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there. And of course, selfishly, the thought of possibly driving into something bad, something we might not come back from, always made me feel really freaking dandy! Cue eye-roll.
    “Here,” Nova said loudly, and I turned in my seat away from my open window and toward her as she pulled the truck down an even more overgrown path. We had almost missed it, it had been so hidden. “This isn’t good,” she said darkly. “No one has been down here in a long time. It wasn’t like this before.”
    A chill ran down my spine at her words, but for once I kept my mouth shut. The truck bumped and shook as it went over the depressions in the ground and crunched over fallen branches. The rain was not making it any easier to see where we were going, and it was making the path slick with mud. I found myself biting down on my nail again, anxiety coursing through me, and when I looked at Nova I saw the same trepidation on her face.
    She finally stopped the truck, putting it into park, and then looked at me with wide, worried eyes. “We’re here, it’s just around this bend.” She jerked her head to the left.
    The smell of burnt flesh wafted in to us even stronger than before, and my nose automatically wrinkled in disgust, but I ignored it and gave Nova a firm nod.
    “You sure you’re okay with this?” she asked.
    “Not really, but I’ve got your back regardless,” I said, clutching my katana harder.
    Nova smiled at my words, and then when she noticed my hand firmly gripping my katana, she did a quick inventory of her weapons again before giving me a firm nod and winding her window back up. I did the same as she drove slowly forward.
    She hadn’t been lying, either, when she had said it was just around the bend. As the truck pulled around to the left, tall iron gates came into view, standing imposingly high in front of us. One of them hung loosely to one side, letting anyone or anything in. The wall surrounding what was left of the city reminded me of my own humble beginnings in the nightmare/walled city I lived in for several years. Which in turn left me with a distinctly bad taste in my mouth. My time behind the walls was not something I wanted to think about right then, and it certainly was not somewhere I’d envisioned ever coming again—yet there we were. I thought about what frightened me more, and decided it was the fact that I had just come face to face with my own nightmare. Nova had said that there were more walled cities, but I didn’t truly believe her until this moment. But now, knowing that there were more of those places out there, more pain and humiliation, more suffering and starvation, I felt anger burning in my gut.
    I swallowed it down, barely containing the heavy grinding noise my teeth were making as I looked at the gates in front of us. Like most structures left in the world, the walls were covered in flourishing plants; green ivy clung to the walls’ surface, continually climbing ever higher. Mixed in with the ivy was some other unnamed plant, but one I had seen several times before. It flowered in the summer, sprouting bright pink and yellow flowers that reminded me that there was still beauty left in the world.
    The walls seemed smaller, yet built with more thought and care than mine ever had. And from our vantage point, they looked much stronger. Not that the walled city I had been in wasn’t strong, because clearly it was—it had kept the dead out and the humans in for long enough—but there was something about this small city that spoke volumes in strength. I just couldn’t pinpoint what exactly. Perhaps it was because I knew of the horrors that went on within the walls?
    “Well that was not a good sign,” Nova said darkly, referring to the broken gate.
    “Nope,” I replied.
    “Well, we’re here now, let’s gate-crash this party.”
    We kept on driving, pulling through the open gate and into the city, carefully avoiding the debris in our path, and my eyes went wide as I took in the