I hate cities, and this one wasn’t any different. Too many windows, too much quiet.

I stood up on top of the old RV. It might’ve been nice in the years before the end, the kind of thing someone’s grandparents would’ve spent a fortune on. Now though, the windows were broken out, the doors torn off, the tires stripped, the engine sabotaged or salvaged – I didn’t look very closely. Visibility was great, I noted, standing up. That little voice inside nagged me to lay back down, that the visibility went both ways. I couldn’t tell if I felt eyes on me or if it was just nerves.

There. A black plume of smoke rose from behind some skyscraper in the heart of the city. Gas station maybe? I laid back down and kept watching it. Might be a camp, I thought, No, nobody would set up a camp in the middle of a city. Nobody’s that stupid. I rolled over and climbed down, opened my pack and sorted through the maps I snagged at the last gas station. I looked around, swept the broken glass away and spread them out on the asphalt.