Chapter 12: The Quiet Harvest Before the Fire
3:27 A.M.
They worked through the night, wordless but not without meaning. The kind of rhythm only born from urgency. Or grief. Or both. Aria couldn't tell anymore. She only knew that Selene never asked why, only what next.
While the world locked its doors and whispered prayers to dead satellites, the two of them moved like specters. Through shuttered storefronts and collapsed bridges, past windows with curtains still swaying from a wind that had gone still days ago. The streets were a memory of motion. A photograph that someone had tried to burn but couldn't quite finish.
They scavenged with a method. Not a frenzy. Every room swept, every step calculated. They never ran. Never lingered. Never revisited. Aria noted that Selene never flinched at the bodies. Only at the mirrors.
Weapons came first — quiet ones. Things you could hide in your sleeve or bury in your coat. Blades with curved handles. Pistols small enough to vanish into a palm. Ammunition of every shape, every caliber. Enough to escape. Not enough to fight back for long.
Selene handed Aria a blade without ceremony. Just held it out like it was nothing. Aria took it and turned it slowly in her hand. The lantern light caught the edge. It gleamed too brightly, like it hadn't earned its dullness yet.
"Like this," Selene said, stepping behind her. Her hand folded over Aria's. Not rough. Not tender. Just exact. "Not like a kitchen knife. Like it's part of your arm."
Aria tried to mimic the grip. The balance. The way Selene held it like muscle memory.
"This feels wrong," she muttered.
"It's supposed to."
Aria frowned. "Where'd you learn that?"
Selene didn't look at her. "You taught me."
They said nothing else.
By sunrise, they shifted their focus. Supplies. Movement. Survival, simplified. Selene led without announcing it, tracing an invisible line across the map of a ruined city that still tried to look like it belonged to someone. Storage lockers hidden behind crumbling yoga studios. Steel - walled cabinets at the backs of fire stations. Supply stashes in the flooded basements of defunct malls. One bunker tucked behind a bookstore, accessible only by breaking the spine of a bookshelf labeled "Self - Help."
They found an abandoned farmers market with hand - painted murals along the outer wall. Yellow sunflowers curled into cracked smiles above a slogan: Grow What Matters. The paint was flaking in long strips.
Selene stared at it longer than she should've.
Aria wiped sweat from her neck and dropped a box of powdered rations onto the pavement. "You okay?"
Selene didn't blink. "I hate this place."
"Why?"
"I don't remember."
Aria thought about asking more. She didn't.
By late morning, they found the RV.
It sat hunched beneath a collapsed billboard promising clean air and faster commutes. The air was neither. The commutes had stopped. The tires were still full, the paint sun - bleached to a colorless gray. Keys in the visor, like some ghost had left them behind on purpose.
Selene twisted the ignition. The engine growled, then purred. It hadn't been dead. Just waiting.
"Why not stay in a house?" Aria asked, brushing dust from the dashboard.
"Too easy to trap."
Selene paused, hands still on the wheel. Her voice dropped. "They'll start experimenting again. When the safe zones fall."
Aria's chest went tight. "Who will?"
Selene didn't answer. But her knuckles whitened against the leather.
The RV rattled as they drove. The city blurred past. Trees grew where sidewalks used to be. The sky kept threatening rain that never came.
Evening crept in like a question. The clouds looked heavier now. Closer.
They found the yacht just before dusk.
It was docked at a private pier that had somehow escaped looting. The vessel gleamed under the broken sky, pristine in a way that felt unnatural. Not untouched — preserved. The ash in the air made it look like it belonged to a different season, a different world. One that still believed in vacations and open water.
Aria watched the lake lap gently against the hull. It looked peaceful. She didn't trust it.
Selene boarded first. She moved with sharp precision, checking the vessel inch by inch. Her silence wasn't cold. It was heavy. Like she carried names she hadn't spoken in years.
"We can't save everyone," she said finally, still inside.
Aria stood at the edge of the dock, watching the sky turn black around the edges. Lightning spidered faintly in the distance.
"I don't want to be someone who only saves herself," she murmured.
"You weren't."
Aria turned toward the voice. "What?"
But Selene was already moving again. "Nothing."
They packed the RV under a bruised moon, fast and without conversation. Every item was cataloged, every ounce of space accounted for. Aria felt something shift inside her as she reached into the storage space she shouldn't be able to access. It welcomed her like it knew her name.
Gasoline. Medical kits. A collapsible generator. Two extra pairs of boots, too large for either of them. Dozens of seed packets labeled in fading ink: basil, kale, black corn, bleeding heart.
Each addition made the pressure in her chest mount. The storage cracked wider. Like her bones were learning to hold more than just her.
With the last crate, Aria stumbled. Selene stepped forward to catch her — but stopped just short. Her hand hovered in the air, fingers twitching, uncertain. Then withdrew.
Aria leaned back against the RV, breathing hard. "It's getting heavier."
"Because it's real now."
"It hurts."
"Good," Selene said, steady as ever. "That means you'll remember."
They drove until the roads gave out, until the signals disappeared, until the silence was no longer unsettling but absolute. They parked behind a gas station swallowed by weeds. One pump still blinked green like it hadn't noticed the end of the world.
No lights. No echoes. No movement but their own.
Aria curled onto the bench seat in the back, wrapped in a wool blanket that still smelled faintly of fire. Her eyes didn't close. They just dimmed. The quiet didn't comfort her. It pressed in.
Selene stayed up.
She sat by the shattered window, one boot braced against the floor, one arm resting against the seat. Her breath fogged the glass. The only sound was the hiss of wind through rusted signs and the hum of a power grid trying, failing, to wake up again.
She looked at Aria.
Still. Curled like something trying not to break.
Selene's throat tightened.
Not this time, she thought. Not again. I'll give her more. I'll give her everything.
Even if the cost is fire.
Even if the fire is me.
She watched the stars disappear behind a slow - moving cloud. Watched the moon turn blood - bright for a second, then blink out.
And waited for morning.