Eastern Los Angeles is dark and empty; the few pedestrians who haven't found shelter from the pouring rain are either homeless or are incapable of going anywhere. The dead rusted hulk of a car provides protection for a man who looks far older than he is. Covered in dirty blankets and old newspapers he's making the best of the direst of situations in the backseat of the vehicle with his hand wrapped around the handle of the knife at his side. Having lived as long as he can remember in this environment he feels no pity for the man whose blood still stains the upholstery under him, nor does he feel contempt against the drifters outside waiting for their chance to rid the car of its new occupant. The rain drips against the steel roof in a hypnotic rhythm that Donald fears will send him to sleep too soon, before the patrols start. Once the patrols start showing up it's safe, before that it's putting your life at risk to just close your eyes out on the streets. People are reduced to being animals in the bad whether, and it will be worse come winter. Shifting his weight off his thigh Donald rolls over to his side trying to get as comfortable as possible. The backseat isn't wide enough and his head is resting upright. His neck will be stiff tomorrow but it beats freezing to death on a curve.

A spotlight flashes through the wind shield and sends shadows playing in the car, a patrol has just arrived in the neighbourhood, soon it will be followed by more and Donald can finally get some sleep, there's no-one who dares to cause trouble when there are patrol cars around except for the crazies. Looking into the beat-up leather on the back of the passenger seat vague memories of a car ride comes flashing back, a hot summer day with him in the backseat and two more in the front. They talk to him in nervous tones, they tell him to keep his head down and to not look out the windows. Screams and gunshots outside, he hugs the seat tighter and the person in the passenger seat turns to him. It's a female, she tries to calm him, and she tells him everything will be all right. Then she screams and everything turns bright white, so bright it burns in Donald’s eyes and he shuts them hard and doesn't open them until the screaming stops. But when he opens them it's a different car, and it's not summer. He's alone again and the dirty blanket around him smells from urine and puke, as does the car. Another patrol goes by and far off in the distance someone screams and yells. The rain stops and Donald falls asleep.

Morning comes without the sun. The cloud cover is too thick and the sun shows itself rarely and when it does it brings on a new outbreak of skin cancer. In a dark and damp back alley between cardboard homes and shopping carts of the homeless men's belongings Donald opens his eyes and shivers in the morning cold. The seats are damp from the night's cold and the windows have fogged. There's not a creature stirring in the alley, even the cockroaches are not awake yet. A car door opening creates no effect and neither does the lone figure emerging from the sad wreckage of a once white Toyota. Donald gathers his belongings such as they are from the inside of the car and swings his backpack across his shoulder. By the end of the alley a lone figure sits against the wall without moving. As Donald passes him, the man tips over and falls dead to the ground. Freezing to death is common, each night hundreds of bodies turn up. Sometimes thousands. Donald has seen it often before yet something in his gut stirs menacingly as he passes the body.

