Cale was a small town. Once, before the war, it had probably been a substantial suburb. What was left of the buildings consisted of two homes and a large concrete post office separated by what remained of the asphalt street, all the rest was mostly rubble. A couple families scraped together a living there, some worked as scavengers and traded with the merchants who wandered the wastelands others had rounded up a small herd of Brahmin to supply the people with meat and milk and lived their lives as farmers.

Anya lived there with her uncle, Phil. Her parents had long since died of radiation poisoning like many in the wastes. Phil looked much like Anya herself, he often told her how much she reminded him of her mother. They both had the sandy blonde hair and odd gray eyes, and so they passed as father and daughter to anyone who bothered to wonder.

They had nearly died in the wastes themselves before they stumbled upon the small community of Cale, three months of scraping together a living had passed before Phil realized that he just wasn't much of a hunter and if they were both going to make it, they needed to find some small bit of civilization if they were to have any chance at all. Cale had a busted water purifier, Phil had been an excellent mechanic and had a hungry little girl with him. The people there had half grudgingly agreed that they could stay.

They earned their way by repairing what they could, but mostly it was by putting the junk that the scavengers brought back together into something useful. Anya had started out bringing Phil tools but had quickly progressed to helping him with small tasks until she became quite competent as a mechanic herself. They settled into their new life and lived quite comfortably through Anya's childhood. She didn't make many friends, but then there weren't many children around. She enjoyed her time with Phil and they made a happy family for a while. The raiders had come when she was sixteen.

They had struck at night; she woke with a jolt to the shrill scream that pierced the otherwise quiet evening. She searched in vain for the one shotgun that they themselves owned but couldn't find it in her haste, maybe Phil had already taken it outside because he wasn't in the room either. Smoke began to pour in through their boarded window, her eyes immediately began to water and any attempt to breathe too deeply resulted in hacking coughs. She pulled her shirt over her nose and crawled across the floor, blinking the tears out of her eyes. She could hear shouting outside and almost see the orange flicker of fire dancing between the boards. She crawled to the only other bedroom in the one story home searching for the family that they lived with.

"Mrs. Henderson?" She whispered into the darkness, her eyes were slowly adjusting to the dim room but the smoke was making normal vision impossible. She heard coughing near the far wall, the twin boys were both sitting in the corner hugging each other, not quite half her age they locked on to her with desperate need.

"Where's mommy?" One of them asked with a trembling chin, she could see the tears that were threatening to spill over had little to do with the smoke. No one else seemed to be in the room, she knew their father was out on watch but had no idea where their mother had gone.

"Come on guys," She managed to speak through choked breaths and pushed them toward the door. "Stay low and keep your shirt over your nose." She followed them both out to the living room; the flames flickered outside the windows, casting jumping shadows across the room. Her heart hammered in her throat as she tried to convince herself that everything would be okay if she just stayed in control.

The terror continued to pump through her veins and settled unpleasantly in her stomach as she saw that some of the boards had begun to burn. They had reached the front of the house and she couldn't hear anything besides the crackling of the fire and the groaning of the building around her. She stood to try and peek through the windows but she couldn't see anything beyond the flames, they would just have to risk it, staying in the burning house meant death for certain.

As she reached gingerly toward the door a hand snatched her wrist and pulled her away from the door, she tried to scream but the smoke limited her to choking coughs until she recognized Gabriel crouching near the wall.

"Raiders." He whispered and motioned for her to keep quiet, he pulled her over to the larger bay window where he had been hidden. She crouched down next to him; a missing board in the window splayed a beam of orange light onto Gabriel's stern looking face. "We'll have to leave out back."

She nodded quickly, relieved to have someone else in charge. Gabriel was one of the scavengers who spent most of his time in the wastes, she knew him well through her uncle, he always managed bring in excellent finds. Phil was always surprised by his knack for returning alive, he couldn't have been more than eighteen. As they were making their way to the back of the house they heard gunshots and another scream outside, she had to cover her mouth to keep from crying out.

Phil was out there, Mrs. Henderson might even be out there. She turned to shush the twins and encouraged them to follow Gabriel's lead. The relief of finding Gabriel drained away and was replaced with the stomach churning fear that everyone outside was dead or dying. Her throat was itching and she ached to cough the soot out but panic kept her throat locked tight, she tried to take shallow breaths and brought her shirt sleeve up over her mouth.

