Burned Lands, Tome 1: Nobody's Hero

ONE

Wastelands, 2147

THE SUN POOLED red on the horizon, the last spears of sunlight slashing across the sky, and then fading. Night was coming, and with it the need to be home. Before the monsters came out to play.

Riley slid down over the rock, easing her body cautiously onto the ledge below. In the distance, a last glimmer of light reflected off something shiny across the desert floor. It could have been merely a shard of glass half-smashed out of some old rust bucket that no longer ran, but Riley didn’t think so. Once a graveyard of cars, most of them had been hauled away for spare parts, or scrap by the roaming bands of reivers.

The only things out here now were cactus, hop sage, and tumbleweed. And the sand. Always the bloody sand.

“What is it?” Jimmy whispered, peering over the edge of the tor.

Riley frowned into the distance, her spyglass in hand. Gauging the distance carefully, she leapt across a gaping chasm in the rock and landed on the very edge of the plateau. Without anything to block her view, the Wastelands stretched before her endlessly, filling the world from horizon to horizon. Her father once said there were cities on the other side of the Great Divide that split the continent, but Riley couldn't imagine it. Living out here in the barren Wastelands, in their guarded little settlement, was the only life she’d ever known.

Peering through the spyglass, her vision catapulted forward. She soon found the cause of the reflection—an old jeep, fitted with a gun turret, a pair of vigilantes riding in the tray. Heavily armored in salvaged scrap, and covered in scarred tattoos, the pair looked hard and mean. Riley swore under her breath. “Damn it.”

“What?” Jimmy asked from above. “Wargs? Reivers?” Pebbles rained down over her as he shifted nervously.

“Reivers,” she confirmed, scanning the desert floor. Her heart started to pound as she swept the spyglass over the canyon below. They were heading east. Toward Haven. Her sanctuary was the only settlement out this far, and the only reason for the vultures to risk the dangerous canyon track.

Riley froze as movement flickered through the lens of the spyglass. She jerked it back, disbelief flooding her with a sickening feeling as another pair of jeeps swept into view. With gasoline sources getting low, it was rare for so many vehicles to be out this far.

Unless they were planning on hitting the settlement.

Hard.

Maybe they knew about the gasoline shipment that Haven had just received from the Eastern Confederacy?

“Shit.” She waited long enough to count the men – thirteen – before jerking her head up.

Jimmy’s pale face came into view, his eyes wide. “Scouting party?”

Riley shook her head grimly. She’d known this day would come. This side of the Great Divide, resources were becoming few and far between. Every month of radio vigilance brought fewer settlements checking in; the previous month, the settlement of New Hope, just forty miles north, had been hit. Since then, there’d been no word from Tom and Jenny, or the rest of the settlers she’d come to know over the radio.

The kid’s face paled further. “It’s crazy hitting the settlement at night, what with the wargs out there.”

“We’re talking about reivers. Sanity’s not really a priority when it comes to membership. Come on.” She tucked the spyglass in her leather bag and slung it over her shoulder. “We’ve got to get back to the jeep and warn them.” As Jimmy made to dash after her, she jerked her hand. “Don’t forget the rocs.”

The reason they’d been out there. Much-needed food. Not even the threat of reivers could make her forget the brace of dead birds they’d spent the day scaling the cliffs to catch.