Kirbs

One is the classic: Additional. Which normally means they need more deputies because someone is being a bit too silly or as Josie would say: sassy.

Then sometimes there would be: medical backup. Which as one would assume, it’s a medical incident. Most often including a withdrawal seizure, someone falling, or an unrelated injury.

Then there would be a general backup call often just saying “Additional to ____” no one truly understood who was needed but the general consensus is that people are needed.

Then the holy trifecta: additional and medical to ____

While deputies ran past you to get to the booking island and holding space you did more of a quick saunter

Didn’t do anyone good if you were winded when you got there

“Do you think he fell?” Josie yipped from beside you, your quick walks slowly as you reached the interview room

Josie, a new grad nurse and former paramedic, was extremely well versed in emergency medicine and was very composed on scene- however in any other scenario she was basically a stereotypical 18 year old girl who happened to be 25.

As you were about to respond your eyes track to see a patrol deputy pulled out of the room, the red flashing light of the body cam the first thing you noticed and then the bloody brow. Then it tracked: Riley.

“Uh-take care the guy, Jos.” You almost mumble the words as you move to push your way through the officers to where Riley was being brought.

They stopped at the end of the hall, a sergeant, Johnny and Simon (as you recently learned) Simon’s brow spilt as he cussed about the arrestee.

“Fuckin’ dick can’t do shit, ask’ him one thing and he fuckin lunged at me.”

You chose to slowly approach, “need medical?”

“Need a beer.” Johnny quipped as he checked his bodycam.

Simon looks to you, gaze that was arguably one of the harshest ones you had seen ever so slightly softening, or maybe just…like, being nice. Yeahhh, he’s being nice. “Sorry, Missy. ‘M okay.”

You give him a look, shoving you hand into your scrub pocket and pulling out a pen light and oddly enough some gauze (magic you supposed or maybe from the stitches you had to pull out earlier) with a careful hand you move to lightly touch the skin above his brow. Completely unnoticed to you on how he lowered his head down to you touch (totally unnoticed why would you notice, it’s not like you’re obsessed with him…or something) “Can I ask what happened?”

He grunted, “Sonnabitch had a brass knuckle up his ass and pulled em out.”

There was a pause, “You’re fucking with me right? They didn’t catch that on-“

“M jokin with you. He just landed a good one.”

You hum, “Better than shit covered brass.”

Johnny let out a laugh, making his presence known as you shined the bright light into Simon’s eyes, checking the reaction time of them- “o tha’ be ass-!!! In both ways!”

You take a step back, placing your light in your pocket, “I think you’re okay, Si.” Oop, why’d he look at you like that? His eyes met yours almost within a nano-oooh, he never told you his name and you just used it. Fuck, do you look like stalker now? oh shit- “But I would go get a checkup when you can.”

Simon nodded, “I could just check in tomorrow night.”

“Heh,” you force a laugh, “I don’t work.”

“Neither do I.”

There was a pause

And before you could respond you hear your name yelled along with: “I need some extra hands.” From Josie.

Well shit.

Heheheheh

You wait until the door slides open before you walk into the garage, the arrestee still get patted down and the officers talking beside the intake desk, so you walk over, skimming over the papers upon it trying to find anything that looked vaguely medical.

“He uh’ may o’ run inno a wall or…simthin, not sure what’s wrong wit’ ‘em.” One of the deputies chipped from the other side of the table.

“Hi, ‘oapy. Uh,” you slowly move to walk over to him, “Why no med clearance if guy got medically hurt?”

Johnny shrugs as he clicks his pen, checking to make sure his body camera was off, “Keep a secret, ya?…Si’ wanted an excuse to talk to you more.”

“Si’?”

Johnny gave you a look, “Simon?”

You blink.

“Riley?”

“Oh!!” You take a step back, “Oh! I thought- isn’t he-? Isn’t he like married or-“ you scramble to grab something- anything really, and you grab some of the intake paperwork off the table, pretending to become occupied with that, “or ya know…something?”

Johnny stared at you as if you the stupidest thing upon the planet. “‘Fore you worked here Si would drag a poor sop through the doors and dump ‘em. He now spends uh-triple the time here?”

“Maybe he has a good work ethic.”

“Maybe he’s got the goods for you.”

You scoff and shrug, “don’t be-don’t be silly.” You glance over your shoulder to the arrestee, who was currently rambling about the tree gods, “Oh, yeah and uh- I want a med clearance.”

After that you started to notice a pattern

Every Thursday at about 10pm or so he would drag someone in with a med clearance

At first they were reasonable

They tazed them

Took them down

The person was running and fell

Then about three weeks in- you noticed them getting a little bit…sillier?

“Um…the paperwork says they didn’t do anything-“

“Oh yeah-“ he grunts as he leans against the hull of the patrol car, “just uh- said she was a diabetic so….figure make it easier for you.”

Don’t get you wrong you enjoyed the silly interactions - hated the paperwork

And then the handoffs in the morning to day shift

“Soooo, did your deputy come by?” One of the bright new grads gleam as she sets her coffee down at her soon to be desk, the warm liquid a harsh contrast to the tin of your energy drink.

You roll your eyes, “unfortunately- he brought in a Miss Louis Jones, took her in because she’s a diabetic-“ you see the look the charge nurse glanced towards you, “trust me I know- she’s all good though, got her screened, lower bunk lower tier cause she’s got a bad hip-“

It was all harmless until one day you get called down for a med clearance

“They brought a fucking GSW? Fuck no, take him back- no, I don’t care if the hospital said it’s okay, the man can’t walk- no! Oh, yeah you go call your sergeant!” You groan as you slam the phone up on the other arresting officer and then set your eyes on Riley

And in typical fashion, he was leaning against his car, typing on his phone- probably texting his wife….probably? Right?

After a moment you slowly begin to approach, “your partner is a pain in the ass, and you by proxy.”

He looks up and then shrugs, “Johnny’s got a way with the girls- can’t blame ‘m though, hospital did clear him.”

You roll your eyes, looking at the arrestee you was currently cussing out a staff deputy as she attempted to take off his very expensive watch. “I mean, dude- they slapped a bandaid on it. The bullet is still in there somewhere-“

“Ah, I’m on your side, Stitch. I told the nurse there she should do more but ya know…she’s not you.”

A scoff escapes your lips, “Don’t flatter me Riley.”

“Ain’t flattery if it’s true. You care more about these dipshits than those do.”

With a cross of the arms you adjust the way you stand, “so, who should I-“

“Price, Sergeant Price wil be givi- ah there he is.”

The world around you didn’t just move—it ran, sprinted past you in a series of frantic blurs, too fast, too disjointed to make sense of. Shapes flickered at the corners of your vision—someone’s coat, a hand reaching, a voice shouting. Maybe Dina? Jesse? You couldn't tell.  You thought you saw Ellie—at least, you hoped you did—but your mind wasn’t connecting faces to names anymore. Everything was slipping. Sliding sideways.

The pain had dulled.  Not gone—no, it pulsed there, deep and nauseating—but it had settled into a strange, faraway ache. A warning bell muffled by distance. You pressed your palms flat against the floor, or maybe against someone’s jacket—it was hard to tell—and tried to remember how to breathe through the tremors wracking your body.  Tried to remember how to stay awake.

Every instinct screamed at you to close your eyes, just for a second, just to rest, but you knew—God, you knew—if you let go now, you wouldn’t come back. So you fought it.You clawed your way against the tide dragging you under.The chaos, the yelling, the hands trying to help—they all blurred together into one steady, deafening hum.  But underneath it all, somewhere in the fading thrum of your consciousness, you swore you still heard it. Joel’s voice. “Da-” 

“Shh, shh you’re okay, Doc- we got ya, we got you.” 

–

The gates of Jackson groaned and shuddered as they opened, metal scraping against metal in hiccuping, broken stops. It wasn’t smooth—nothing about today was. The bodies strewn across the entryway acted like jagged anchors, slowing the gates' sluggish crawl toward sanctuary.

Dina didn’t flinch. She didn’t look down—not at the red that had long since soaked through your shirt, not at the trail you’d left in the snow, not at the body being dragged behind the horse like some unholy offering. She didn’t dare. Her eyes stayed locked forward, focused on the gates that loomed just ahead, on the lights of Jackson flickering like distant promises she wasn’t sure she could still believe in. Her jaw was clenched tight enough to ache, and each breath she took came out in thin, ragged clouds of vapor that vanished before they ever had a chance to warm her. The weight leaning into her—your weight—dragged worse than gravity. 

Not because of the physical strain, though that was plenty, but because of what it meant. You, usually so loud, so stubborn, so alive, now slumped against her like something small and breakable. Too still. Too quiet. Every now and then, she’d feel a shudder, a sharp inhale pressed into her jacket, like your body was trying to keep itself moving by memory alone. A sound that rattled in your chest like the last breath of a dying engine. But it was still a breath. And that was all she needed to keep going. Still breathing. Still here.

It was a fragile, ragged thread of life, barely there—barely enough to count—but it was something. It was everything.

And behind them, tied with careful hands, the other body dragged through the snow.  Neatly wrapped, almost reverently, in blood-soaked fabric and cloaked in a silence that screamed louder than any gunshot.  The snow beneath it was streaked in vivid red, a jagged line that traced their whole broken journey back to the gates—an ugly, undeniable path of what had been lost.

The people waiting at the gates watched with wide, stricken eyes, some clutching weapons tighter, others dropping them entirely in stunned horror. Dina kept her chin up.  Kept her arms tight around you.  Kept her horse steady under her, even as her own body threatened to betray her. 

Telling Tommy was harder than anything else.

Harder than watching the blood seep into the snow. Harder than dragging yourself back through the gates with your insides barely holding. Harder than hearing your own voice crack when you said his name.

Because Tommy already looked broken.  He stood at the edge of the square, surrounded by people shouting logistics, wounded being carried in on stretchers, smoke still curling off the rooftops in thin, ghostly wisps.  He looked older than he had hours ago—his shoulders bent low, his eyes sunk too deep.  And then he saw the horse.

Saw you.

His gaze dropped immediately to Ellie, walking hollow-eyed beside you. Then up—to the way Dina was gripping the reins with white knuckles. And finally, down.

To the body bag.

He didn’t say anything at first. Didn’t move.

His mouth opened slightly, like a question was forming—but nothing came. The silence grew loud around him, pressing against the air until it almost hurt.

And then... he nodded. A slow, heavy movement, like the weight of it cost him something. Like he already knew what had happened before anyone had spoken, before he saw the blood-streaked trail behind the horse, or the stillness of the body wrapped too carefully to be anything but final. There was no shock in his face, only that quiet, unbearable kind of recognition that comes from a man who’s lost too much and was always waiting for the next thing to fall apart. Tommy stepped forward without a word, his boots crunching through snow as he reached for you, both hands rising—not forceful, not urgent, just steady.

 Gentle, even. His fingers found your shoulders, curling in with the kind of touch meant to ground, to tether, to hold someone together when they were seconds from shattering. His hands were rough, but warm, and they lingered there for a breath too long, like he needed to be sure you were real, still standing, still breathing. And though his grip didn’t shake, you could feel the strain in it, the restraint. He looked at you, really looked at you, and something flickered in his expression that you couldn’t name.

Grief, maybe. Grief and guilt and that bone-deep understanding that everything had just changed. Again.

“C’mon, sweetheart,” he said quietly. “Let’s get you to the clinic.” You didn’t argue.

– 

You could lie there for exactly seventy minutes before the noise started—sharp, rhythmic, relentless. A dull drumming sound that broke through the fog in your head.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8... You blinked.

9, 10, 11, 12... The numbers kept counting in your mind before you even registered what they meant.

13, 14, 15... 28, 29, 30..

Pause

Two breaths.

CPR. Someone was doing CPR.  Someone was dying.

You pushed yourself up so fast the world spun sideways. For a split second, you weren’t sure where the ceiling ended and the walls began, only that your stomach pulled and twisted in agony like someone had gutted you and sewn you back together wrong.

Oh. Right. You’d been shot. How had you—?

It didn’t matter. None of it did.

You slid out of the clinic bed, your fingers trembling as they grabbed the edge of the mattress for balance. There were clean bandages around your middle—stitches, clearly recent, the skin beneath raw and tight. Someone had cleaned you up. Saved you. But whoever it was hadn’t stuck around long enough to stop you from moving.

Your boots were sitting neatly on the chair beside the bed. A kindness. Or a mistake. You didn’t know which. You shoved them on with shaking hands, grimacing as your body screamed in protest. A hoodie—yours—hung over the backrest. You threw it on, every inch of fabric dragging like sandpaper across bruised skin.

Pain lanced through your abdomen with every breath, every step, every heartbeat. It wanted to flatten you. To drag you back down.

But someone was dying.  And they needed you.

Blindly, you stumbled into the hallway, the world still spinning slightly, your vision tunneled and pulsing with each beat of your heart. The air was thick with antiseptic and blood, sweat and smoke—a battlefield trying to wear the mask of a clinic.

Everywhere you looked, there were bodies.

People laid across cots, some slumped in chairs, others curled on the floor against the wall with makeshift bandages pressed to their wounds. Gashes split down arms. Burns bloomed across cheeks and necks. Dirt-crusted scrapes marked those lucky enough to limp away. And then there were the bites.

You didn’t need to look closely to know which wounds had a timer ticking behind them. You could feel the tension coiled tight in the room. Some were already grieving. Some didn’t know yet that they should be.

It was loud. Too loud. A cacophony of groans and footsteps, overlapping voices shouting instructions, weeping, begging, praying. The kind of noise that made it impossible to think, to breathe, to feel.

You bent down to scoop up a dropped first aid kit, the corners stained red and the zipper half torn. Your hands were shaking, still numb, the weight of your own healing wound dragging your spine into a curve. You hadn’t even opened the kit when a voice cut through the noise.

“Doctor Miller.”

Your head snapped up, breath caught in your throat, pain momentarily forgotten. “Marcie.”

She stood across from you—pale, trembling, her face streaked with soot and something darker that you didn’t want to look at too long. Blood soaked the front of her shirt, matting it to her skin in places, and you couldn’t tell if it was hers, or someone else's, or if it even mattered anymore. Her hands were outstretched, desperately pressing a soaked towel against the gaping wound at a man’s throat, the fabric so saturated it barely slowed the seep of blood anymore. Her eyes locked onto yours, wide and glassy with panic, with pleading—like she already knew you were running on empty but still couldn’t stop herself from asking.

"You—you should lay down," Marcie stammered, her voice cracking halfway through the words as she tried to glance between you and the injured man gasping shallowly on the floor.

"No, no no," you said quickly, trying to sound steady, trying to mask the way your own knees wanted to buckle. You tightened your grip on the first aid kit, stepping forward as your vision swam at the edges. "I can help. Just—just connect me to some fluids or something, and I’ll be good. I’ll be fine."

The lie came easy. Reflexive.

Marcie hesitated again, visibly torn, her mouth opening like she wanted to argue—but the look in your eyes, raw and clear, stole the breath right out of her chest. She glanced around, at the bodies slumped against the walls, at the blood pooling around the cots, at the wounded who had no time left to wait. Her lips trembled, and she stammered, “Um… Um, you really should—”

“Marce,” you said, coaxing her with a smile that felt steadier than it had any right to be. You took a few slow, careful steps closer, each one making your stomach clench with pain, but you forced yourself to keep moving until you were right in front of her. You touched her arm lightly, grounding her—and yourself. “You are a phenomenal medic. I’m serious. I’m so happy you’re here. But I’m here too. So let me help you guys.”

For a second, it looked like she might break down. Tears welled up in her eyes, the strain of the last few hours cracking through whatever stubborn hold she had on herself. But she sniffled hard, wiped her sleeve across her face, and nodded. Quick. Sharp. No more arguing. Only survival now.

She rattled off the triage system without wasting another breath. Greens were downstairs—walking wounded, stable enough to move. Yellows were in the chairs—serious, but holding. Reds were in the beds—the ones clinging by a thread. She finished the rundown with a shaky breath, and you nodded back, already pivoting toward the first cot in sight.

Rounds started immediately.

One patient after another. Bullet wound to the thigh, pressure dressing and pain meds. A shattered wrist, splinted and stabilized. A sucking chest wound, sealed as best you could with trembling hands.

When you knelt beside a man with a gut shot, you didn’t hesitate. You grabbed the forceps, fingers slipping slightly on the blood-slick handle, and worked the bullet out carefully, feeling the torn flesh shudder beneath your touch.

While you were elbow-deep in the mess of it, Marcie hooked a saline bag to a metal rod beside the cot. She worked fast, threading an IV line into your arm so smoothly you barely noticed the pinch. You tried to wave her off when she reached for the pain meds, tried to tell her you were fine, but she gave you a look that brokered no argument—a look you must have taught her—and pressed the dose in anyway.

Somewhere between hour four and five, somewhere between stitching up another torn shoulder and laying a sheet over another body that had gone still, you found yourself moving on muscle memory alone. People were being discharged, shuffled out with bandaged limbs and whispered blessings. Others were being carried out beneath thin white sheets, the only kindness the world still had left to offer them. You barely registered it anymore. You were a machine. You had to be.

You passed the closed room—that room—without a second thought. Marcie had flagged it earlier, said it was green, stable enough to leave alone, just needed observation per standard SI protocol. Nothing urgent. Nothing needing a second glance. And you didn’t have time for non-urgency. Not when blood was spilling like water and screams were still shaking the foundation of the town.

But then you heard it.

The screaming. The familiar, gut-wrenching sound of someone not just in pain, but in grief. In rage.

Your body moved before your mind caught up. You slammed the door open with your shoulder, stumbling into the room—

And froze.

There, half-wild and thrashing, face flushed with fury and brokenness, was Ellie.

Your heart lurched violently against your ribs. Why was— Why was she here— Why was she screaming—

And the memories—God, the memories—hit you like a hammer blow. I’ll fucking kill you. Close your eyes, Sparrow. Please… he’s a good man.

It was like a dam breaking inside you. Everything you'd been stuffing down—pain, fear, guilt, hope—came roaring back in one sickening wave. The ache in your stomach twisted violently, making your knees tremble. Your vision blurred, not from the medicated haze but from the burning in your eyes, the pressure that threatened to spill out in a way you didn’t have time for, didn’t have room for.

Everything felt so heavy. The room, the world, your own skin. As if even the air was weighed down by it.

Close your eyes.

Close your eyes, Starshine,

–

Spring was easily one of the better seasons—soft, forgiving in a way the world rarely was anymore. The snow had finally melted, revealing soil that had somehow managed to survive the frost. The cold air didn’t bite quite as cruelly, and by midday, people shed their coats and basked in the warmth like they hadn’t felt sunlight in years. Flowers were blooming—small, stubborn things that pushed their way through cracked soil and broken sidewalks like they had something to prove. Birds sang without a care, voices sharp and bright as if the world had never fallen apart.

Jackson was healing.

Not fast. Not perfectly. But steadily. The outer walls were being rebuilt, this time with better materials and stronger supports. Extra hands—newcomers, volunteers—helped mix concrete, shape beams, lay down fencing. Defense mechanisms were being revamped, patrol routes expanded, watch towers reinforced. There was talk of expanding the school. Of rebuilding the greenhouse. Of starting another community kitchen closer to the east gate.

Every day was busy. Every day came with new priorities, new decisions, new fires to put out—figurative and sometimes literal. And those tasks were brought before the board. The board that, for some reason, you now sat at.

It still felt strange, your name etched into the chart beside Maria’s, and Tommy’s. The chair felt too big some days. Too small on others. You’d never asked for this kind of role. You’d never wanted it, but now that it was yours, you bore it like everything else in your life: shoulders squared, heart a little too raw, but eyes forward. You watched as voices rose and fell in the meeting—people pointing at maps, listing resources, debating timing—and you nodded, took notes, offered compromises.

The whiskey was warm now, untouched for long enough that the edge of comfort it once promised had dulled. It sat beside your folder like a paperweight, condensation pooling into a lazy ring on the table’s wood. You squinted down at the expansion proposal, eyes moving over each line with the kind of tired scrutiny that came only after months of fatigue—not from the work itself, but from knowing how many beautiful, well-planned ideas would have to sit and rot on paper before the world caught up with the dream.

It was good. Really good. Thoughtful, efficient. A design that actually accounted for population growth, medical supply storage, patrol turnover rates. The kind of work someone had poured hours of hope into. But it didn’t matter. Not yet.

Not until the walls were fully repaired. Not until the clinic wasn’t three patients away from collapse. Not until people stopped sleeping with a hand on their rifle. You sighed, low and tight in your throat, and shoved the folder aside.

Then you stood, the scrape of the chair loud against the quiet hum of rebuilding noise filtering in from outside. You grabbed your coat, tugged it on with stiff fingers, and left the meeting hall—stepping into the main street where spring was trying its best to be felt, where the town buzzed with nail guns, shouted measurements, wheelbarrows and laughter you didn’t fully trust yet.

You weren’t sure what you were looking for at first, but your feet seemed to know. And when your eyes found him—there, sleeves rolled, hammer in hand—you felt that familiar ache unwind just a bit.

Tommy was crouched low, driving a thick wooden post into the ground, part of a new foundation for another security structure. His shirt clung to his back with sweat, strands of gray hair falling into his eyes, and still, he worked like he was thirty years younger and trying to beat the sun to the finish line.

You stood there for a moment, almost debating if you should bug him or not.

“You just here to watch us or are ya gonna help?” Jesse called out, not even looking up from where he knelt beside a pallet of stacked timber. His voice carried over the hammering and rustling of canvas, laced with that same dry humor he always kept close, like a shield he never put down. But there was a fleeting smile too—quick, genuine—the kind that didn’t always come easy anymore.

It was enough to draw Tommy’s attention. He paused mid-swing, one final thud echoing as he drove the post firm into the earth. He turned, the sun catching the sweat on his brow, making him look older, weathered—but strong. Solid in a way that made you feel like things might not crumble if he was still upright.

He walked over, a bit stiff in the knees, brushing his palms against his jeans. The hug was quick, but not rushed. Familiar. A hand on the back of your head, firm but gentle, like he was making sure you were really there. He pressed a kiss into your temple, calloused fingers tapping once against your shoulder as he pulled back.

“How ya doin’, Supernova?” he asked, voice low, quiet in the way it always was when it wasn’t for the crowd—just for you.

You hadn’t heard that name in a while. Not since before the chaos. Before the clinic ran red and the board meetings started feeling like interrogations. Hearing it now—warm and soft and without weight seemd uncanny.

“I’ve been better,” you said honestly, the shrug in your voice not quite hiding the heaviness behind it.

Tommy’s easy grin faltered, just slightly—his face still lit with warmth, but his eyes sharpened. The kind of shift that only came with years of surviving the aftermath of war, not the bullets, but the emotional shrapnel. He stopped walking, boots crunching in the gravel, just as a wagon creaked past behind you, children laughing as they helped toss tools into a bin too big for them. A stark contrast to the low, serious turn your voice had taken.

You slowed with him, both of you now standing still in the middle of Jackson’s heartbeat—hammers, chatter, the rising scent of bread from the bakery’s open window, a dog barking somewhere off near the south post. The town was alive, and that made your stillness feel heavier.

“Well, what you got on your agenda?” he’d asked, easy as ever. “Benji misses you. Says he ‘wants to be Auntie Starry.’”

“Mm, still don’t have the heart to tell him we’re cousins.”

Tommy chuckled, shaking his head. “Eh, he can survive with the white lie—”

But he stopped mid-step, turning to really look at you. The kind of look that stripped past the politeness, the role you wore for the town, the board, the clinic. The kind of look only someone who’d helped raise you could give.

“But seriously, are you okay?”

You didn’t meet his eyes. Instead, you rubbed your thumb across your knuckles, focusing on the sting in the tender scar between your fingers. “I’ll live, Uncle Tommy.”

He waited—still, quiet.

And then, as the wind cut through the street and caught the hem of your jacket, you spoke again, voice smaller now, your words nearly swallowed by the noise of the world around you.

“If I start feeling all the things I want to feel…” you swallowed, eyes locked on the ground, “I’m scared of what I’ll do.”

Tommy didn’t flinch. But his posture changed, just slightly. Shoulders squaring. His jaw worked as he nodded once, slowly.

“What do you think you’re gonna do?”

More silence. A breath. Then the answer came, quiet and unflinching.

“…Hurt people.”

It sat there, between you, like a cracked bone that hadn’t healed right. And even in the warm bustle of a rebuilding town—surrounded by laughter, nails, music, and spring- the life—those three words felt louder than all of it.

– 

Ellie was already pacing before the door even clicked shut. Her boots scuffed against the wooden floor, dragging bits of melted snow and dried mud across the seams. Her jaw was tight, shoulders squared like she was still on the defensive, like she hadn’t left whatever fight she’d just had at the door.

“I don’t want you,” she snapped again, though the words came out thinner now, less fire and more smoke. “Tell her I don’t want another doctor. I don’t need someone hovering, or asking me about sleep, or trying to poke around in my head with a clipboard. - I want you, tell her that everyone else can fuck off.”

You didn’t move for a second. Just blinked, breathed in slow through your nose, rubbed the edge of your temple with a tired finger, and then pushed your glass of lukewarm whiskey aside. The one you’d poured not ten minutes ago, hoping maybe—just maybe—it would be a quiet night. “Marce, I got it,” you said, voice calm, practiced. Tired. The kind of tired that didn't come from lack of sleep, but from living three lives at once—doctor, survivor, and the girl who still kept her dad’s dog tags in a drawer under her socks.

Marcie’s eyes were wide, flicking between you and Ellie like she half-expected the walls to come down. But she nodded. Quietly. Then pulled the door shut behind her with a soft click.

The silence that followed was heavy and strangely intimate.

You leaned back in your chair, gesturing vaguely to the other seat. “You want to sit down, or… are we doing this storm-and-sputter style today?” She sat with her arms crossed tight over her chest, like the act alone could shield her from your questions. From the stethoscope. From you.

You gave her a nod and went to work in silence—checking her vitals with the same careful, measured hands you used for everyone else, but the silence between you two was different. Not awkward. Just heavy. Like the ghosts of all the things you weren’t saying were crowding the space between her pulse and your fingers.

The bruising had faded mostly now, but the scar tissue on her ribs still told its story in puckered, angry swirls. You pressed gently, watched for her flinch. She didn’t give you the satisfaction. Of course not.

You finally leaned back in your chair, setting your stethoscope down with a soft clink, the silence between you two dragging longer now, thick with mutual stubbornness. 

A doctor and a patient. Acceptance and rage. Fatigue and will.

You tapped the pen against your clipboard and cleared your throat. “Alright, lousy questions part, Ells—” you muttered as you clicked the pen, more to distract yourself than her. “How would you rate your pain? Ten being ‘fuck this is how I die,’ and one is like… a paper cut.”

Ellie didn’t even blink. “Nothing. Zero.”

You raised a brow and looked up from the clipboard. “Bullshit.”

“I’m thriving, Starry,” she replied, with that familiar sarcasm curling the corner of her lip. Too sharp to be funny, too practiced to be convincing.

You sighed, muttering as you scribbled down the number anyway. “Fine. Zero.”

The quiet between questions hung in the air like steam off hot pavement. You shuffled through the notes—checkups, stats, field reports from the medics who treated her when you couldn’t. When you’d been the one on the other side of the clinic doors, blood still wet on your shirt, pleading silently with anyone who had hands and saline.

You didn’t look up when you asked the next one. “Any trouble breathing?”

“No.”

You glanced at her now. “Not even when you’re working out, running, lifting heavy—”

“No.”

She caught the spirometer one-handed, didn’t even flinch. Muscle memory. Like she’d done it a dozen times before—and she had. You watched her take the deep inhale, jaw tight, shoulders rolling back like she was bracing for a hit instead of measuring lung capacity. Then came the exhale. Long. Steady. Controlled. Almost like she was trying to prove something with every breath.

You turned your back for a moment, sliding her file into the overstuffed cabinet at your desk. You weren’t in a rush. You just needed something to do with your hands while you gave her the space to do it her way. A small mercy, but an important one.

“Mm, okay, I can live with that,” you hummed once she held the result up, the little plastic needle hitting the higher end of what you’d expected. No hesitation, no shallow panic, just a solid number. You took it from her hand with a nod, scribbled it into the file margin without looking up.

Ellie shrugged like it didn’t matter, but you saw the tiny flicker of satisfaction in her eyes. Not pride. Something smaller. Maybe relief. Maybe the comfort of something in her body still working the way it should.

A moment passed—too long, too quiet—before you cleared your throat, still flipping the pen between your fingers like it could somehow soften the blow. “Uh… so there is a note in the file.”

Ellie’s brow lifted immediately. “What, like ‘this one likes to cuss out nurses’? ‘Watch for sarcasm-related injuries’?”

Your lips twitched, but you didn’t smile. Because she was already on edge. Because she was going to hate this. “No, uh—”

Knock knock.

Right on cue, the universe stepped in.

The door creaked open before you could say another word, and Gale stepped in with the smooth self-assurance of someone who had no idea they were walking into a live grenade. “Now a good time?”

You groaned, dragging your palm over your face like you could disappear behind it. “Jesus.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Ellie muttered under her breath, the chair she sat in creaking with her shift in posture—shoulders already pulled back, like a punch was coming.

But Gale? Unbothered. Classic. She walked in with the clipboard in one hand and an annoyingly casual ease in the other, like she hadn’t just walked into a pressure cooker. “Good. You’re both here, actually. Saves me the trouble. How are you doing?”

“Right and dandy,” your words hushed,, though the sigh in your voice undercut it completely.

“Fine,” Ellit bit.

The air was thick, like it had weight. Like the tension was pressing in around all three of you, suffocating any attempt at casual conversation. You could feel Ellie’s knee bouncing now, could hear the scratch of her nails against the armrest. Her version of a scream held behind gritted teeth.

“If you say it that fast, it kind of implies you’re not,” Gale quipped, her tone just dry enough to be annoying but not enough to be ignored. She tilted her head slightly, arms folding as she stood just inside the door—perfect posture, like judgment incarnate.

Ellie didn’t even miss a beat. “Okay,” she said, nodding, eyes sharp as they cut sideways to you with a look that could curdle milk. “Ask me again.”

You groaned internally, already bracing for it. But, like a fool in a horror movie, you walked right into it.

“How ya doing, Ellie?”

There was a pause—way too long. You winced. You knew what was coming.

“Mmm,” she hummed, tapping her fingers against her thigh like she was thinking really hard about it. “Give me a moment.”

