I’m not sure how long I would have run, had I not noticed a gaping pit in the ground. I stopped and took a breath. It was one of our bear traps — a large hole, covered up with a matrix of branches and leaves. Either it had collapsed or something had fallen in.

I unsheathed my knife and carefully sneaked closer to the pit, to get the slightest glimpse over the edge without alerting whoever was in the pit.

I saw a girl sitting at the bottom. She couldn’t have been older than twenty. Short black hair, leather jacket open in the front covering a t-shirt and blue jeans. Everything she wore was cleaner and newer than anything I had seen. She looked like she stepped out of one of those magazines I had found from the pre-Event era.

Her face was beautiful, perfectly symmetrical, with strong yet feminine facial features, dimples on her cheeks, and deep blue eyes looking straight into mine.

“A little help please,” I heard her say with a calm voice and a hint of a smile.

“Who…Wha…Are you okay?” I sputtered out nervously.

“I am fine, just fell into your hole,” she replied with a chuckle, standing up and brushing the dirt from her clothes.

“And you couldn’t get out? This trap isn’t designed to hold a person.”

“I probably could have…Just wanted to see who would come to rescue me,” she said smugly. “A rope or something would be appreciated…”

I dropped my backpack and rushed to tie a rope around the nearest tree. “I’m David, by the way,” I shouted while fixing the rope.

I threw the other end of the rope in the hole, and with impressive dexterity, she started climbing out. I held out my hand to help her up over the edge. She grabbed it, pulled herself out, and without letting go, stood up in front of me. She smiled warmly and said, “Nice to meet you, David. You can call me Jane.”

I tried to smile back, but my face probably looked like I had just bitten into an extremely sour lemon. I hadn’t seen another soul other than my granny for many years, and to say I was nervous would be a grave understatement. Yet she seemed totally in her element. Calm, happy, warm…

“Weren’t you afraid I was going to hurt you or something?” I asked while winding the rope back up.

She laughed, “No. You are a good person, David. I am pretty good judge of character.”

“How could you judge my character from the bottom of a pit?”

“There were no spikes. A bad person would put spikes in the bottom,” she said, glancing down into the pit.

I snorted, “Not sure that’s how it works…”

“Are you planning to hurt me then?”

“No, uh… No! Of course not!”

“See. I wasn’t wrong.”

I guess there was no questioning her logic. I swung the backpack on my shoulders and looked at the sky. It was already getting dark. Jane was still standing there, calm as ever.

I asked her, “You’re not from around here? Do you have a place to go?”

“Not exactly,” she said, looking around.

“You wanna come with me?” I asked eagerly. “I have a house a half hour from here. It’s probably not a good idea to stay out here in the dark.”

“Sure. Show me where you live, David!”

We walked in silence for a while. Thoughts rushed through my head. Who was she? Why was she here? Was she dangerous? She couldn’t be! She seems so friendly. But granny had always told me not to judge book by its cover.

“I live with my grandma, you know,” I said ina hesitant tone.

“Oh? Is she a nice person too?”

“She is a wise person. She knows a lot,” I said, giving Jane a probing look, hoping to see her reaction.

She just smiled, looked at the patches of sky between the trees and said, “I love wise people. There is always so much to learn from them.”

She pointed her finger at the sky. “You see that reddish star there? Just over the crooked pine. That is Mars. It’s another planet. Just like the one we are living on.”

“Is that where you are from?” I asked jokingly.

Jane laughed. “No, I’m from The City.”

I stopped in my tracks. “You…you’re from The City?! Where the metal hounds are from?”

“Is that what you call them?” she asked curiously.

I suddenly felt a lot less comfortable with her. I looked in her eyes. She was not smiling anymore, but she did not seem any less friendly. I felt my pulse racing again and asked, “What do you call them?”

“Sentinels. I call them sentinels. And they are not all dog shaped,” she said, turning her eyes back to the sky.

“But they…kill people,” I said with a shaky voice.

“Not unless you provoke them,” she said in a more serious tone. “They keep the raiders away. If you know what you are doing, The City is actually a very safe place to be.”

I reluctantly continued along the path and she followed by my side.

“Are there others in The City?”

“Yes.”

“Can I go there?”

“Yes,” she gave another short answer. She took a breath, then continued with a refreshed smile on her face, “But first let’s meet your grandma, right?”