Far outside the limits of what used to be the largest city on the west coast of Northern America, where the highways used to rule lies now abandoned deserts as far as one can see. All but one road in and out are closed and cars seldom travel it. It's the end of civilization such as it is as far as Donald is concerned as he sits on a rock far up on a cliff overlooking the former net of highways. This is where he goes when he needs to think, and sometimes not to think. Breaking through the majestic cement skeletons is a recent addition to the LA skyline. An eight hundred feet long sleek metal hulk with long trails in the ground has crashed directly into the supports under the highways. The faded paint on the outer hull is chipped and the bright white letters no longer bear the same contrast as it would to the rest of the ship, but it still reads; ”The UNSS Pacific”, though the A is barely readable. Gun turrets and battery lines still shoot out from their placements in the hull, still aligned to some target long since gone from some battle long since lost. The once-mighty but now derelict warship has been cleared of explosives and shells, the reactor removed and now it is a dead shell, a husk, a monument to humanity's final hour, and a favourite playground of the few local children who still live. They climb up on the embankments of the forward sections and play games, push each other down and laugh at those to young to climb up. The older children climb up in the old gun turrets and sits on the barrels, swinging their legs derisively at those below them, and the even older have climbed as high as the radar dishes behind the antenna arrays. Sometimes they go exploring inside, but only in groups. Donald was once like them, and he remembered his pride when he first climbed a gun turret. Now all his days are spent on finding a place to eat and sleep, the shelters only let him have one meal and no sleeping place since his fifteenth birthday, and the car will not be his anymore come nightfall, lest he fights for it. His knife is in his belt, but the scar above his left eyebrow still hurts from last month and in retrospect the prospect of losing an eye did not seem worth a box of crackers, even though they had been very tasty. A low screeching noise puts a stop to the racket the children makes and Donald looks up at the sky. The dark clouds move in swirling movements, affected by strong local winds, and the roaring from above tells Donald that something is moving up there. It's been weeks since he saw one, but this one doesn't seem like it's heading down below the clouds. There would be no need, no major fighting has erupted lately; the past month has been quiet. The patrols have made few arrests and very few shootings have been heard. He is not sure if it has always been the same ship up there. From what he remembers they all look alike and whatever name is written on the side he can't recognize. In any case it hardly matters any more.

More rain fell in the afternoon. The city's drainage system didn't work too well anymore and the near constant rainfall caused streets to be covered in water and dead rats, other critters and sometimes people would be swept along the streams that gathered in the low streets. Already people were heading for cover, the rain is no longer as deadly as it were during the years after the attack, but fear of acid rain still bears weight and anxious mothers and fathers barely let their children an inch outside the house should a single drop of water fall. Their over-anxiety was well-founded of course; Donald had seen what happened to children who were left outside to play in the rain many years ago. A small limp body with the entire right side hollowed out and half a skull missing flashed before Donald's eyes. The mother had cradled the charred smoking piece of twisted flesh and bone and tried to comfort it as if the child was still alive, the father had simply returned to the house and screamed for hours before he shot himself. Fuelled by these memories Donald ran a bit faster to the nearest roof. An empty bus stop appealed to him and he pressed himself against a commercial poster inside the small rain shelter. The ad was for a new kind of toothpaste. ”Better breath, healthier gums and 100% guaranteed whiter teeth or your money back!” the advertisement promised in bold text above the large picture of the blond woman with the alluringly white smile and hint in her eyes. Her skin was faded and the poster had crumpled in wavy patterns from the moisture but she kept smiling, her eyes staring far away at the large twisted metal structures, what little remains of what used to be Downtown Los Angeles. Donald looked at her and wondered if the woman had been killed. Probability said she had, if not in the attack then in the aftermath. Not many people had survived both.

The rain calmed down and Donald made his way down the streets and back alleys of what had been his home for as long as he could remember. Old abandoned storefronts with empty and broken windows are scattered in between the apartment buildings, most of them don't have running water, very few have electricity and people are killed every day over living accommodations. It is safer on the streets. Thankfully, the shelter is still open. Sometimes they close it when it rains too hard for fear of the roof caving in. Donald walks in and waits dutifully at the end of the line. He gets his piece of bread and mug of soup, as well as a ration of anti-radiation meds. The bread he stuffed down his backpack and took the box with the needle in it under his arm and headed out for the street again. Somewhere far off thunder was rolling across the hills, hopefully not heading this way. Watching carefully for thieves and crazies he headed for the Laundromat at the corner.

Outside the Laundromat sits several depressing figures, some moving, some not. Some were conversing, complaining about different aches, some haven't spoken in years. One in particular is of interest to Donald as he steers towards the sad frontline in front of the small shop. He sat down in the middle of the line to an old man with a thick beard who was mumbling to himself.

”Hi Julian.” The man looked over to him but said nothing.

”I brought you some soup.” Donald handed over the styrofoam cup and the man greedily snatched it to him like a child would. He peered inside then drank the whole mug in one swig.