In that “moment,” Gale turned her gaze to you, only to catch the flask halfway up to your lips. You didn’t even try to be subtle about it—just tilted your head back and finished off the rest like it was water and not whatever unholy whiskey you kept under the cabinet labeled for emergencies only. When you pulled it back down and saw her watching, you gagged—not from the burn, but from the shame. “I’m fine,” you said with the flattest sarcasm known to man. “Perfectly fine.”

“Uh huh,” Gale replied, with a slow nod and the same energy as a therapist who was about to drag you without mercy.

“You know,” Ellie finally chimed back in, still not looking at either of you, “it’s really complicated. ‘Cause, ya know... feelings.” She said the word like it personally offended her. Like emotions had shown up uninvited to ruin her day.

Gale, to her credit, didn’t even blink. She just nodded, walked further into the room, and dragged a chair over with the resolve of someone who had done this before. A thousand times. Maybe more.

“Alright, okay,” she said as she sat down and crossed one leg over the other.

“Alright, okay,” Gale said calmly as she settled into the chair across from Ellie, crossing one leg over the other like she had all the time in the world. Like she hadn’t just detonated a live grenade of unresolved emotion in the middle of a clinic room.

Ellie groaned immediately, throwing her head back like a teenager at the brink of a meltdown. “Oh, come on, man—I’ve been stuck in here—” She stopped, mid-complaint, locking eyes with Gale. Whatever she saw there made her pause. A long beat passed, and then Ellie slumped a little in her chair, picking at a scab on her hand. “Fine. Yeah. I miss him. He meant a lot to me. So yeah—upset and sad?”

Gale didn’t flinch. She just nodded slowly, voice gentler now. “Of course. Actually... I was wondering about New Year’s Eve.”

That made you look up. Hard.

Until now, you'd been fully committed to fading into the wall like some traumatized wallpaper, tuned out and vaguely counting the ceiling tiles just to avoid participating. But that line? That event? You immediately sat upright, spine stiffening like someone had called your name in roll call and you weren’t ready to be perceived.

“Oh sick,” you blurted, voice already on the edge of a panicked laugh. “This is just Ellie therapy time?  Cause I…Well I was there for a minute, then I got drunk with Jesse- anyway this is just, Ellie time? Cool, love that. I—I’m good. I can go.” You started to rise, like that would actually save you from whatever emotional ambush was about to be sprung.

Gale turned toward you slowly, her voice sharp and surgical. “Doctor Miller, I will be shortly with you.”

You blinked. “What—wh—”

But she had already turned back to Ellie, completely unbothered.

“Ha, loser,” Ellie muttered under her breath with the most evil smirk on her face, not even looking at you.

You narrowed your eyes. “Shut the fuck up,” you snapped, grabbing your coat off the back of the chair like it had personally betrayed you. The door slammed behind you with more force than intended, a dull thud echoing down the hallway as you groaned and leaned your forehead against the nearest wall.

“Hey, Starry, kids in 3, broke his leg I think.” 

Yet the world never stops spinning. “Got it, coming, Marce.”

– 

When you got back home—if that word still meant anything—it felt more like stepping into a memory than a space you occupied. The door creaked like it hadn’t been opened in weeks, the hinges stiff with neglect and cold. The air inside was stale, not from rot or disrepair, just… still. Lifeless. Like the walls were holding their breath, waiting for laughter or guitar strings or boots scraping against the floorboards. Waiting for him.

You stepped over the threshold without thinking, boots dragging snow and dirt across the rug he used to insist you clean. The place was tidy, unnervingly so, not because you'd cleaned it, but because it hadn’t been lived in. The couch still had that blanket folded on the back of it—his blanket. The lamp by the window still flickered like it always did when the wind hit the house just right. But the warmth? The feeling? That had packed up and left with him.

Your bag thudded to the floor, a dull and careless sound. You didn’t bother to hang your coat or take off your boots. Just turned on instinct, the way a body moves when it knows exactly where the pain medicine is kept. Straight to the kitchen. You didn’t even check what was in the cabinet—just opened it and reached for the bottle with the most liquid left. Rum. Probably not good. Probably hadn’t been good when it was opened two years ago.

Didn’t matter. The bottle came down hard on the counter. You didn’t reach for a glass. Just twisted the cap with a trembling hand and stared at it for a long second—long enough to remember how often he’d stood in that very kitchen, telling you not to do stupid shit when you were upset.

You spun on your heel so fast the bottle nearly slipped from your hand, already tipped to your lips when the voice caught you off guard.

“Holy fuckin—Ellie!” you barked, stumbling back a step and slamming the bottle down onto the counter with a sharp clink. The rum sloshed inside, sticky and sharp, catching the dull kitchen light. Your pulse hadn’t even started to slow yet when she raised her brows at you, leaned casually in the doorway like she hadn’t just given you a heart attack.

“Damn,” she muttered, her voice half a smirk, “I thought they were lyin’ when they said you started drinking again.”

You bristled immediately, shoulders tightening under your jacket. “I don’t—fuck off.” You grabbed the bottle again, less for the taste and more for the grounding weight of it in your hand. “Why are you here?”

Ellie didn’t answer right away. She stepped inside, slow, like the room might bite her. Like you might. Her eyes scanned the space—the untouched dishes, the unopened mail, the stack of your father’s books collecting dust on the edge of the table. Her face tightened. Not in judgment. Just recognition. She’d seen this kind of grief before. Worn it like a second skin.

“I knocked. Twice,” she said. “Figured either you were dead or too drunk to care.”

You let out a sharp, dry laugh that didn’t sound like you. Not really. Not the you before all this. You raised the bottle again—not with the intent to drink this time, but just to hold it like a shield. “Just got home,” you said, trying to lace your voice with something breezy, something that wasn’t panic or sorrow or everything else bleeding through your cracks. “And for the record, I am not a drunk.”

Ellie didn’t flinch. She shrugged one shoulder, her mouth pulling into that half-smile that always looked more like a dare than comfort. “Oh yeah, I know,” she said. “Seems like… you’re not super bad yet.”

Yet. The word sank like lead into your stomach. You didn’t answer. Didn’t need to. The silence that followed was thicker than the air had any right to be—clogged with everything neither of you had the guts to say. Not yet.

You didn’t look at her, but you could feel it. The weight of her stare. The way her eyes tracked your fingers as they twitched slightly around the neck of the bottle. The tension in your shoulders. The way your throat bobbed when you swallowed down a truth that was chewing you apart from the inside. Then, without meaning to, your voice cracked the silence like a splintering beam.

“I don’t remember.”

It came out too fast, too rehearsed, and too empty all at once.

Ellie’s brows lifted slightly, but her face didn’t twist in shock. She didn’t call you a liar. She didn’t need to. She just… looked at you. And you could feel what she wanted to ask—the question that had been curled in your gut like a splinter ever since you’d been stitched back together. The question you couldn’t ask yourself in the mirror. The one you refused to let anyone else give voice to.

Who killed him?

“You,” Ellie said slowly, her voice soft but cutting, “are really bad at lying.”

“No I’m not.” The words snapped from your throat like you were trying to prove it. To her. To yourself.

“Right.” Her mouth tugged down at the corners, not quite a frown but something close. She crossed her arms, leaned against the doorframe like she wasn’t planning to leave anytime soon. “So you don’t remember anything. Not the sound, not the blood, not the look on his face right before—”

Your voice cracked, echoing in the empty kitchen like a cracked dish—barely louder than a whisper, but somehow more brittle than anything you’d ever screamed. “Ellie.”

She froze in the doorway, framed by the dull yellow of the hallway light that pooled just behind her. The only sound was the drip of melting ice from the kitchen faucet, the faint hum of the refrigerator, and the blood pounding in your ears.

“You know their names, Starshine,” she said softly, stepping forward so the light glinted off the steel toe of her boot, “I know you do.”

You stayed pressed against the counter, fingers curling around the neck of the rum bottle until your knuckles went white. The liquid inside sloshed gently, as if it knew what was coming. Finally you whispered, voice raw. “I do.”

Her eyes searched your face. “Why won’t you tell me?”

A hollow laugh tumbled out as you shrugged against the cold countertop. “’Cause I haven’t even told Tommy, Ells.” The words tasted like ash in your mouth. You let your head fall back against the chipped cabinet, the weight of the ceiling pressing down. “...Fuck...”

Silence stretched so long it felt like water pooling in your lungs. You closed your eyes, letting the grief seep into your bones until you couldn’t stand it any longer. Taking a breath that felt like it might be your last, you pushed off the counter and met her gaze slowly, each heartbeat thudding heavy and loud in your chest.

Death is a tricky subject to think about; maybe it had always been that way, even before the world cracked open, if the history books were anything to go by. People feared it, wrote about it, built whole kingdoms and religions and wars around it. But now—now—it was different. Worse. You had a strong opinion about that, one you carried quietly, heavy in your chest. Because death today didn’t mean an end. It didn’t mean quiet. It didn’t even mean peace.

It meant transformation. It meant something wrong.

It meant the body getting back up, even after the soul was long gone. It meant losing the person you loved twice—first to the infection, and then again when you had to look them in the face and pull the trigger. Or worse, when you couldn’t. There was no mourning anymore. No process. No funerals or songs or prayers whispered into the earth. Death now came clawing, screaming, snarling. It ripped dignity away. It hollowed people out and left them shambling echoes of who they used to be.

You didn’t just lose someone when they died—you had to fight them.  And that made grief a battle you never really won. So you thought about death the way you thought about the infection—like a thief in the night. A monster wearing the skin of someone you loved.  And maybe the worst part was knowing it could happen to you, too. That someday, someone you cared about might have to look you in the eye and choose between love and survival.

Love and loyalty are often entangled within a mess of emotions and the heavy duty of responsibility, so closely woven that some would consider them one and the same. Both bloom from that rare, less frozen corner of the heart—the part untouched by survival instinct, by fear, by the brutal demands of the world. Love, true love, demands loyalty; not the easy kind whispered between easy days, but the kind that kings would die for, the kind that widows would wail for under blackened skies. Loyalty forged not by words but by action, by blood and broken promises and desperate hope. Loyalty that, in a final breath, would not turn upward in prayer for a soul, but sideways, toward the battered body laying beside it. The last thought not of heaven or hell, but of them.

And Joel Miller was a man whose loyalties lay in the same half-dug grave where his love had long since wilted. Buried under the rubble of years he refused to count, under the weight of names he no longer dared to say aloud. Love, for him, was not the shining, effortless thing the old world sang about. It was a scar tissue kind of love—gnarled and ugly, stitched together by loss, hardened by survival. His loyalty was a relic of that same ruin, stubborn and brutal and unmovable. It lived in calloused hands and in the way he stood between danger and those he cared for, even when he knew the cost. Especially when he knew the cost. Joel Miller didn’t love often, and he didn’t love easily—but when he did, it was with the kind of loyalty that refused to die, even when everything else around him had.

Sarah Miller was a girl who had always managed to find the good in things, even when the world seemed hell-bent on crushing it down. She was the kind of light that didn’t demand attention, the kind that simply existed—quiet, warm, stubbornly present in places where most people only saw the cracks. And some part of Joel—some twisted, broken part he didn’t like to look at too long—was thankful she had never lived to see the worst of it. Thankful that, even in her death, Sarah had only glimpsed the early fractures, the kind of brokenness that still wore the thin disguise of normalcy: late dinners, missed birthdays, heavy silences mistaken for routine. She never saw the cities fall, never saw the fire consume the streets, never heard the sound of a thousand lives ending all at once. She never had to become someone else just to survive. In Joel’s mind, Sarah was frozen in that better world—the last piece of it he could still pretend was untouched. And even if the guilt of that gratitude hollowed him out some days, he clung to it anyway, because it was the only way he knew how to keep her safe.

"Annnnd, ooooh, I think I just have to buy Park Place,” she chirped happily, bouncing a little in her seat as she snatched the deed card from the banker—Tommy, who was barely hiding a tired, fond grin behind his beer. She placed the card down with a flourish, carefully arranging it next to the neat little row of properties she had already amassed, color-coded and impeccably organized like trophies.

When she looked up, she flashed them both that grin—the one that could probably power an entire city if the lights ever went out. Bright and triumphant, cheeks flushed with victory. "You two give up yet?" she teased, swinging her legs under the table like she already knew the answer.

Joel leaned back in his chair, giving the board a slow, skeptical look. Little plastic houses and hotels littered the spaces, most of them claimed by Sarah’s careful planning. His brow furrowed, lips twitching at the corners.

"You think you’re winning?" he drawled, voice low and teasing, like a challenge disguised as a casual observation.

Sarah beamed, practically bouncing in her seat as she straightened out the row of property cards in front of her like she was laying down a royal flush. "Uh, yeah, I’m winning," she said, matter-of-fact, tapping her freshly acquired Park Place with the pride of a general conquering a new city. "And you're both going down."

Tommy laughed under his breath, shuffling the bank notes in his hand with theatrical disappointment. "Kid’s got more hotels than I got brain cells."

"That ain’t sayin’ much," Joel muttered around the rim of his beer bottle, earning a snort from Sarah and a mock-offended look from Tommy.

Sarah leaned her elbows onto the table, chin resting on her fists, and gave them both a saccharine smile that practically dripped with mischief. It was the kind of grin that said she knew exactly how far ahead she was, and she was savoring every second of it. The soft overhead light caught the curve of her cheek, the sparkle in her eye, making her look every bit the kid she still was—untouched by the weight of the world outside their walls, if only for tonight.

"I could let you guys mortgage some of your properties," she said sweetly, like she was offering charity at a soup kitchen. "Maybe give you a fighting chance."

Joel leaned back in his chair, arms folding loosely across his chest, his gaze sharpening with mock suspicion. He narrowed his eyes at her like a general sizing up an enemy commander, the edges of his mouth twitching against the smile he was trying—and failing—to suppress. "I’ve seen war zones more merciful than you," he muttered, shaking his head slowly, voice all rough affection.

Tommy chuckled into his drink, half-hiding his grin behind the rim of the bottle.

And Sarah just beamed wider, practically glowing with triumph, her laugh bubbling out—bright, free, safe. For a moment, just a flicker, Joel let himself believe that maybe this was what life could have stayed like. Nights around a worn kitchen table. Laughter louder than sirens. Battles fought with fake money and gleeful trash talk, instead of bullets and broken promises.

"And I've seen grown men cry over Monopoly," she shot back sweetly, nudging one of Joel's little green houses just slightly out of place with her fingertip.

Tommy chuckled again, tossing hi down with a dramatic sigh. "Alright, I’m out. I ain’t got the heart to watch her bankrupt her own father."

Joel shook his head, reaching for the dice with a groan that was only half-faked. "Gimme that. I ain't goin' down without a fight."

Sarah grinned wider—the kind of grin that said she already knew he was doomed, but she was gonna make him work for it anyway. It was pure, unfiltered joy, the kind of smile kids wore when they still believed they were invincible, when the biggest battles they faced were across a board game and not out in the world.

The living room was warm, cozy in the way only an old house could be. The low hum of the heater filled the space, a steady, comforting backdrop to their little corner of the universe. The fading sun poured through the windows, painting everything in a soft, golden glow—turning the battered couch, the scuffed coffee table, the worn Monopoly board into something sacred without even trying. Dust motes floated lazily in the air, catching the last light of the day, and somewhere down the street, a dog barked and kids laughed, the sound barely reaching them through the half-open window. It felt safe. Whole.

Whole 

A whole

A hole. 

A hole of ever-consuming grief gnawed at him, vast and endless, something he could never quite outrun. It lived under his skin, burrowed deep in the marrow of his bones, heavy in his chest with every breath he dared to take. The screams weighed down on his senses—not just noise, but a memory that lived sharper than any knife. The panicked begging, the way small hands had clutched at him, pleading for him to fix it, to make it better, when there was nothing left to fix. No way to pull shattered pieces back into something whole. The sight of dark red flooded his mind without permission, the warmth of blood soaking through his fingers, sticky and hot, seeping into his palms like it wanted to stain him forever. No matter how many times he scrubbed his hands, no matter how many winters passed, he still felt it—still smelled it, coppery and final. Heavy steps—too heavy, too fast—pounded behind him, the sound of something unnatural crashing through the world with no purpose but to tear it apart. Gunshots cracked through the haze like a cruel metronome, each one carving another memory into him he couldn’t erase. The fire—God, the fire—spitting ember-

He only snapped back into reality when Tommy glanced back at him, the weight of the moment pulling Joel up from the deep, suffocating pit of memory he’d fallen into. The silence inside the dealership was deafening—howling, almost—as if the building itself was mourning. Rain hissed through the broken windows, misting across the floor in thin, cold sheets, soaking into abandoned papers and the dark stains smeared across the tile. Desks sat overturned, chairs scattered like fallen soldiers. A body or two lay crumpled in the corners, frozen mid-escape or mid-defense, stripped of identity by the violence that had come and gone in a rush. A few bloodied handprints smeared across the wall spoke louder than words ever could.

And behind all of it, almost untouched in the eerie stillness, sat the wall of keys—dozens of them, gleaming faintly under the flickering fluorescent lights. Each one belonged to a truck still parked outside, lined up along the cracked asphalt, waiting. As if they still believed someone was coming back for them. As if the world hadn’t ended overnight. Joel’s eyes fixed on the keys, and for a moment, it felt like a lifeline—something he could still grab onto, something solid in a world that had turned to ash and ghosts around him. Without a word, he moved forward, boots splashing lightly through the rain-slicked floor, the sound of his steps too loud in the hollow, broken space.

A good seventeen miles back was where their truck had finally given up the ghost—after seventy thousand miles of stubborn grit, one and a half oil changes, a cracked windshield, and maybe one accidental dose of diesel instead of unleaded. It had fought longer than it should have, clinging to life out of pure spite, but the engine’s last coughing breath had been final. No amount of cursing or coaxing from Joel could will it back into motion.

After three straight weeks of nonstop driving—only stopping for gas when they found it, sleeping in shifts with guns in their laps—the silence of a dead engine was almost deafening. The truck had left them somewhere in Illinois, or at least what Joel thought was Illinois. Hard to say anymore. Road signs were rotted out, towns abandoned, maps unreliable when the highways buckled and forests swallowed the old borders whole.

They had chased a lead. Some whispered chatter on a half-working scanner that spoke of a government base still standing, somewhere farther east. Maybe a resettlement. Maybe just another lie wrapped in static.

“Maybe this truck has a DVD player,” the girl said brightly—Maggie, or Margie, or something close to that. Joel couldn’t quite remember. Names were starting to blur together these days, and honestly, it didn’t much matter. Some random kid Tommy insisted they bring along, swearing she could hold her own. Grew up rough on a cattle ranch, knew how to fix a flat tire in a rainstorm and shoot one of them dead from damn near a mile away. Good shot, good instincts. Decent. She was decent.

And decent was hard to come by now. However, if someone has sruvived the past month likelyhood is that they’re decent; otherwise they would be dead.

Tommy cracked a short laugh, the sound brittle around the edges, and threw a glance back at the two of them. “Hopefully,” he said, flashing a grin that was more tired than anything, “I’ll shoot myself if I have to listen to Foreplay again.” There was a hopeful flicker in his eyes when he looked at Joel—not expecting a real laugh, not anymore, but maybe just a smirk, a shared remember when look, something that said the world hadn’t completely sanded Joel Miller down to the bone.

Tommy nodded, a silent agreement passing between them, and then turned to head deeper into the dealership, his steps careful but never hesitant. He moved like a man who had done this too many times—knew the patterns, the sounds, the way death hung in the air before it showed its face. His boots crunched softly over broken glass, the sharp, tiny sounds swallowed almost instantly by the heavy, wet silence that filled the place.

Generally, if there were any of them around—the zombies, as Margaret not-so-lovingly insisted on calling them—you could hear the bastards well before you laid eyes on them. The guttural rasp of ruined lungs, the low scraping shuffle of dragging limbs, the wet grargles…almost…well, sometimes sounded as if something was clicking their tonuge…those noises that raised the hair on the back of your neck. Tommy knew the signs. Joel knew them even better.

Joel stayed behind for a moment, posted beside the shattered window frame, the wind pushing slow sheets of rain into the room. His eyes scanned the mangled shards of glass still clinging to the frame, the dried blood that clotted in rusty streaks along the edges, the gore that had long since rotted into something sour and black. Whatever happened here hadn’t been clean. Probably hadn’t been quick either.

He shifted his weight, the shotgun slung heavy at his side, thumb brushing along the worn wood of the grip. Every muscle stayed taut, senses sharpened, not trusting the quiet for a second. Off to the left, he caught a flash of movement—Margaret, wandering closer to the mechanic’s garage. She moved with the curious, cautious energy of someone still young enough to think the worst might not be waiting just behind the next door. Her steps were light, her head tilted slightly as she peered through the broken window of the garage bay door, trying to catch a glimpse inside.

Eventually, when Margaret seemed content enough with what she was seeing—nothing moving, no breathing shapes in the shadows—she turned around, her boots crunching across the wreckage-strewn floor. She moved without real urgency, without the bone-deep paranoia that Joel had learned to carry like a second skin. The kind of instinct that only came from surviving bad days. Days when being a second too slow meant a body never got back up.

She barely glanced at the darkened stairwell that cut up to the next floor, just a black mouth yawning open beside her. Probably figured it was clear. Probably figured if something had been up there, they’d have heard it already. She stepped right over a pile of broken glass, the shards cracking and popping under her boots—loud, too loud in the dead quiet space.

And poor Margaret—poor girl, brave and stupid and just young enough to still have hope—by the time she heard the grotesque, wet snarl echoing down the stairwell, it was already too late.

It hit her like a thunderclap. A mass of rot and claws and teeth, tumbling down the stairs with terrifying momentum. She barely had time to turn her head, her mouth half-open on a shout that never made it out before it was on her—dragging her down in a flash of thrashing limbs and shredded, inhuman screams.

The thud of their bodies slamming to the floor jolted through the whole dealership.

Tommy started to move toward her—toward the screaming, toward the thrashing heap of torn limbs and horror—but the second he took a step, the world cracked wide open.

The sound was deafening. From above, more snarls ripped through the silence—wet, ragged, frantic. One set of clawing hands became two. Then four. Then seven. Shapes spilling down the broken staircase, slipping over the railings, crashing onto the floor with grotesque thuds. A writhing, snarling mass of death, all teeth and shredded skin and desperate, animal hunger.

The screaming never stopped, but it changed—got gurgled, weaker, swallowed by the sound of flesh tearing.

And then the pounding started.

At first, Joel thought it was the noise of the infected falling over each other, but no—there was a door behind them, bolted shut, that now shuddered violently with every hit. Something was there, something big, slamming its whole weight against the wood again and again, the frame groaning under the force.

As if the chaos had woken it up—dragged whatever nightmare lay dormant behind that door into violent, ravenous life. Joel's heart punched against his ribs. He took a step back instinctively, shotgun already half-raised, breath tight in his chest.

Four, five, seven bodies—maybe more—scrambling over each other, trampling blood and glass and Margaret’s body like it was nothing, like she was nothing but a catalyst now. A starter pistol for a feeding frenzy.

Tommy froze too—just for a heartbeat, the kind of pause that could cost a man his life—like the sheer horror of it all hit him at the same time it hit Joel.

“Holy shit—” he breathed, voice too loud, too alive in the suffocating air.

And it was like the monsters heard him. Like Tommy had just asked for their names, called them like a pet.

Like the sound of his voice cracked through their blood-hazed frenzy and reminded them there was still fresh meat on the floor.  Heads snapped up in jerky, broken movements. Faces—what was left of them—twisted toward him. Gaping mouths, blood-slicked teeth, eyes covered by some sort of fungus like growth-

And oh god—Joel caught it in one fleeting glance—one of them still had Margaret’s jacket tangled in its claws, dragging it along like a trophy.

The horde moved as one—no hesitation, no thought—they lunged. Tommy didn’t wait to be heroic. Didn’t wait to think.  He bolted, boots slamming against the rain-slick tile as he turned and ran, the stolen keys clutched tight in his hand, a lifeline and a curse all at once.

Joel was half a breath away from chasing after Tommy, from yelling his name, when a hand clamped down hard over his mouth and yanked him down behind a shattered desk. His body reacted instantly, muscles tensing, hand flying to his sidearm—but before he could pull the trigger, another hand grabbed the front of his jacket and jerked his face toward whoever had dragged him down.

A woman.

Dirt smeared across her jaw, a deep cut running from her temple to her ear, blood trailing sluggishly down her neck. Her eyes were sharp, feral—alive in a way Joel hadn’t seen in a long time. The look she gave him wasn’t pleading. It was command. She pressed a finger to her lips, a sharp, almost surgical motion. Stay quiet. Not please. Not begging. Directive.

Joel sucked in a breath through his nose, nodding once, slow and deliberate. The woman removed her hand from his mouth just as the thunder of infected bodies tore past the desk, shrieking and snarling, focused on the retreating noise Tommy had left behind like bait in the storm. Joel stayed low, heart hammering against his ribs, the butt of his pistol slick in his palm.

The sharp crack of gunfire ripped through the storm, hissing and snapping like an electric wire whipping loose. It was close—too close—coming from somewhere behind the building, somewhere just beyond the broken back wall. And not just one shot. Several. Overlapping bursts, panicked bursts. Multiple people. Fighting something they weren’t going to win against.

Joel instinctively tensed, about to surge up from behind the desk—heart hammering, blood roaring in his ears—but the woman caught him again, yanking him back down with a force that left no room for argument. Her fingers dug into the collar of his jacket, her face twisted into a scowl that read clear even in the dim, flickering light: Don’t be stupid.

Exasperation rolled off her in waves. Like she couldn’t believe she had to spell it out.

Slowly, deliberately, she pointed to her ear, tapping it once—listen. Then her hand moved, pointing stiffly to where Margaret’s body… or what little was left of it… lay crumpled in a ruined heap by the stairs. Nothing.  No rise and fall of breath.  No twitch of fingers.  No moan.

Dead. And still, it was quiet around her.

Joel's breath hitched. Because Margaret hadn't made a sound. And yet, they came for her anyway. And then—so faint it could’ve been missed—he heard it.

A click. A dry, wet, inhuman click. Somewhere close. Somewhere moving.

Followed by the shuffling scrape of feet, dragging slowly across the ruined tile floor.

The woman didn’t move.  Joel didn’t either.  Not a breath.  Not a whisper.

 Because now he understood. Blind. Fungi covered their eyes. Only indiction was noise.

Then, sure enough, through the thick, rattling noise of the storm, a voice carried—a giddy, reckless sort of laugh, far too loud for the situation. “Got one more, Tess!” the man called from somewhere down a shadowed hallway, his voice bouncing off the ruined walls.

Joel’s gut twisted instantly. Not because of the voice—but because of what followed. A high, sickening howl tore through the building. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t anything Joel could put a clean name to. It rattled inside his chest, vibrated in his teeth, felt wrong in a way that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with instinct screaming danger.

Then a sharp burst of gunfire—three, four shots in rapid succession—and then a thump.Joel stood quickly, rising from his crouch like a spring snapping loose. He didn’t look back at the woman who had saved his ass or the ruined bodies littering the floor. He moved like a man possessed—driven forward by the singular need to find Tommy.

His boots thudded dully over the broken tile, each step measured, heavy, as he weaved through the carnage. He didn’t flinch when he stepped over what was left of Margaret, didn’t stop when his shoulder brushed against a toppled, blood-slicked chair. His eyes were locked ahead, focused on the trail Tommy had cut through the building’s chaos.

Joel shoved open the back door, the hinges screaming against the movement, and stumbled out into the rain-soaked loading bay.

There.

Tommy stood a few yards away, hunched over with his hands braced on his knees, chest heaving as he caught his breath. Around him were a handful of people—strangers to Joel—each one armed to the teeth, guns raised and tense like they were a second away from deciding he was a threat.

Joel’s heart seized for a beat at the sight, instincts screaming at the way their eyes narrowed at him, hands twitching near triggers.

"Tommy." Joel barked out, voice cutting through the cold rain.

Tommy’s head snapped up immediately. He straightened, lifting one hand to wave them off, his voice quick and low. "Joe—my brother," he said to the group, the words firm, desperate to douse the tension before it could spark into violence. "Joel. I’m good. We’re good."

Joel took a breath, hands half-raised, showing empty palms, keeping his shotgun lowered but ready. His body didn’t relax—not fully—but he eased closer, eyes flickering between Tommy and the strangers.

“You two good?”

The voice came from behind them—low, steady, edged with the same sharpness Joel remembered. He turned slightly, heart still hammering, to see the woman from before stepping into the light drizzle. Her rifle was slung casually over her shoulder, but there was nothing casual about the way she moved—eyes flicking over them, checking for wounds, for tells of infection. Calculated. Controlled.

Tommy straightened fully, scrubbing a hand down his soaked face, and gave a quick, almost breathless nod. "Yeah, yes," he said hurriedly, voice still rough from sprinting. "Thank you. Thank you all so much."

The strangers around them didn’t relax immediately. Guns still stayed in hands, fingers resting just a little too near the triggers. Not pointed directly at Joel or Tommy anymore, but not lowered either. Joel got it.  You didn’t survive this long by trusting easy.

The woman—clearly the one in charge, though no one had said it out loud—nodded once, the barest dip of her chin. Her gaze lingered on Joel for half a second longer than was comfortable, something calculating behind her expression, but then she turned and motioned to the others.

"Secure the perimeter. Don’t wait for an invitation if you hear anything."  The others moved without a word, fanning out into the rain with the crisp efficiency of people who had survived long enough to be good at it.

Joel let out a slow, careful breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.  He shifted his weight closer to Tommy, voice pitched low. "You alright?"

Tommy nodded again, slower this time. "Yeah. Just—" he glanced back at the dealership, the shattered windows, the broken bodies inside.  “God, Margret-”

Joel grunted in agreement. His fingers itched to grab Tommy by the shoulder, drag him the hell out of here, but he forced himself to stay still. For now.

The woman crossed back toward them, stopping a few feet away. The rain slicked down her hair, dripping from her jaw, but she stood solid, like the storm barely registered.

"Name’s Tess" she said finally, tilting her head at Joel. “You?” 

“Joel, my brother, Tommy.” 

Tess, as it turned out, became the most valuable asset they had. Not because she was the smartest—though she was damn sharp—or because she could shoot straighter than most men twice her size—though she could. It was because when everything else started to crumble, Tess stayed steady. When others in the group fell away—picked off by infection, bad luck, worse choices—when every lead they chased turned out to be a crippled, broken dead-end, when the world seemed to fold in on itself one abandoned building, one collapsed bridge at a time, Tess never lost her footing. Her steps stayed heavy and even, shoulders squared against the storm, never quickening in panic, never slowing in fear. She carried them through the worst of it—through betrayals, bloodbaths, starvation—without ever looking back. It wasn’t about hope for her. It wasn’t about some grand vision of rebuilding the world. It was about survival, pure and simple, sharpened down into a blade's edge. Tess didn’t run on hope. Tess ran on will. And somehow, somehow, that was stronger than anything Joel had seen in the ruins of what used to be civilization.

