She ran along the city skyline, running, leaving. She was leaving her home, her family, the only stability in her life, but also leaving the masses of people who were coming, demanding, demanding shelter, demanding an explanation. Some didn’t even know what they wanted, but they wanted someone to do something. From what she’d learned from the past years of living in the fort, and from her own common-sense view of the world, They would come to where the scent of people was strongest. Knowing that she was saving her own life didn’t make leaving easier, and tears stained her face as she continued running, leaping from building to building.

Everything that she could take was in her backpack: three water bottles, five granola bars, a blanket, a hairbrush, a small first-aid-kit, a book, a knife that she’d grabbed from the kitchen on her way out. In the back of her mind, she knew that it wouldn’t be enough, but she’d had no time to get what she’d really needed; there was no time to make a sandwich when the fort was overcrowded with people.

She leapt to the fire escape of the apartment complex and started climbing. She wasn’t sure how safe her plan was, but it was better than staying, or worse, leaving, leaving in one of the trucks that was carrying the dead, where, she didn’t want to know. Reaching the roof, she sat down, pulled a granola bar and her book out of her backpack, and started reading, trying to escape from reality, because reality was too complicated to even think about right now.