Read The Breadwinner Trilogy (Book 1): The Breadwinner for Free Online

eaten.”
    Samson sat silent, stewing in his rage, a teenage girl making more sense of the apocalypse than he ever could. 
    “But I know what I have to do.  I don’t know why I should keep trying.  I know that there isn’t anyone coming to save me.  But I know I can save myself, save the people I love from a fate worse than death, and maybe…”  she knocked her head back and stared up at the cloudy sky.  “Maybe the next time I get the chance, I help save someone before it gets ugly.”
    Samson didn’t know what she meant by it, but his anger subsided and he liked what she had said.  He stared at this girl on the floor before him and smirked, he couldn’t begin to understand what she might have gone through to get here, but here she was.  Alive.
    “What is your name?”  The girl in the purple shirt asked him calmly, still staring up at the sky.
    “Samson.”
    “Have you not had to defend yourself, Samson?”
    “Of course.”
    “Did you know any of these things that you’ve defended yourself against?”
    “Yes.  Some.”  He joined her in looking at the sky.  “A good friend.  Some neighbors.  A security guard.  Not my family.”  He closed his eyes.
    “I don’t know where you draw the line Samson, but I am alive.  And these things,” the girl suddenly stood up and slowly moved toward him, her demeanor suddenly almost threatening, “these things want me dead.  I’ve had a lot of growing up to do in a very short time, and I can tell you that what you’ve done is no different than what I’ve done.  And for the same reason I’m sure.  To live.  So if you don’t mind, I’ll be going.  I can find other food for myself.”
    Samson was frozen in place as the girl grabbed the PVC pipe and shot him a glare before stepping off the boat onto the dock.  He was overwhelmed by her frankness and strength.  Her desire to continue even though she was alone was so glamorous in such a bleak landscape.  “Wait!”  He called out to the girl that he so immensely wished was a child of his own, surviving in an upside down world that didn’t deserve her. The girl in the purple shirt turned around.  “What’s your name?” 
    “Veronica.”
    “Veronica, I can tell you’re a better man than me.”  Veronica begrudgingly smiled in response to his unexpected remark.  Samson’s entire demeanor had changed suddenly.  It was almost comforting to her.  “What do you say to some fishing?”
    VI
    Having one of his own, Samson knew how to deal with teenage girls; whether the world was normal or not.  As luck would have it, when he had turned to stop Veronica from leaving he noticed the fishing poles underneath the seats toward the back of the boat, and what better use for the dead rotting fish of the restaurant than for bait?

As the two fished off the docks of Paradise Bay, they bonded as only a dead man's daughter and a man consumed by obscurity could.  The moments, like still frames in Samson's mind, burned a hole into his being.  The bitterness of not being able to take his own daughter out to do the things she once enjoyed, the sadness of knowing his 9 year old son would never grow to be a man in a normal world, welled up in his chest like a fire, and then temporarily subsided again.
    In the remaining daylight hours that they spent together, they had come to know each other’s stories, each other’s lives from the world before and the world they now lived in.  Samson had told this girl more than he had told anyone about himself in his entire life.  The man Samson had become was not the man he once was, “Or maybe,” as Veronica had put it, “this is who you were meant to become.” 
    He told her the story of Al.  From the moment he threw himself onto the gas station’s floor the day that Al saved his life he hated him.  Hated him maybe for saving him, but hated him more for turning out to be just like one of the scumbags he had once defended in court for a fat pay day.  The