“Right,” Tess snapped from across the battered table, voice slicing through the bitter cold. They were huddled under the half-collapsed overhang of an old maintenance shed, the darkness of the night being the only real cover they had from the snow that blistered down in thick, angry sheets. The storm made everything feel closer, heavier, as if the world itself were trying to shove them into the dirt.

Across from them sat two smugglers, the kind that were all too common now—desperate enough to risk a deal, but greedy enough to make it dangerous. Their hands hovered near their jackets where weapons were undoubtedly tucked away, eyes flickering with suspicion at the crates of ammunition Tess had pushed onto the table between them.

Joel tracked their movements carefully, saw how their attention kept straying—away from the ammo, away from Tess's firm, no-bullshit stare—and settling, instead, on the small figure perched on his knee.

His daughter.  Tiny, bundled in a too-big coat, cheeks red from the cold, hands idly fiddling with a cracked toy truck Joel had scavenged earlier that week. Blissfully unaware of the tension in the air. Of the way the men’s eyes hardened when they looked at them—not with pity, but with calculation.

Joel felt the muscles in his jaw tighten.

 Tess noticed too.

"Eyes here, boys," Tess said coldly, her voice slicing through the icy air sharper than the storm ever could. She snapped her fingers once—sharp, commanding—like she was calling a disobedient dog to heel. Every muscle in her posture, every tilt of her head, warned them that this wasn’t a suggestion. This was a line drawn in the dirt, and God help them if they thought about stepping over it. "Unless you’re planning on offering more than just ammo for this run," she continued, her words dripping with venom, "you keep your fucking gaze on the merchandise. Otherwise, I’d suggest you start getting real familiar with the idea of not having eyes at all."

There was a sharpness to her voice that made even Joel flinch slightly—a reminder, as if he needed it, that Tess wasn’t just some middleman playing smuggler. She was survival carved into a person. One of the men muttered something under his breath, but he looked away. Good decision. 

uck could get a person a long way in this world. Luck—or maybe some godforsaken miracle—was often the only thing standing between breathing another day and rotting in a ditch.

Luck. It was fickle. It was cruel. And it always ran out.

“Luck had to run out at some point, right?” Tess said, her voice hollow with a humorless laugh that barely scraped out of her chest. The words hung in the dim, crumbling space around them like a death sentence. She didn’t sound angry. She didn’t sound scared. She sounded tired. Like someone who had been fighting gravity her whole life and was just realizing how heavy it really was.

Her gaze snapped to Ellie, sharp and commanding. "Take the bandage off."

Ellie hesitated only a second before peeling back the mess of dirty gauze and tape from her arm—each layer pulling slowly, sticking to the blood and grime of days on the run. Joel watched, fists clenching uselessly at his sides, every part of him coiled tight. Waiting for the ugly truth to show itself. For the telltale black veins, the sickly swollen tissue, the smell of death already setting in.

But when the last scrap of bandage came free— Nothing.

The bite was there, yeah. The teeth marks.  But no infection. No spread.  Just skin. Healing, pink, stubbornly alive.

Tess moved before Joel could react, crossing the small gap between them like a woman pulled by invisible strings. She reached out, almost reverently, and took Ellie’s arm in her hands—careful, almost tender, like she was holding something sacred. Her fingers brushed the wound, disbelief writ plain across her face. "Look," Tess breathed, turning slightly so Joel could see clearer. "Joel..." Her voice cracked, raw and wide with something that might have once been hope, "This is real. It's fucking real."

Because if it was real— 

Truly real-

Real?

What could be more real?

What could be more real than the blooming, agonizing pain that rooted itself so deep it became a part of you, stitched into your bones? What could be more real than the way grief carved holes into your chest, hollowed you out no matter how tightly you clung to what little you had left? No matter how hard you fought, how you clawed and cursed and bled for a world that didn’t care if you lived or died, it was never enough. Despite every desperate effort, every bargain whispered into the cold night air, everything—everything—would always be torn away. That was reality. That was the only thing that stayed, when all else failed. Not hope. Not promises. Not miracles.

Second chances didn’t come by very often. Not in this world. Not in the kind of life Joel Miller had clawed his way through. And if he dared to call you a second chance, it felt almost wrong—like it demanded too much of you, like it stripped you bare of everything you had fought so hard to become. He would never want that. He would never want the weight of him to be the only thing that shaped your reality. Yet, no matter how he tried to frame it, no matter how he tried to deny it, you were his second chance. A chance to prove that it wasn’t all for nothing. That the pain he carried hadn’t rotted him down to nothing but violence and grief. A chance to say that he wasn’t just a broken man clinging to the wreckage. You were the proof that somewhere inside all that wreckage, something was still alive. Something still mattered. And to him, that meant everything.

Then there was Ellie—God, Ellie. A stubborn, reckless spark that refused to be snuffed out no matter how dark the world around her got. She was a nudge at first, subtle and irritating, pushing against the parts of him that had long calcified into something cold and unmovable. But she didn’t stop at a nudge. She shoved, cracked him open piece by piece, until even he couldn’t deny it—deep down, under all the scar tissue and rage, he wasn’t just a survivor. He was still something more. Ellie reminded him that he could be a father again, not just a weapon sharpened by loss. That he could laugh. That he could hope, in small, battered pieces. She gave him a breath of air his blackened, hollow lungs didn’t realize they were desperate for—a breath that hurt like hell to take, but kept him standing anyway. Ellie was a reminder that he wasn’t lost. Not completely. Not yet.

His girls. 

His last reason. 

"Mel—" you stuttered out again, the word crumbling in your throat, heavier than it should have been. A smile, small and cracked, played across your lips as you tried to steady your breathing. The familiar voices around you wavered, blurry through the rush of adrenaline still surging in your veins. Your body was caught between two instincts—fight or shut down—and it was getting harder by the second to remember which one you were supposed to pick.

"God, Mel—" you whispered again, almost in disbelief.

"Sparrow," Mel smiled, her voice soft but focused, reaching out with steady hands. She carefully peeled off your gloves, and both of you winced at the sight of your fingers—skin darkened, stiff from the bite of frost. "Okay," she said, trying to make her voice sound normal, soothing, even though her hands shook the tiniest bit. "You’re going to be okay. We’ve got you."

Your gaze, fogged with exhaustion, drifted away from her and found your father. Joel was hunched over the radio, speaking low and urgent into it, but the second your broken voice called out— "Dad—"

"Starshine," he barked immediately, snapping his head around. His whole body moved on instinct, crossing the distance in seconds. He caught you when you stumbled forward, half-collapsing into him, and without missing a beat, he turned you gently back toward the crackling fire. His hand cradled the back of your neck like you were something fragile, something already breaking. "Baby, you gotta warm up, okay? I’m fine," he promised, even though you could hear the crack in his voice, the way fear still clawed at his throat.

You stubbornly shook your head, trembling, refusing to let your eyes leave him even as your legs buckled and Mel pulled you down into a crouch closer to the fleeting warmth of the flames. "M-My," you stammered, your numb mouth barely forming the word. Your eyes flickered desperately to Mel again, to the few others gathered around the fire. "Friends." It came out in a broken, childlike breath—half a plea, half a promise—because in that moment, your frozen mind clung to the simplest truth it could find: you weren’t alone.

"Ammo, blankets, whatever weapons you have—we're headin’ out here soon," Joel said, his voice cutting through the low murmurs of the room with that solid, unyielding weight he always carried. His eyes, though, drifted back to the horizon—where the faint, flickering glow of Jackson burned against the snowfall. Home.  Or what was left of it.

"Sorry," a voice broke through the tension, hesitant but firm. Abby. She stepped a little closer to where you sat bundled in blankets by the fire, arms wrapped around yourself like you were still bracing against the cold. "Sparrow—uh, she introduced me—but... I’m Abby. This is Nora, Manny, Owen, and Mel."

She motioned around the room to the others—faces half-lit by the fire, strangers dressed in worn coats, hands still close to their weapons out of habit, not trust. Joel barely spared them a glance, already fiddling with the battered radio again, jaw tight with frustration when it only answered back with static.

Abby looked at you then.

And there was something in her eyes that made your chest tighten. Something layered. Not just sadness. Not just anger. Grief, wrapped up tight in acceptance. Like she was looking at something she had already mourned once and wasn’t ready to do again.

"We all know Sparrow," she said, her voice steady but brittle around the edges. "She was there when my dad died. We have history." Her gaze shifted to Joel, cool and sharp in a way that made the fire feel colder. "You, though, Joel—we don’t know you."

The room went still. The kind of stillness that had nothing to do with exhaustion or caution. It was the kind that filled a space right before something broke.

Mel, who had been gently inspecting the frostbite on your arm, slowly looked up at you at that. Her hand paused, hovering in midair like she could feel the shift before the words even left your mouth.

"My dad," you said quietly, voice raw but sure. "Joel’s my dad." You said it with a kind of proud eagerness, like you wanted them to understand how easy it was—how obvious. Like maybe saying it aloud would erase whatever complicated knots of grief and history hung in the air. For you, the answer was simple. For them, it wasn’t.

Mel drew in a shaky breath, her lips parting like she had a thousand things she wanted to say but couldn’t force any of them into words. All that made it out was your name—soft, broken—a sound that felt more like mourning than greeting."Joel... Sparrow..." she said, her voice trailing into something hollow.

You barely caught the way her eyes flicked up—past you, behind you—something unreadable flashing across her face. She shook her head, like shaking off a thought too heavy to hold, and then her hands were on your shoulders, gentle but insistent. "I have more medical supplies in the other room," she said, her voice steadying as she tugged you lightly. "C’mon." And you—still dazed, still half-adrift in the warmth of old memories—went without question. Why wouldn't you? Why would you feel threatened?

These were people you trusted. People who had once taken care of you like blood, in the days when survival wasn’t just about brute strength but about bonds. About patching each other up in the dark and whispering promises that you’d make it through another night. Your legs moved before your mind caught up, following her steps deeper into the building.  Because loyalty, once forged, wasn’t something you let go of easily.  Even when maybe you should have. Even when everything inside you should’ve been screaming.

You didn’t move from where you sat until the sharp, gut-wrenching crack of a gunshot echoed down the hallway. You were up in an instant, chair scraping loudly against the floor, heart leaping into your throat, your hand already flying to the pistol at your hip—muscle memory, instinct, fear.

“DAD?” you yelled, your voice slicing through the sudden ringing silence.

For a breathless second, there was nothing. And then— "Starshine—RUN!"

God, you wished you had. Wished you had listened without thinking. Wished you hadn't hesitated. But you had.

Your boots skidded against the floor as you sprinted toward the room, heart hammering so hard it drowned out everything else. When you burst through the doorway, you barely registered the world tilting around you, the horror slamming into your gut so fast it stole your breath.

Joel was on the ground. Abby knelt in front of him, her hands moving fast, tying a makeshift tourniquet high above a ragged, blood-soaked blast wound in his knee. His face was twisted in pain—gritting his teeth, blood on his lips—but his eyes snapped to you the second you appeared.

You didn't even think. You raised your gun.

First it went to Owen—Owen, who once spent hours with you fixing Birdie's broken reins, laughing every time you cursed when the knots slipped. He held his hands up slowly, taking a cautious step back, his face grim.

Then Manny— Manny, who taught you how to strip an engine with nothing more than stubbornness and a busted wrench. Manny, who now just glared at you, daring you to shoot, like somehow you were the one who betrayed him.

Then Nora— Nora, who had pointed a gun at you without a second thought, the barrel trembling. Nora, who lowered it only after Abby barked something harsh, clipped, something that might’ve been an order or a plea—you couldn’t tell anymore. Nora, who once taught you to fight better, faster, smarter. Taught you how to win against men twice your size with nothing but your weight and your rage.

And then—  Abby.

 Abby, kneeling in front of your father, blood on her hands, looking up at you like you were the traitor here. Like you were the one who had crossed a line.

“Gale—” your voice cracked, real confusion, real hurt bleeding through. “Wha… what are you doing?”

She looked at you then—really looked at you—and you could see the war happening behind her eyes. A hesitation, a fracture between past and present, like she was trying to choose between mercy and rage. Her lips pressed together before she spoke, voice low and razor-sharp.

"Remember the day my dad died?" she said.

The words hit you like a slap, because you hadn’t been expecting it. What?

"The day you were so happy because you got to scrub in with my dad," she went on, almost with a mockery of softness, like she was telling a bedtime story warped into something cruel. "The day you got shot in the back because you—" she broke off, a harsh, broken laugh tearing from her throat, her eyes flicking with a bitterness that felt too large for the room.

And then she turned her head—looked right at Joel. Not you. Joel.

"You shot your own daughter, you fucker," she spat, voice cracking under the weight of it. "God, I didn’t even —you shot your own daughter."

She laughed again, but it wasn’t humor—it was the kind of sound that scraped against your ribs, cold and cruel and full of something you didn’t want to name.

"That’s fucked up," Abby continued, words spiraling faster now like she couldn’t stop herself. "What, you don’t see her for three months after you ditched her in some city? And then you what? You want to waltz back into her life, storm a hospital, shoot up a fucking surgical team—and her with it?"

She shook her head slowly, disbelief thick in every motion, like she couldn’t believe she was even having to say it aloud.  The firelight caught the wet gleam in her eyes, but her mouth was set in something like a snarl.

Your hands trembled against the grip of the gun, muscles locking up, breath hitching painfully in your throat. You looked between them—your father, standing bloody and stubborn against the wall, and Abby, fire burning in her eyes like she had been waiting years for this moment.

"He didn’t do that, Gale—he—" you started, but the words faltered, crumbled in your mouth before they could take full shape.

Because it made too much sense.The pieces you had spent so long ignoring clicked into place with cruel, effortless precision.

You remembered the subject that day—the one Jerry had assured you wasn’t what you thought. But you had known. Deep down, you had always known. The surgery. The stakes. The way everyone looked at Ellie like she was some divine answer, some final hope. And the way Joel had looked at her like she was his. It had to have been her.

And the truth—the one you had quietly, shamefully realized years ago but shoved deep down into a corner of yourself you didn’t touch—ripped itself free.

Your voice cracked as you begged, pleaded, desperate to sew the pieces back into something you could live with. "He wouldn’t have hurt so many people," you said, words trembling and broken. "He’s a good man—Abby, please—"

But even as you said it, even as you fought to believe it, some part of you—the part that still flinched at the memory of blood, of gunshots echoing down sterile hospital halls—knew the truth. 

 Joel Miller was a good man. And Joel Miller would set the whole world on fire if it meant saving what he loved.  

Your eyes looked to your father through a mess of bleary tears, and you ear something being grabbed from behind you, “Dad-” "Baby, you gotta go—" Joel’s voice broke through the static roaring in your ears, low and frantic and wrong somehow, like even he knew he couldn’t fix what was coming.

"You should go," Abby said, her tone almost gentle, almost pitying, as she stepped past you. In her hands—  A golf club.

You stumbled back a step, gun still dangling uselessly in your hand, words spilling out before you could stop them, desperate and cracking. "Abby, please—"

She paused just for a second, looking at you—not with hatred, not even anger, but something worse. Something inevitable. "Close your eyes, Sparrow." The words were almost a mercy. A kindness she thought she was giving you.

You should have listened. You should have closed your eyes. But you didn't. You couldn’t.

And so you saw it—the swing, the arc, the sickening crack of metal against bone, a sound that would lodge itself deep into the marrow of your memory and rot there forever.

Within a breathless, scattered mess of no's and please's, you raised your gun again. You knew it wouldn’t fire. The chamber was empty. You knew.

But they didn’t.

And for a heartbeat—for a breath—you held a whole room hostage on a bluff you couldn't cash.

Another shot rang out. Not yours. Someone else’s.

And then agony bloomed through your stomach like a wildfire—sick, sudden, swallowing everything whole.

You barely registered the weight slamming into you, pinning you to the floor, the iron taste of blood choking your throat.

 You barely registered Joel’s voice—ragged and roaring and breaking—the sound of someone losing everything. You barely registered the flurry of hands, the shouting, the chaos folding in around you like a grave being dug too fast.

All you saw— All you could see—

Was your father. Staring back at you through blood-streaked vision, his face carved into a look so raw, so devastated, it made the pain almost meaningless. 

"Please..." you whimpered, the word slurring, broken beyond recognition. You tried to reach for him, hand trembling, heavy as stone, every muscle in your body aching, fighting against a fight it wouldn’t win, and with another crash against the skull you almost scream. 

Joel Miller was a great many things. And in that moment all he wanted was- “Do…don’t hurt her.” 

Keep his girls safe. 

And when Ellie crashed down in front of his gaze, he realized in a crippling moment that he had failed. He failed. 

He failed. 

That the one thing he had been trying to do for so long was meaningless. 

His girls shouldn’t die like this. 

But…he’s tired. And it hurts. 

He’s…so.

tired

...

“Head high.”

Her voice cut through the air like a blade, sharp and breathless, snapping you out of the fog clawing at the edges of your mind. Her fingers gripped the collar of your coat with more force than necessary, tugging it straight—tight—until the pressure made your knees tremble.

Her hands didn’t shake. But her voice did. Not enough for anyone else to hear it. But you did. 

“You be strong,” she said again, eyes locking with yours, wild and wide with fear she wasn’t letting rise to the surface. “You’re strong.”

And for a moment, you weren’t in a barn or a battlefield or the middle of a storm. You were just a kid again, looking up into a face that had always made things better—Tess, jaw clenched like she could hold back the world with her will alone, eyes burning because she couldn’t afford to cry. You nodded, throat too tight to speak. She didn’t need a reply. She just needed to know that you'd walk out of there with your spine straight and your eyes forward—even if the ground was shaking beneath your feet.

“Momma—” The word slipped from your mouth before you could stop it. Small. Broken. That old name—buried under years of ash and grit—rose up like a ghost in your throat.

Tess shook her head before you could say anything more, pressing her hands to your arms with a force that rooted you in place. Her grip was firm—unchangeable—but you could feel it. The tremble beneath her skin. Not from weakness. Not from fear. But from urgency. From knowing what came next and not being able to stop it.

Her breath was shallow, uneven. Her eyes—red at the edges, ringed with sweat and smoke—searched your face like she was trying to memorize it one last time. Like she was holding onto the sight of you the way you’d once held onto her hand as a child—tight, unrelenting, like letting go meant the world would slip through your fingers.

“No, no…” she breathed, voice cracking in a way you’d only heard once before—back when you were sick, and she thought she was going to lose you. “You gotta go, baby. You gotta go—”

“I don’t—” you choked on the words, voice barely holding itself together, like your throat couldn’t decide whether to scream or sob. “I don’t want to—”

Your hands reached for her again, desperate, trembling, small. Just like you used to be when she’d pull you out of bed during raids or storms and tell you to be brave—when all you really wanted was to stay in her arms and let the world crash outside.

But this time, she didn’t pull you close.

“Nope,” Tess snapped, the word sharp and final like a slammed door. Her jaw clenched, her voice tight and cracking all at once—like it was holding back more than she was willing to show. Her eyes were glassy, rimmed with unshed tears she refused to let fall in front of you. “You don’t get to want right now,” she said, and each word cut into the air like a blade. “You go. That’s what you do. That’s what I taught you. You run. You live.”

She was already stepping back, her fingers slipping from your arms slowly—deliberately—as if she knew it would be the last time. Like if she held on any longer, she wouldn’t let go at all. Like she was tearing a piece of herself off and leaving it with you.

Then— “Oh my GOD!” Ellie’s voice cracked through the narrow hallway like thunder, wild and full of dread. She was pacing, hands in her hair, eyes darting like she couldn’t look at the truth head-on.

“She got bit,” she shouted, half to you, half to herself. “A fuckin’ bite! A— OH MY GOD!” The words echoed off the broken walls of what was left of the Firefly base, bouncing around the bloodstains and spent rounds.

Tess turned her face to the side, just enough to hide the bite on her neck, just enough to let the shadows swallow it. But you saw it. And she saw that you saw. “You go, go and grow up and you do all of the things I know you can do, go and survive, Starry,” she said, eyes locked with yours one final time, “Go.” her eyes go to Joel, “Go.” 

–

You sat at the piano, fingers grazing the keys as if some old memory was trapped beneath them, begging to be set free. The air was thick with silence, heavy with the weight of everything left behind. Above you, in the lofted bed, bodies lay curled into one another—old, rotted, still. The shape of what once was love, preserved only by decay. Potted plants, now brittle husks, lined the windowsill, their soil long dried and cracked. Outside, the gates still held—strong, defiant against the elements—but inside, the beauty of what had been built was beginning to crumble. Dust coated the armory in the corner, weapons untouched, once symbols of protection and preparation, now relics of hope long since buried. The walls bore the ghosts of art and expression, paintings faded, photographs curled at the edges, every corner whispering of lives lived fully and lost too soon. Art and beauty wilted. People died. Memory faded. But the blood—that never washed away. It soaked deep into the floorboards, immune to time. The arrow that once stood dull in its peace had grown sharper not by hand, but by the erosion of everything soft around it. What was left behind was not gentleness or legacy, but a sharpened edge, a quiet piano, and a world that kept forgetting.

“Hey.”

Ellie’s voice was soft—uncharacteristically so—and it came from just over your shoulder. You didn’t turn to look at her. You didn’t have it in you. Instead, you gave the faintest nod, enough to tell her she could sit. The bench creaked as she did, wood groaning under the weight of two people and too much grief.

Your fingers hovered above the piano keys again, unmoving now. Whatever memory had stirred in you earlier had gone quiet, buried again beneath the weight in your chest. Grief wasn’t new—not in this world—but this? This was something else. It wasn’t just death. It wasn’t just pain.

It was everything.

The loss of your anchor, of the only person who had ever made the weight feel lighter—even for a moment. The ringing in your ears hadn’t faded since that blast, a phantom echo that followed you even in sleep. And now this—this house, this sacred, hollow space that had once held warmth and purpose—was collapsing under time’s slow cruelty. The vines would eat it, the snow would break it, and the world would forget it.

Just like it forgot everything else. It felt like your whole life was crumbling in slow motion, and there was nothing left to do but sit in the ruins.

There was a long moment—just the hum of the wind through the cracked barn walls, the faint creak of the old piano bench beneath you both—before Ellie spoke again.

“Bill seemed like a cool guy.”

You snorted, a dry, broken laugh slipping from your chest before you could stop it. “Yeah,” you said, eyes still on the keys, “he was a jerk.”

Ellie scoffed beside you, her tone playful but soft around the edges. “Oof. Hope you said that to his face too, ‘cause otherwise you’re just talking shit about dead people.”

You turned your head just slightly, enough to catch the flicker of a smirk tugging at her mouth.

“Trust me,” you murmured, “he knew my opinions.”

Ellie leaned back a little on the bench, arms stretched across the top of it, looking around the room with that expression she wore when she didn’t quite know what to do with silence—restless, like she was trying to fill it without making it worse. Her eyes drifted up to the lofted bed, the still figures beneath the blanket, the dust settled thick like snow on the floor.

“Still,” she said after a moment, voice low now. “I dunno. It’s kinda… weird. Beautiful. In a morbid way. This place. A little slice of…i don’t know 1950’s sitcom-ism.”

You didn’t answer right away. Just looked at the keys again, your fingers twitching slightly like they wanted to press one, just one, to hear if the sound still worked. You didn’t. Not yet.

“Yeah,” you finally whispered. “They made it mean something. As much as they could.”

Ellie tilted her head. “You think they were in love? LIke…love, love?”

You let out a soft exhale—less a laugh, more like the air was heavy in your lungs. “Yeah. I think so. I think they were scared, and angry, and stubborn as hell… but yeah. I think they loved each other. And if they didn’t then fuck- could’ve fooled me..”

Ellie didn’t say anything to that. She didn’t need to. Her silence was agreement.

You glanced at her again, this time with something sadder behind your eyes. “It’s hard, you know? Watching the world end slowly. Over and over again. But they held their little piece of it, well, Bill did. Frank made it …well, he painted the room, the one I stayed in. They made it …something good.”

“Yeah,” Ellie said, swallowing thickly. “They did.”

You pressed one key finally. A soft note echoed out—haunting, hollow, still alive. It faded into the stillness like a breath. You didn’t look at Ellie. Just sat in it. Let the sound settle.

Then you smirked slightly. “He once tried to set me up with someone, you know. Technically it was Bill’s idea, but he made Frank swear up and down it was his. A girl,” The words faltered on your lips, as you could feel Ellie’s gaze shift on you, a girl was what they thought you would want, as a girl so you clear your throat, “Another smuggler’s kid.”

Ellie blinked. “Wait—what?”

You grinned, just a little. “Swore we’d ‘make a practical pair.’ His words.”

“And?”

You shrugged. “She hated my guts. Called me a bleeding-heart knife freak.”

Ellie barked out a laugh, too loud for the room, but you didn’t mind. “Sounds like your type.”

“Shut up.”

“No, really, I’m picturing it now—very intense, very stabby courtship—”

You were laughing now too, and it cracked something open in your chest. Not grief. Not exactly.

–

You barely had time to scramble upright, legs fumbling beneath you, vision blurred with tears that stung more than they cleared. The noise was deafening—growls, snarls, chaos—and then Joel’s hand, rough and familiar, grabbed your arm in a vice grip and shoved you out of the way.

It was instinct. Reflex. Love.

He barely got you clear of the charge before the thing crashed toward you, all limbs and shrieks and rot.

What had once been a boy—just a kid. Maybe eight, maybe younger. Now twisted. Snapping teeth. Hands like claws. Eyes gone. Just hunger.

You hit the ground hard, the breath punched out of your lungs as your knees slammed into the packed dirt and crusted snow. The impact sent a jolt up your spine, and for a brief, disoriented second, all you could hear was the dull thud of your body meeting earth and the high ring of your own heartbeat in your ears.

Then—pain.

Immediate. Sharp. Wrong.

Something latched onto your ankle with a force that stole not just your breath, but your sense of reality. One second you were on the ground—alive, moving, thinking—and the next, you were being dragged. Your hands scrambled across the frozen dirt, fingers clawing for anything to hold onto—twigs, broken stone, splinters of what might’ve once been a barn beam—but the snow gave you nothing. Nothing.

The grip on your leg tightened, claws digging through the leather of your boot and catching skin. You felt it break. The tearing. The pressure. The shock.

And then the scream ripped out of you—raw, loud, animal. It wasn’t words. It wasn’t thought. It was the kind of sound that came from deep inside your chest, where instinct lived and logic didn’t matter. Your throat burned with it, tears stinging your eyes as your entire body fought against the pull—against the thing dragging you back into the dark.

You could hear it behind you now—snarling, breathing, moving with that frantic, erratic twitch that only the infected carried. The sound of nails skittering on wood. Teeth gnashing air. The wet slop of something ruined and reanimated.

“DA—”

But the word didn’t even finish.

A gunshot split the air like thunder.

Everything rang. High-pitched, sharp, wrong. Your vision blurred further, not from tears now—but from blood.

Warmth dripped down the side of your face, sticking your hair to your cheek, crawling down your neck. You didn’t know if it was yours. Didn’t know whose it was. All you could hear was the high screech of panic in your ears and the faraway sound of yelling—muffled, like underwater.

Joel. You knew his voice even through the ringing. Yelling your name. Yelling something else.

And your eyes—wide, stinging, bloodied—barely had time to register what you were seeing.

Henry.

He stood there, frozen in place, gun trembling in his hands, arms locked like a man holding the sky on his back. His face was cracked open in shock, in disbelief, in the kind of grief that doesn’t make a sound because it can’t.

And at his feet—

Sam.

Oh… Sam.

He’d turned. He’d turned, and the moment it happened—just a flicker, just a blink—Henry had moved.

He shot him.

He shot his little brother.

Because there was no other choice.

Your breath hitched, caught sharp in your chest like glass. Barely even sitting up, your blood falling down the side of your face, warm despite it all running like ice.

BANG.

The second shot.

You flinched hard, arms rising like they could protect you from it, even though it was already done. Even though the room had already gone quiet.

Henry’s body hit the floor before the echo even faded. And all you could do was stand there. Bleeding. Shaking. Watching.

Helpless.

Joel, since that day, normally stuck to your left side, where the skin of your ear had been torn.

—

“Abigail.”

“Sparrow.”

Her voice cracked through the chaos like it had been waiting years to say your name. And maybe it had.

Your legs started moving before your brain caught up, your body carried by something deeper than instinct—something ancient, something aching. You pushed off the ground, boots slamming against warped wooden steps as you climbed the rickety staircase two at a time, breath fogging in the freezing air, the cold suddenly nothing compared to the heat blooming in your chest.

You met her at the top—right there, on the landing—like the world wasn’t ending below your feet. Like the horde of infected pounding at the outer doors weren’t real. Like the wind wasn’t howling through broken beams behind you. Like none of it mattered.

Because she was there. Standing at the top of those splintered stairs like a ghost made real—after all this time, after you had convinced yourself she’d either forgotten you or died somewhere out in the cold. You’d pictured it a thousand ways: her gone without a trace, swallowed up by infection or raiders or the cruel indifference of the world. It was easier to believe she’d been lost than to imagine she’d simply moved on. That she'd let you become one more fading thing in her rearview. But she hadn’t. She remembered. She came.

Even through blizzards and blood and sirens that never stopped wailing in your head, she came. You remembered the way her laugh used to cut through the dark like a spark, the way she once held your trembling hands in some ruined schoolhouse basement and told you it was okay to cry—but then she left. Or maybe you left. The details blurred, both of you torn in different directions by war and circumstance and survival. Still, she found you. Not by chance—by choice. And that mattered more than the horde at your back or the frost clinging to your lashes.

Her cheeks were raw from the wind, her jacket half-frozen, a cut blooming at her temple—but her eyes… her eyes were on you like she’d never looked away. Like she hadn’t let you go for a second, even when everything said she should’ve. And your name on her lips still felt like a promise. The embrace was short-lived, but in that brief moment it held a thousand unspoken things—years of silence, grief left to rot in the spaces between, the unbearable hope that maybe, just maybe, the other had made it. Her hand pressed to the back of your head, grounding you, fingers buried in your hair like she couldn’t believe you were solid, real. Your breaths came out sharp and ragged, gasping like you were both trying to breathe for the first time in a long time, like you were daring the world to correct you—to say this was a hallucination, a dream conjured by cold and exhaustion and too much missing.