The house started to creak and groan more earnestly, flames chewed through the boards and slipped inside through the windows to start climbing up the walls. Still she hesitated when they reached the back door; the terror inside the building was suddenly nothing to what she imagined was happening outside. Gabriel stood in front of the door, a baseball bat clutched in his hands. He gave her a quick nod and pulled open the door. He stepped out into the night and surveyed the area before he returned to the door frame and waved them forward with an all clear. They stumbled out into the night, the boys blinking in the firelight; she immediately sucked in a lungful of the cool clean air. She fell to the ground and coughed violently into her arms, careful to muffle the sound. The black smoke that had been gathering in the house billowed out into the night air, joining the hazy cloud that reached up into the sky and blocked the full light of the moon.

"What do we do?" She asked Gabriel in a trembling voice, she hated that she sounded like such a child even to herself; she was supposed to be a grown woman, a strong asset to the community. But fear and blind panic were plain on her face and now shameful tears started to well up in her eyes. Cries echoed from beyond the house and the roof was a riot of flames, bathing everything in a yellowish-orange glaze. She could see the boys were both crying now, tears streaked down their sooty cheeks were clear even in the dim light. She didn't know what, if anything, they understood to be going on. She didn't want to be the one to explain. Gabriel looked down at them miserably; he looked as though he was faced with a burden he wasn't quite ready to deal with.

"I think we have to go." He didn't sound like he wanted to run, his tone sounded like he wanted to go fight them. But even though he was young, he wasn't stupid, the Wastes took care of that kind of stupid quickly. He knew what would happen to her and the boys if he were to lose. "I think we have to go right now."

She nodded, determined to keep her calm, the twins had both dropped to their rears, tears and snot flowing freely. They didn't look to have understood what Gabriel was saying. She was grateful for that small blessing. They would come back after the worst of it, she promised herself. After the raiders had taken what they wanted and destroyed her home they would come back for the others, they would rebuild what they could. Phil would be waiting for them, maybe wounded but otherwise fine. She told those lies to herself so she could tell them to the boys. She pulled up on their arms lifting them to their feet.

"Come on kiddos." She tried to sound brave, she wiped away at their cheeks with her sleeve. "We've got to get out of here. Your mommy and daddy said we should meet them later." She brushed the tears away from their face. "We've got to be brave, and we've got to be quiet okay?" They nodded and she gave them a strained smile. She didn't know how much safer they'd be out in the wilderness without anything to their name, but she didn't want to stick around and find out. Gabriel jumped down into the dried creek bed behind the house already on his way. She turned back to usher the boys to follow when a shadow stepped forward from the edge of the building, the flames cast his frame over the boys, his face was just visible in the glowing light; he didn't look friendly.

"Hello lovey." He grinned unpleasantly, many of his teeth were missing and the ones that were left were a grimy yellow. She leapt back a few steps in her panic, forgetting the twins completely, she fell into another man who had snuck up beside her from the opposite side of the house. He gripped her around the chest, trapping her arms at her side.

"Found us some slaves, 'ave we?" The man breathed into her ear, she shuddered and instincts kicked in. She started to scream and thrash in his arms trying to bash her head into his face. But he was much stronger than she was and he just laughed at her struggles. Gabriel appeared out of the corner of her eye and yelled as he swung with his bat. She heard and felt the bat connect midway down the man's back, his arms instantly went limp and he crumpled to the ground. She nearly fell herself as his thick arms dragged along her sides. She heard one of the boys scream shrilly and she found the first man had approached the boys and was pulling their hair teasingly. She flung herself at him then, the boys barely stumbling out of the way, she was determined to save them instead of being a coward.

She swung as hard as she could and hit him in the face with her fist, crying out as she felt pain explode in her hand from the strike. His head turned a little with the impact but his nasty grin suggested she didn't have much of an impression on him. He swung back with his arm and backhanded her so hard she spun half around before dropping face first into the ground. She tried to make sense of anything but her face and whole head pulsed in starbursts of pain, her vision spun with darkness as she tried to focus on anything but the dirt she was pressed against. Her fingers clenched and unclenched in the dirt feebly, she managed to slide her face to the side so she didn't feel like screaming any more.

