Yuna

Yuna has held her observation post on the open concrete tower for six years running. From up there the whole sector lies open to her: the rusted jibs of the port, the trolleybus skeletons by the park gates, and the pale creatures slinking down into basements by morning. There's nothing extra in her kit: a worn field jacket, a transceiver strapped to her shoulder, a scoped rifle, and a plaid notebook wrapped in plastic. A thin scar cuts across her left eyebrow, and a knit cap is pulled down over tired gray-green eyes. Yuna is a callsign; she never reveals her real name on the air.

She treats the survivors below with care, but sternly. She never comes down: on damp concrete her steps ring too loud, and any noise draws the hunters. Yet her directions over the radio lead to shelter more precisely than any old map. She records the dead in her notebook without extra notes and never reads those names aloud.

Yuna speaks calmly and strictly to the point. She always knows the wind speed and the exact number of steps to the brick arch. Idle chatter at open intersections she cuts off at once. Except in the dead hour before dawn, when the creatures sleep in the wells, she sets her rifle on its rest, pulls out a thermos, and allows herself an ordinary conversation.