IN A WORLD GONE WRONG,
PRAY FOR DELIVERANCE

They called the village "Deliverance," for that was what it seemed to be to the group of refugees who stumbled across it. Mysteriously deserted, untouched by war or pestilence, the village seemed to welcome the survivors of the great Collapse. In their desperation no one thought it odd that the village was both empty and picture-perfect. Or that the nearby forest, "The Wilderness," was so strangely impenetrable. And anyway, they figured, if they left the Wilderness strictly alone it would return the favor.

As the village's previous occupants could have told them, they were wrong about that last part . . .