She watched as Gabriel leapt over her fallen form and charged at the man with his bat high above his head, the man watched too with a smug sneer plastered across his ugly face. Something was wrong. A crack startled her, Gabriel seemed to stop his charge mid step. His momentum carried him forward a little further but the bat dropped from his hands. In slow motion he fell to the ground he landed with a heavy thud on his stomach.

Several heartbeats passed where she didn't understand what had happened, her mind started to clear as the man gave a snort and walked past the both of them. With great effort she pushed herself up to her knees and could see where Gabriel lay unmoving. A small bloom of color pierced through Gabriel's shirt at his shoulder and a stain slowly spread out from his back, as she crawled toward him she could smell the tang of copper in the air.

"Gabriel!" She shrieked, crawling to his side. "Gabriel get up!"Her whole face felt like it was on fire but it was a passing thought, she screamed hysterically at him, he wasn't moving. The boys stood nearby, their choked sobs barely noticeable over her screaming. She shook his shoulder as roughly as she could, panic surging up in her all at once. The red stain smeared on her hands and clothes, the smell of the blood was thick and choking despite the smoke. She tore a strip from his shirt and mashed it against Gabriel's wound to try and stop the bleeding, she struggled to get him to roll over so that the bandage might be pinned. Blood had pooled beneath his chest and she sobbed helplessly as she saw the bullet had gone clean through him. She continued to scream his name in the vain hope that sheer volume would cause him to awaken. Her fingers pressed against his chest now, the blood seemed to slow but didn't stop. She patted his face and shook his chin, her bloody finger prints smeared across his skin, but he didn't stir.

"Cutting it close there, Mal." The yellow tooth man nodded back over his shoulder. She turned to see the man who still held the pistol approaching from where he had been hiding and flashed a sheepish grin. His face was thin and unfriendly looking, he winked at Anya.

Mal walked foward until he reached the other raider who had fallen to Gabriel's bat. The man groaned and rolled his head but the rest of his body didn't move from the awkward position he had fallen in. Mal kicked the raider in the back of his skull with a chuckle; the man cried out but was unable to do anything. He spat on the ground near his face and sneered.

"Told you this greenie was worthless. Leave him for the mole rats." He looked over to where Anya was kneeling next to Gabriel and let out a low whistle. "She'll catch us a price, eh Pete?" He marched over to her and pulled her face up with a handful of straw colored hair before she could react. She screamed, the assault brought all the pains in her face sharply into focus. She wept uncontrollably but refused to look the man in the eye.

Pete slapped Mal's hands away from the girl. She collapsed back into a kneeling position, clutching the right side of her face. Gabriel lay forgotten to her side, her searing pain and fear the only thing she knew. "She'll fetch me a price Mal. If you hadn't a killed so many folk out front, I mighta been more generous with your share." Mal stared daggers at Pete but he seemed unimpressed. She shuddered to herself watching them both, the man called Mal looked as though he wanted to kill and keep on killing.

"Tie em up." Pete threw a length of rope at Mal's feet and walked away. Mal grunted and grabbed the rope. "Get the brats too; they'll fetch a nice price from the scav's." He nodded toward the wide eyed boys who sat trembling and silent.

"What'd the hell they want kids for? Damn pain in the ass." Mal glowered at the boys and snapped the ropes at them threateningly; Anya cried that she could do nothing to protect them, she cried harder because there was no one to protect her.

"Mutie bait." Pete smiled in a sickly manner, he disappeared around the side of the house leaving them alone. Mal looped leads around the boys necks and tied them together. He was snickering to himself at the idea of children as bait as he approached her.

"Time to get up." He wretched her arms up, her face was still a throbbing ache but nothing compared to the misery she expected to come. He wrenched her arms behind her back and roped them together painfully tight. He tied a lead around her neck as well, connecting it to her arms so that any movement on their part would result in choking herself. A wretched cry choked up in her throat as she watched him tie the boys to the end of the rope behind her.

"Get moving bitch," He smacked her salaciously in the rear to shut her up. "You've got a long walk yet." She flinched and fresh tears spilled over her cheeks, her legs felt weak as noodles but they marched forward. Mal cackled wildly at her apparent agony. She stole one last glance toward Gabriel's still form and stepped forward into her own private hell.