But it wasn’t.

You pulled back at the same time, still gripping her arms like letting go would somehow undo the moment. And when you both got a good look at each other—really looked, through the blood and bruises, the snow in your lashes, the sheer alive-ness of it all—all you could do was laugh.

A shaky, breathless, disbelieving laugh.

“Hi.”

Her voice cracked, and her grin split through the grime on her face like sunlight. “Oh fuck—hi.”

Then, in proper Joel fashion, he cleared his throat—loud, gruff, and perfectly timed to cut through the moment without completely shattering it. Your eyes flicked toward him, and he gave you that look—half exasperation, half soft patience masked as urgency. You nodded once, still caught somewhere between disbelief and relief, and then turned back to her.

And almost without thinking—like your body needed one final confirmation that this wasn’t some cruel dream conjured by adrenaline and blood loss—you leaned in and pressed a quick, chaste kiss to her forehead. It landed more on the edge of her knit hat than skin, but it didn’t matter. It was the weight of it. The intention. The grounding of it. She’s here.

You pulled back with a shaky breath, the cold still biting at your cheeks, and muttered, “Uh—what—we gotta go.”

“No shit,” Joel coughed.

“Dad—” you started, turning toward him just as he stepped past, boots heavy on the stairs.

“Sorry,” Joel said, not missing a beat. “Bonding moment—got it. Real sweet. But we gotta go, kiddo.”

He patted your shoulder as he passed, gentle but firm. The kind of touch that said he was glad you were safe—both of you—but now it was time to move.

He patted your shoulder as he passed—gentle, but firm. The kind of touch that said everything without saying a word: I’m glad you’re okay. I see you. Now let’s move.

“Um, right, um—Gale, my dad—Dad—” you stammered, adrenaline still chasing your words as you turned toward the unfolding urgency.

Joel gave a nod as he checked over Maple, running a hand down the gelding’s neck, eyes scanning for any injuries before gripping the saddle horn and mounting with a grunt, his body tense but focused, like he’d never once known a moment of rest but still kept moving forward.

“Joel,” he said as he shifted in the saddle, looking at “Gale” now—Abby—like he already knew everything he needed to. “Nice to meet ya, Gale.”

Abby faltered. Her body stilled, her mouth barely parting, the weight of that name crashing down on her like snow off a rooftop. “Joel?” she echoed. Not quite a question. Not quite an answer either. Just disbelief. Recognition twisting through the air.

You looked to her, voice softening instinctively—an old habit, the one you always reserved for when she looked like that. Like she was trying to do the math on a war she hadn’t signed up for.

“Mm. Ride with him.”

Abby stared at you like you’d just suggested she jump out a window. Her brows knit tight, jaw twitching, her eyes flickering between you and Joel like she was trying to see if you were joking—or just didn’t know. That look wasn’t just hesitation. It was exasperation. Shock. Maybe even betrayal. Like she was standing face to face with a story she’d buried and you were handing it a saddle.

You tilted your head, confused, the storm outside nothing compared to the tension that had suddenly rooted her feet to the barn floor. You were about to ask, what the hell is wrong—

And then the upstairs door exploded inward with a deafening crash, splinters and snow raining down. The shrieking that followed was inhuman—the sound of hunger without restraint. Echoing, guttural, close.

You didn’t have time to think. Didn’t have time to argue.

Without a word, you slapped your hand hard against the flank of Maple, the sound cracking through the barn. The horse bolted instantly—Joel cursing under his breath as he gripped the reins, catching Abby’s arm just as she jolted in shock.

And then they were gone.  Racing into the whiteout, hooves pounding against the frozen earth.You spun, already reaching for Birdie’s reins, heart thundering in your chest—not from the horde behind you, but from the unanswered question hanging in the air like a blade: Why the hell did she look at him like that?

It was cold.

Not the kind that made you see your breath in the air or wish you’d remembered your gloves. Not the crisp, biting kind you could joke about or shake off with a hot drink and a few layers.

This was the kind of cold that settled into you, bone-deep and merciless. The kind that crept beneath your skin and curled around your spine like frostbite waiting for an invitation. It made your vision blur at the edges, not from snow, but from the sheer shock of it—your body struggling to keep up, your nerves screaming that it wasn’t supposed to be this cold and you weren’t supposed to be out here. Every breath was a battle, the air itself slicing your throat raw as you dragged it into your lungs. The snow wasn’t soft or quiet—it was vicious. Whipping sideways in violent gusts, stripping the world of all shape and sound. Visibility disappeared inch by inch, swallowed whole by the whiteout fury of it.

It was disorienting. Drowning. Like walking through the inside of a storm that had no beginning or end, just a slow, suffocating middle. You didn’t know where you were anymore. You weren’t sure you ever really had. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a thought took root—a small, bitter whisper that maybe this was exactly what some cruel, watching god had intended when they carved your name into joke of a reality.

With a heavy shotgun slung over your shoulder, its weight digging into your already sore muscles, and your eyes narrowed against the stinging flurries of snow, you did your best to keep pace—trailing just behind Joel, who rode ahead, his silhouette barely visible through the storm, perched steady on horseback like the weather didn’t dare challenge him.

He was maybe ten feet ahead, but it felt farther. The wind carried his shape away from you in flashes, obscuring him in the blur of white and gray. Each step you took felt heavier than the last—boots crunching through snow that had long since swallowed the trail. You could barely feel your toes, your legs protesting with every uneven stride. The snow was thick, unpredictable, masking dips and frozen patches that sent your balance lurching every few yards.

Still, you followed. You always followed.

Joel’s back was rigid, his posture cautious. Alert. He didn’t speak much—not in storms like this. He trusted you’d be there. Trusted you’d listen. If there was danger, he’d signal. If he vanished, you’d know it wasn’t on purpose. Your hands itched to adjust your grip, but you didn’t dare take them out of your pockets—too much risk of freezing skin, too much exposure. The shotgun bounced against your back with each step, a cold, brutal reminder that comfort had no place out here.

You had already gone about nine miles south of Jackson, boots sinking deep into the snow with every step, legs aching from the steady grind of the terrain. Supposedly, this was where the remainder of the infected should’ve been—at least according to the map sketched hastily the night before, based on where Kyle had been ambushed.

But so far? Nothing. No tracks. No movement. No moaning in the distance. Just the endless, white-drenched silence of a winter that didn’t care who you were or what you were looking for. It wasn’t comforting, though. Quiet never was—not out here.

Joel didn’t say much, but you could tell he felt the same. Every so often, he’d slow his horse just slightly, scanning the treeline with that same hard squint he always got when something didn’t sit right. His hand would twitch near the rifle strapped across his back. Not panicked. Just ready.

The air was still cruel, slicing through even your thickest layers, and visibility had only gotten worse since the last mile marker. You wiped your sleeve across your brow, snow clinging to your lashes, and cast a glance over your shoulder. The town was long gone from view now, swallowed by fog and flurries. Just you, Joel, the storm, and whatever waited ahead. The trail—if you could even call it that—was guesswork now. No bodies. No blood. No signs of feeding. And that was what unsettled you most.

For the record, you’d always thought of yourself as a tough girl.

Not in the way people bragged about around campfires or during drunken post-patrol stories. You never cared for that kind of glory—never needed the head-pats or impressed gasps. It wasn’t about being the toughest or the bravest. It was just… fact. You could take a bullet and only wince. Bite down on a rag, clench your teeth, press your palm over the wound until the bleeding slowed enough to keep going. You’d learned early that pain didn’t mean stop. It meant don’t fall behind.

You’d fought off a fever with nothing but half a canteen of lukewarm water and a dirty blanket in the back of a ration truck, your body shaking so violently you could hardly hold your knife. And yet you still showed up the next morning for rotation—eyes sunken, skin clammy, sweat sticking your shirt to your back. You threw your coat on, tucked the knife into its sheath, and acted like you were just tired.

No one questioned it. That was the trick, really. If you carried yourself like you were fine, people stopped asking if you weren’t. You could be bleeding out, and if you kept your voice steady, you were “tough.” If you never said you were scared, they assumed you weren’t.

So you leaned into it. The silence. The endurance. The quiet refusal to falter.

Because what else were you supposed to do?

You were Joel Miller’s girl.

That name—Miller—slapped on the end of yours like armor you didn’t ask for. Like a badge or a target, depending on who was looking. It came with expectations you never signed up for. People saw it and suddenly assumed you were carved out of the same iron as him. That you didn’t flinch. That you didn’t break.

Tommy Miller’s blood meant you had to be steady. Reliable. Someone who could hold the line, talk the angry ones down, keep a cool head when bullets were flying. You had to speak like a soldier, walk like a leader, stand like you hadn’t already buried too many pieces of yourself to count. And being Maria’s family? That meant you were expected to know how to organize, how to plan, how to smile during meetings and know exactly when to raise your voice. To carry a clipboard and a rifle with equal ease. You were supposed to be a bridge between chaos and order.

But being Joel’s daughter—that carried the most weight of all.

Because Joel didn’t survive. He endured. He clawed his way through decades of grief and rot and didn’t blink when the world got cruel. People thought that made you the same. That you could take a hit, lose a friend, bleed out three pints and still stay standing. They thought toughness was genetic. That resilience lived in your marrow, passed down like blue eyes or a square jaw.

So you let them believe it.

Because what was the alternative? Admit that you woke up some nights too afraid to breathe? That sometimes the weight of that name—the bloodline, the expectations, the unspoken history—pressed down on you so hard you couldn’t tell if you were standing tall or just faking it better than everyone else? 

You knew how to get out of things—horrid things.

The kind that happened fast and ugly. The kind that left blood on your knuckles and someone else’s breath hot on your neck. You’d been grabbed, cornered, pinned—more times than you’d ever say out loud. But your body always moved. Not clean, not graceful, but effective. Elbows, knees, teeth—whatever it took. You knew how to slip out of a hold like smoke through fingers, even when your own hands were shaking so bad you couldn’t tell if it was rage or terror fueling you.

You could shoot with trembling hands, the kind of tremble that came after, not during. That first shot always landed. Muscle memory. Panic disguised as precision. You didn’t need time to think—you just needed the weight of the trigger under your finger. You’d killed when you didn’t want to. And not just infected. People, too. People who didn’t hesitate when they looked at you, so you couldn’t afford to either. The guilt came later—if at all. And you survived. Not because you were fearless. Not because you were trained. But because you were made of instinct, spit, and sheer stubbornness.

People called it bravery. Admired it. Told stories about it like you were some kind of legend with a lucky streak. But you didn’t call it bravery. You called it not dying. Because that’s all it ever was—figuring out how to live one more day without letting the world win.

And when it came to grief?

You learned how to delay it. You learned early. Tess taught you that. Not with words—Tess never believed in wasting breath—but with her example. With the way she stood tall even when the whole world around her collapsed. With the way she wiped blood from her hands and kept moving, like the pain didn’t belong to her, like grief was something you tucked into your back pocket and carried quiet.

So you did the same. You stuffed it down into some hidden place in your chest and boarded it up tight. Like a room in an old building no one ever entered. You could feel it, sure—could hear the occasional knocking behind the door—but you never opened it. Never looked too closely.

Let years pass like nothing had happened. Smile at people. Nod when they spoke. Take care of the sick, the broken, the lost. Work. Breathe. Sleep. Wake up. Repeat. Your mother had taught you something different. Before the world ended, before FEDRA, before the silence. She cried openly. Mourned loudly. She said grief was love with nowhere to go. But that version of you—the child who believed in softness—didn’t make it past the third quarantine zone.

You learned Tess’s way instead. Grief was something you could handle. Something you buried. And you got good at pretending the weight didn’t shape your shoulders.

You were a tough girl, after all.

But none of that mattered when the cold started to feel like fingers around your ribs. When silence stretched too long and the snow pressed down like a weight on your shoulders. When your brain kept whispering what if and what now and what if you’re wrong?

You blinked a few times, snowflakes clinging to your lashes as the wind cut sharp across your face. The hairs on the back of your neck stood up before you even registered what you’d heard—something off, too soft to be the wind, too unnatural to be the settling snow. Your eyes snapped to the treeline, heart stalling in your chest. “Dad—”

“I heard it.”

Joel’s voice was already low, calm in that way that meant move, not panic. He didn’t turn fully in his saddle, but his shoulders tensed, posture shifting. He reached back with one hand, slowly, deliberately—unhooking the rifle slung against his back without taking his eyes off the woods.

Slowly, you shifted upright in the saddle, every movement deliberate, measured—like even your breathing had weight now. The ache in your knees from the ride didn’t matter. The burning cold didn’t matter. Only the space between you and Joel. Only your hands, careful and practiced, easing down toward the handgun strapped to your thigh. You didn’t go for the shotgun. Not yet. Not unless everything went to hell.

Quiet was better. Quieter meant smarter. More deliberate. More alive.

You wrapped your fingers around the grip, easing it free with the kind of reverence one might use with a match in the dark. The metal was cold even through your gloves, grounding in a way that pulled your pulse into something steady. Focused. Joel hadn't moved much—he was still forward in the saddle, rifle cradled in his lap now, one gloved hand resting on the barrel, eyes cutting across the white-coated trees like he was waiting for them to blink.

Quiet was your best defense. Because whatever was out there? It didn’t care about the storm. Didn’t care if it had to crawl through ice or shadow or snowdrift to get to you. It couldn’t see well, sure—not in this blizzard—but hearing?

That was different.

That’s where the storm worked for you. The wind screamed through the trees, howling like ghosts in the branches, muffling your horses’ nervous shifts, blanketing the sound of leather and hooves and breathing. Every crunch beneath your boot was swallowed before it echoed. Every breath you let out vanished into frost.

It was like the earth itself was holding its breath with you. Beside you, Joel shifted slightly, eyes narrowing as he leaned forward a fraction.

Something was moving.

You didn’t speak. You didn’t have to.

However—of course—the ever-annoying, bless-her-heart Amy, who you couldn’t really blame because she was just doing her job, came through on the radio with all the subtlety of a firecracker in a library.

“Copper Mine, this is Jackson. Do you read me?”

The static crackled loud and far too clear through the receiver on Joel’s hip, the sound slicing through the silence like a gunshot. The horses stiffened. You felt it before you saw it—Joel’s back straightening, your own breath catching in your throat as you both snapped a look at each other.

Wide eyes. The same exact look.

That oh shit realization.

The we just lost every ounce of advantage we had look.

You barely had time for a scream to scramble its way out of your throat before you saw it.

The clicker burst from the tree line like a bullet from the dark—arms twitching, fungal plates split wide across its face like a grotesque bloom. Its scream tore through the air, jagged and shrill, so loud it drowned out the wind, the horses, the pounding of your own heartbeat.

“DAD—”

Your voice cracked raw and sharp, panic weaponized in the single word. It wasn’t fear that froze your legs—it was instinct. That razor-edged moment of stillness your body needed to react right. Just a second. A breath. Just long enough to draw your pistol, just long enough for Joel to be moving.

Then he was gone.

Tumbling off the horse with a sickening thud that made your stomach turn inside out. The thud of muscle and bone hitting frozen earth. His horse screamed and bolted, vanishing into the white. And then the clicker was on him—clawing, shrieking, limbs jerking in that inhuman rhythm. Joel rolled, snarling something guttural, but you barely heard him.

Because of course—of course—there were more.

You didn’t hesitate.

It took all of a millionth of a second for your fingers to find the strap, to rip the shotgun from your back and sling it into your grip. Cold metal against your shoulder, your cheek. You didn’t aim at them—not yet. You aimed for the sky.

The first blast ripped through the storm like lightning—BOOM.

One turned.

Not enough. Never enough.

You fired again. BOOM.

Another scream. Another head snapping toward the sound.

You let out a taunting shout of your own this time—wordless, full of heat and challenge. Your voice echoing just enough to be confusing. Just enough to draw them to you.

You were the bait now. And that was the plan. Because if they were coming for you, they weren’t tearing into him.

“Yeah, yeah—HEY FUCKERS, COME AND GET ME!” you screamed, voice ripping from your throat with more rage than fear, the words cutting clean through the howl of the wind and shriek of the infected.

It worked. It worked? It worked!!!

Heads snapped in your direction, fungal plates twitching like antennae catching on sound. The nearest ones stumbled, then lunged—not for Joel, but for you, drawn to the noise, the heat, the pulse.

Despite the chaos, Birdie didn’t falter.

Your horse shifted under you, tense but grounded, muscles coiled as she backed away from the infected with practiced, deliberate steps. Her ears pinned back, hooves crunching into the snow, but she didn’t buck—she trusted you.

You adjusted your grip, breath fogging the air as you lined up another shot. The infected closest to you—too fast, too twitchy, too close—lunged low through the white. You didn’t wait.

BOOM.

The shotgun kicked against your shoulder, the blast tearing through its chest mid-stride. The thing crumpled mid-air, folding in on itself like a ragdoll, the snow beneath it painted in red and steam.

More were coming. You could hear them now—wails and snarls and the slap of feet in the snow.

But your pulse was steady. Because Joel was getting back up. He had to get back up. And you weren’t letting anything get between him and that chance.

Once it seemed they had all chosen to come after you—every twitching limb, every scream splitting through the cold—you moved.

You grabbed the reins of the bridle tight, heart hammering, snow stinging your cheeks, and turned Birdie hard with a practiced tug. Her hooves skidded once on the ice-packed ground, but she recovered, nostrils flaring with heat and instinct.

You clicked your heels against her sides, low and steady, your voice barely above a whisper but full of grit. “Don’t give out on me now, baby.”

And Birdie—bless her, brave as any Miller you’d ever known—listened.

She took off.

Power surged beneath you as she burst into motion, slicing through the white with muscle and momentum, like she knew what was behind you. Like she could smell death chasing your heels. The wind tore at your coat, flurries blinding you in bursts, but you stayed low, hand still gripping the shotgun, the other curled around the reins with desperate, trembling focus.

Behind you, the clickers followed—howling, stumbling, dragging themselves forward in a rage that didn’t know exhaustion. You didn’t look back. You didn’t need to.

╔═══════ ≪ °❈° ≫ ═══════╗

“Oh, there she is!” Tess laughed from the couch, her voice warm and familiar, the kind that wrapped around your ribs like a blanket. She leaned back, one arm thrown lazily over the back of the ratty cushions, boots kicked up on a cracked crate they used as a coffee table. Her eyes crinkled with pride as she watched you step carefully through the doorway, trying not to trip on the hem.

“Now, Miss 9 and a half year old, give me a spin.”

You hesitated, just for a second, your hand fidgeting with the fraying edge of the sleeve. But the smile tugging at the corners of your mouth betrayed you—soft, a little shy, but genuine in a way you didn’t often let show. With a breath, you lifted the edge of the dress and gave a slow twirl in the middle of the room.

The fabric flared out just enough, the pale green catching what little light filtered through the grimy windowpanes. It was delicate in a way that felt foreign—lace trim at the sleeves and a stitched-in ribbon that someone must have sewn by hand. It didn’t fit perfectly, but nothing ever did. The neckline dipped just enough to expose the curved scar along your collarbone—the one that never quite healed right, jagged and pale against your skin, a reminder of some night you and Tess still didn’t talk about.

“I feel like a princess,” you announced with a high chin, posture proud, chin tilted just-so the way you'd seen in old books and flickering movie reels. The dress swayed around your knees, uneven but soft, and your boots peeked out beneath the hem, mud-stained and absolutely ruining the illusion—but you didn’t care. Not one bit.

You were gleaming with pride. Not because of the dress, not really—but because of the way Tess was looking at you like you were something whole.

Tess gave a firm nod, arms now crossed over her chest like she was guarding something precious. “You should feel like one,” she said, voice warm with conviction. “Look at you. Royalty. Princess of FEDRA.” 

She cast a glance over at Joel, who was leaning in the doorway to the kitchen, a mug of something steaming clutched in one hand. He hadn’t said much. He rarely did during moments like these. But his eyes were on you, quiet and unreadable, like he wasn’t sure whether he was allowed to smile.

He always looked like that when you wore something soft. Like his heart was caught between the past and the present. Like it was trying to figure out how this world could allow this—a kid in lace, spinning around like the world outside hadn’t turned to ruin.

Tess arched a brow at him, nudging him with that look only she could give—sharp and knowing, half exasperation and half affection. It said say something, dummy and look what we have—don’t you dare let this moment pass you by.

Joel shifted, like the floor had suddenly gotten uneven beneath his boots. His eyes flicked up to you—just for a second—then down again, to the chipped mug in his hands. The steam curled up like a curtain he could hide behind.

“Looks good, kid,” he muttered, voice a little too quiet, a little too rough. Like it had caught on something on the way out. “Real good.” But that was Joel. Never too much, yet nothing at all. Never the loudest in the room, yet always heard the loudest. His affection lived in the in-betweens—the extra portion on your plate, the worn jacket draped over your shoulders…Just there.

With a gleaming smile and a flair of dramatic confidence, you placed your hands on your hips, chin still high, basking in the full glow of your imaginary crown. The dress crinkled slightly as you walked—more of a stomp, really—across the living room, your boots thudding proudly against the old floorboards.

You flopped down beside Tess on the worn sofa, your skirt spreading around you like a wrinkled halo. She looked at you with a crooked grin, already anticipating something ridiculous.

“If I’m a princess,” you declared, tugging the hem into place like royalty might, “then doesn’t that make you a queen and daddy a king?”

Tess gave a low, thoughtful hum, like she was actually considering the politics of it all. “I suppose so,” she said with a casual shrug, though the soft pride in her voice betrayed her amusement. “Queen of the QZ has a nice ring to it.”

You beamed. Joel, still leaning in the doorway, gave the faintest of snorts into his mug.

“Well then,” you said, stretching your arms across the back of the couch like you owned the place, “I guess that means you two better treat me accordion-ing-ly.” 

Tess smirked and leaned over, stealing the scrunchie off your wrist and snapping it playfully against your arm. “Only if your royal highness helps with dinner.”

You groaned dramatically, flopping over into her lap like only a true princess would.  But you were smiling the whole time.

╔═══════ ≪ °❈° ≫ ═══════╗

“You’re okay, you’re—fuck,”

The words tangled in your throat, collapsing under the weight of the blood soaking your hands. You’d said them out of instinct, out of reflex, but they felt hollow now, like a promise you couldn’t keep. The soldier beneath you—young, maybe twenty—sputtered, mouth full of red, eyes wide and unfocused as they tried to speak, tried to hold on.

They didn’t.

The air was thick with smoke and panic, sirens long dead, replaced with the low, chaotic buzz of people yelling, coughing, dying. You wiped your hands on your pants, but the blood didn’t go anywhere. Just smeared. Just sank deeper. Your boots splashed in the growing mud as you moved to the next person—someone groaning, barely conscious, arm twisted at the wrong angle, blood pulsing through a deep wound in their side. You dropped to your knees without thinking. No hesitation. No space for fear.

Everything was mechanical now. Everything hurt.

Some group of raiders had come into Jackson just before dawn—pushed through the east wall like it was paper. They were taken down, all of them, but not before chaos settled into the streets like smoke. A fire here. A collapsed post there. Screaming. Screaming everywhere.

You didn’t know how long you’d been moving. Minutes? Hours? Your thoughts felt slow, dragged down by the heaviness clinging to your shoulders. The overwhelming sense of not enough. Not enough hands, not enough supplies, not enough time.

“Doc—”

The voice was weak, strained like it had been dragged out of him, and you turned sharply, boots skidding slightly in the blood-slick snow.

There he was. Curled against a splintered beam, barely upright, eyes glossy with pain and breath fogging just barely in the cold. You crouched beside him, already reaching for gauze you knew wouldn’t do a damn thing.

“Hey, hey,” you said gently, pressing your palm to the side of his face, grounding him. “It’s Billy, right? Hi, Billy.”

Your voice was steady, slow, deliberate. The kind of tone you used for children and the dying. You scanned the wound quickly, hands practiced—but the moment your eyes truly landed on it, your breath caught. A mouth-sized gash tore through his abdomen, deep and jagged, like something had taken a bite out of him. Bone was visible. So was the end.

You didn’t speak for a second. The words stuck in your throat like glue. The pressure of everything—of not being able to save him, of knowing you wouldn’t—hit all at once. But you didn’t cry. You didn’t shake.

Instead, you looked up, and he was already watching you. He knew.

Of course he knew.

So you didn’t say it. You didn’t have to. Instead, you reached for the pistol on his chest, his hands barely managing to lift. You guided his trembling fingers toward it, steadying him with your own. Not pushing. Not forcing. Just being there. Your hand rested gently atop his, a silent vow.

He wasn’t alone. Not in this. Not at the end. And that had to be enough.

“Infected—”

The word tumbled from your throat like it didn’t belong there. Like it had been torn loose, brittle and thick on your tongue, forced out by sheer necessity rather than breath. Your knees nearly buckled as you stood, hands slick and shaking, your body screaming for stillness—but you couldn’t stop. Not now. Not with the blood still warm on your fingers.

You reached down, pried Billy’s gun from his loosened grasp, whispering a soft “I’m sorry,” though you weren’t sure if it was meant for him or yourself. You shoved it into the deepened pocket of your pants—mechanical, detached. Something to do. Something to carry.

“They…” you started, barely louder than a whisper, blinking hard through the blur in your vision. “They brought infected—”

The syllables slurred, broken somewhere between a breath and a sob. Your boots dragged through blood, through snow turned to sludge. You stepped over bodies—some familiar, some you didn’t have the strength to identify.

The screaming wasn’t stopping. It echoed off walls, threaded through the roar of alarms, twisted into the wind until you weren’t sure if it was real or in your head. Your ears rang with it. Or maybe it was just the blood rushing behind your eyes.

Red.

Red in the sky. Red in your vision. You didn’t know if it was from the spinning sirens, or from the blood that had dried into your lashes and splattered across your cheek. You turned your head, and through the haze you saw them—Joel and Ellie. Standing in the half-collapsed alleyway near the gate. He was talking to someone. Or yelling. Or trying to get her to move. You couldn’t tell.

You didn’t care. All you could do was keep moving.

Out of the corner of your eye, through the blur of smoke and chaos, you saw Tommy—his frame unmistakable as he half-carried, half-dragged someone toward the infirmary. Or what was left of it. You knew he was heading there because that’s where you were supposed to be. That’s where they thought you were.

But you weren’t. And he didn’t know that.

So you turned, slowly, your mouth already moving before your legs could catch up. “Uncle Tommy—”

His eyes snapped to yours. And for a split second, something like recognition flickered behind them. But it wasn’t relief. It was pure, unfiltered panic.

Your breath caught. You didn’t have time to ask why. Because then—you felt it.

The cold press of steel at your neck. Sharp and real, the weight of it shoving the breath from your lungs.

A voice—gravel-thick, too close—spoke into your ear.

“Doc, right?” the raider hissed again, breath sour against your ear as the cold barrel scraped higher against the edge of your jaw, pressing hard enough to bruise. “You’re a doctor?”

You didn’t answer.

Didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink.

Your heart thundered in your ears, but you stayed still. Because you saw Tommy, and Tommy had seen you. His mouth parted like he was about to shout, to run—but then he stopped himself. He froze, hands slowly rising, palms out, as if you were a deer and he was the only thing standing between you and the gun going off.

His eyes locked on yours, sharp and silent: Don’t do anything. Don’t give him a reason.

“Hey, hey,” Tommy said, voice low and cold, handing off the bloodied man he’d been dragging to someone else without ever looking away from you. “Hey man, don’t—don’t do anything stupid.”

The raider’s grip on you jerked suddenly, pulling you back tighter against his chest. His arm dug under yours, locking around your ribs like a vice.

“SHUT UP. STOP.” the raider screamed, voice cracking with panic, fear masked as fury. “I’LL BLOW HER FUCKING HEAD OFF!”

He staggered as he backed away, dragging you with him—his boots slipping in the blood-slick snow, nearly tripping over the body of a fallen patrolman. You didn’t dare look down, didn’t dare look anywhere but forward, straight ahead, teeth clenched tight as you felt every inch of him shaking against you.

Across the courtyard, you felt it like a pulse in the air—Joel and Ellie—their heads snapping to the sound, to you, to the image of you held at gunpoint and the man behind you threatening to take everything from them in a blink.

Joel didn’t move at first. But his face—God, his face—was nothing short of murderous. Rage that was carved from something deeper than fury. His jaw set, eyes locked, hand already lowering to the rifle at his side in a way that said he didn’t need orders. He needed a shot.

And Ellie? Ellie was already moving.Eyes hard. Expression cold. Not charging, not screaming, not waving a weapon. No—Ellie moved like a blade sliding from a sheath. Quiet. Precise. Her boots whispered over blood and broken glass. Her eyes were narrowed, jaw set, shoulders tense like a coiled spring. Her expression wasn’t scared. It wasn’t even angry.

Yet, there was something about when your eyes finally met his—Joel’s—that broke you in a way no blade or bullet ever could.

It was like something cracked open.

The resolve you’d wrapped yourself in—tight and unyielding, stone-etched and battle-earned—splintered the moment you saw the sheer terror in his face. Not fear of death. Joel Miller didn’t fear dying. He feared loss. Feared it so deeply, so completely, that it lived beneath his skin, burned in his bones. You saw it there, written clear in his eyes, wide and desperate and locked onto yours like he was memorizing you all over again. Like he was preparing for this to be the last time he saw you breathing.

You’d seen that look once before. In a different life. On a different day. A hallway, a stairwell, a dying breath that had never come. And it lived there still, just beneath the surface.

Your lips parted, breath catching—just a tremble, just a whisper.  “Daddy—” It came out like a prayer. Like a confession. Like a word you hadn’t said in years but now felt like the only thing that could save you.

Then it hit. The moment.  The terror.  The helplessness.

“Daddy!” you cried, this time louder, nearly a scream ripped from the deepest part of your chest. Raw. Unfiltered. A child’s plea from behind the mask of a grown body. It shattered through the courtyard like glass.

╔═══════ ≪ °❈° ≫ ═══════╗

“Good girl,” you murmured, voice shaking as you ran your hand along Birdie’s neck, the warmth of her body a stark contrast to the chill still clinging to your bones. Her breath puffed softly from her nostrils, a quiet rhythm in the stillness of the barn. She didn’t move much—just a subtle flick of her ears and a slow turn of her head, as if she, too, was catching her breath.

You carefully dismounted, your legs aching the moment they hit the ground. The adrenaline was wearing off now, and your body felt every mile, every jolt, every second of panic. You steadied yourself with a hand on her side before stepping away.

The barn creaked in the wind, its old wooden frame groaning as snow beat softly against the roof. You’d barely gotten the doors shut in time—wedged them with an old board and some luck—and now you stood in the hollow quiet, trying to remember how to breathe like a person again.

