Cyrusngoo

As acid rain corrodes the skyscrapers of New York City, Luna, a convenience store clerk in Kansas, finds herself a post-apocalyptic “savior” with the last 5,000 cans of beans in the state stacked in her underground warehouse. The sociopathic, blood-sick, cockroach-shy 24-year-old is forced to establish the rules of her new world with tin cans and expired candy: Want food? Trade secrets. But when marauders point guns at her glass door, a swarm of mutant voles gnaws at the shelves, and survivors begin to question “why the Savior is a dumbass who's never even been in love,” Luna finally raises the crowbar to her betrayer's throat: “Now, get down on your knees and call me God. ”

Savior with Expiration Date

Maya's pink barrette shimmered Tiffany blue, looking so absurd on the 14th day of the end.

"You you you you you you hello." The young girl's stutter was more deliberate than the torn holes in the hem of her skirt, "I I I I I can dance..."

Luna's shotgun barrel protruded from the cargo port and poked at the knockoff of the other girl's GUCCI fanny pack. Three days ago the bag had been in a convenience store body pile, and now the bulging silhouette inside made her narrow her eyes.

"Rule twenty." She lied, "Performing arts for twenty grams of candy, double for stripping."

Maya suddenly lifted the hem of her skirt.

Not her thighs, but her Y-shaped stitches from pubic bone to rib cage. Rotting flesh and fluorescent green ointment mingled at the scars like gothic Christmas ribbons. "The mayor's husband's hideout," her teeth chattered, "change... Change all the rainbow candy."

The exhaust fan at the top of the warehouse chirped sadly.Lune remembered the mayor who always smiled on TV, who'd bought condoms at QuickStop when he was campaigning, and whistled at the lace trim under her shirt when he scanned the code.

"Liars get their toes nibbled off by voles." Luna activates a homemade lie detector-actually a toast machine with electrodes attached.

Maya's screams culminate as the toast pops up. The truth fills the air with the smell of burning: the mayor dunked concrete in the shelter to bury three hundred homeless people alive, including her brother with Down syndrome.

"Add this." The young woman pulled the blonde hair from her scalp, the roots still clinging to the follicle-bearing blood clots.

As Luna picked up the strand of hair with tweezers, Maya suddenly lunged and bit her wrist. The bulletproof glass reflected the distorted reflections of the two, like two hyenas fighting over carrion.

"You know what?" The teenager licked her bloodstained lips, "He said the exact same thing you just did when he spanked me with a golf club in the basement..."

Rainbow candy looked like voodoo bone grains in the moonlight.Luna watched Maya bounce and disappear into the rubble and turned to examine the exchanged map with a magnifying glass.The X marked the bottom of the wastewater treatment plant, next to it was a line of small print:

"First batch of canned goods here."

There is a sudden loud crash of cans collapsing from deep within the warehouse.

Luna approaches the source of the sound, gripping her lead-filled baseball bat, and the flashlight illuminates the baked beans in aubergine sauce that are stealing... A dog? No, a mutant Chihuahua with fangs, its irradiated eyes reflecting the light of a supermarket promotional poster-

Chapter 4: The Magic of Expired Rainbow Candy