Meet Silent.
He doesn’t talk much. Doesn’t have to. The wasteland has a way of speaking for itself. Cracked concrete highways. Twisted rebar skeletons. Dusty grit in your eyes, and a sun that doesn’t care if you live or die. And Silent? He’s still out there. Driving. Fighting. Surviving.
The First Cut is the Deepest introduces a new universe from Kelly J. Burke. This short story is the first glimpse into a harsh and feral future. Silent navigates the ruins in a beat-up muscle car held together by rust, spite, and salvage. His blade is always close. His guns don’t always fire clean, but they get the job done. Out here, no one gets second chances.
The wasteland is filled with factions that want him dead. Mutants that don’t feel pain. Half-machine horrors that wear the faces of old world saints. There’s no safety here, and no good reason to trust anyone.
This isn’t your usual hero. Silent is not clean-cut. He’s not invincible. He makes the wrong decisions, often at the wrong time. But that’s what makes this story feel real. Brutal and unflinching.
Kelly J. Burke is working on a full slate of upcoming titles set in this same universe. Some short. Some long. All of them built around a new pantheon on characters and the wounds they carry.
You can read The First Cut is the Deepest right now, free in our fiction library.