With a heaving breath, you crossed the dirt floor and pushed the door open just a crack, peering out into the white blur that had swallowed the world outside. No movement. No sound beyond the wind and the distant moan of trees bending under snow. You turned back to Birdie—and swore she was looking at you. Judging you.

Her big, dark eyes held that heavy, slow blink of a creature that had seen things, and the faint way her nostrils flared almost seemed like disapproval. Or maybe disappointment. Like she wanted to say, really? That was the plan?

You exhaled and raised your brows, whispering, “Don’t look at me like that.”

Birdie flicked her tail, turned her head, and began chewing on some forgotten hay—unbothered. Because of course she was.

All within a moment—like the storm had exhaled just long enough for a miracle—Maple trotted into the barn.

Your breath hitched. The doors had barely creaked open, and there he was, pushing through the snow, nostrils flared, eyes wide, his coat speckled with frost. He was alone. No rider. No reins being held. Just him. The storm clinging to his back like he’d torn straight through it.

“Oh my god…” you whispered, feet already moving. “Hi, Maple. Hi, buddy—” You rushed to him, hands flying up to catch the reins, to stroke his soaked muzzle, to ground yourself in the fact that he was here. That he made it.

Maple snorted, sides heaving, hooves scraping the dirt as if he was still trying to outrun the memory of what had chased him. You cupped his face, your fingers sifting through his damp mane like it was a lifeline. “You know where my dad is? Huh?” your voice cracked, thick with worry as you leaned in, voice falling to a near whisper. “D’ya know? You gotta tell me, buddy… you gotta—”

Your words stumbled, catching behind the knot in your throat. Maple pressed his forehead gently to your chest, exhaling a puff of warmth into your coat. It was comforting. It was horrifying.

Then, within a single breath—a heartbeat—the upper barn doors heaved open with a sickening thud, the sound deep and violent enough to echo off the rafters. The ancient wood groaned under the weight of whatever had shoved through it, hinges shrieking in protest like they hadn’t been asked to move in years. For a moment, the world held still, suspended in that sound.

Then the wind followed.

It howled in behind the doors like it had been waiting—sharp and bitter and cruel. Snow curled into the barn in spiraling tendrils, slithering down from the upper loft like smoke from a fire. It glittered in the weak light, eerie and quiet, until it scattered across the straw-strewn floor in a hush that felt wrong. Like the silence before something bad.

Your head snapped up, chest clenching so tight it nearly knocked the air out of you. “Dad!?” you shouted, voice rough, disbelieving. “Dad!!”

And then— “Starshine.”

Joel’s voice. Low. Tired. A little frayed at the edges. But his. Solid as the earth. Familiar as your heartbeat.

You let out something between a gasp and a sob, stepping toward the middle of the barn floor as he stepped into view, shoulders broad beneath his snow-drenched coat, face pale with cold and blood-splattered but whole. He walked to the rail, eyes scanning until they landed on you. Softened, instantly.

“Starshine,” he said again, quieter this time—like he was making sure you were real. Like he needed to say it twice to believe it.

He looked worn. Half-frozen. One hand gripping the rail like maybe his legs didn’t fully trust the floor beneath him. But his eyes—those sharp, steady, Dad eyes—were locked on you with that same quiet promise they always carried.

He was alive. Alive.

You nearly collapsed from the weight of that word.

And then—someone stepped into view beside him.

Your breath caught. Your world tilted.

“…Gale?”

“Gale,” you called, voice cracking more than you’d meant it to. But she kept walking.

She shouldn’t have kept walking. Not with the way her boots slammed against the floor, not with the way her shoulders were squared in that kind of grief-fueled determination that only ends in heartbreak. Her steps were too purposeful, too loud in the echoing silence that had followed the scream, the gunfire, the collapse.

She shouldn’t have been moving at all.

You could see it in her face when she passed you—her eyes barely met yours, just a flicker of a glance, but it was enough. It was all she needed. Because in that split second, something inside her changed. Like her brain was fighting to rewrite the truth, but her eyes wouldn’t let her.

The blood on your hands was impossible to ignore. Dark, drying, tacky in some places and still wet in others. It had soaked through your sleeves, crusted into the creases of your palms, caked under your fingernails like dirt you’d never be able to scrub out. You didn’t even feel cold anymore—you didn’t feel much of anything at all.

Your knees were soaked, heavy with a mixture of snowmelt, dirt, and blood from where you’d dropped too fast, too hard, too late. And still you hadn’t moved. You hadn’t had the strength to.

And then your face.

That was what broke her.

Because panic was carved into every inch of it—your mouth trembling around words you couldn’t form, your chest rising too fast, your eyes glazed with something deeper than shock. Not fear. Not confusion. But that hollow understanding—the kind that only came after.

The glaze hadn’t gone away since you’d pressed your hands to his chest—desperate, fumbling, begging for movement, for breath, for anything. But there’d been nothing. Just the stillness. The unbearable silence that followed the last heartbeat.

And your voice—your voice had broken with it, splintered open like glass. When you’d called for help, it had already been too late.

She saw all of that in a glance.

And still, she kept walking. Because stopping meant accepting it. And neither of you were ready for that.

The hallway was lit in harsh red pulses—the overhead emergency lights flickering on and off like a dying heartbeat. The sun was long gone. All that was left was the cold, sterile hum of power reserves failing, and the metallic tang of blood clinging to every breath.

“Gale, please—” you begged again, your voice barely audible over the blare of the high-pitched alarm that wouldn’t shut off, screaming over your grief like it didn’t know when to quit.

He’s dead.

She stopped.

Not because your voice convinced her, but because her mind finally caught up with what she was about to do. The door in front of her—the one that still hung half open. The one with the trail of blood leading inside. The one you had stumbled out of just minutes ago.

“Stop,” she said. Her voice wasn’t loud. It didn’t have to be. It was final.

You s“Stop,” she said. Her voice wasn’t loud. It didn’t have to be. It was final—cut through the chaos like a blade, sharp and simple, the kind of word that made everything still.

You swallowed hard, chest tightening as you stepped toward her. Not fast, not all at once—just careful, deliberate steps, like she was a wire pulled taut and one wrong move would snap her in two. Your hands trembled, still sticky with blood that had dried unevenly across your fingers, your wrists, under your nails. It was beneath your skin now, like you'd never be clean again.

“Don’t go in there,” you said, voice hoarse, small. The words cracked as they left your throat, raw from screaming and silence and everything in between. “He… he’s gone.”

Gale didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. But something behind her eyes faltered—just a flicker of disbelief trying to claw its way back.

You kept going, because if you didn’t speak, the memory would do it for you.

“It’s everywhere,” you whispered, the words tumbling out faster now, unfiltered and jagged, like floodwaters slipping through a cracked dam. “Just blood and—b—” your voice caught in your throat, choked and broken, “and it—it’s all over the floor. And his—his hand was still twitching and I tried, I swear I tried, I didn’t know what to press, there was just so much and he—he looked at me like he knew and he, bu-but he-he couldn’t be looking at me because- it was clean, clean shot through the head-an-and b-blood and b—”

You couldn’t finish.

Your knees buckled slightly beneath you, and you caught yourself on the wall, the weight of the moment pulling you down like gravity had finally won. The emergency lights strobed red over your face, your voice, your pain—painting you in flashes of hell. Sallowed hard, stepping toward her as carefully as you could, as if one wrong move might shatter her completely.

“Don’t go in there,” you whispered, the words dragging out of you like they hurt. “He… he’s gone- It’ it’s everywhere,” The words began to tumble out, as if you couldn’t stop them, “Just blood and b-...and it-” 

She means brains, Abby, his brains are on the floor.

“You’re lying,” Abby snapped, her voice sharp and hot, cutting through the thick weight of panic like it might be able to slice your words in half, undo them, erase them.

You flinched—not from her tone, but from the truth in your hands. You’d almost wiped your face, almost tried to dry the tears burning your eyes, only to freeze when you saw the blood again.

Still fresh. Still wet.  Your breath hitched, staggered and uneven, as if your lungs couldn’t decide whether to sob or scream. You stared at your palms, trembling, shining in the low red light like some cruel joke. Like a stain you weren’t meant to wash off.

“No—no,” you stammered, voice cracking, thick with grief. You shook your head, your voice desperate and fraying at the edges. “Come back.”

–

“HEY, DOC—!”

The shout slammed through the thin veil of your sleep like a sledgehammer, rattling against the inside of your skull and dragging you violently from whatever shallow dream you'd been clinging to. The words stung, sharp and echoing, still bouncing around your head as you jerked upright, disoriented and half tangled in the blanket that had slipped off your shoulders sometime in the night.

Adrenaline surged through your chest like a crash, a hot, immediate wave that left you breathless and wired. Your heart was pounding—thumping—so hard and fast it almost drowned everything else out. No birds, no wind, no hum of the old heater from the next room. Just your heartbeat and the faintest trace of panic still buzzing in your veins.

You stood too fast, your feet hitting the floor in uneven steps, and your socks betrayed you instantly—slipping on the smooth wood as you stumbled, caught yourself against the edge of your dresser, and pushed off toward the door.

Your mind was already racing ahead of your body.

Something was wrong. You knew that shout—Doc only meant one thing when it was yelled like that. Not casual. Not routine. Urgent. Emergency.

With clumsy, adrenaline-fueled steps, you staggered out of your bedroom, one hand bracing against the wall to steady yourself as the world caught up in blurry, disjointed pieces. Your hair had come undone—half fallen from whatever sleepy, half-hearted braid Joel had managed to weave into it last night after he found you curled over the toilet, vomiting up what had once been a perfectly good dinner and about three drinks too many. His hands had been steady, his voice gruff but gentle, the way it always got when you were sick or hurting or scared and trying not to show it.

The hallway lights were off, but the faint spill of lantern-glow from downstairs illuminated the upstairs landing just enough for you to see the outline of another figure stepping into view.

Your father.

Joel stood in the doorway of his room, hair tousled, shirt half-buttoned, his own eyes wild with that specific mix of sleep confusion and immediate, paternal dread. His posture was tense—back straight, shoulders squared like instinct had already carried him halfway into fight mode. He looked toward you instantly, gaze darting to your face, down to your hands, checking for blood, for a limp, for something broken.

You stopped when you saw him—your breath caught in your chest, your socked feet still sliding slightly on the floor, your own panic momentarily giving way to his.

You didn’t have to say anything.

Because he was already speaking, voice low, coarse, and tight with concern.“You okay? What the hell’s goin’ on?”

The words hadn’t even fully formed on your tongue before the next shout cut through the quiet again—

“Doctor Miller, we need you!”

You winced. Not at the volume—though it rang through the house like a shot—but at the title.

Doctor.

It never sat right with you. It clung too heavy to your shoulders, too clinical, too official for what you were. It didn’t feel earned. Didn’t feel yours. Not really. You weren’t trained for this—not in the way that word implied. You didn’t sit in classrooms or pass boards or swear under oath with clean hands and steady futures. There was no diploma hanging over your desk, no framed certificate, no moment where someone in a white coat handed you the title with applause.

What you had was blood. Trial by fire. Scar by scar. You had the memory of holding down screaming bodies while trying to figure out what was bone and what was tendon with nothing but a dull knife and shaking hands. You had Joel reading aloud from a tattered copy of Grey’s Anatomy in a whisper, squinting in the half-light of a lantern while you dug into someone's side with a pair of repurposed tweezers.

You learned from mistakes—mistakes that bled and cried and sometimes didn’t make it through the night.

But still—people called you Doctor Miller.

Because it made them feel safer. Because in a world of collapsing walls and too many funerals, they needed something—someone—to believe in. And if that someone could stitch a wound, stop the bleeding, bring someone back from the edge? That was enough.

“Doctor Miller” was easier to say than scared kid who learned how to stitch a laceration in someone’s basement by flashlight while praying they didn’t nick an artery. It gave people permission to hope. And so you answered to it. Every time. Even when it made your skin crawl. Even when the word felt like a lie stitched just as tight as the wounds you closed.

So, you didn’t argue. You just jerked your chin toward Joel.

He nodded without a word, already stepping into his room, grabbing the worn, leather-wrapped first aid kit from the hook by the door. It was old and heavy and patched together with duct tape and thread, but it had saved lives more times than you could count. He didn’t need instructions. He’d done this before—too many times.

Your steps down the stairs were faster than your brain could catch up. Each thud of your feet echoed through your skull, still buzzing with leftover whiskey, dehydration, and dread. You’d sobered up the second your name was called—but your body hadn’t quite forgiven you yet.

And still, you didn’t hesitate.

You’d seen it all before—lived through it more times than you could count. Pregnant women screaming through clenched teeth on the kitchen table while someone boiled water that wouldn’t stay hot and Joel held their hand, silent and steady. Babies born blue and silent, and some that weren’t. You remembered the way Maria’s eyes didn’t leave yours during the worst of them—not in panic, but in pure, hard faith. Because she had to believe you could do it. There was no one else.

Kids with fevers so high they trembled until their limbs stiffened, foam bubbling at their mouths as you tried every old-world remedy, every whispered wives’ tale, and watched, helpless, as their parents crumpled before your eyes. You’d held a child as she went still. You’d lied to her father and said she didn’t feel a thing.

You’d patched up shattered limbs and torn skin, digging glass and gravel out of tissue with forceps that had seen more war than peace. You’d sewn lips shut, reattached fingers, drained abscesses so rancid you had to burn the rags afterward.

You’d screamed at people to hold them down while you worked. You’d begged for more light, more hands, more time.

And then there were the bites. The ones no one wanted to talk about. The ones you tried to clean anyway. That you wrapped tight and whispered promises over—promises you never kept.

You’d seen the eyes go hazy, seen the tremors start, seen someone’s last coherent thought flash through their expression as the infection took hold. You’d been the one to nod to Joel or Maria or Tommy when the time came. Sometimes you did it yourself.

You’d worked through all of it—sweat, blood, bile, terror—with your sleeves rolled up and your hands shaking so badly you thought they’d never be steady again.

But you never let them shake during. Not until afterward. Only when the door shut behind you, only when the patient was gone—or saved—did your body catch up to the storm. You’d sit on the floor, head in your hands, blood dried on your arms, and let yourself feel it.

Then you’d get back up. Because there was always someone else waiting.

But this—this made your stomach twist.

Kyle.

He sat on the couch, his face pale and slick with sweat, jaw clenched as he tried not to groan. One hand gripped the side of the cushion, the other pressed against his upper thigh, blood soaking through his jeans in a wide, wet patch. His shirt had been pulled off and wadded beside him, clearly used as makeshift pressure.

He was a good patroller. Young, sharp. Earned respect fast. Always the one to help the new kids, always quick on his feet, always came back in one piece. Until now.

Beside him sat Tommy, steady and calm, one hand on Kyle’s shoulder—quiet reassurance. And on the other side, Maria, already pale from too many nights without sleep, her gaze snapping to you the second your feet hit the bottom step.

Two other board members lingered nearby, one pacing near the front door, the other wringing their hands uselessly, trying to look like they belonged.

The wound wasn’t horrifying. Not at a glance. A deep gash in the upper thigh, wide and angry, possibly from a blade or shrapnel. Ugly, yes, but not catastrophic. Not unless it hit the wrong artery. Not unless infection set in. It bled more from movement than depth, you could already tell that from the streaked trails on the floor and the way Kyle winced every time he shifted.

Still. Something about it—the weight of the room, the way all the voices had gone still the second you stepped in, the anxious eyes of board members trained on you like you were some kind of savior or ticking clock—made your skin crawl.

The kind of silence that didn’t feel like trust.

It felt like pressure.

With a slow blink, you forced your breath in and out, grounding yourself. You stepped forward, wiping your hands along the hem of your shirt without thinking. “W… what happened?”

“I’m not bit,” Kyle blurted out immediately, voice sharp and defensive, like the words had been locked and loaded before you even asked. His gaze met yours—steady, firm—but his words shook around the edges. You could see it in the tightness of his jaw, the twitch of the hand still gripping his leg.

Your knees creaked as you lowered yourself to the floor beside him, your focus shifting fully to the wound now that the adrenaline had thinned enough for clarity to set in.

Kyle spoke again, quieter this time. “Got it riding through the edge of town… snow was thick, couldn’t see shit, and it caught my leg.”

Your hands stilled for a moment. “What did?”

He didn’t even hesitate. “Metal. Rusted pipe, maybe. Fence that fell in the snowbank. I didn’t stop to check, just—fuck, I felt it tear.”

“Okay,” you murmured, a little steadier now, nodding slowly, your voice more clinical, more in it. “Okay. Good. No bite, just a laceration.”

Joel had set the kit down on the coffee table without a word, already open, the contents lined up like familiar tools in a battlefield shrine—gauze, thread, peroxide, forceps, antiseptic wipes, tape, bandage rolls, scissors. All waiting. All ready.

“They ran into a small horde. Thirty or so,” Maria began, her voice even but distant, like her mind was halfway elsewhere, calculating, already three steps ahead. “They said they’d come across a few—maybe seven—frozen solid.”

You didn’t look up as she spoke, your focus rooted in the angry, jagged tear down Kyle’s thigh. The antiseptic soaked the gauze and your gloved fingers worked with quiet precision, cleaning the blood away from the edges, checking the depth, your breath steady despite the way the room felt like it had dropped a few degrees.

Maria continued, “Then thirty of them broke out from underneath. Snow-covered. Camouflaged. They didn’t even hear them coming until the ground started moving.”

There was a pause in the room then—a stillness that stretched too long. Like everyone was thinking the same thing, but no one wanted to say it aloud. The kind of silence that waits for a confirmation no one wants to hear.

You finally spoke, voice quiet. “Which direction?”

Maria’s eyes flicked to you, her mouth set in a hard, unreadable line. “Southwest ridge.”

You nodded once, eyes narrowing slightly. You’d been out that way before. Sparse woods. Shallow drifts. If they were frozen, that meant they were waiting—dormant, hidden. The kind that didn’t move until you were already too close.

“They’ll come here eventually,” Maria said, not with fear, but with that resigned certainty that only came from years of this. Of knowing.

Joel didn’t hesitate. His voice was steady, already sliding into that no-nonsense tone that meant this was now real.

“Alright,” Joel said, his voice cutting through the room with that familiar weight—calm, commanding, the kind of tone that turned chaos into a checklist. “Prep the town. Lock down the outer gates. Get lanterns posted on the blind corners—we’re not gonna be caught off guard.”

You didn’t even pause your work, but the shift in the room was immediate. The energy snapped from dread to movement. Maria was already pulling out her radio, barking quick, clipped orders through static. One of the board members stepped out into the cold without a word. Tommy vanished into the kitchen to grab the weapons ledger, his boots echoing behind him.

Then Joel’s voice came again, softer but just as certain—threaded with something warmer beneath the grit.

“Starshine, baby, you get bundled up,” he said. “We’re heading out.”

You peeked your head over your shoulder, squinting past the strands of hair that had fallen from your braid, still carefully pulling the thread through Kyle’s skin—steady, even, despite the hammering of your pulse.

“Want me to wake Ells?” you asked, tone light but laced with purpose. “Be good for three of us.”

There was a beat of silence. Just long enough for the tension to shift slightly, like a breath had been held.

Then Joel replied, his voice a little quieter, a little gentler in the way only someone who knew the shape of tiredness could manage.

“No,” he said. “Let her sleep in. Some of us need to have a good night’s sleep.”

You nodded once, not smiling exactly, but something softer pulled at the corner of your mouth. It was a rare kind of care he gave, hidden behind the bark and gravel, wrapped in sarcasm and bossy orders—but it was there. Always there.

You tied off the final stitch with a practiced flick of your wrist, trimmed it clean with the scissors Joel had laid out, and pressed a thick gauze pad firmly over the wound on Kyle’s thigh. He hissed through his teeth but didn’t complain—not out loud, anyway. His knuckles had gone white from gripping the edge of the couch, his face pale but grateful.

You gave him a nod, the kind that said you’ll live, then leaned back on your heels, already a few steps ahead.

If you were heading out tonight—and you were—you’d need to move fast.

Layers first. The cold had teeth tonight, and if you were headed southwest, you'd be hitting deeper snow and open terrain. Thick socks, thermals, the insulated jacket Joel had patched twice over, and your scarf—God, if you could find where you threw it after patrol last week.

Two knives. One for quick kills, close and silent. The other tucked in your boot, heavier, better for hacking through brush or something worse. You always double-checked the edges before leaving.  Your gloves were still hanging by the fire downstairs—if someone hadn’t already moved them—and you’d need the good ones, the pair Ellie had stolen and re-sewn the fingertips on after you'd worn through them last winter.

And your pack—already half-stocked, but you’d have to double-check for backup radio batteries. The last time the comms went dead mid-patrol, it had nearly ended with you stuck on a rooftop watching infected swarm through the street below with no one listening to your signal.

You stood slowly, your knees stiff from kneeling, and gave Kyle’s shoulder a soft squeeze. “Keep it elevated. Don’t move unless Maria says so.”  He nodded, too exhausted to argue. Tommy had already stepped in to take watch.

–

“Wha…” Nora breathed, her face nearly pressed to the cold glass, eyes wide as the landscape unfolded in front of them. “It’s a city, Abs. I thought it’d be like… I don’t know, a tent colony. Wood frames and tarps and open fires or something.”

Abby stood a few feet behind her, arms crossed over her chest, her jaw tight as she looked out the same frosted window. Beyond the trees and rolling snowbanks, Jackson rose out of the quiet like something impossible. Streets laid out in grids, homes with actual rooftops, smoke curling from chimneys, lights glowing in second-story windows like the world hadn’t fallen apart.

“Well,” Abby murmured, “we knew they had lights.”

“Yeah, well I thought they were like... little generators,” Mel said from the corner of the room, her hands half-tucked into her sleeves. “Like the kind we used at the FOB. Couple hours of light, tops. Rationed use.”

“Nope,” Nora muttered, shaking her head with a bitter little scoff. “They got full fuckin’ power lines. Substations. Poles. Cables. Look at that.” She gestured toward the skyline—barely a skyline, really, but enough. A town with structure. With order. With comfort.

“Well isn’t that great,” she added under her breath.

The room went quiet for a moment, just the pop and crackle of the fire burning low in the hearth.

Owen, seated closest to the flames, barely turned his head. He didn’t look outside. He didn’t have to.

“Power lines aren’t the problem,” he said flatly, voice almost bored but with that undercurrent of calculation he always slipped into when things got serious. “Here are the problems: they’ve got four main gates, no in-or-outs without clearance, guard towers flanking each exit. Mounted patrols—heavily armed. Tight rotations. Routes that overlap.”

He leaned forward just slightly, tossing a glance at the floor like he could see the city’s layout spread across it like a map. You could tell he’d been watching—really watching. Taking notes even when the others were still caught up in the shock of seeing a town that had functioning power and fences that weren’t made of scrap.

Nora stared at the floor too, brow furrowed. “These guys are trained.”

“Yeah,” Owen nodded. “They’ve got some Vets down there for sure. I’d bet a few old QZ soldiers, some Fireflies, maybe even a few FEDRA leftovers that got tired of orders and set up shop for themselves.”

He took a slow breath, jaw flexing, then stood. The firelight caught the edge of his expression, shadows warping across his features.

“But okay—let’s just say we somehow get past the gates. Slip the guards. Avoid the patrols…”

“They got dogs,” Nora muttered, voice sharp. “I saw three, minimum. Patrol dogs. Trained.”

“Okay… and the dogs,” Owen acknowledged with a tired sigh, running a hand down his face. “Even then, we still don’t know where Joel is. No map. No layout of their housing sectors. No indication of whether he’s even in the inner ring.” The room felt colder then, despite the fire.Until Abby spoke.

“Sparrow does.”

Her voice cut clean through the tension in the room—low, calm, unshaken. There was no hesitation, no flicker of doubt behind it. Just certainty. Heavy and anchored. Like she wasn’t just guessing—she knew.

Everyone turned toward her. The flickering firelight caught the edge of her jaw, set her expression in sharp contrast—cold eyes, clenched fists, arms crossed tightly over her chest like armor she’d worn a thousand times before. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t shift under the sudden weight of the silence.

“That’s why I’m not worried,” she said. “Because Sparrow is down there. That’s her home. And she probably knows him…even if she doesn’t know she does.”

There was a pause. A long, quiet one that seemed to hum with the tension of everything no one wanted to say aloud.

Then Nora, voice thin and skeptical, finally let the question fall into the open air like a dropped match.

“If she’s alive… then how do we know she didn’t already kill him?”

The words didn’t echo, but they felt like they had. Like they'd rippled through the room and set something off, something no one could take back. The weight of it didn’t just land—it hit, sharp and sudden, like a blade laid across old wounds.

Everyone felt it.

Because that was the unspoken fear, wasn’t it? The uncomfortable truth humming beneath all the planning and quiet hope. That maybe Sparrow—their Sparrow—wasn’t the person they remembered anymore. That time and distance and grief had twisted her into something else. Something cold. Something capable. That maybe Joel was already gone, and not by accident. Not by some patrol gone wrong. But because she’d found out before they did. Because her rage got there first.

Abby’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment, it looked like she might snap—but she didn’t. She took a breath instead, slow and tight, and answered with a clipped, deliberate calm.

“She didn’t know what he looked like. She didn’t even know his name. Hell, we barely did. That’s how careful they were.”

“She wouldn’t have done it on accident?” Nora pushed, arms folded, eyes flicking between Abby and Owen.

“No,” Abby snapped—then softer, “She wouldn’t. Jesus- Nora, she wouldn’t hurt a fucking fly.”

Another silence stretched. Then Owen spoke up, tone a little more cautious, a little more tired.

“Fine… but—hypothetically—if she is alive, and she knows, why would she help us? What makes you think she hasn’t just picked her side and stayed on it?”

The question hung heavy, thick in the air like smoke refusing to clear.

It was fair—brutally so. And it didn’t just come from suspicion. It came from experience. Everyone in the room had seen what survival turned people into. What time and loyalty and betrayal did when left to simmer for too long. People didn’t always stay who they were. Especially not out here. Especially not when it came to him.

Abby didn’t blink.

No hesitation. No flicker of uncertainty. She just stood there, spine straight, her voice calm and clean like she'd rehearsed the answer in her head a hundred times. Like she'd hoped someone would ask.

“We have a standing invitation,” she said.

Simple. Direct. Final.

And that simplicity stopped the room. Nora’s brows lifted, her skepticism cracking just slightly at the edges. “What?”

There was something in Abby’s eyes now—unreadable, but fierce. Not emotional. Not pleading. Just… certain. The way someone looked when they were betting on a truth no one else could quite believe in anymore. “She told me,” Abby said. “Before she left. That if we ever needed to find her, to come to Jackson. Said I’d know how. She meant it.”And maybe that didn’t seem like much. But coming from her—from someone who didn’t trust easily, didn’t speak. unless she had reason—that kind of conviction was its own kind of proof. 

“We’ll wait till it warms up a little bit to go down,” Abby said, her voice steady, practical. She crossed her arms again, glancing toward the frost-laced windows, where the pre-dawn light barely touched the snow-covered treetops outside. “Till then, I’ll take first watch.”

There was no discussion. No challenge. Just a quiet, collective understanding that settled over the room like an extra layer of weight. Abby wasn’t asking—she was deciding. The kind of decision that came from experience, from loss, from knowing what it meant to wait too long or move too soon.

She stepped back toward the window, scanning the dark treeline below like she could see through the shadows, through the buildings, through time itself. The fire behind her cracked, casting her silhouette in long, flickering lines against the wall.

There was tension in the room still—questions unasked, fears that hadn’t yet dared to take shape—but no one argued. Not when her shoulders were squared like that. Not when her eyes were fixed like that. They’d come all this way. And now all they could do was wait… and trust that if Sparrow was still out there, she hadn’t forgotten which way home was.

Ellie, 

There’s something going on. My dad and I are on patrol, I think you and Jesse are coming out at 0800. Do me a huuuuuge favor and feed Pedge and Johnny before you leave? You’re the best. Love you.

 -Starry

Ellie blinked down at the note, the familiar messy scrawl of Starry’s handwriting barely legible in the early morning light. Her eyes still heavy with sleep, she rubbed the heel of her palm against one and then glanced up at Jesse, who’d already pulled the note from where it had been pinned crookedly to the doorframe of the makeshift home they’d been crashing in.

The paper fluttered slightly in the morning breeze, creased at the corners, written in blue ink that smudged just enough to prove it had been scribbled in a hurry. There was a faint little coffee stain on the bottom corner. Typical. Starry probably left it right before hauling herself out into the freezing cold.

Jesse was squinting at the note like it was a puzzle. “Pedge and Johnny?”

“Her sheep,” Ellie muttered, already turning toward the small pen at the back of the lot, where two unmistakably disgruntled animals were already bleating in complaint like they knew they’d been left waiting.

“Oh. Right.” Jesse shook his head. “I thought they were, like, cousins or something.”

Ellie rolled her eyes, but she smiled faintly all the same, folding the note once and tucking it into her back pocket. Love you, it had said. It was simple. Rushed. But it still warmed her chest in a way that made the frost bite a little less when she stepped out into the snow.

“Anyway, heard you had quite the night after Doc an’ I left,” Jesse said slowly.

Ellie froze just slightly, her breath catching in that subtle way someone does when they’re suddenly two steps behind in a conversation they thought they were leading. The warmth in her cheeks betrayed her immediately, even in the cold.

“Oh…” she started, trying to play it off—casual, like it was nothing. Like the night hadn’t burned itself into her bloodstream.

“Yeah… yeah, she kissed me,” she muttered, and it came out too quick, too defensive. Her hands shifted awkwardly in her pockets as she looked away, out toward the snow-covered fence line. “It was just Dina being Dina. She was high. She won’t even remember it—”

But Jesse’s expression didn’t shift the way she expected. Because he was not talking about that.

“-Ahh, I was talking about some fight you had with Seth and Joel. You kisseed her?” When his eyebrows lifted and that dry, confused look crossed his face, Ellie felt her stomach dip just slightly, her brain catching up to the part of the story she’d missed. The part that mattered to everyone else. The fight.

Seth. Joel. Raised voices in the middle of a community potluck, threats whispered too loud, pride stung too deep. Ellie had felt the eyes on her afterward, the ones that stuck around long after the shouting stopped. And the worst part? She couldn’t even remember how it started. Only how it felt—hot, sharp, humiliating. Like no matter how long she'd been in Jackson, she was still just half-outside.

Maybe—maybe—she could still save this.

“No.”

One word, sharp and immediate, like it could rewind time, undo the crack that had just formed in Jesse’s expression. But it didn’t. It landed flat, too late, too transparent.