”Thank you.” His beard was wet from drops and chunks of meat from the soup. ”Who are you?” Donald smiled.

”It doesn't matter.” He had come here everyday for three years now. At first he and Julian had talked for hours every day, but now the radiation had eaten too far into his brain and he only remembered his own name on good days. He stayed with him for a short while then walked into the Laundromat and handed the med kit to the man who ran the shop as a shelter for those the regular shelters deemed lost cases. On the way out he said goodbye to Julian, who looked at him with unfamiliarity spread across his face and grabbed his few belongings tight, as if Donald were a ravenous dog looking for fresh meat.

On one of the many lone and dark back streets that have cropped up garbage cans pile up quickly. Mountains of unfound treasures wait for those who seek and the small figure is elbow-deep in trash already. It's his second night here and so far he's found bounty of unprecedented proportions. An old car battery, some shoes that were only one size too large and a half-empty can of spam that had sustained him last night are only some of the amazing gifts this rich vein of disposables had revealed. And so it was with great hope that the young boy had dived in and was now digging through a shoebox, which unfortunately contained nothing but a dead cat. But a smaller box next to it nestled among some old clothes showed all kinds of promises and his slinky fingers formed a vice-like grip around the box and pulled it out. The box was hard plastic and with a small red cross on the top. The paper seal around it was unbroken, his heartbeat went up several notches when he opened the lid and in doing so ripped the paper band. Inside were two small vials of a clear liquid, and three needles. He had tried not to get his hopes up but an anti-radiation pack was more than he could have ever hoped for even in his wildest dreams. This would fetch a great price, enough for him to stay at the shelter for weeks.

A rattle somewhere down the street scared him and he tried to hide the box inside his jacket but dropped a vial. As it smashed against the street he cried out, ”No!” and knelt down next to the broken glass and put the box next to him. A figure down the street made a noise and he looked up, a man in a long coat and wild beard came walking down the alley towards him.

Knowing better than to fight over even a treasure site as valuable as this one he ran.

Donald jogged after him and stopped when he saw the box, he opened it and saw the three needles and two vials. He picked it up and looked to the corner where the young boy stood frozen, wondering whether or not to run or try to get the anti-rad box back. When Donald looked up however, he ran.

”No, wait! We can share!” He got up and ran after with the box in hand, he rounded the corner but the boy was gone.

”We can... share...” He sighed heavily and sat down. The box did not look as though it had been tampered with, except for the missing vial and the ripped seal that lay in the fresh puddle on the street. Tying the box up with string he put it in his jacket pocket for safekeeping. For a few minutes he half-heartedly patrolled the streets looking for the boy but gave up quickly. Night was coming soon and a place to sleep was priority number one once more. By the entrance to a small deli by the end of the road a group of five or so had made sleeping arrangements and they deemed there was enough room for Donald there. Wrapping himself in his blanket still damp from the night in the car he lay squashed in against the corner, watching the rainfall for several hours. While watching the rain he tried to conjure up images of how the city used to look before the attack. He had no clear memory of what the city had looked like, nor did he recall and specific locations or people he could connect with LA until way after the attacks. He couldn't sure but he was fairly sure he hadn't lived here before then. Moving as carefully as possible so to not rouse anyone from their sleep he opened his backpack and got out a postcard. It was folded several times and worn in the edges. He'd been carrying it for a long time. There was no message on the back but the front depicted a coastal city, with tall skyscrapers and several bridges. In the foreground stood a large dirty-green statue of a woman with a torch in her hand and a crown in her hair and just to the right of her face was printed large bold letters that said; ”I heart NYC”. This postcard was one of the few things he had managed to cling onto for all these years, and although he still didn't recall any particular images or memories from that view he felt closer to it than the skyline of former Los Angeles. Perhaps he had lived there and moved here very shortly before the attack. He wished he could remember. Not that it really mattered.

”Morning Marla.”

