End of the World, Start of My Empire novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Gate Opens

We opened the gate at sunrise, and eleven trucks rolled in out of the dust.

They were old and overloaded, with people on the roofs and tied to the bumpers.

Every face that looked down at us was gray with road.

Children stared with their mouths open at the well house.

Nobody spoke until the last truck had stopped.

Hallie met them at the gate with a bucket and a ladle.

"Water first," she said. "Questions after."

A girl climbed down, no more than five, and took the ladle in both hands.

She drank, and spilled half of it, and drank again.

Hallie's green cuff lit softly as she touched the child's cracked lips, and the cracks closed.

The convoy's people began to cry.

I stood by the wall and felt something I hadn't known I'd lost.

It was not victory.

It was something quieter, like hearing a clock start in an empty house.

"Boss," said Bria, at my elbow. She had her head tilted, listening. "Come look at this."

She walked me to the lead truck, a flatbed with a cracked windshield.

The driver stood beside it, a thin man in a patched coat, staring at his boots.

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