Cal Weaver had learned three things in the weeks since the Collapse tore his world apart:

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1. Never light a fire before dusk.

2. Rainwater was cleaner than any creek.

3. People were always more dangerous when they smiled.

 

He was seventeen and alone. His grandfather, a former cartographer, back when such things were still used, had left behind a stash of hand-drawn maps. A few weeks before The Collapse, when Gramps died, Cal’s mother had told Cal to gather them up and throw them away, but instead, Cal hid them under his bed, desperate for one last link to the man who’d spent hours upon hours with him, while his mother worked three jobs to make ends meet.

Mom hadn’t made it out of Kansas City. Not past the looters and lawlessness.

Now Cal wandered the ruins of backwater towns, skirting shattered gas stations and hollowed-out churches. He carried a rusted revolver with one round left and a soft leather folio strapped to his back. Inside: maps. Hand-drawn and updated in pencil. Every checkpoint. Every patrol he’d seen. Water caches, safe crossings, abandoned farms with rotting crops. He didn’t think of it as a journal. More like a ledger of life and death.

The girl found him on the edge of Springfield, in the shell of an old Dollar General, digging under a capsized end cap for one lone can of beans. He ripped open the lid thrusting the food into his mouth. He hadn’t seen her at first. She was barefoot, covered in ash, her dark hair matted and blood-crusted at the temple. She looked like something feral—but she didn’t beg. Just pointed to the can in his hand and held up two fingers.

Cal hesitated. This was the first food he’d found all day. He sighed, shoved another handful of beans into his mouth and handed her the half-eaten can.

While she devoured the rest, he licked his fingers clean. Both of them silent. When she finally spoke, it was only one word.

“Ada.”

“Cal.”

He offered her a swig from his water flask. She didn’t thank him, didn’t smile. He liked that.

For three days, she followed him, never more than ten steps behind. She didn’t ask where they were going, and he didn’t say. But on the morning of the fourth, she knelt by his fire and said,

“You know how to read the land.”

“My granddad taught me,” he said.

Ada looked at his maps with reverence. “I knew a boy who drew like that once. He was quiet too.”

“What happened to him?”

“The Western Front took his sister. Then shot him when he tried to stop them.”

They didn’t speak again for hours.

That night, they reached the bridge at Fellows Lake—burned out and sagging, but passable by foot. On the other side, Cal knew, was a ranger station where he'd once seen a hand-scrawled message pinned to a tree.

SAFE HOUSE—3 MILES EAST. Look for red ribbon

They crossed at dusk, cold water lapped at their ankles, lightning distant in the north, the rumble of thunder a constant. Ada slipped once, and Cal caught her hand. Her fingers clutched his like a lifeline.

On the far bank, they found a body—young, maybe twelve. Shot in the back. A red ribbon tied to one wrist.

“It’s a trap,” Ada said, voice tight.

“Maybe,” Cal replied. “Or maybe someone else just didn’t make it.”

She looked at him then, eyes narrowed. “You still believe there are good people out there, don’t you?”

“I have to,” he said. “Or else why bother going on?”

She didn’t answer. Just tore the ribbon free and handed it to him.

They buried the boy beneath a pile of wet stones and moved on.

Three miles later, they reached the cabin.

Inside, they found warmth. Blankets. Canned peaches. A woodstove still warm. No soldiers. Just a battered notebook with a list of names—every person who had passed through.

Ada wrote hers without hesitation.

Cal paused, then added his—and one more.

For the mapmaker.

That night, for the first time since the world had cracked open and swallowed everything he knew, Cal slept without dreaming of fire.