”Morning Donald.” The young girl scooted to the side and Donald slid down next to her. They were huddled together with some other young boys and girls in a semicircle around a fire in a backyard somewhere. Some of the boys were Donald's age but most were not older than fifteen. The one small blessing that still existed to a certain extent, he thought, was that children were still allowed to be children, at least those that the shelters accepted, like himself. When they turned fifteen they had kicked him and all his friends out. Most of them had not adapted well and he saw them everyday, drinking or doing drugs or dying away from the radiation. Some had turned to prostitution almost immediately after leaving the shelter, boys and girls alike, and some had done like him, they had started fighting for their lives each and every day. Many had not made it. As he surveyed the small group he wondered how many years these kids would continue to help each other like this, and how many would eventually turn to the bottle or needle or petty theft, or start selling their bodies just to live each day.

”Happy birthday by the way.” An attempt at cheerfulness. It didn't suit him.

”Yeah, thanks.” She didn't smile and her voice was cold and empty. Her fifteenth birthday had most likely been spent much like his; A celebration without gifts, a hearty song by the staff at the shelter, a good-luck pat on the head and doors closing behind her. His first few days had bought him a deep cut to his left arm that still hurt him in colder whether.

”I'm sorry I wasn't there to meet you, I know I promised you but I forgot until yesterday.”

”That's okay. I forgot you'd promised until just now.” She hadn't looked at him since he got there, she just stared into the fire.

”Any of the boys giving you trouble?” Someone a few seats down was eavesdropping and started to shift nervously. Marla waited a short while before she answered.

”Not more so than the other girls.” He hesitated but left it at that.

”Have you noticed no-one cries anymore?” The question was rhetorical, of course he'd noticed.

”Yes.”

”Do you think it's because of the attack? Because of the stuff?”

”I don't know, maybe. Or maybe it's just that people finished crying a while ago.” Donald finished and looked up at the sky. They were both sitting cross-legged at the cliff he had visited the day before (or maybe it was two days, Donald wasn't sure) and many times before, looking down on the children playing on the Pacific. Marla still hadn't said much and her question had been the first full sentence since they'd left the street. The wind was strong coming from the north today and the cloud cover rolled over their heads.

”I can't remember your name.” He smiled at the embarrassed tone in the question.

”It's Donald.”

”Right. Sorry.”

”That's alright. Happens all the time.” He'd forgotten her name many times himself, and he'd even forgotten her birthday, something he'd promised many times over he wouldn't. Down there the shouts and cries of excitement from playing children echoed against the cliff wall. He reached into his backpack and brought up the postcard again. Looking at it against the light from the occasional ray of sunlight that penetrated the cloud cover Donald tried to trace the lines that ran across the surface from being folded and put into pockets. Marla watched him play with his fingers with the small piece of paper and asked him:

”What's that?” Donald didn't answer right away but looked at it while figuring out a good response.

”It's a photo of a city.”

”Yes thank you, I can see that. What city?”

”I don't know. But I have this feeling I used to live there.” Marla looked shocked.

”You remember from before the attacks?”

”No, not exactly. Only bits and pieces.” He tried to remember and a picture of a man much taller than him at the time talking with a woman in a kitchen somewhere. They were running around gathering items from drawers and cupboards while talking in quivering voices. The man was talking about bombs; he said the radio said the attack hadn't hit California as badly.

”I think we came here to escape the attacks.” While he pondered this he kept looking at the postcard and the letters in the corner. As if she could read his mind Marla said:

”What kinda of a name for a city is Nyc?”

