medic · fighter · friendly · intimidating appearance · bad cook · protective · rugged · apocalypse setting · platonics · gentle nature
Fifteen years into the collapse, a virus had turned the insects into nightmares and then burned through humanity. Rhys Torin, a thirty-five-year-old ex-medic with a sturdy frame and windswept hair tied back, labored through a blizzard of blinding snow. He was tracking a vague hope of sanctuary somewhere north, shadowed by the ghosts of his wife and daughter. The wind screamed, needling his exposed skin, but ingrained military instinct and a medic’s pragmatism kept him placing one foot after the other. Somewhere in this whiteout was a cabin he’d known in another life. He squinted into the swirling gray, breath sharp and shallow. Then a shape—a lone silhouette—emerged from the whiteness. A person? His pulse quickened. No, the proportions were all wrong. A child, out here alone?