I step through the door clearly marked FIRE EXIT and the cold December air wraps around me like an icy blanket.

After nearly a decade of analysis, the Linguistics Department of Gabonium University cracked the enigma that is the Sea Lords Script.

“I’ll take five diamond earrings,” the lady from the fourth encampment north said. “Five pairs of diamond earrings?” I asked. “Yes, five pairs, and I want them all fingertip.”

“Hear that si–” …lence, boy? That’s right, the generator’s down.

Terra gives her best impression of a scowl up at me, though to my eye she looks more like a puppy that’s about to sneeze.

Fire took out the whole damn block down to the foundations, but not our place.

Anders is crying. His face remains composed, not a single twitch, but his eyes are shining.

Michael grinned widely to see the little girl in the pink puffa jacket, bouncing as she ran towards him, probably more vertical motion than forward movement.

Halvar sheltered under the branches of an old willow tree, hidden from sight by a thick curtain of fronds that trailed the river’s surface.

I got out of bed, and shivered. Edith said it was the middle of April, and even I remembered April being warmer than this.

One way or another, the fallout has carved its marks on all of us.

The first of the buildings fell today. The salt had eaten away at the foundations, the water churned and crashed into the walls, until it buckled under the weight of sixteen storeys of concrete and collapsed.

Bastian sat heavily in the angle formed by tree trunk and crust.

Carrie Michaels reclined in the dry dirt of the lakeside, watching water spiders skitter across the green-tinted water.

“We really shouldn’t go near that place,” Katy said as Jacob led her toward the dark building in the middle of the abandoned village. “You know who lives there.”

Not even an hour into Mare Imbrium’s two-week-long night, Commander Gordon Gooch III was snoring through the end of the world.

Chains and ropes creaked on the other side of the great gate. Beyond, Grade could hear the sounds of life and livestock, mingling with the rain.

Joss McIntyre sat on his favorite knoll and looked down at The Camp spread below in the small steep-walled valley.

War came in the summer like a heat wave.

Elani sheltered under the branches of an old willow tree, hidden from sight, her aluminium canoe bobbing on the water.