizard didn’t move.

“I will shoot you.”

“No.” His cold, gray eyes challenged Ray more than words could.

“No?”

Wizard leaned aside and waved to Samantha. “Are you soulless as well? You’d murder me in front of your little girl? I think not.”

Two simultaneous reports exploded, scattering pieces of the intruders’ heads across the yard. “Wrong answer, Wizard,” Ray lamented over the gun smoke as he crouched to search pockets. “Soulless, never. But humanity ain’t what it was a year ago.”

Rummaging through Wizard’s pockets, Ray retrieved a flashing, electronic beacon. “Oh, no,” he whispered, even as the shrill whine of a sky drone filled his ears. His heart sank, his fears confirmed. The trespassers were Blood Hounds; human traitors employed to sell out their own kind.

Ray fled, scooping up his little girl even as the hazy sky began falling, bleeding acid rain. Hot rivulets, burning like salty wounds, concealed Ray’s tears as he dashed past a rusted and blackened grain elevator.

The airborne drone belched a ground-roving Deathsquad even as it hovered above, firing missiles. Rockets streaked into the house. Flames erupted nearly as high as the aerial; the families’ home was disintegrated once again.

Ray winced at the explosion. He knew his wife and son lay dead or dying; Samantha screamed in terror. Holding her close, Ray sprinted toward the charred woods, hoping a radioactive storm wouldn’t push their way. The Deathsquad would find them soon, unless they risked the fallout sector.

Flipping his Geiger counter on, Ray pushed into the dead forest, glancing back at the dilapidated farm buildings that suffered various degrees of damage from the caustic winds. The Deathsquad roved far behind and Ray pushed headlong into the hot zone. Only dark thoughts and his whimpering daughter giving him reason to live.

I’m not soulless! Ray looked down at Samantha; his heart threatened to burst with pain and love. The emotions reassured him that his soul was right. Hope those things have souls, too! He wanted to see them burn in eventual hellfire. The Devil take you!

His Geiger counter ticked a steady cadence, then sped up. It clicked dangerously fast, mirroring Ray’s heartbeat. Then it died, trailing off, old batteries failing.

Ray slowed and stopped, sinking to his knees. He squeezed Samantha in a tight hug. Then the ticking started again. No, not the Geiger counter. The popcorn began popping inside Samantha’s bag.

“Look, Daddy!”

“I know, sweetie.” Ray breathed heavily. “In just a few seconds, we can show Mommy.”

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