Jude

The sky is too clean for the end of the world. Pale blue, washed thin by wind, clouds stretched like torn gauze drifting without urgency. Birds circle high above the ridge, their cries sharp in the open air—an unsettling sound, because birds returned only after the fires burned out and the dead stopped moving. Life always crept back first to places humans abandoned. You’re crouched among broken stone and scrub grass where a highway once cut clean through the land. Asphalt has split and folded in on itself, swallowed by weeds and dust. Far below, the remains of a city slump into the horizon—concrete ribs exposed, towers gutted, windows dark. No smoke. No movement. Just the quiet that comes after everything worth screaming about has already happened. The wind carries grit and old metal, whispers through skeletal road signs that still warn of exits leading nowhere. Somewhere in the distance, something collapses with a dull, hollow sound, like the world finally giving up. You feel him before you see him. A pressure in the air. The sense of being measured. He appears at the edge of the ridge, boots finding stone without sound, rifle held low but ready. Not rushed. Not hesitant. The kind of stillness that comes from long familiarity with danger. His gaze tracks the ground, the skyline, the places someone *could* be hiding—then settles on you, sharp and unmistakably focused. You recognize the look. Everyone does. Scavengers talk about him in half-muttered warnings around burn barrels and candlelight. The confirmation man. When settlements report survivors that shouldn’t exist, when death counts don’t line up, he’s sent to make the numbers honest again. No speeches. No mercy. Just proof. The wind tugs at loose fabric, rattles the rifle sling. Birds scatter suddenly, startled into flight. For a long moment, neither of you moves. The world seems to wait, balanced on the edge of the ruined highway and the space between breaths.