“Wooow, Ellie, c’mon.” His voice wasn’t angry—not yet—but it held that bitter edge, like something was breaking loose under the surface. “We’ve been broken up one week, and you made a move on her?”

Her chest tightened. Oh no. This wasn’t going to be saved.

“I didn’t— I didn’t make—” Her words tangled, stumbled over each other like they were trying to catch up to the damage already done. Her hands moved uselessly at her sides, caught between explanation and defense.

Jesse looked away, jaw tense, the kind of quiet that meant he was trying not to say what he really wanted to.

“Dina—you—it didn’t mean anything!” Ellie’s voice cracked, pushed too loud, too fast. “It’s like when I kissed Starshine, it’s—”

“Whoa—”

She hadn’t meant to say that. Not like that. But now it was out, and the silence it left in its wake was too big to ignore. “It doesn’t mean anything,” she said again, quieter now, trying to shove the words back into their box. “She was probably just trying to make you jealous.” It felt weak even as she said it. Like she didn’t believe it. Like she was hoping he would. Like saying probably was enough to pretend it hadn’t mattered to her at all. 

“It didn’t mean anything, it didn’t. I wouldn’t do that, man—”

Ellie’s words were coming fast, tangled and frantic, her chest tight with the weight of guilt and panic. She’d already started bracing for the fallout—the ruined trust, the cold shoulder, the long silences that would stretch into something permanent. She was already halfway through grieving the friendship when Jesse finally spoke.

“I’m screwing with you, man.” He said it with that infuriating calm, that Jesse calm, the one he used when he was already ten paces ahead of her in the conversation.

“I already know,” he added with a shrug. “Trust me. I don’t care.” Then, without skipping a beat: “C’mon, get dressed. We gotta go.”

Ellie just stared at him. Like the world had tilted on its axis. Like she’d braced for a punch and someone handed her a glass of water instead. Her mouth hung open, caught somewhere between disbelief and outrage as he turned on his heel like nothing happened. She was still stunned when the door started to swing closed behind him. And then, as if on cue—

Wham. She tried to slam it, but his boot caught it just in time, wedging between the frame and the edge. He leaned back in, grin already forming, eyes sparkling with mischief.

“But I do wanna hear the story about how you and Doc kissed—”

“Shut up!” Ellie shouted, voice cracking with horror and a flush creeping up her neck like wildfire.

Jesse just laughed and walked off, whistling like he hadn’t just sent her into cardiac arrest.

The ride back to Jackson was steeped in that kind of charged silence—the kind that buzzed under the skin like static, heavy and loud in its own quiet way. No one said a word. Not for a long while. The only sounds were the rhythmic crunch of hooves against packed snow and the soft hush of wind slipping through the trees.

Kat’s jaw was clenched so tight you were pretty sure her molars were grinding into dust. Her posture was rigid, straight-backed and sharp, and her hands gripped the reins like they were the only thing anchoring her to the thin thread of composure she had left. She hadn’t looked at any of you since you left the ruined building, and honestly, that was more terrifying than if she had. There was something about the way she rode—controlled, silent, calculated rage simmering under every movement—that said if anyone so much as breathed wrong, she’d spin her horse around and start yelling. Probably at Ellie. Maybe at you.

You wouldn’t even blame her.

Dina rode ahead of you, shoulders slightly hunched, her eyes scanning the treeline like she was pretending to look for threats just so she didn’t have to meet anyone’s gaze. Every now and then, she would glance back at Ellie, then shake her head like she still hadn’t processed what exactly happened.

And Ellie—Ellie was riding with a smugness that wasn’t on her face, but radiated off her entire being. Like she’d swallowed a firework and it was glowing through her ribs. She said nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just chewed her gum (when did she get gum?), sat too casually in her saddle, and occasionally glanced your way like she knew you were dying to ask her what the hell that little stunt was about.

You didn’t.

Mostly because you weren’t sure you could without laughing.

Snow had started falling sometime in the last mile or so—light at first, soft and drifting like ash. Then steadier, heavier, the kind that came down in thick, quiet curtains and turned everything still. Big, lazy flakes spiraled through the air, melting the second they kissed the warmth of your coat, but clinging stubbornly to your gloves, your eyelashes, your horse’s mane like the forest was trying to dress you in winter’s hush.

The sky stretched wide overhead, a dull, glowing gray that blurred the edges of everything below it. Not dark, not light—just hushed. Like the sun had stepped aside and the world was caught in that in-between moment before breath and after heartbeat. The clouds hung low and heavy, pressing down on the treetops, casting a silvery tone over the snow-dusted ground, and for once, there was no wind. No rustling. Just the steady rhythm of hooves against frost-hardened dirt and the faint, distant creak of saddle leather.

Even the trees seemed to hold their breath. Limbs dusted in white stood frozen in place, not swaying, not shifting, as if nature itself had paused to watch you return.

Jackson’s walls peeked out through the curtain of falling snow in the distance, rising like a quiet promise against the pale horizon. The snowfall softened the world around it, dusting the trees and fences, blanketing the earth in white, but Jackson still stood strong—solid, unmoving. The tall, reinforced walls curved gently around the settlement like a protective arm, worn but reliable. Built not just with wood and steel, but with sweat, fear, and a stubborn kind of hope that had outlasted the worst of what the world had thrown at it.

Warm light flickered from the towers and narrow windows embedded in the higher buildings, casting golden glows onto the snow-drenched rooftops. Smoke curled lazily from a chimney near the mill, the scent of burning wood always the first sign that you were nearing home. From here, you could just barely hear the distant clatter of life—the thump of boots on walkways, the low rumble of voices, the distant bark of a dog. Life was still happening in there. Safe, controlled chaos. A world you could almost call normal.

It wasn’t perfect. The walls had been patched, reinforced too many times to count. Supplies were never plentiful. Grief lived in those homes just as much as laughter. But it was a place people returned to. A place people fought to return to. And seeing it there, through the snow and silence, felt like exhaling a breath you didn’t realize you’d been holding.

You shifted slightly in your saddle, your muscles still sore from the earlier chaos, your coat stiff with dried blood, and your nerves barely starting to settle.

“So,” Dina said finally, voice dry and low, her breath visible in the cold. “Anyone wanna explain what that was?”

No one answered.

Not immediately.

Then, from behind you, Ellie’s voice: “I saw an opportunity.”

You closed your eyes.

Kat’s horse snorted.

“I told you not to go in that building,” Kat snapped, her voice sharp enough to cut through the snowfall. “I told all of you.”

Ellie’s boots creaked against the stirrups as she shifted. “Technically, I fell through the ceiling.”

“Oh my god,” Kat hissed under her breath.

You bit your cheek, hard, to keep the laugh down, the sting grounding you just enough to keep a straight face. Dina didn’t try nearly as hard—she choked on a snort and tried to pass it off as a cough, which only made Kat whip her head around with the kind of glare that could shatter stone. Dina ducked like that might help.

With a quiet exhale and a shake of your head, you eased Birdie into a slower trot until you were riding beside Ellie. She still had that look on her face—just the slightest upward curl at the corner of her mouth, like she was doing a terrible job of pretending she wasn’t thrilled with herself.

You gave her a sideways glance. “Right, so—”

“I am not getting a check-up,” she cut in immediately, not even looking at you. “I refuse.”

Your frown was instant. “No, not that—”

“Not getting poked, not getting prodded, and I’m definitely not answering any of your condescending ‘so where does it hurt’ questions.”

You blinked. “Ellie, I’m not—”

“And if I see you coming at me with stitches, I’m pushing you off your horse.”

You sighed, staring at her with flat disbelief. “Ellie, I wasn’t going to ask about your injuries. I know you’ll lie about them anyway.”

She finally glanced over, eyes squinting in suspicion. “...Then what?”

You hesitated for a beat. Then, quieter, “I was gonna ask why you looked so… pleased with yourself.”

She didn’t answer right away. Just looked forward again, the wind tugging at the collar of her jacket, snowflakes catching in her lashes.

Then she grinned.

“Because,” she said, voice low, “I told you I’d survive anything.”

You stared at her, your eyes locked on the side of her face as she rode just ahead of you, a little too proud, a little too smug, her breath still visible in the cold air as she grinned like someone who’d just pulled off the world’s dumbest magic trick and somehow made it look cool.

Your heart stuttered. Just a beat. Like it hadn’t been expecting her to say that—like it hadn’t braced for the way her voice had gone low, cocky, soft, all at once.

Because I told you I’d survive anything.

It wasn’t fair. Not the way she said it. Not the way she looked back at you like it meant more than just a joke. Like it was a promise. Or a challenge. Or a quiet confession, half-buried under bravado and bloodstains and the snow still clinging to her shoulders.

You rolled your eyes—hard enough that it bordered on theatrical, the kind of overdone gesture you hoped would disguise the sudden warmth blooming in your chest. You did it out of self-preservation, really. Because if you didn’t, you were either going to smile like an idiot or say something you couldn’t walk back.

It almost worked. Except your face was already flushed. Except your mouth was twitching at the corners. Except your stomach was still doing that dumb fluttering thing like it hadn’t gotten the memo about how dangerous this all was—feelings, not just clickers.

“Yeah? Well, maybe try surviving without falling through buildings next time,”  you shot back, the words sharper than you intended, but laced with something else beneath the sarcasm—fear, maybe. Relief. That awful cocktail that still hadn’t quite left your chest since the moment the floor gave out beneath her.

Your voice wavered just slightly at the end, not enough for her to call it out, but enough for you to hear it in your own ears. Because what you really wanted to say was don’t scare me like that again. That the sound of her crashing through the boards had made your heart stop. That your hands were still shaking, even if you’d tucked them into your coat to hide it.

But instead you smirked, tried to play it cool. Because that’s what the two of you did—dance around the panic, lace your worry in sarcasm, bury care in banter.

Ellie just gave you a crooked smile in return, one corner of her mouth pulling higher than the other. She didn’t say anything. Didn’t have to.

“No promises,” she said sweetly, kicking her heels into her horse with a little too much glee, taking off ahead of you like she hadn’t just narrowly avoided death. Snow kicked up behind her, scattered in the air like confetti.

“Wait—!” you called after her, already clicking your heels against Birdie’s sides. Your horse groaned like she was just as exhausted as you were, but still obediently surged forward, hooves pounding against the softening path.

You pulled up alongside Ellie, your breath visible in the cold air, heart thudding more from nerves than the ride. “One more thing! ELLIE!”

She glanced over, wind in her face, eyes bright from the adrenaline and cold. “What?”

“Wh—” you blinked, the cold stinging your eyes, your thoughts scrambling to catch up with your mouth. “Aren’t we gonna slow down?”

Ellie didn’t miss a beat. She snorted, not bothering to look back. “You said one thing.”

You shook your head, brushing snow from your sleeve where it had started to cling, melting slowly through the fabric. The cold was biting at your fingertips, but it didn’t matter. The words came out before you could second-guess them.

“Never mind. Dinner. Tonight.”

That—that—got her attention.

You watched her posture change, subtly but definitely. Her hands tensed slightly on the reins. Her eyes flicked between you and the snowy trail ahead, like she couldn’t decide which one was the real danger. There was hesitation in the silence that followed—just long enough to feel it stretch tight in the space between your horses.

Ellie’s brows pulled together, eyes narrowing, guarded. “Just you—?”

She said it like it might be a trap. Like she wanted to be wrong about what she thought you meant, but didn’t want to hope too hard in case she wasn’t. Her voice was caught somewhere between curiosity and caution, and under that—something quieter. Something almost… tentative.

You recognized it instantly. You felt the same thing. Every time you asked her to stay. Every time you reached first. “No,” you said, voice flat. “Family dinner. Everyone. Benji, Uncle Tommy…my dad. Maria’s idea.”

Her face immediately soured. “No.”

“Ellie, please!” you groaned, reaching out to lightly tug at her coat sleeve like that might physically stop her from riding off, which alone was risky but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. “C’mon. Just one night. You don’t even have to talk that much—just nod, make eye contact, maybe chew your food like a civilized human being.”

“I hate those dinners,” she grumbled, but there was already a crack forming in her resolve, you could hear it. “Everyone stares at me like I’m gonna throw a chair through the window.”

“Then don’t throw a chair through the window,” you deadpanned.

“I only did that once.”

You huffed, eyes narrowing with a small grin you didn’t bother hiding. “Just show up. That’s all I’m asking.”

Ellie hesitated. Slowed a little.

Then, dramatically, she slumped forward over her horse’s neck like the weight of the request had physically crushed her. “Fine.”

“Seriously?”

She peeked over at you, her smirk half-hidden beneath the weight of the wind and the flush in her cheeks from the cold—but her eyes were steady, watching you like she knew exactly what she was doing. “Only if I get to sit next to you.”

Your heart stuttered—just a flicker, like something skipped and landed in the wrong spot—but you forced your mouth not to twitch, forced your voice to stay flat. Cool. Controlled. You swallowed the heat rising in your chest and answered with practiced calm.

“Deal.”

She grinned wider, playful but dangerous, like she’d just secured a win in a game you didn’t realize you were playing. “Then I’m wearing something awful.”

The image flashed across your mind instantly—Ellie showing up to Maria’s family dinner in some god-awful outfit, probably layered in clashing patterns, maybe even sunglasses indoors, just to make a point. You didn’t doubt she’d do it. Hell, she'd probably make a spectacle of it if she knew it’d get a reaction out of you—or even worse, Joel.

“Also expected.”

Her grin turned into something wicked. Mischievous. Proud. Like she was already plotting ways to ruin the evening with precision-level chaos.

“Cool. Can’t wait to traumatize Joel over soup.”

And just like that, she nudged her horse forward again, riding a little faster, snow flicking off her coat as she disappeared into the slow haze of the falling dusk.

You stayed where you were for a moment longer, the cold biting at your ears, your breath fogging up around you—and your heart still thudding that half-beat behind.

Because yeah. She was joking.

Probably.

But it was getting harder to ignore the way your chest fluttered every time she chose to sit beside you. The way her shoulder would brush yours like it meant nothing, but always lingered just long enough to mean something. The way she smiled like she knew exactly how to disarm you with it. The way she said your name like it was easy—like it belonged to her lips, like it was hers to keep.

And it wasn’t fair. Because you’d made your choice years ago. Back when the world was a little more on fire, and your heart was still too tangled up in grief and guilt to know the difference between affection and safety.

You remembered that day—clear as anything. You’d looked her in the eye and said, We’re like sisters. Said it with a shrug, with a practiced ease that masked the crack in your voice. Told her you were best friends. That the two of you could survive anything. And maybe you believed it. Maybe you needed to.

Because you’d already packed those kinds of feelings away. Neatly. Quietly. Locked them behind doors labeled not now, and not again, and never with her—because those keys had once belonged to someone else. Someone who left. Or disappeared. Or someone you had to leave behind, with no promises and no closure. Just a memory and a dull ache.

And god that had taken awhile to get over. 

And you told yourself that was enough. Being alone was enough, because you were alive and you could stay alive. That is was enough and everything else was just…just…

But now… now Ellie was still here. Still fighting. Still falling through floors and throwing out dinner invitations like they were life preservers.

— 

Your steps were slow into the house—not your own, or rather not technically yours. Joel’s, officially. But this wasn’t his place. This was Tommy and Maria’s, just a few houses down, same creaky porch steps, same frosted windowpanes softened by snow. You barely made a sound as you nudged the back door open with your hip, arms full of a carefully packed box.

It was second nature to try here when you couldn’t find your father at home. He and Tommy had a way of being predictably unpredictable—either knee-deep in a project, halfway across town on a supply check, or sitting in near silence at the kitchen table, sharing the kind of conversation that didn’t require many words.

The door gave with a soft creak, the warm smell of wood and something vaguely herby—probably whatever Maria had brewed earlier—wrapping around you like a blanket. You stepped inside, boots leaving faint, melting tracks on the rug as you closed the door behind you with a gentle nudge of your foot.

The box in your arms was heavier than it looked. Full of scavenged medical supplies: a blood pressure cuff, a couple of thermometers, three half-used glucose kits, a box of alcohol swabs, and a splint that had definitely seen better days but would still do the trick. There were a few sealed medication bottles too—basic painkillers, some antibiotics. Nothing rare, but valuable enough that you carried them like gold. You’d even found a few rolls of gauze, two cracked cold packs, and an unopened bandage wrap.

Everything inside was organized with almost compulsive care, labels facing the same direction, tape rolls tucked into corners, syringes banded and capped. You’d packed it the way you packed your fear: neatly, methodically, pretending it wasn’t there at all.

As soon as you opened the door, the warm, savory scent of stew wrapped around you like a wool blanket—thick with herbs, something tomato-based, maybe beef, and definitely Maria’s doing. Your stomach gave an immediate, almost rude little growl in response, and you let out a content hum, already feeling the warmth of the house pulling the cold from your bones.

You didn’t even think about it when you called out, voice raised just enough to carry through the house: “Auntie? Uncle Tommy?”

And that was apparently the magic phrase.

Because before the echo of your voice even faded, you were greeted not by Maria or Tommy—but by the unmistakable thunder of tiny feet on hardwood.

A heartbeat later, a very recognizable four-year-old came tumbling down the stairs.

Not falling—tumbling. Purposefully chaotic, arms flailing for balance, one sock on, one sock missing entirely, a mop of curly brown hair bouncing with every step as he barrelled his way down like gravity had personally challenged him to a race.

You barely had time to set down the box of medical supplies before he was launching himself across the entryway with full commitment, little legs pumping like he was chasing down the last slice of cake in the world.

“Staaaaar!” he yelled, voice high and delighted as he flung himself at your knees.

You barely caught him in time, stumbling back a step as his arms wrapped around your thighs, clinging to you like a human koala. His face was already squished into your jacket, giggling like a maniac.

“Whoa—hey, hey! Careful, I’m armed with thermometers,” you laughed, one arm instinctively wrapping around his small frame to keep him from toppling both of you over.

He tilted his head back, cheeks flushed from his epic stairway descent, curls sticking to his forehead in wild loops, eyes bright with that particular brand of mischief only four-year-olds could possess—like he knew he’d startled you and was very pleased about it.

“Did you bring boo-boo stuff?” he asked, voice breathless with excitement, his little hands clutching the front of your jacket like he was fully prepared to drag you into a pretend triage situation right there in the entryway.

You nodded solemnly, like it was a matter of national importance. “A whole box.”

His mouth dropped open in a tiny gasp, awe widening his eyes. “Cool,” he breathed, like you’d just told him you brought a dragon instead.

The grip he had on your coat tightened.

You could already see the wheels turning in his head.

“Does it have the stingy spray?” he asked with a hopeful wince. “The one that makes your leg cry but then you feel better?”

“Yeah,” you said with a grin, tapping the side of your nose. “Hidden at the bottom. Top secret.”

“Whoa,” he whispered. “I’m gonna get a fake injury so we can use it.”

“Let’s not,” you said, picking him up and balancing him on your hip as he leaned into you like he’d done it a hundred times—which, to be fair, he had. “Let’s pretend no one gets hurt today. Deal?”

He stuck out his pinky. You shook it with exaggerated seriousness.

Then he leaned in close and whispered, “But if someone does, I get to be your helper.”

“Well obviously, Auntie Starshine and Medical professional Benji.” You chripped, which earned a gleaming smile from the young boy. 

From somewhere down the hall, Maria’s voice called out, laced with affection and the usual exasperation of someone parenting a human rocket. “Benji! Did you just tackle our guest again?!”

“Starry’s not a guest,” Benji mumbled into your coat, grinning. “She lives here too.”

With a soft smile curling on your lips, you carried Benji—still clinging to you like a particularly affectionate barnacle—into the heart of the home. The kitchen was a swirl of warmth and motion, every corner alive with sound or scent or the gentle clatter of domesticity that felt almost sacred in this world.

The table was already set for six. Plates stacked with care, mismatched mugs at each seat, silverware wrapped in folded cloth napkins that didn’t match but felt right. A small jar of preserved jam sat at the center beside a half-empty salt shaker and a candle that had been burned down to a stub and lit again anyway.

The stove was alive—one pot bubbling with something thick and savory, the scent of herbs and garlic and slow-cooked meat filling the air. Something else baked in the oven, sweet and spiced, the kind of smell that reached down into your ribs and tugged gently on childhood. A kettle was whistling low, not shrill yet, just humming, and the old percolator rattled faintly beside it, coffee bubbling in rhythmic hiccups like it was trying to keep time with the household.

You set Benji down gently, ruffling his hair as he scampered off toward the table to inspect exactly which mug he wanted for dinner—even though he didn’t drink anything but warm milk and watered-down juice.

Beside the stove, her back to you, Maria was working with that effortless multitasking ease only a mom—or a woman with too much experience keeping things together—could master. She stirred one pot with her right hand and flipped something in a cast-iron skillet with her left, barely glancing away from the bubbling stew.

You stepped up beside her, tucking your hands into your jacket pockets, and hummed quietly as you leaned over to peer into the pot.

“Smells like someone’s trying to win Aunt of the Year again,” you teased, eyes twinkling.

Maria gave a sideways glance without missing a beat. “I am Aunr of the Year. Every year.”

You chuckled. “Well, your competition is a four-year-old with a spoon and a lot of opinions.”

She smiled, lips tugging up as she handed you the wooden spoon without looking. “Taste that and tell me if it needs salt. But don’t lie to spare my ego.”

“Your ego’s unsinkable,” you muttered as you took the spoon, carefully blowing on the broth before tasting it.

Benji let out a triumphant “I found the red cup!” from the other room.

Maria just smirked. “Told you.” 

Benji’s voice echoed from the dining room again, now narrating his highly scientific mug-placement process with the kind of intense focus only small children possess. You could hear him tapping things on the table and muttering about “symmetry” like he knew what it meant.

You were still mid-eye roll when Maria’s smirk faded into something quieter, her gaze lingering on the pot just long enough to mark the shift in atmosphere. She turned slightly, the ladle resting on the edge of the pot, and looked at you—not sharp, but deliberate. Measured.

“So,” she said carefully, “the market.”

You stiffened a little, your hand still loosely holding the spoon, suddenly very interested in stirring the stew again.

“Oh, please don’t,” you sighed, not quite meeting her eyes. “We told you what happened.”

“You told us,” Maria repeated slowly, folding her arms across her chest. “But I know you. I know Ellie. I know Dina. And I definitely know Kat. What you told me was a report. What I’m asking for is the truth.”

You tried to scoff, to laugh it off, but it came out thin. “What part of ‘we cleared the area and fell through the floor’ sounded untrue?”

Maria raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “The part where you all made it home in one piece, and no one’s limping or sobbing—but Ellie looked smug, Kat looked homicidal, and you walked in like you were trying not to cry or throw up. Or both.”

You didn’t say anything. You just pressed your palm to the edge of the counter and focused on the burn still healing beneath your bandage. It wasn’t much, but the sting helped ground you.

“Starshine,” Maria said more softly now, her voice dropping into that calm, patient tone she only used when you were trying very hard not to unravel. “I’m not mad. I’m not here to scold. But I need to know what I don’t know.”

You looked at her then—really looked at her. The lines on her face from years of holding too many things together. The quiet concern behind the strength. She wasn’t just asking because she was Maria. She was asking because she was family.

You swallowed thickly. “It was close,” you admitted, voice barely above a whisper, like saying it too loud would make it real all over again. “Like… really close. Ellie went down hard. I thought—” You stopped, the words catching in your throat like glass. You cleared it roughly. “There were about eight clickers… and a stalker. Second and third stages of infection. All of which have been eliminated. I don’t—We took care of it.”

The silence that followed felt heavier than the snow gathering on the roof. Maria didn’t speak right away, just exhaled slowly through her nose, the corners of her mouth twitching downward like she was biting back a thousand things at once—anger, fear, maybe just exhaustion.

“You fuckin’ Millers,” she muttered, shaking her head as she turned back to the stove. “You and your emotionally crippled ass instincts to not ask for help. Jesus.”

You didn’t argue. Couldn’t. Because she wasn’t wrong.

She stirred the stew once, twice, like she was channeling something into the motion. Then she looked over her shoulder, eyebrows arched, voice a little tighter now. “And you checked yourself and the other two?”

You nodded firmly, pulling your coat back to show the bandage peeking out from under your sleeve. “Course. Dina’s clean, just a few bruises. Ellie—couple scrapes. She’ll pretend she’s dying, but she’s fine.”

Maria narrowed her eyes for a moment, assessing you like she was reading your heartbeat through your face alone. You met her gaze without flinching. Barely.

“Okay,” Maria said finally, turning the heat down on the stove with a decisive twist of her wrist. The bubbling stew quieted to a soft simmer, the warm, rich scent still curling through the air like a comfort blanket. She didn’t look at you this time, just stared down at the pot as she added, “But if any of you start coughing, twitching, or brooding more than usual, I will sedate you and lock you in the pantry.”

You huffed a quiet laugh—half breath, half disbelief. It was her usual deadpan humor, but there was an edge under it. She meant it more than not.

Then she glanced at you again, one brow arching knowingly. “Oh. Ellie’s coming?”

You hesitated, your fingers tapping the edge of the counter lightly. The question was simple, but the answer never was.

You took a slow breath through your nose and gave a small nod. “Said she would.” A pause. “But… I doubt it.”

It hung there for a moment—between the two of you. You weren’t even sure if you meant she wouldn’t come to dinner… or that she just wouldn’t stay long enough to matter.

Maria didn’t press. She never did when the subject turned into that.

She just gave a single, understanding nod and turned toward the cabinet, already pulling out another plate from the stack. “I’ll still get one ready.”

And somehow, the simple act of that—of someone setting a place for her even when she probably wouldn’t show—meant more than any question or lecture or well-meaning warning ever could.

– 

Later that night, you sat between Joel’s legs on the living room floor, your back resting gently against the curve of his knees, knees drawn to your chest, arms wrapped around them. The fire crackled low in the hearth, casting a soft amber glow across the room, throwing long shadows that danced over the worn floorboards and the quiet clutter of home—books, boots, a half-finished mug of coffee left forgotten on the side table.

Your eyes stared ahead, unfocused, fixed somewhere past the flickering flame, but your mind was far from the fire. It had been a long day—longer than most—and the exhaustion had settled in your bones, heavy and still.

Joel worked quietly behind you, fingers deft and gentle as they threaded through your hair. His calloused hands—hands that had held rifles, built fences, broken bones—moved with surprising softness, parting strands with a kind of reverence. There was a rhythm to it, a muscle memory in his movements that felt older than the man himself, as if braiding your hair was something etched into his bones, even if you both knew that wasn’t quite true.

But it was familiar.

He used to do this almost every morning—back in the QZ, when days started with ration lines and the metallic tang of burning trash. You were younger then. Smaller. The back of your head barely reached his chest when you sat in front of him on the floor. He'd sit cross-legged, still half-dressed for patrol, and you’d hand him your brush without a word, already knowing what came next.

While Tess mapped routes and mumbled curses at broken radios in the background, Joel would braid your hair by the first light of dawn, his brows furrowed like he was doing surgery. It was always a little too tight, never symmetrical, and he'd mutter under his breath the entire time—but he'd do it. Every damn time. And right before he tied the band in place, the sky would shift from navy to gold, and the birds would start to sing.

That was your cue.

A soft snap of the band. A low grunt of approval.

And then the day would begin.

Now, years later, it felt the same. The tension in your shoulders slowly melted with each pull of the braid. The quiet between you wasn’t heavy—it was full, layered with memory, with comfort, with all the things you didn’t need to say.

Joel cleared his throat softly behind you, not to speak, just to clear the space. His fingers paused at the nape of your neck, holding the braid in place as if he needed to linger there a second longer. Maybe for your sake. Maybe for his. Outside, the wind rustled against the windows, soft and distant.

After a moment, you felt the familiar tension of the band wrapping around the end of your braid—tight, secure. Then, the soft press of a kiss to the crown of your head. It was quiet, unceremonious, but you felt it like a warm ripple down your spine.

“Alright,” Joel murmured, voice low and rough with sleep or age or something heavier. “Finished up.”

“Mmm,” was all you could manage, not even bothering to lift your head from where it leaned slightly back against his knee.

He paused. It took him about a millionth of a second to realize you had absolutely no intention of moving. No desire to get up, no instinct to shift into conversation or activity or anything else. Just you, settled there on the floor in front of him like a weight he wasn’t in any rush to put down.

So he adjusted. Shifted just enough so his back pressed deeper into the couch, knees settling on either side of you with a soft creak. One hand rested loosely on his thigh, the other absentmindedly smoothing down the braid he'd just finished—like some part of him wasn’t ready to stop.

“How was the trip?” he asked after a beat, his voice careful. Not pressing. Not yet.

You let out a short, scoffed laugh—half amusement, half exhaustion. It wasn’t really funny, but the sound escaped you anyway. The kind of laugh that said you wouldn’t believe me if I tried.

Joel’s hand paused against your hair.

“Well,” he said, quieter this time, “I ain’t gonna pretend I didn’t hear about it.”

And that was Joel in a nutshell—never one to pry, never demanding answers, but letting you know that the door was open, that he knew. That he’d already heard from Maria, or Tommy, or someone else in town who’d used the word clickers and floor collapse in the same breath, and he’d been sitting with that knowledge ever since, waiting for you to offer the rest.

Waiting like he always did—silent, steady, and there.

It took a moment, the kind that stretched between breaths, heavy and quiet.

Then your voice came, rough around the edges. “I miss…” You trailed off, shaking your head like you could scatter the thought before it solidified. “God, I’m just missing stuff today.”

Joel didn’t move, didn’t speak. Just let the words settle.

“Like?” he asked after a moment, his voice low, neutral, soft in that way only he could make feel like a safety net instead of a pry.

“Mom.” The word left you faster than you meant it to—too sharp, too unfiltered—but it was there now. You breathed around it. “I miss FEDRA,” you said next, and then winced, already bracing for the look. “Which is messed up, right? I know. But I miss… being a kid. I miss the routine. The school. The drills. Even the goddamn whistles.”

You laughed softly, but it broke halfway through.

“I miss my friends,” you continued, voice softening to almost nothing. “I miss stupid things, like canned peaches. And the sound of the elevator in our old apartment building. I miss… I dunno. When it was just us.”

Joel didn’t say anything. He just stayed there behind you, his presence like a wall against the chaos of the world outside. His hand rested at the base of your braid, thumb tracing lazy, slow lines over the woven strands—not rushing you, not offering solutions, just being there.

“I know it wasn’t easy,” you murmured, voice fraying at the edges. “It was never easy. But at least it made sense. At least I knew who the bad guys were. At least… you were always right there.”

