It felt like he was only asleep for a second but Shawn woke up with a start and looked around. Before him was his High School, crumbled and in ruin. He stood up and looked behind him. The field was all overgrown, the football goal had fallen to the ground and was barely visible through the overgrowth. Panicked, he turned back to the school and rubbed his eyes. The front door to the building was a gaping hole of fallen bricks, with the occasional sunbeam providing the only lighting into the once bustling school. 

Shawn ran down to the ominous building. Standing in front of the once familiar structure he pinched himself. It was still desolate. He rapidly smacked his face and looked again. Nothing changed. Rising panic made the silence in the air deafening, and his vision grew hazy. If he wasn’t so stricken he might have noted that it was like he was in a Twilight Zone Episode. 

The sound of a heavy metal beam falling somewhere deep into the darkness of the destroyed school snapped Shawn out of his cold sweat. His world tightened in on the source of the noise. He was sure the noise must be a person, an answer. Stiff from panic, Shawn slowly makes his way up the uneven staircase. He had just passed the threshold between the outside light and shadow of the building when he heard a low rumble. 

“Hello?” Shawn spoke into the quiet. The only response was the rumble again, a little deeper and louder. 

Before he was able to recognize it as a growl he was grabbed and tugged back into the light. He stumbled down the crumbling stairs onto the dirt, dazed for only a moment when he realized he hadn’t landed on pavement. Shawn looked at the figure before him, they were tall and cast a heavy shadow across him in the midday sun. 

“What do you think you are doing?!” The voice hissed. He was surprised to hear a gruff woman’s voice, contradictorily young and tired. She spoke with an unrecognizable accent, and it took him a minute to process her words. 

The figure offered her tanned scarred hand to him. Shawn took it, and held in his yelp as he was effortlessly pulled to his feet. Standing in front of him was an incredibly tall woman, dressed in well worn clothes. She had a baggy green sweater, dull in color, and dark capri pants that had been stitched numerous times. His eyes were drawn to a large woven basket slung over her shoulder, held on by a thick strap that she rested her hand on. Shawn must have been lost in through too long because that same hand that helped him up started tapping on his forehead. 

“I… I don’t know.” He muttered. She must have thought his words sounded strange as hers had, because she turned her head and furrowed her brow. 

Before the conversation had continued, the rumbling was heard again and the strange woman instantly grabbed his arm and pulled Shawn away. She led him to the forested area just beyond the overgrown school field, toward where he was certain houses were supposed to be. The pair reached a clearing, and looking around Shawn saw short mossy borders around the clearing. They were straight and bent at right angles, Was this a house? What the hell happened? 

“Have you never left a settlement before? Do you have rich parents who kept you locked up!?” She spoke quickly and Shawn struggled to sort through her accent. “Surely you’ve learned about ashwalkers! You don’t just walk into their dens!” The woman stopped and looked at him expectantly. 

Shawn stared blankly at her as he processed her words. ‘Settlement’ and ‘ashwalkers’, she brings them up so casually and he's only ever heard the term settlement in U.S history class.

“What are you talking about? That’s my school! What happened to it? Where are you from that you talk so weird!” Shawn didn’t mean to yell, but his rising confusion and agitation was wearing him down. 

“I talk weird?!” The woman sounded nearly flabbergasted. “You sound like you came right from those vintage media films!” She took a deep breath and sighed.

An easy smile spread to her single visible eye. “Sorry ‘bout yelling, you’re obviously confused. I’ll take you to the nearest settlement, you can get help there and find your way back home.” 

Shawn’s head was still swimming, despite knowing exactly where he was he was still lost. He didn’t know this woman, what her intentions were, but he couldn’t just wander here. 

“Settlement? Like a town?” 

“Uh,” the smile faded for a second, “well, I wouldn’t say town. Nearest town is at least a day and a half away. And that’s with a cart, ours is a bit busted at the moment.” The woman continued on but Shawn was elsewhere. 

The last thing he remembered was falling asleep in that chair on the hill. So it would make sense that this was all a dream. But he pinched himself and didn’t wake up, he felt that pinch, just as he felt when he fell. It had to be a nightmare. Shawn would usually only dream of being at school and forgetting the homework, or maybe sometimes whatever movie he just watched, but he’s not watched anything like this. 

“Follow me, I know the way to the settlement, you’ll find better clothes and food there.” The woman started walking down a faint path through the forest and motioned for him to follow. “I'm not sure how you haven’t been eaten alive by bugs yet, or how your clothes are still clean.” 

She turned back to him, “How long have you been wandering in the forest?” 

“Not long.” he followed behind her, taking in the area around him. 

“Huh.” She mumbled under her breath, and kept moving.