People who have not lived through cataclysmic events, such as a loved one dying or a heart attack always say that they cannot imagine what it must feel like. They are lying. We can all imagine what if feels like, it haunts us in our nightmares, all mother's greatest fear is to lose their child to one of the many dangers in the world just as the sixty year old banker wakes up each night and for a paralysing moment thinks he can't feel his left arm. It is for that very reason that people say they don't think about these things, to protect their innermost fears from public viewing. Donald wasn't sure he had any fears any more. He used to be scared of the dark and of whom might lurk in it when he was first kicked out from the shelter but he isn't any more, if he ever had anyone he feared losing they had already been lost. Marla was dear to him but he had lost so many of his friends he didn't fear her death because he knew it would come soon. Few children survived past twenty, which meant he himself might be kicking it before too long, but he told himself he didn't fear his own mortality either, the radiation had caused him and almost everyone else constant pain and he had few memories he felt were worth fighting for. But he intended to keep fighting until his day came, even though it might mean a more drawn-out and more painful death. A strong northern wind hit him in the face and tugged at his dirty hair and threw Marla's long blonde hair into his face. She was curled up in his arms and had fallen asleep, he had wrapped his jacket around her to keep her warm. The wind grew stronger and the clouds began to move, revealing above it the belly of the mighty ship that always hovered above the city. He felt Marla start to move and she looked up at him.

”It's cold.”

”I know, let's go.” Groggily she got on her feet and followed him down to the city again.

Patrols were rolling across the hills towards the east and they arrived in the streets just as the first car rolled past, they froze and reach up their hands when the searchlight spotted them like ants in the sunrays from a magnifying glass. It scanned their ID markers and then kept on going. They found an open apartment door and curled up close together in the staircase that smelled of urine and vomit. He felt content with himself for the first time in a long while when he felt her hand close around his and hold it tight as they fell asleep.

In the morning she was gone. He squeezed his hand, expecting to feel hers still there. The staircase was not so empty now, others who had spent the night there were watching him where he sat and he reached quickly for his back pocket in a gesture that is commonly interpreted as; 'I have a weapon.' When those who had watched him with hungry eyes looked away nonchalantly he quickly gathered his things and walked down the stairs with his grip around the handle of the knife. Outside on the street things were quiet as usual but there was something different in the air. A denseness that wasn't there yesterday. As he walked down the road to the shelter he noticed a very thin stream of people with their heads bowed down heading the opposite way. Donald turned a corner and saw a small circle of people in the middle of the street and when he got closer he spotted the body. With a sinking feeling he ran up and made a clearing in the circle and looked down on the body. His stomach was still tied in a knot when he saw the face.

It wasn't Marla. It was the little boy who had run away from Donald when he took his anti-radiation kit some days before. A knife looked oddly out of place in the small hand that gripped the handle. He wasn't any older than thirteen and a small puddle of crimson red dried blood centered out from under him from where he had gotten stabbed. Some crazy drunk or drug addict or radiation-sick man or woman had taken the knife to his face when he had fallen and it was hard to recognize the torn up mass of flesh as a person. His right ear was missing, and a tuft of his blond hair was stuck in the fleshy wound that was left in its place. Donald sincerely hoped he had died quickly. As a patrol car rounded the corner the group dispersed in a hurry, Donald did the same and started looking for Marla.

He had seen kids who were younger than that boy killed before, and some of them had had horrible things done to them before they were dead, but most of them he'd only seen once they were dead. This boy he'd seen alive, breathing and running and the image wouldn't leave him alone. He saw the kid run away from him, as if it were him that wanted to hack him to death. God he hoped whoever killed had the decency to kill him off properly before he went to town on his face. He wished for the radiation to wipe out this memory quickly. Then again, he could have seen much worse before and forgotten. He could have even done it to the boy himself and now his mind had wiped out the deed. Many of the older geezers acted crazy from the radiation but there were some as young as him who would throw into violent attacks when they'd claw away at anything and anyone, including themselves in hallucinations so vivid not even the pain of slicing off their own flesh would bring them out of it. Then they'd snap out of it and have no memory of it. Maybe that's why Marla had left, she'd seen him start acting crazy and saved her life by running. In a paranoid desperation he checked his hands and shirtfront for blood and flipped up his knife, but the red stuff was absent on all three and he forced himself to accept that he didn't kill the boy.