Your words drifted into the room like smoke, too heavy to disappear but too fragile to hold.

The fire crackled, low and steady, and Joel’s hand moved again—smoothing over your hair with the same careful pressure he used when you were a kid and couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t just comfort. It was something like apology. Like I hear you. I remember, too.

“I just…” you swallowed thickly, curling in tighter on yourself, “I feel like everything has been in this constant state of change, and I… I just need a minute. Just one. To breathe. To not have to be anything.”

There was a beat of silence.

Then Joel’s voice, low and careful: “You wanna stay in the house?”

You shook your head without looking up. “No. No, we gotta go to the silly prom- wait no sorry, Community uniting Potluck.”  Your tone was flat, tired, a little bit amused, a little bit exasperated. “Auntie wants me to be on the board. So I gotta, go be perfect Doctor Miller.”

“Ah,” Joel said, like that explained everything. “So that’s it?”

You laughed once—sharp and dry. “No. That’s not the main issue.”

He didn’t ask what was. He didn’t have to. He just made a low, thoughtful sound in the back of his throat—Mm...—and let the silence speak.

Because he already knew. He always did.

You let out a breath you didn’t know you’d been holding. “Yeah.”

Joel nodded, hand resting once more on the back of your head with all the strength and softness of someone who’s spent too much time surviving and still found room to care.

“Let’s go, baby,” he said quietly, with the weight of everything you didn’t have to explain resting gently in the space between you.

And just like that, you stood—not because you were ready, but because he was standing too. Because you didn’t have to do it alone.

–

The fires outside crackled cheerfully, ringed by bundled-up children who shrieked and giggled as they danced around them, their breath puffing out in little clouds that faded into the falling snow. The flames lit their faces like lanterns, soft and golden, and for a moment—just a moment—it all felt untouched by grief. The snowfall was light, drifting in lazy spirals from the sky, clinging to hair and coats and lashes like a quiet blessing. The air held that sharp, clean cold, brisk enough to sting the lungs but not enough to chase people inside. It was the kind of night that almost pretended the world hadn’t ended.

Inside, it was warmth on every surface—wood-paneled walls, coats draped over chairs, the air heavy with the scent of slow-cooked meat, firewood, and faintly-spiced cider. Laughter moved like a current through the room, pulling people along with it. There were no harsh lines of rank or routine tonight—only neighbors chatting like old friends, kids weaving between legs, and couples caught in private smiles.

Some debated over plans—gardening for spring, a new water line, maybe rebuilding the west fence. Others hovered near tables lined with drinks, cups filled with precious liquid—wine, actual wine, brewed and hoarded and bartered for over months of planning. It was the kind of drink that carried weight, not just for its rarity but because it meant hope. Forward thinking. Celebration.

And the lights. The lights were bright and steady, cutting through the shadows with a warmth the fire couldn’t reach. They glowed not because of luck or leftover fuel, but because someone—probably Maria, probably four other people, too—had shut down the outer grids earlier that week, calculated it down to the second, and made sure tonight had light. Because sometimes, the illusion of normalcy needed a little engineering.

You were in the middle of a conversation, half-laughing, half-listening, as the teenager you’d once treated animatedly recounted something about school—how she was finally allowed back into gardening duty, how she swore the antibiotics you gave her saved not only her leg but also her chances with the girl she liked. Her parents stood nearby, quieter but equally grateful, their nods full of warmth, eyes soft with the kind of gratitude that didn’t need to be loud.

You’d accepted their thanks with the usual mix of humility and awkwardness—because honestly, you’d just done your job, and if the infection had gone a day longer, it might’ve ended very differently. But tonight wasn’t about that. Tonight, it was about the after. The surviving. The living.

You were just leaning into another story when you heard your name called—louder than most voices, in that unmistakable friendly ambush tone.

You turned, instinctively polite, hand on the girl’s arm as you murmured, “One sec.” Then you pivoted, and of course it was Jesse.

There he stood, near the drink table, with that ever-present warmth in his expression and a drink in hand like he was the host of a party you’d forgotten you RSVP’d to.

“Doctor Miller,” he said with far too much formality, his grin betraying the mock-seriousness in his tone.

“Jesus, I—” you blinked, nearly tripping over your own surprise and the suddenness of the address.

“Ah ah ah!” Jesse said, stepping forward like he was about to present you with an award. “I heard about the appendix thing.”

You let your head fall back with a sigh, a groan half-caught in your throat. “Why is that such a point of conversation?”

Jesse just sipped from his cup, eyes crinkling with amusement. “You literally performed surgery with your dad reading out instructions like it was the apocalypse version of a cooking show.”

“It was the apocalypse version of a cooking show,” you muttered, rubbing your eyes. “Fine. What is it?”

“I just came to tell you,” Jesse said, tone dipping into that theatrical seriousness he wore like a second skin, “that you’re officially cooler than me now. And I hate that.”

You raised a brow, sipping cautiously from your cup. “That was the line? The appendix?”

“That, and the fact that Maria won’t shut up about putting you on the board.”

Your smile faltered—just a flicker, but enough to be noticeable. The weight of that word board settled onto your shoulders like snow that didn’t melt.

“God, no,” you muttered, eyes drifting past him for a moment. “Trust me. I am painfully aware of her scheming.”

Jesse chuckled, but it faded fast when he caught the look on your face. Not dread, exactly. More like… tiredness. That deep, slow kind of tired that doesn’t come from one bad night’s sleep but from weeks of holding everything up and together and still being told you need to do more.

“She corner you again?” he asked gently.

You gave him a long-suffering look. “At least twice a week. She brings food now. Like it’s some sort of bribe-slash-threat.”

He snorted. “That’s the Maria Method. You say no, she gives you stew. You say no again, she makes you feel like saying yes is your idea.”

“And then you’re sitting at a table with a bunch of people twice your age talking about zoning codes and water lines,” you deadpanned.

“Don’t forget the new compost system,” he added, raising his cup in mock-honor.

You groaned. “Kill me.”

But Jesse just smiled and bumped his shoulder against yours. “Look, all I’m saying is… she wouldn’t be pushing so hard if she didn’t believe in you. Everyone does.”

You looked at him, surprised by the shift in tone—and maybe a little disarmed by how genuine he sounded. The weight didn’t disappear, but something in your chest loosened just a little.

You took a sip of your drink and let out a breath. “You trying to convince me to say yes?”

Jesse gave you a look of mock offense, clutching his chest like you’d wounded him. “Don’t assume I care that much,” he drawled, lips twitching into a grin. “But I do wanna make sure I’m on the good side of the Jackson royal family.”

You narrowed your eyes. “And that is exactly why I say it’s a bad idea—put me on the board and suddenly you’re gonna have people accusing us of nepotism and cult politics.”

“Hey, if the crown fits—”

“Starshine.”

The voice came from behind you. Low. Familiar. Soft enough to stop you mid-sentence but loud enough to send a ripple through your chest.

Your ramble died in your throat instantly.

You turned, slowly, instinctively, your whole body already shifting before your mind caught up.

And there she was.

Ellie.

Your breath caught—not from shock, not exactly. More like… disbelief laced with something warmer. Something stupid and soft that settled beneath your ribs and flickered, like someone had finally lit a candle in a room you'd forgotten was dark.

The look of faint distress still creasing your features melted into a quiet, confused smile. Not wide. Not exaggerated. Just real. Just there.

“…Ellie,” you said, the name falling from your lips like it had been waiting there all night.

She stood just a few feet away, shoulders dusted with snow, cheeks flushed from the cold, hands shoved into her jean pockets. Her eyes flicked between you and Jesse and then back again, something unreadable—but not unkind—in her expression.

“I wanted to say sorry,” Ellie said, voice quieter now, the usual sarcastic edge completely absent. “For not coming. I…I had something.”

You blinked, the words catching you a little off guard—not because they were harsh, but because they weren’t. Because you hadn’t expected them. Hadn’t expected her.

Your mouth opened, then closed again, and you gave a short, uncertain laugh, rubbing your thumb along the rim of your cup before answering. “Oh. Um… I won’t lie, I wasn’t expecting you to.”

Your eyes finally met hers, and she didn’t look away. There was something heavy but earnest in her stare. Not guilt exactly—Ellie rarely let herself wear guilt. But something close. Something honest.

“But… but thanks,” you added, the words awkward, small, but true. 

She nodded once, stuffing her hands deeper into her pockets like she was keeping herself from saying more. The space between you felt strangely fragile, like one wrong word could tip the moment into something neither of you were ready to deal with. 

You were just about to say something—some awkward, forced version of small talk, the kind that people used when they didn’t know how to admit they’d shared too much history to pretend they were strangers. Something dumb like how’ve you been, as if you hadn’t once carried her through a blizzard, or held her hand through the shakes of a fever, or—taken a bullet for her, like it was just another part of the job. As if everything you’d survived together could be neatly folded and tucked beneath the word complicated.

But you never got the chance.

Because Dina arrived like a gust of warmth—cheeks flushed from the cold, eyes bright, smile already wide like she’d been halfway through laughing before she even spotted you.

“Oh god, hi,” she grinned, reaching out to grab your arm like you were mid-conversation.

“Hi,” you offered, startled but unable to stop yourself from smiling back.

She clocked your cup immediately and wrinkled her nose. “What’s that?”

“…Water?”

“Gross,” she declared. “Right, you can’t be fun anymore.”

Before you could respond, she turned smoothly toward Jesse, who barely had time to raise a brow before she snagged his cup right out of his hand. With no hesitation, she downed what remained—maybe three fingers’ worth of whiskey—like it was water, then handed the empty cup back to him with a triumphant little smirk.

Jesse blinked. “Okay.”

“Anyway,” Dina said, already shifting her attention to Ellie, who had said nothing, done nothing, and yet somehow looked like she’d just been hit with a snowball. “What took you so long? Let’s go.”

And just like that, Ellie was being tugged away, blinking, looking over her shoulder once, maybe twice. But she didn’t fight it.

You stood there with your untouched cup of water, still trying to remember how breathing worked. Your chest was tight—not painfully, just enough to remind you that moments like that, with her, never seemed to unfold the way you imagined. Or wanted. Or needed.

You let out a huff and leaned back against the table behind you, the wood creaking slightly beneath your weight. You stared down into your drink like it held some kind of answer, some kind of reason for why everything always seemed to pull her just far enough out of reach.

Jesse stood next to you, quiet for a beat too long. Then, dry as ever, he said, “You’re so, so sad.”

You snapped your eyes to him, frowning. “Says you.” The words came out sharper than you intended, your voice cutting through the warmth of the room like a knife. His brows lifted just slightly, but he didn’t flinch.

You winced, already regretting it. “Fuck. Sorry, Jess. I didn’t mean—” You sighed again, running a hand through your hair. “You two’ll be back together in two weeks. Probably less.”

Jesse didn’t respond. Not right away.

Instead, he looked ahead—toward the crowd, toward where Ellie and Dina had disappeared through the flickering lights and laughter and music. You followed his gaze without meaning to, your eyes landing on the same spot where their figures were still barely visible, spinning slightly in the crowd.

And then Jesse spoke, voice flat and certain in a way that made your stomach drop.

“Not gonna happen.”

You didn’t move.

Because you saw it too.

The way Dina leaned into Ellie. The way Ellie let her. The way she didn’t look back again—not this time.

And just like that, your stomach sank to meet Jesse’s in that quiet, brittle place. That hollow ache where hope used to sit before reality laid it bare. No final words. No dramatic ending. Just… gone.

You let out a low sigh and glanced sideways at Jesse, your voice dry and only half-joking. “I have the key to the liquor cabinet at the parlor. Wanna get drunk and cry about… that?”

Jesse tilted his head like he was giving it serious thought, then gave a shrug. “I’ll take you up on the liquor.” He pointed a finger at you. “But you’ll be doing all the crying.”

You let out a sarcastic laugh, already reaching for your coat. “Uh-huh. You were screaming bloody murder when I popped your shoulder back in, don’t give me that ‘I’m tough shit’ act.”

He scoffed, following your lead. “That was a reasonable amount of screaming, and also you are not licensed—”

“You’re welcome.”

As the two of you made your way through the thinning crowd toward the exit, coats in hand, boots crunching faintly against the snow tracked inside, you passed by your father.

Joel was mid-conversation with Tommy, something quiet and practical, as usual. He barely broke stride as he leaned over, pressing a kiss to your temple with the same ease he always had—habitual and grounding, like muscle memory. Like reassurance that he was there even when he didn’t know what you were carrying.

You paused, just for a second, letting yourself lean into it before moving on. Your hand brushed his side gently, a silent thank-you. He didn’t say anything, didn’t need to. He just gave your shoulder a soft squeeze as you passed.

It was barely ten feet outside of the barn when it happened—one moment filled with the crunch of snow underfoot and the sharp bite of winter air against flushed skin, and then—

“Hey! HEY—SOMEONE GET JOEL.”

The voice cut through the air like a gunshot, high and panicked, bouncing off the barn’s timber walls and echoing out into the frozen dark. It wasn’t the kind of shout people made for attention. It was the kind that grabbed your spine and jerked. Urgent. Unmistakably real.

You and Jesse froze.

Absolutely still. Like the cold itself had reached up and grabbed you by the throat.

You had one arm halfway into your coat, your scarf still tangled around your neck like you hadn’t figured out which way to wrap it yet. Jesse’s hand was hovering just above his jacket’s zipper, his expression shifting from relaxed to razor-sharp in the span of a heartbeat.

The firelight from the barn behind you still flickered warm, casting long shadows on the snow. Laughter and voices inside hadn’t even registered what had just been screamed. Not yet.

But you had. Your breath caught halfway out of your chest.

You weren’t sure if it was the name—Joel—or the tone that undid you. Maybe both. Maybe it was the way the voice cracked in the second scream. Or the sound of boots scrambling in the snow a few feet ahead. Maybe it was the sound of fear, the real kind. The kind that people in Jackson didn’t yell with unless something had truly gone wrong.

You and Jesse exchanged a look—sharp, eyes wide but saying nothing. You didn’t need to. The shared tension passed between you like a second language.

And then you were moving.

Coat half on, scarf flapping, boots barely dug in—you didn’t wait for instructions, didn’t think about the liquor cabinet, or Ellie, or Dina, or the awkward ache in your chest that had brought you out here in the first place. Because none of it mattered anymore. Not in this moment.

Before you could even make it to the barn’s side doors—before the fear in your chest had a chance to take shape, to form into any concrete thought—Ellie stormed out. She moved like a force of nature, all sharp limbs and quick, furious steps, shoving past the swinging doors with her jaw clenched and her eyes burning. You caught a flash of red on her knuckles—blood, maybe someone else’s, maybe her own—and the sight stopped you cold.

You turned on instinct, already reaching out for her. “Ellie—” Her name left your lips fast, too fast, like maybe if you said it quick enough you could slow her down. Like it could pull her back.

But she didn’t stop. She didn’t even look at you.

Her shoulders were tight, her eyes locked ahead, and her whole body radiated that quiet, dangerous kind of rage that made people scatter. She pushed through the snow like it wasn’t even there, bootprints deep and wild behind her.

“Ellie, wait!” you said again, following after her a step, your hand still outstretched, fingers brushing nothing but cold air.

She didn’t answer. Just kept walking.

And in that split second of frozen hesitation—scarf still dangling from your shoulders, coat still undone—you realized something had happened. Something bad.

Jesse, ever the comedian—even with the tension still strung tight in the air, even with the snow barely settling from Ellie’s storm of an exit—broke the silence the only way he knew how.

“…So,” he said, low and cautious, but with a hint of dry humor curling around the edges of his voice, “there’s this bottle of Jack I’ve seen… tucked behind the flour bins in the parlor kitchen.”

You turned your head slowly, eyes wide with disbelief, breath still caught halfway in your throat. “Jesse.”

He held up his hands defensively, stepping a little closer, his expression the perfect mask of mock-seriousness. “I’m just saying. If whatever the hell that was has anything to do with Joel, and Ellie’s walking out like the goddamn barn’s on fire—then yeah, I’m gonna need whiskey.”

You almost wanted to laugh. Almost. But your stomach was still too tight, the air felt too thin, and your thoughts wouldn’t stop circling like buzzards. Your hand still hung in the air, halfway open from where you’d tried to grab Ellie—like some part of you hadn’t gotten the message that she was already gone.

“Fuck,” you breathed out, voice low, hollow. “Yeah. Just… I’m gonna take mine to-go.”

Jesse, ever the master of emotional whiplash, gave you a grin that was a little too smug for the moment, but somehow not entirely unwelcome.

“Awe,” he said, mock-pouting, “but I was so looking forward to your little sapphic rambles.”

You shot him a flat, exhausted glare as you pulled your coat fully on and adjusted your scarf with way too much force.

“Shut up.”

He gave you a half-salute, stepping back toward the barn doors with an exaggerated bow. “Yes, your majesty.” Despite yourself, your lips twitched—just slightly. Just enough to make the ache in your chest feel almost bearable for half a second.

Age: 11 

“Now,” Tess said firmly, her voice cutting through the heavy static of alarms echoing in the distance. She reached forward, her hands steady as she straightened the collar of your shirt. Her fingers lingered for a second too long—not out of fussiness, but as if she needed something to do, something to anchor herself before the chaos really began. “Rules for when we leave the QZ?”

The world around you was already shaking. The red glow of emergency lights painted the alleyway in flashes, and the distant shout of FEDRA orders crackled like broken glass. You were huddled low, crouched in the grime of a half-collapsed drainage trench, knees pulled to your chest, heart pounding so loud it nearly drowned out everything else.

Still, you heard her. You always heard her.

Squinting against the darkness, you tried to make her out through the blur of light and fear. The high beams from a patrol truck passed over you both like a sweeping hand, and you flinched, instinctively ducking lower.

From your hidden spot in the muck, you mumbled out the rules. You knew them by heart. “Don’t get bit… don’t stray too far… make sure I got a gun or knife…” You paused, the words automatic but heavy. “Think first, hurt later. If you or Dad go down… I run.”

Tess stilled.

The noise around you didn't stop—the alarms, the shouting, the thudding boots on concrete—but there was a moment, brief and solemn, where it felt like the only two people left in the world were her and you.

She looked at you, really looked, and in your eyes, she saw the weight those rules carried. Not recited from duty or drilled repetition—but remembered, clung to, because they were the only things keeping you from falling apart.

There was a pause.

Then Tess gave a small, approving nod, eyes sharp but warm with something deeper. Pride. Maybe guilt. Maybe both. “Atta girl,” she said softly, one hand briefly brushing over the back of your head before she turned back toward the shadows.

– .

Age: 14

“Whistle low,” the woman said, crouched in front of you with blood on her hands that didn’t look like it was hers. Or maybe it was. You couldn’t tell anymore. Her voice was level, like this was just another lesson. Like she wasn’t speaking over the sound of explosions and screaming and that awful, wet gurgling roar of something inhuman getting closer.

Your back was pressed against a crumbling concrete wall, spine digging into the jagged edge of an exposed rebar rod, but you barely felt it. Knees tucked up to your chest, arms curled around them in a grip so tight your knuckles had gone white, but even that was slipping now. Your fingers wouldn’t stop shaking. You could still feel the echo of your knife handle in your palm—the last place it had been before it fell. Or before you dropped it. Or threw it. You didn’t even know. Just that it was gone now.

The alley smelled like wet metal, smoke, and piss. There was something rotting behind the dumpster nearby, but it was masked by the stronger scent of blood—fresh blood, hot and sharp. It had soaked into the knees of your pants without you realizing it, and every breath you took tasted like copper.

Everything around you was loud. Not just the gunfire in the distance, or the thundering boom of explosives—though those still made your ears ring—but the world felt loud. The static in your brain. The thump-thump-thump of your heartbeat in your head. The ragged sound of your own breathing, which no matter how hard you tried, wouldn’t come quiet.

Everything was red. Not just the blood. But the lights, the flares, the way the flames danced against the buildings nearby, turning the snow to slurry and shadow. It made the world feel wrong—like you were inside of a nightmare your body hadn’t caught up to yet.

And the cold? The cold didn’t even feel cold anymore. Not the kind you could shiver through, anyway. It felt like something deep had frozen inside your chest and was sitting there, heavy and still, like ice pressed right up against your heart. You didn’t know if you were shaking from the temperature or from the fear, or both, or neither. It all blurred together into this weird, unreal float.

Tears stung at the corners of your eyes. Not just from the smoke, though that helped. You hadn’t cried yet—not really. Not like you wanted to. Not like your body ached to. There’d been no time, no space to be a kid. And it felt like if you started now, you might never stop. You might cry yourself empty. And then what would be left?

She was crouched in front of you. The woman. You didn’t even know her name. She’d pulled you out of the collapsed hallway, shoved you behind this half-dead truck, and told you to stay.

Now she was looking at you. Her face streaked with soot, a tear in her sleeve, blood smeared across her forearm—but her eyes were clear. Focused. Calm. She looked at you like she needed you to be older than you were. Like she knew you were eleven but didn’t have time to treat you like it. Like she expected you to keep it together, because if you didn’t—well, the math didn’t leave room for it.

You tried to meet her gaze. You tried to be brave. But the image of that man—the one with the beard and kind eyes who gave you gum at checkpoint stations—flashed in your mind again. The way his scream had been cut off. The way his body hit the ground two feet from you, his blood spraying your boots, his arm still twitching even when the rest of him didn’t move.

You flinched, hard, and a whimper broke past your lips before you could swallow it down.

The woman didn’t say anything. Didn’t yell at you. Didn’t shush you. Just reached forward, slow and steady, and touched your shoulder. Her hand was warm through the fabric of your coat. She didn’t say everything’s going to be okay, because that would’ve been a lie. She just looked at you like you mattered. Like you could do this.

And you wanted to. You wanted to be good. You wanted her to keep looking at you like that.

So you nodded.

Even though your stomach hurt. Even though your legs felt like jelly and your throat burned and your fingers were still twitching like they were trying to find the knife that was already gone.

You nodded.

You didn’t know where your mom was.

But you wanted her more than anything.

“It catches their attention,” she went on, like a teacher repeating a spelling word. “Low whistles. Then high. Makes them lunge. They go right past you. You don’t run until they miss.”

You blinked at her. Nodded slowly. Then looked down at your arms. There was blood on your sleeves. A lot of it.

You sniffled. “Okay… cool, I guess,” you mumbled. Your voice cracked halfway through. “I just… I want my mom.”

She didn’t flinch. Just pressed a hand against your shoulder—steady, warm despite everything. She didn’t tell you your mom was okay. Didn’t lie. That was almost worse.

A shriek echoed somewhere nearby, too close. The woman’s head snapped toward the alley entrance. Then she looked back at you.

“I know, kid,” she said. “But right now I need you to whistle like your life depends on it.”

You nodded again. You didn’t know what else to do.

And when the shadows twisted, and the snarl came, and she grabbed your hand and said, “Now.”—you did it.

Low. Then high. 

And goddamnint, it worked. 

—

Age: 14 1/5

“Eh,” Joel grunted, snapping his fingers in your direction like he was calling a dog—classic—and then holding out his hand, palm-up, expectant. No words, just a raised brow and that quiet, authoritative presence that somehow made you feel like you had to obey even when he wasn’t looking at you. You rolled your eyes hard enough that Ellie snorted, but still, you handed over the knife you and she had found near the creek bank. It had been half-buried in a tangle of roots and mud, the blade rusted to hell and back, but it looked cool.

Joel turned it over in his hands, inspecting it like it was a priceless relic. “It’s junk,” he said. But he didn’t give it back.

Ellie groaned dramatically, stomping through the shallow water as her once-white Converse splashed dark with creekwater. Her jeans were rolled up to her knees, dirt already smeared along her shins. “He steals all the good shit,” she called, glancing over at you. “Next time we find a machete, we bury it until he’s gone.”

“He’s like the tax man,” you muttered, skidding halfway down the muddy slope back to the water, arms outstretched like wings for balance. “Like a dad tax. You find something? Boom. Gone. Right into the Joel Vault.”

Joel didn’t look up from the knife. “I heard that.”

You grinned, twisting around to face him. “Hey, Dad?”

He grunted in reply—his universal signal for I’m listening, but you better be quick about it.

“That’s what a tax is, right? People just... take your stuff ‘cause they’re in charge?”

“Mmhm,” he confirmed without missing a beat, still running a thumb across the edge of the blade like he thought if he stared hard enough, it’d sharpen itself.

“God,” you sighed, water sloshing around your ankles, “sometimes I’m so, so smart I amaze myself.”

Ellie cackled at that, nearly losing her balance as she leaned against a smooth boulder, flicking water toward you with the side of her foot. “I’m gonna get that stitched on a shirt for you. ‘So Smart It Hurts: The Starshine Story.’”

“Hey,” you called back, pretending to look offended. “Genius doesn’t always get appreciated in its own time.”

Joel finally looked up, just long enough to shoot you both a tired but unmistakably amused glare. “You two are lucky I ain’t charging interest.”

You all lapsed into comfortable silence for a moment. The water murmured against the rocks. Dragonflies hovered lazily in the air. The late afternoon sun filtered through the trees, golden and slow, casting long shadows across the bank. It felt like one of those rare, still pockets of peace—where the world wasn’t trying to kill you, and nobody was bleeding, and laughter was something real and earned.

Joel turned the knife over one last time, then tucked it into his belt. “Could sand the rust off,” he murmured, mostly to himself. “Might still hold an edge.”

Ellie groaned again. “Dad tax,” she muttered.

You kicked water in her direction. “You’re just mad I found it first.”

“Keep talkin', Starshine,” she said, squinting at you. “I’m the one with the rock.”

Joel sat down heavily on a fallen log, letting out a long, tired exhale. “God help me, I raised two gremlins.”

“Nah,” you said, collapsing next to him and leaning back into the sunlight with a grin. “You inherited us.”

And for once, he didn’t argue

–

Age: 15-16

By the time you came to, everything hurt.

The sun, which you remembered lazily dipping beneath the horizon, was now rising—early light slicing through gaps in the crumbled warehouse walls around you. The air was cold, sharp in your nose, and the metallic tang of blood sat stubbornly on your tongue. You were propped up against a supply crate, vision blurred, head pounding with each passing second. Every blink stung. Your lip throbbed. Something crusted and dry clung to your temple, and it didn’t take much to realize—head wound. Possibly worse. Probably a concussion.

Voices echoed nearby, warped like underwater shouting. Shapes moved beyond the haze—figures, people. A group. One stood closest. A man, kneeling in front of you, hands moving with practiced care as he dabbed gently at your hairline with a cloth that came away stained.

Your instincts screamed too many people, no weapon, can’t see straight. You tried to shift, fingers twitching in search of your knife, your gun, something—but your belt was empty. You were alone. Unarmed.

Panic began to settle in your chest just as the man’s voice cut through the fog.

“What the fuck? A child appears and your first reaction is to hit her over the head with a shotgun?”

His words weren’t directed at you. They were aimed over his shoulder at the group standing just a few feet back, some watching guiltily, others looking everywhere but at you.

“She spooked me!” someone said, but the excuse was limp.

“Yeah? Try spooking back,” the man growled. “You knock her out cold and then leave her in the dirt?” He turned toward you again, softer now. “How do you feel?” he asked, and though you didn’t answer, he reached forward, taking your hand gently. “Squeeze my hand.”

You blinked at him, disoriented, before giving the weakest squeeze imaginable. His mouth quirked at the corner—almost a smile.

“Good job, kiddo.”

He helped you upright with more strength than grace, supporting most of your weight as your legs immediately buckled. The sudden motion made the world spin, your stomach churn. You blinked hard.

“Can you tell me your name?”

You mumbled it, slurring slightly from the dizziness. He nodded, murmuring something reassuring that you didn’t catch. You weren’t listening.

Your gaze had shifted—drawn past him, past the blurring outlines of people, to a girl a little older than you standing just out of reach. She had her arms crossed, blonde hair braided loosely down her back, and her eyes were locked—not on you, but on the man tending to you. Watching him like she already knew what he was going to say. Probably his daughter. She hadn’t hit you.

You blinked again, a flicker of realization striking deep.

Where is your father?

The panic returned with startling force, and your limbs moved without your permission. You jolted, clumsy and breathless, making the man catch you again before you could crumple to the ground.

“Where’s my dad?” you gasped, louder now. “Where’s my dad?!”

Your voice cracked on the last word, desperation bleeding through.

The man eased you back down onto a crate, more firmly this time. “Hey—hey, easy,” he said, crouching to meet your eyes again. “I don’t know where he is, okay? He was with another girl. They rode off yesterday when we heard the commotion. It was chaos—we were defending the west end.”

Your lip trembled. You weren’t hearing what you needed to hear.

“But listen to me,” he continued gently, “we’ll help you. We’re gonna keep looking. Right now, I need you to sit. You’ve got a nasty concussion. And you’re gonna be no good to him if you pass out again.”

Then he turned slightly, calling over his shoulder. “Gale.”

The blonde girl stepped forward immediately, a half-melted baggie of snow in her hands. She knelt beside you without a word, carefully pressing it to your swollen temple. The cold made you wince, but it grounded you a little.

“This is my daughter,” the man said, voice steady, trying to reassure you. “Abigail. And my name is Gary, I’m a doctor, we’re gonna take care of you.”

Abigail didn’t speak. But she met your eyes as she pressed the snow against your head—eyes serious, maybe a little unsure, but not unkind.

You didn’t know who these people were. You didn’t know where your dad was. But for now, there was snow on your skin, a warm hand on your shoulder, and the promise—no matter how thin—that someone was looking.

-

Jerry had started you off slow—basic wound cleaning, gauze wraps, when and how to apply pressure—but it hadn’t taken him long to realize you knew more than most small-settlement medics. You’d learned out of necessity, not interest, your hands steady not because you were fearless but because you’d had to be. So after a few half-hearted bandage tutorials and some mild astonishment at your stitchwork, he started pushing you further.

By week two at the Firefly hospital, you weren’t just assisting anymore—you were performing. Jerry began teaching you field trauma protocols, makeshift procedures that walked the razor’s edge between survival and surgery. You learned how to stabilize a punctured lung, how to guide your fingers by feel when you couldn’t see the wound, how to cut open someone’s chest when there was no other option and no time for precision.

You weren’t licensed. You weren’t even technically old enough to drive. But by then, you were a fully trained field medic, and when the call came down, and the Fireflies got the all-clear to send out patrol squads, you were named their medic. There were grumbles, of course—she’s fifteen, what if she freezes, what if she panics—but they faded the moment they saw you in action. You didn’t flinch at the sight of gore. You didn’t blink when bullets tore through flesh. You didn’t hesitate. You worked fast, precise, and cold. That kind of calm made people trust you. It made them listen.

