Trade

When my husband replaces me with a younger model, I’m entered into the lottery and traded to an Outsider for fuel.

I expect a wasteland, but when the bunker doors open, I see green trees, blue skies, and him—a man half my age with a stone-cold face and a machete strapped to his thigh.

I’ll be lucky to escape him alive. That’s what we’ve been told all our lives.

And the people in charge wouldn’t lie to our faces us about everything.

Would they?