The path was straight and wide, void of any large trees. Similar bordered clearings were scattered on each side of the trail. Everything just felt off. There was something wrong with the trees, they looked different, something about the bark and the leaves. Shawn wouldn’t call himself a nature enthusiast but he could recognize a maple tree and there were indeed maple trees around. But the leaves were huge and the branches curvy. Then he noticed something else. He hadn’t seen a single animal. Not a squirrel or chipmunk, not even a bird flying about. 

“Where are all the animals?” As he asked he noticed a large tree with a large spot of missing bark and exposed wood, as if someone hit it with a large sledge hammer. Dream or not, in a forest he should at least see a bird or two. 

“The ashwalker’s den is nearby. Once we walk farther away you should see some creatures, nothing wants to live too close.” The woman didn’t break her stride, but she turned her head towards him slightly. “The names Nickel by the way, sorry I forgot my manners for a moment. You?” 

“Uh, Shawn- Then why were you there?” He thought about what sort of creature was sleeping in the ruins of his school that could possibly scare away all life nearby. 

Nickel spoke very matter of factly “Oh, cause there’s a lot of rare plants around an ashwalker den.” She tightened her grip slightly on the strap over her shoulder. “One of the few benefits they have is chasing away the herbivores.” 

“Oh.” Shawn had so many more questions but didn’t know how to ask, and he feared annoying the only person he’s seen since this nightmare started. 

Even if he’ll wake up eventually the dread was real. They fall into silence the rest of the walk to the settlement.

The Golden Arches were the last thing he expected to see peak through the tree line. As they walked the path for the last fifteen minutes, the evidence of human life grew as it littered the side of the trail. The trail itself turned from forest floor to a sparse dirt road, before it led into a gravel road. They passed wooden signs, rusted metal and concrete railings, tree stumps and roughly constructed shelters. 

Shawn had thought running the mile was agonizing, but this was something else. He felt as if they'd been walking for days, but the sun hadn’t set yet. It creeped steadily towards the horizon, casting a golden glow through the trees by the time their feet hit the gravel path. 

“We’re getting close to the settlement, Arbrest doesn’t have a strong wall or a checkpoint so there's no worry about getting in.” Nickel spoke up after her period of silence. 

“Arbrest? Is that the name of this place?” Shabby wooden walls came into view and the path led right through a large open walkway. 

Nickel hummed an affirmative and walked through to the settlement. 

One one side of the entrance was a wooden platform built about eight feet tall, with a ladder on the side. On the other side of the wall Shawn could see a run down Mcdonalds. It had thin patchwork cloth covering where the windows had long lost their glass. The fast food restaurant's bold exterior has faded with time. Around it were small cabins made of wood, debris and bricks. Lanterns hung from posts and low hanging tree branches, and a shaggy robed man armed with a torch went from lantern to lantern lighting them as the sunlight faded. There were a couple of cinder block structures still standing that Shawn recognized as other commercial buildings. 

An older woman taking down clothes hanging on line stretching from a tree to one of the shelters turned to them as they walked by. Her face brightened when she saw Nickel and waved. 

Nickel came to a stop by a well by the rundown McDonald’s and gestured to the small village around them. 

“Here we are, in Arbrest. It’s not much, but there are a few mostly stable archaic structures,” she pointed to the McDonald's and a Walmart in the distance. “Always a good thing to have.” 

She leaned against the well. “I imagine you’d want to get to the nearest city. Then you can start making your way back to wherever you came from.” 

Shawn didn’t know what to say. The longer this went on the less he believed that this could be a dream. The walk here truly felt like hours, doesn’t time not pass reasonably in dreams? He fell to the ground and dug his hands into the dirt. He was distantly aware that the woman in front of him was calling to him but he couldn't hear her. What if he wasn’t dreaming?  He held his breath, surely if he was dreaming his body would still be breathing. But he started to feel light headed and the world grew fuzzy. He took a large gulp of air but the panic did not dissipate. This couldn't be possible. Shawn saw the glimmering of the lanterns hanging from the tree tops before all went dark. 

“Can you hear me?” 

“Young man? Can you hear me?”

Shawn first felt a cold press over his eyes and not much else. Distantly he heard soft mumbling between two people. Was he in the nurse's office?  He must be uncomfortable. He remembers playing football in the gym, he must have collided into another kid too hard. 

He floated there in his mind for a while drifting in and out of consciousness. A weird dream, no, a nightmare. A drop of cool water from the cold compress over his eyes dripped down his face into his ear, snapping out of his trance. He shook his head. 

“Are you awake now?” he heard a voice say, they didn’t sound like the grouchy school nurse. “What year is it?” 

“Two-thousand an-...” He mumbled feeling like his throat had turned to dust. 

A quiet concerned mumble was the room's response.