Two miles outside of the city, on top of a hill in a local campground, I stare at the screen of my digital hiking watch as the minutes tick past. Before me, the sky radiates orange and pink as the sun continues its long, slow descent below the horizon.

Behind me, the kid has strung two travel hammocks between a couple of trees and is already rolling his sleeping bag out in one of them, leaving the other open for me.

“No lights tonight. We’re too visible up here.” My voice feels almost too loud amongst the trees.

He doesn’t answer, but I know he’s heard me. Outside the city, the sounds of nature are soothing. Crickets. Cicadas. Fireflies flicker around in the shadowed edges of the treeline as the light dwindles.

The final rays of daylight disappear as night descends across the land. I pull out a pair of binoculars I requisitioned from the same shop I got my watch a few days earlier. I’d palmed them precisely for this moment. Putting the binoculars up to my eyes, I peer out across the dark landscape.

“Why did you drag us out here?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper. “It’s going to be impossible to find anything to eat.”

“I’m trying to figure out how fucked we are,” I say.

Another sweep across the horizon.

“And?”

I lower the binoculars and turn to him, though in the full dark he’s barely more than a smudge against the shadows.

“Well… it’s not any worse than I expected.”

I fish through my duffle and pull out my own sleeping bag, settling into the other hammock. He’s set them up so our heads are together, both hammocks tied to the same tree on one end.

“Since the power grid went out day one and hasn’t come back on, I figured the issue might extend further than the city. Looking out across the horizon now, it’s clear that power is out as far as the eye can see.”

“Woah, so there’s, like… no one?”

“Not no one. I can see some lights here and there. People with generators or fires. But nothing as organized as a power grid.”

A brief pause as we both ponder what that means.

“So what, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” I hear him shift as he sits up, only to lie back again when the hammock tips dangerously at the abrupt movement. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I mean, I don’t know. It’s not like I’m an apocalypse expert.”

“But you knew about the powers, didn’t you?”

I don’t answer his question right away. Yes, I knew about the powers to an extent. But it’s not like it’s an exact science. How was I supposed to know that the niche genre of webtoons I frequently engaged in would someday turn out to be my reality?

“Consider it more of a lucky guess,” I say finally.

I hear his sigh, but he doesn’t press further.

“Look,” now it’s my turn to sigh. I run a hand through my hair, now a shocking white whereas before it had been a dull, mousy brown. “There are only two ways this goes. First, and perhaps the most likely, at some point society will right itself. Some sort of government will reemerge, and within a few months pockets of ‘safe zones’ will begin cropping up. We just need to survive as best we can until then.”

The silence stretches. I wonder if he’s already fallen asleep. Then his voice comes.

“And the second?”

I frown. “Let’s just hope the genre of our reality doesn’t slip any further into fantasy.”

I hear him shift in his sleeping bag, but he doesn’t answer—perhaps sensing my desire to avoid speaking the worse fate into existence.

There, in that uneasy silence, we both somehow eventually find sleep.