Why had Marla left then? And why did this annoy him? He had abandoned many people himself and had certainly been abandoned many, many times, for better and for worse. But Marla was special. He felt deep down that he didn't want to be abandoned or abandon her. He didn't know why, but when he thought about it, it seemed he had some fears left when it came down to it. Two of them had gripped him just now and he wasn't interested in letting a third in today. But his brain decided to delve further into them and forced images of Marla lying dead in a puddle of blood and himself standing over her body, a bloody knife in his hand and his pants around his ankles. He almost screamed out loud and shook his head to get the image out. It was in his nature to imagine the worst, even about himself. Maybe that was what drove those others to madness, not the radiation. Focusing on blocking the images he sat down and breathed deeply. He tasted the foul air, it tasted like oil and burning wood and left an aftertaste that never quite went away. Banging his head against the brick wall behind him he closed his eyes.

Another image flashed before his eyes but this one was not unpleasant. He saw the man and woman again; he recognized the woman's face now and was sure that it was his mother. But this time he was standing above her and his father held his hand, still towering above Donald. The woman didn't move and Donald cried when the man's hand held his tighter. He felt the horror and sadness that had come over him then, as his mother died, but it was unknown to him now, as if it belonged to another person, another version of him. He didn't know his mother now and didn't care that she was dead. A lot of people were dead, and he cared very little about all of them, but he cared that Marla lived and he rose up, determined once again to find her.

People didn't talk anymore. They hadn't talked for as long as Donald could remember, they were sitting around in a daze until someone younger or someone angry woke them up and engaged them in conversations of attacks. Donald sometimes wondered why they were like that and he was not. Maybe he would be like them before too long. Maybe he would sit there in a circle of filthy people in his own faeces and puke staring into a fire all night. Maybe someone like him would pass him in an alley, his body frozen from head to toe. He secretly hoped he would die well before then. High above the streets and houses a helicopter passed by. The helicopters only showed up if the nightly patrols weren't deemed enough, maybe the boy wasn't the only dead body that had been sniffed out in the morning air. This could be bad, last time they had come cracking down on the streets there had been more than thirty dead bodies neatly lined up by the road the morning after, and six houses and burned down. Two kids Donald knew had been among those few who tried to stop them and threw rocks at the civil security officers when they came to their street and had been ripped in two. Donald had found three quarters of them. There hadn't been a drop of blood anywhere on them.

As the days progressed there was an odour of trouble in the air. It seemed to get a bit warmer and everywhere people seemed more on edge. Three times he nearly got involved in fights just for walking past someone.

Donald knew where the situation was headed. This happened every now and then, some gruesome death occurred in the neighbourhood that got people all stirred up and made them forget that civil security was just five minutes away from executing anyone even holding a bottle opener in a threatening manner. By tonight this street would be a war zone. He'd better find Marla before then. Far off in the distance he heard shouts and screams. It was already starting. Next would be the smashing of what few windows still remained, then the fires would start and as a finale, the gunfires would break out. Then it would be over, and anyone in the wrong place at the wrong time would be dead, whether he caused trouble or not. Another helicopter made low pass over the rooftops and Donald froze as its searchlight played over him before some fight further down the street drew its attention. There wasn't much time, once the first fire started it wouldn't be safe to be anywhere and Donald started running down streets and back alleys shouting her name until he realized attracting attention was very stupid and he kept to quietly tearing through camps and getting empty beer bottles thrown after him from those who just wanted to ride the night out.

