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Maylee Land gripped the cold metal of the ladder and peered out into the trees. She was maybe twenty feet up, a few feet over the makeshift walls of World Memorial. World Memorial was a town her mother had built. Or the closest thing that passed for a town these days.
Walls of wooden planks and sheets of metal surrounded what had once been a medium-sized farm. Behind the walls sat trailers, sheds and crude shacks people had managed to cobble together. At the front of all was a small farmhouse. Maylee lived there with her mom and her brother. The town had grown up around them.
It was so cold her worn gloves almost stuck to the ladder. There were several ladders like it spread across the town, nailed and chained together atop each other so as to stick up over the walls. They served as guard posts. The Town Guard consisted of those healthy enough to defend the town from the dead who wandered the landscape, looking for the living to consume. And Maylee was now in charge of the Guard, despite being only eighteen. Healthy young adults were in short supply and she had proven herself many times over the years. For the first year, before others had shown up, it had been her doing most of the defending. Especially after Mom had been hurt.
Beyond the wall was a large field, covered in snow. Beyond that were woods, acres of frozen trees stretching on for miles. She stared into the trees, watching. The morning sky was bright, cold and clear. She blinked, staring harder.
"I got something!" she yelled out. Beneath her, a guard ran to a nearby alarm rope. The ropes were set all over town. They ran up to large collections of scrap metal and wood. The guard yanked on the chain, over and over. The metal and wood clanged and clattered, loud enough to be heard over the whole town.
Maylee took both feet off the rung she stood on and straddled the ladder. Using her gloves to guide herself, she slid down the ladder and landed hard in the snow. Her legs complained but she didn't care. She ran to a large metal gate that led outside. The gate had once been used to close off an area for livestock, but had since been extended and covered with wood and metal until it stood over twice its original height and had no openings. She nodded to Walsh, who was already opening the gate. He was maybe sixteen, almost too young for the Guard.
Maylee rushed out into the snow and veered off where she knew a driveway to be. The driveway had been covered by so much snow it was indistinguishable from the land around it. It led to a nearby road that cut through the countryside. No one ever came down that road.
She reached a snow bank and dropped to her stomach. She looked out across the field.
She heard other guards come up behind her. She pulled her scarf down, sputtering in the snow, and put a battered pair of binoculars against the bridge of her nose. She scanned up and down the nearby trees and hills, but saw nothing.
"Are you sure you saw something?" said Walsh from behind her.
"Shhh!" said Maylee.
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