The city had been transformed in just a few hours, the streets were alive with people who despite being more or less sober grew more and more agitated by the minute, people were even building small fortifications made out of tables and chairs. Group leaders were shouting to their platoons while slamming improvised weapons against anything that world make a sound and other were playing tacticians and telling their men how to defeat the civil security officers. Donald wondered if they had all forgotten how this ended, and then remembered that it was completely possible that they had. By the time he reached the southern edge of the neighbourhood the first thin curls of black smoke were rising up from above the rooftops. The dying sun was setting somewhere far off in the horizon and the cloud cover broke up for a few minutes, enough time to cast ominous beams of twilight over the city as the first cries of jubilation over the fires echoed across the suburban soon-to-bee war zone. It got colder and Donald wrapped his coat tight as he went from alley to alley, he had started to shout again, and it didn't matter anymore, not this far away from the fires. He stepped into another alley between two stores and shouted Marla's name again, some shouted back at him to shut the hell up but he was already at the next one shouting the same. He had almost reached the edge of the city, he must have missed Marla and she was in the middle of the fighting by now. Images of her body ripped in two or hit by some stray bullet flashed through his head, along with terrible visions of her charred body trapped inside a burning building. As the first gunshot echoed like a scream he opened his eyes and looked down at his hands, he had made fists with them and his palms were bleeding from scratches. He felt as if he would cry but he couldn't and looked out to the streets again. And then he saw her. She was standing in a group of ten or so that had come out at the sound of gunfire. Shock made him freeze in the middle of the street, staring at her. The group turned and hastily made their way back into wherever they came from but Marla remained at the back of the group. Donald snapped out of the shock and ran after her, halfway there he shouted happily:

”Marla!” She turned and spotted him and froze where she stood.

”Marla, it's me!” He smiled and reached out his arms and wrapped them around him. He froze again. A sharp sting in his side grabbed him with and ice cold hand. A tug as the switchblade knife was pulled out and then another sting as it went in again, this time in the between two of his ribs, a low wheezing as it punctured one of his lungs.

Trying not to make faces he looked at her, his hand had instinctively reached for his own knife but he dropped it before it got even close to her, the sound of it hitting the ground scared her and she pulled out the knife and pushed it firmly into his stomach, pushing him away from her, he lost his balance and collapsed on the street. Bleeding, coughing and jerking around like a fish out of water she knelt down beside him after picking up his knife. A thin line of blood ran out from his lips and he looked at her. As he gasped for air he mouthed something but she spat in his face, her fright and sympathy all gone in the sight of this pathetic bum. She brought her boot down on his stomach and heard him cry out in pain with satisfaction.

His backpack was filled with both junk and booty, a quilted blanket in good condition, an anti-radiation pack, some water bottles and a watch that didn't work (no watches worked anymore). His knife was longer and sharper than hers and she decided to keep it. Then she found something in the last compartment in the pack. It was a worn-out postcard, dirty and bleached. The skyline seemed oddly familiar and the postcard itself brought back some vague memory. For a few minutes she stood still and tried to remember. The gunshots had died out far behind her when suddenly she stared at the now dead body next to her. With wide eyes and quivering lips she looked at him and remembered. She spit at him again. He had taken this postcard from her! That's why she remembered it, it was hers, and this filthy drunk must've stolen it! She remembered holding it in her hands and then his hands gripping it again. It was him, it definitely was, and now he'd come back to steal more from her, or worse.

”Well too bad buddy, but easy come easy go asshole!” She kicked the body again. The postcard seemed more familiar by the minute and she suddenly knew why.

This was where she had lived before the attacks. Wherever this Nyc was, that's where she'd lived, and this guy had tried to steal that away from her! She started to recall images of a man and woman whom she had known before and smiled to herself.

Some gunshots that was much more closer now brought her out of it and she stuffed the postcard on her along with anything else of use the man had been carrying, she left the backpack, it was covered in blood. Hurriedly she ran back into the alley to hide from the patrols, satisfied if yet a bit shaken. As the night grew colder and patrols drove past every minute she sat wrapped in the blanket like a cocoon and stared at the postcard.

A few days later she would be looking at that postcard again and remember who Donald really was and start screaming and fight with those who tried to stop her from hurting herself until they dumped her knocked out body back in her part of the camp. But for now, Marla felt content and even happy, staring at her postcard featuring a skyline that no longer exists, part of a city long since wiped out from the surface of the earth, as a heavy rain falls on the body of a man only a few years older than her. A man who loved her.