It also made them forget your name.

Most of them didn’t know it to begin with. But they did know your call sign: Sparrow.

It had started with Jerry.

He called Abby Nightingale—a bit of a joke, a little too poetic for someone who rolled her eyes every time he said it, but he meant it. She was a shooter with bite, loud when she needed to be and silent when it mattered. So when you joined them, younger and quieter, sharp-eyed and constantly within arm’s reach of his elbow, he dubbed you Sparrow. It wasn’t a joke. It was gentler, quieter. Something smaller, but quick. Observant. Careful. Always in motion, always listening.

At first, you hadn’t cared. Names were noise. Something other people used to get your attention. But it stuck. People started using it—at first just his team, then the others. Someone tacked Anderson’s onto the front like a title, a warning, a quiet way of saying she’s his, don’t mess with her. Eventually, the possessive dropped, but the identity didn’t. You were Sparrow now. And no one asked otherwise.

And the thing was… you liked it.

You liked that it wasn’t your real name. That it hadn’t come from before. It reminded you of Starshine—your father’s voice in the dark, that soft way he used to say it when he thought you were asleep. Something given, not demanded. Something earned, not assigned. Starshine was love. Sparrow was survival. But somehow, they both felt like they belonged to you.

More than that, it gave you something to hide behind.

In a world where people disappeared every day—some to death, some to fear, and some to their own grief—it felt like armor. A layer between your heart and the hands that would ask too much of it. You didn’t have to be the kid with a dead mom and a father who rode off and didn’t come back. You didn’t have to explain the bags under your eyes or why you never asked for help. You didn’t have to carry everything on your name.

You could just be Sparrow.

The girl with steady hands and a scalpel tucked in her boot. The one who could reset a dislocated shoulder in thirty seconds flat. The one who didn’t flinch at the sight of intestines or a severed limb. The one who stayed calm when the radio snapped to life with panicked voices and the screaming hadn’t even reached the door yet.

Sparrow didn’t cry in the laundry room at night. Sparrow didn’t wonder if she’d ever hear her dad’s voice again. Sparrow didn’t miss what the world had taken from her. You did. But not her.

And so you kept her close. Let them believe that was who you were. Let the world call for Sparrow—because that was someone who could always answer. Someone who didn’t break.

And honestly?

You needed her as much as everyone else did.

…

“Abigail,” you laughed as she tugged on your wrist, dragging you up the cracked, vine-wrapped stairwell that led to the rooftop deck of the overgrown hospital. Her excitement buzzed off her in waves, her fingers warm even in the cool night air, and you didn’t ask questions—just followed. You never really needed a reason when it came to her.

But your smile faltered the second you stepped out onto the rooftop.

It wasn’t anything grand. It wasn’t perfect. But it was... intentional. A blanket—worn, frayed at the corners, but still soft-looking—was spread in the center of the open space, held down by smooth river rocks. A few battery-powered lanterns flickered around its edges, their light soft and hazy against the encroaching dark. Someone had even cleared the worst of the debris—shoved rusted medical carts to the side, brushed away loose gravel and broken glass.

It wasn’t clean, not really. But it was cared for.

“Oh my god,” you breathed, frozen at the threshold. The sky above you stretched wide and endless, deep blue bleeding into the black of night, and there, just cresting over the tops of the trees, was the full moon—low, massive, and tinged with the faintest blush of soft pink.

Abigail plopped down onto the blanket with a little oof, grinning up at you like she was waiting for a reaction.

“Yeah,” she said, stretching the word out, “I read that the moon goes through these like... color things? Phases? Something to do with dust and the way it reflects light or whatever. Anyway, tonight it’s a pink moon. And since your favorite color is pink...”

She gestured toward the sky dramatically, her smile widening. “Ta-da.”

You blinked, heart climbing somewhere uncomfortably high in your throat. She looked so pleased with herself. And you were still standing there like an idiot.

She glanced sideways, then dropped her voice into a faux whisper. “Also, don’t tell my dad. This is technically his blanket.”

That broke you from your daze. You let out a soft laugh, finally crossing the rooftop toward her.

“Trust me,” you murmured, sinking down beside her, “I won’t speak a word of it.”

Abigail handed you a warm bottle of water from her bag, as if she’d planned every second of this—from the blanket placement to the lanterns that buzzed faintly beside you. You took the bottle without hesitation, brushing your shoulder against hers in quiet thanks.

She bumped back into you gently, the gesture easy and familiar. “Not bad for a rooftop, huh?”

You snorted. “You made a rooftop feel like a date in a real world. That’s impressive.”

“Oh,” she said, faux-innocent. “So this is a date?”

Your eyes flicked toward her, amused. “You dragged me up here under the moonlight, brought me water, and set the vibe with the stars. If this isn’t a date, I’m gonna be very confused later.”

Abigail laughed, her head tipping back as the sound bounced lightly across the rooftop. “Okay, okay, fine. It’s a date,” she said with a grin. “Guess that means I gotta be charming now.”

“You’re already charming,” you said before you could stop yourself.

Her gaze flicked toward you at that, lingering a little longer than before, the corner of her mouth twitching with something softer. “You’re sweet.”

You shrugged and looked back toward the moon, trying to hide how warm your cheeks felt. “You said it’s called a pink moon?”

“Yeah,” she said, pulling one knee up to her chest. “Something about the atmosphere, or pollen, or... science-y stuff I don’t remember. I just saw a picture once, and it was pretty. I guess it stuck with me.”

You looked over at her again, taking in the way the light painted her skin in muted silver and rose, the way her braid had started to fray in soft wisps around her face. You’d seen her covered in grime, blood, sweat—seen her gut infected without flinching and laugh like a kid in the same hour—but right now, sitting on a hospital rooftop with a bag of emergency rations and someone else’s blanket, she looked like she belonged in another world.

A softer one.

“I think it’s beautiful,” you said. “Not just the moon. The whole thing.”

Abigail glanced over, and for a second, she didn’t speak.

Then, her voice quieter, “Yeah… me too.”

You both went silent again, the sounds of the world at rest humming faintly around you. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted. The breeze picked up slightly, brushing past the vines that clung to the rooftop edge.

“I know it’s dumb,” Abigail murmured after a while. “Doing stuff like this. It’s not like the world cares about pink moons or perfect little nights.”

You turned toward her, leaning your head lightly on her shoulder. “No,” you said softly, “but I do.”

She didn’t answer right away. But she rested her head against yours in return.

And the world, for a little while, didn’t feel like it was ending.

Age: 19

“If you hear anything, you come right back!” Kat barked from her horse, her voice sharp enough to carry over the wind that whispered through the abandoned town. She sat high in the saddle, eyes narrowed beneath her hood as she watched the three of you climb up the back of the broken-down truck like you'd done it a hundred times before.

And to be fair—you had.

You landed with a soft thud on the roof, your boots catching against the ridged metal as the truck groaned beneath the shift of weight. It had rusted to hell and back, but it held. For now.

A quiet chuckle slipped out of you as you crouched beside Ellie, knees bent just beneath the shattered remains of the window. Glass glittered like old stars across the sill, but the window itself was fogged—dirt, dust, dried blood caked in long-forgotten streaks, a smear of violence that hadn’t faded with time. It was like the building had been trying to forget what happened inside, but the rot lingered. Always did.

Even if your eyesight had been perfect—which it wasn’t—you wouldn’t have been able to see much. The inside was black, that kind of thick, pressing dark that felt like it breathed. Still, you leaned in close, just enough to hear, to feel the chill bleeding out from the cracked glass.

On your other side, Dina climbed up quietly, one hand on the rim of the window, the other steadying herself on your shoulder as she adjusted into position. You gave her a small nod, your hand sliding down to draw the knife from your boot. The handle felt familiar in your palm—well-worn, comfortable. Your other hand braced against the cold metal of the roof, muscles tense, ready.

“Three on one,” Ellie whispered, voice almost chipper in a way that only she could manage while staring into literal death. It wasn’t false confidence—it was just Ellie. The smirk on her face didn’t match the way her eyes narrowed, scanning the dark like she could see something forming inside it.

You were just about to let her slip through the window when the scream came.

Ragged. Guttural. Not quite human.

You flinched, hand shooting out on instinct to stop her. She froze mid-motion, her eyes snapping to yours in a flash of alertness, expression already hardening. You weren’t the only one who’d heard it. Dina, too, had gone still, one hand raising slowly—three fingers.

You swallowed, glancing over.

Three infected. Maybe more.

The screams came again, overlapping slightly. Close enough in tone to sound like echoes—but not quite. They had the variance of human voices: one higher, one raspier, one more guttural like it had festered deeper. Like people once had names before their throats were filled with spores.

Ellie blinked at Dina’s signal, her brow furrowing before she groaned softly. “Okay, so one-on-one then. Starry’s taken four before, and I can handle myself. We’re good. We’ve done worse.”

You and Dina shared a look over her head.

It wasn’t that she was wrong. It wasn’t that the odds were impossible. It was that something about the air felt different—heavier. The kind of weight that doesn’t come from numbers but intention. These weren’t mindless runners caught in a supply closet. These were the waiting kind. The kind that listened.

Still… there was that itch in your bones. The hum under your skin that came from too many hours with a needle and thread in your hands instead of a trigger or a blade. The wrongness of wanting a fight clashed with the comfort it brought.

Ellie smirked, sensing your hesitation. She leaned in a little closer. “I mean, we don’t have to go in. We could always wait for the boys to grow some balls.”

You blinked. Frowned. “Low blow, Ells.”

“I call it motivation.”

You didn’t respond with words—just slung the shotgun off your back, the weight of it grounding. You stepped forward to the window, peeking through again. This time you focused.

The room beyond was gutted. Mold crawled up the corners of the walls like slow-moving shadows. Rust had eaten through the metal storage shelves, and collapsed ceiling tiles littered the floor in dusty heaps. Vines had broken in through the far window once, but even they had died here, curling in on themselves like they’d realized too late what kind of graveyard they’d entered.

No movement. Not yet.

But you could feel it.

They were in there. Waiting. Listening.

You sucked in a quiet breath, shoulders tight. Every muscle in your body knew better than to relax yet. Each step you took was deliberate, heel to toe, carefully avoiding the scattered glass and loose tiles littering the corridor floor. The beam from Dina’s flashlight cut across the decaying corpse splayed in the middle of the hall—torso torn open, chest cavity bloated with fungal growth that had long since stopped spreading but hadn’t stopped smelling.

You crouched beside it for half a second, lips pursed in a frown. The body was old. Dried blood. Black around the edges. But not too old. Maybe a few days. You gave a sharp nod, signaling for the others to hold formation as you rose again, grip tightening around your knife. Every crackle of movement—every groan of the walls—pulled your attention like a hook under the skin.

Ellie and Dina had already taken up positions on either side of the intersecting hall—silent, focused. Ellie's back flattened against the wall, her pistol at the ready, while Dina shifted just enough to peer around her corner, steadying the light in her hand.

You opted for something different.

Instead of sticking to the side, you walked the center of the hallway, careful and upright—bait without the panic. The sound of clicking filtered through the thick dark, echoing like bone snapped too cleanly. Familiar. But faint.

It wasn’t close enough to be Ellie’s side. Had to be Dina’s.

Then—another sound.

Heavier. Slower. The drag of something big and uneven. The rasp of breath that wasn’t quite formed in lungs anymore. Two, maybe three. Definitely Dina’s side.

You turned your head slowly, just enough to peer around the corner—and there they were.

Two clickers, hunched and pulsing with breath, their fungal plates splitting the shape of what used to be human faces. One was smaller, maybe newly turned. The other was massive, its movements heavier, more deliberate. A bad fight waiting to happen.

And some part of you—exhausted, stubborn, and so damn tired of things lurking in corners of ruined places—scoffed.

That’s it? That’s what the world had waiting for you this time?

You weren’t sure if the feeling in your chest was frustration or boredom, but either way it made your lip curl into something like a smirk.

With a glance back over your shoulder, you caught Ellie’s eye.

She was already watching you. Had been the whole time.

You didn’t say anything. You didn’t need to.

She gave you the look. That raised-eyebrow, half-irritated, half-impressed expression she saved for the times you were about to do something incredibly risky but undeniably effective.

You nodded once, slowly. Then twice

“No. Get back, no.”

Ellie mouthed it at you from across the hall, her eyes wide, her head shaking so violently it was a miracle it didn’t fall right off her shoulders. Her expression screamed panic—not the we’re gonna die kind, but the you’re about to do something catastrophically stupid and I’m going to be blamed for it kind. Which, honestly, was funnier.

You fought the grin twitching at the edge of your mouth, trying not to let it take over. But your hand was already tightening around the handle of your knife, and you were so ready.

You leaned a little toward her, smirk spreading. “I’m gonna do it,” you mouthed, just barely above a whisper.

Ellie’s whole body tensed like she was physically holding herself back from lunging across the room to slap sense into you. Her hands flailed in panicked mime—No! NO!!—before she pointed to herself and made an exaggerated throat-slashing motion. “Joel will kill me! Me!!”

The silent dramatics were almost enough to make you laugh out loud. But instead, you gave her a wink.

Behind her, Dina was watching the whole thing with the most resigned expression known to mankind. Behind her, Dina was watching the whole thing unfold with the most resigned expression known to mankind—arms crossed, one eyebrow raised, the picture of a woman who’d accepted that whatever happened next was probably her fault by association. But then, after a long pause… she nodded. A grin slowly pulled at her lips as she gave you a very unhelpful thumbs-up, then mimed a stabbing motion with her knife, adding a second nod for good measure.

Your face lit up, smug as hell, and you gestured toward Dina with both hands, shooting Ellie the most obnoxious “See? She supports me.” expression you could manage.

Ellie looked personally betrayed.

You didn’t give her time to argue—just winked, turned your attention back to the connecting hall, and leaned into the edge of the doorway. Your fingers flexed on the knife, that familiar tremor rippling through your hand—not weakness, just nerves, just enough to make you feel the weight of it.

One breath in.

One breath out.

You whistled—low. Steady.

The reaction was instant.

Bodies jerked unnaturally in the darkness, heads twitching with that horrible, snapping sound that meant they’d heard something but didn’t know what. The noise grew—clicks turning to distorted shrieks, echoing through the walls, louder, closer. Their feet scraped across the floor in that unsteady shuffle, limbs twitching as they turned toward your sound.

Then you raised the pitch. Sharper. Higher. Shrill.

Like a wire pulled taut, both clickers snapped—lunging toward the sound like bullets. One charged into the wall beside you, shoulder-first with a wet crunch that echoed up the corridor. The second one—the larger one—moved toward you with a slower, heavier momentum, less erratic, more calculated.

Your pulse surged. You backed up one step, then two, keeping the beast in front of you.

A wild laugh slipped past your lips—just a breath, just enough to release the pressure building in your chest—and then you stomped your foot down, hard, onto the rotting wood. A crack echoed beneath your boot.

The clicker turned toward the sound, just as you pivoted hard left.

It was all you needed.

Your knife swung in a clean, practiced arc—sinking deep into the side of its neck. You grunted, twisting your body with the motion, expecting the creature to crumple.

It didn’t.

With a shuddering screech, it staggered, but it didn’t fall. You had only seconds to process that before it lunged, wild and still alive, forcing you to roll with it. You hit the ground hard, elbow barking against the floor, but you didn’t let go.

Its claws scraped at your back—sharp, burning trails tearing down through your jacket, and fuck, that hurt.

You snarled, grabbing the side of its fungal-plated head with both hands. With a violent jerk, you twisted, dragging the infected down with you as you slammed your blade into it again and again in a messy blur of panic and fury and something that felt terrifyingly close to instinct.

Blood spattered across your face, warm and wet and awful.

And then—stillness.

Heavy, final.

You panted against the quiet, your ears ringing from the noise, heart thrumming in your throat.

Across the room, Ellie was on her back, grunting as she shoved the second clicker’s now-limp body off of her. She sat up quickly, scanning for you, her chest rising and falling in time with your own. Her face was scratched, smeared with blood—hers or theirs, you couldn’t tell.

You stared at each other for a long beat, the silence loud with what-ifs and almosts.

And then you tried to stand.

Your legs trembled as you pushed yourself upright, fingers fumbling at the zipper of your jacket where the blood had already started to dry, sticking fabric to skin. Your breath hitched and your voice came out too fast, too broken.

“I-I- need you to che—”

“Okay, okay,” Ellie said instantly, stumbling to her feet with a grunt, already moving toward you. “You’re fine. You’re okay.”

She met you halfway, one hand on your waist, the other already tugging at your jacket, checking for damage. You let her. Couldn’t not.

Blood streaked down her arm, staining the fabric of her shirt like armor—deep, smeared lines across her sleeves and spattered across her collarbone like some warpaint the world hadn’t meant to give her. Her chest still rose and fell too fast. Her hands, covered in drying blood, shook as they ghosted over your sides, your face, your jacket. She scanned every inch of you like she didn’t believe what she was seeing, like she needed to feel your pulse to prove you were real.

“You’re okay,” she said again, her voice dropping lower, almost like she was talking to herself now. “No scratches, no scratches—Starshine, hey—Starshine, look at me.”

Her hands cupped your face, trembling at the edges, and her voice went soft enough to break something inside you. “Babe… you’re okay.” One hand slid up to gently pat your shoulder—almost grounding herself more than you. “Look at you,” she breathed, a half-laugh stuttering out of her. “Fuck yeah.”

Dina's boots echoed faintly as she approached, the swing of her steps still casual despite the tension that hadn’t quite left the air. Her grin was crooked, her voice teasing but not unkind. “Did you two get bit? Do I have to shoot you in the face? ‘Cause that’d really kill the mood.”

You let out a dry laugh, your head tipping back slightly in relief. “No, no bites. Just trauma. And my jacket’s a goner.”

You turned, pulling the back of your jacket forward enough to show the shredded leather, the long claw marks cutting through it like ribbons. A small, sympathetic noise slipped from Dina’s lips, followed by a whispered “damn.”

She moved toward the clicker’s bodies, crouching to inspect the mess you’d made with practiced ease. The blood hadn’t even dried yet. And Ellie… Ellie was already wandering off, of course, her limp unmistakable, though she carried it like pride. She’d die before admitting to it, but you knew her gait well enough to see the wince she didn’t let show.

“Oh my god,” Ellie called out, her voice echoing through the busted hallway like nothing had happened, like none of you had almost died five minutes ago. “Before we leave you guys have to check out the Employee—”

CRRRACK.

The sound split the air like lightning.

You didn’t even have time to turn fully before it happened.

Ellie’s foot hit the soft patch of floor—rotted through, probably hollow beneath—and the wood gave beneath her with a sickening groan. A second later, she was gone.

Gone.

You and Dina both froze.

There wasn’t even time to scream.

Just the deafening crash of splintering beams and her body disappearing into the darkness below.

“Ellie??”

Your voice ripped from your throat, hoarse and wild, too loud for the silence that followed the fall. You were already on your knees, crawling across splintered boards with no care for what they might give way to next. Wood cracked beneath your weight, dust burst up around your hands, and your palms burned as they scraped against the jagged edge of the hole. You didn’t feel it. Not really.

Your heart was a war drum—too fast, too loud—and your eyes scanned the space below in blind panic, lungs barely working around the taste of old insulation and mold.

Below you, half-buried in dust and metal, lay Ellie.

She was tangled in a heap of storage shelving that must’ve once belonged to the market floor beneath. Torn insulation clung to her like frost, wires caught in her hair, and one of her legs was awkwardly bent under her as she gasped for air, a sharp rattle in her chest.

“Ellie!” Dina shouted from beside you, nearly on top of you now, flashlight beam cutting through the haze and landing on her figure. The beam danced over her arms, her face—thank God—eyes blinking up at the light.

“Are you okay?!”

There was a pause—long enough that fear curled up into your ribs again.

Then Ellie coughed, hacking violently into her arm, dust billowing out of her lungs in clouds. She winced as she moved a piece of metal from her side and twisted just enough to sit upright. She looked like hell.

“I’m good,” she croaked out.

The words crashed into you like a wave. You nearly fell back from the force of the relief. Dina let out a breath next to you—one of those sharp exhales that sounded like it was ripped from her spine. You looked at her, and she looked at you, both eyes wide, both silently confirming the same thing: She’s alive.

Ellie shifted, testing her limbs, her face tightening as she moved but not breaking. “Nothing’s broken… I don’t think.”

You snapped back down into the present.

“And—? Don’t move!” Your voice cracked as you leaned further over the edge. “God, Ellie, stay down. You could’ve messed up your spine, or your—anything! What the fuck, why didn’t you stop when I—”

“I said I’m fine,” she cut in, but the grunt that followed said otherwise. She tried to adjust again, only to hiss between her teeth when her elbow knocked into the edge of the bent shelving.

Dina moved beside you, her eyes darting around the perimeter of the room below. “Are you alone down there?” she called down, her voice steadier than yours, but still tight around the edges.

Ellie didn’t answer right away. You could see her processing—head tilted slightly, breath held like she was trying to feel the air.

Then she grunted. “Don’t hear anything. ”

You didn’t like that answer. Not in this building. Not with the way the walls creaked and groaned like they remembered too much.

Dina stood, already moving back down the hall. “I’m gonna find stairs or a ladder. Something stable.”

“I’m going down,” you said immediately, standing up like your body hadn’t just been through hell.

“No. You, miss medic lady, are coming with me.” Dina shot you a look over her shoulder. “If you fall too, I’m would just leave you both, so c’mon.”

But you were already scanning the wall, finding what looked like a series of old support beams and a shelf that half-jutted out from the wall beneath the break. Climbable. A rightfully terrible idea, so you grumbled as you pushed yourself to your knees, looking at Dina and nodding in agreement that you would go with her.

You turned back to Ellie, who had now flopped onto her back like she was accepting death. “You stay right there. Don’t move until I get to you.”

Ellie raised a shaky hand in a loose thumbs-up. “Ten-four, boss lady.”

“Not the time for jokes, Williams.”

“C’mon,” she murmured, smirking slightly even through the dust and blood. “Wouldn’t be a patrol if I didn’t nearly die and get scolded about it.”

There was always something disgustingly interesting about a person who grew up within the walls of safety—those rare few who had the privilege of surviving the end of the world without ever truly tasting it. People who heard stories about the outbreak, about clickers and raiders and what it felt like to have to kill something that used to look human—but only ever secondhand. They saw the world for what it was, yes, but had yet to live it. Not the way others had. Not the way those who clawed their way through twenty years of blood, mud, and ash had.

These people grew up inside places like Jackson or maybe even a QZ if they were lucky, where things like clean water and structure still existed. They learned about the cordyceps fungus from textbooks instead of watching it tear through a loved one. They trained with rifles on firing ranges, not with trembling hands in dark hallways echoing with guttural screeches. Often, in their need to prove themselves worthy of the stories they were told, they tried to be brave. They sought out danger like it was some kind of badge. They ventured beyond the gates on poorly planned “missions,” romanticized patrols, searching for that adrenaline spike that might make them feel real.

They went into the woods at night without permission, thinking a flashlight and a knife made them invincible. They snuck onto supply routes. They begged to be taken on patrols, not realizing that there was nothing noble about watching someone bleed out in the snow because you hesitated for half a second.

Within that same vein, it would be easy to assume those people were prideful, arrogant, full of themselves—and most of the time, they were. They were annoying, sure. Loud in their confidence and blind in their inexperience. But beneath all that? Beneath the posturing and the bravado?

There was fear.

A quiet kind of fear. The fear of being seen as weak in a world that doesn’t wait for anyone to grow into their strength. A fear that they were somehow less than those who had endured the worst of it. So they ran headfirst into danger hoping that maybe—just maybe—one act of recklessness would make them equal to the legends they were raised under.

And in places like Jackson, where the people who had truly survived—the ones with scars and haunted eyes—were finally starting to breathe again, it was hard not to look at these kids with a mixture of pity and resentment. Because it wasn’t their fault, they hadn’t suffered. But it sure didn’t mean they understood what it meant to survive.

With all of that being said, you had found yourself rather fond of the woman that Ellie very pointedly insisted wasn’t her girlfriend—nor her friend, depending on the day and who was asking. Which, of course, only made it more obvious that she was both.

Dina had a way about her. A quiet sharpness masked behind a warm grin, like she could read the room and everyone in it before a single word was spoken. And unlike most of the younger folks who came into the clinic—those raised within Jackson’s fortified walls who wore their minor injuries like medals—Dina didn’t come in with performative stories or dramatic flair. No tales of heroic mishaps or exaggerated chaos. She wasn’t like the others, the ones who limped in with a burn on their hand and launched into a saga about a rogue pot of boiling water with a personal vendetta, half-inspired by a scene out of Final Destination. You never said it out loud, but that was usually how you spotted them—the ones who hadn't seen the worst of it, who hadn't lived outside the wire, hadn’t slept under trees while praying the wind wouldn’t carry sound to the infected.

Because when you or your father got hurt—burnt wrist, sprained ankle, bruised ribs—it came with a simple explanation. No fluff. No theatrics. Just, "burnt it on the stove," or "twisted it getting off the horse." The kind of injury you don’t have the energy to dress up because you’ve lived through worse. Because the people who had lived through real shit didn’t need to make survival poetic. They were just grateful they were still breathing.

But Dina… Dina never needed to embellish. She didn’t posture or pretend. When she came into the clinic with a busted knuckle, she just said, “Horse spooked. Slammed my hand into the railing.” No self-deprecating jokes, no self-pity either—just the facts. A wince, maybe a quip if the pain meds kicked in fast enough, and then a quiet thank you as she walked out, hand bandaged and chin high.

You started to notice her more after that. The way she carried herself with this grounded sort of ease, like someone who had seen enough to know when to stay soft and when to be steel. She spoke when it mattered, held back when it didn’t. And you couldn’t help but appreciate that kind of clarity in a world that had turned most people into either blustering noise or total silence.

Perhaps thats why when you were given the option that morning by your aunt if you wanted someone a bit more experienced on the patrol with you; you had declined. Because for so many people that had yet to see the gore of this, you had seen enough to make a judgment. 

“Are you sure? Tommy’s lookin’ for an  excuse to go out that way—”

“Uncle Tommy just wants to babysit me and Ellie,” you shoot back without hesitation, tugging the satchel strap tight across your chest with a practiced yank. You squint through the sharp reflection of sunlight bouncing off the snow, eyes adjusting as you meet Maria’s gaze. “He’s always welcome to come, you of all people know that. So why are we having this conversation again?”

Maria held your gaze with that familiar, unreadable expression—part concern, part calculation. You knew it well. She wasn’t just thinking like your aunt; she was thinking like a leader. But it wasn’t until your voice faltered at the end that she finally responded, her tone softer than you expected.

“I just want you girls safe, is all,” she said, the words weighed down by something deeper. “And… if I’m being honest, it’d give me time to talk your dad into finally sitting down for dinner tonight.”

You blink. “Before the prom?”

Maria rolled her eyes, lips curling. “It’s not a prom. It’s a community-building potluck to welcome the newcomers and introduce them to leadership. Such as…”

“No.” You groaned, cutting her off, and pointed a gloved finger at her accusingly. “No. Auntie. I am a glorified nurse. A glorified nurse with a growing pile of suture requests and a sprained wrist from trying to yank a molar last week. I am not—and will never be—board material.”

“You took out an appendix last week,” she countered flatly. “A whole ass appendix. Something you had never done before. You had Joel—Joel—reading Grey’s Anatomy out loud like it was a damn bedtime story. Don’t tell me you’re ‘just a nurse.’”

You winced. Okay, that was a fair point.

“I stitched it crooked,” you muttered.

Maria smiled faintly. “But you saved her life. You did that. And you’ve done that more than once now. You're the closest thing Jackson has to a doctor, and that’s why I want you on the board.”

You crossed your arms tightly, bracing against more than just the cold. “People already think the Millers run Jackson. You’ve heard the whispers. Hell, I’ve heard them. Adding me to the board wouldn’t fix that.”

Maria tilted her head, her tone shifting into something more deliberate. “People always have something to say. Doesn’t mean they’re right. You earned your place—just like your dad, just like Tommy, just like I did. That’s what Jackson needs. Not politics. People who give a damn.”

You let the silence stretch between you for a beat, snow crunching faintly underfoot as you shifted your weight. She wasn’t wrong—but that didn’t mean you were ready to believe it.

“I’ll think about it,” you murmured.

Maria nodded, clearly satisfied with that tiny concession. “Good.”

She turned as if to head back toward the community hall, then paused, glancing back over her shoulder with a smirk. “Dinner tonight. And talk Ellie into coming.”

You raised a brow. “Is that smart?”

Maria grinned, her breath a puff of white against the air. “Probably not. Which is exactly why I want to see it happen.”

You shook your head, laughing softly to yourself. “You're the worst.”

“Yeah, well,” she called as she walked off, “you are my niece.”

You looked out toward the stables, where Ellie was no doubt already pretending she wasn’t excited about the patrol. And with Maria’s words still hanging in the air, the thought of dinner—of sitting at the table, all of you, pretending just for a little while that things were whole. 

With a small grumble, you started your walk toward the stables, boots crunching against the half-frozen dirt path. The streets were already alive with morning bustle—kids chasing each other toward the parlor-turned-schoolhouse, their laughter echoing off the worn wooden buildings like something out of a memory too good to be real. Adults milled about with baskets and toolkits in hand, trading greetings, making deals, hurrying toward the next chore on their endless lists. And despite the weight in your chest—the nerves, the responsibility, the heaviness of the patrol ahead—you didn’t doubt, not really, that for all its cracks and ghosts, Jackson was the best the world had to offer now.

You shoved your hands deeper into your coat pockets, shotgun slung snug across your chest, the leather strap worn and creased where your fingers had nervously gripped it too many times before. You cut through the morning crowd with practiced ease, dodging a cart full of firewood, sidestepping a dog sprinting after a group of laughing kids, nodding at a few familiar faces who offered tired but warm hellos.

The smell of scrambled eggs and something that could almost pass for coffee drifted from the diner, the scent wrapping around you like a blanket you hadn’t asked for. It reminded you of quieter mornings—ones that didn’t involve prepping for a supply run through the cold, praying that maybe, just maybe, you wouldn’t find any clickers this time.

A little girl waved at you from her place on a porch step, swinging her legs as she munched on a biscuit. You gave her a tired smile, lifting a hand in return before letting it fall back to your side. You passed the community board next, where someone had tacked up a hand-drawn flyer: “TONIGHT! Community Potluck – Newcomers Welcome! Bring Food or Bring Stories.”

You rolled your eyes affectionately and muttered under your breath, “Not a prom, my ass.”

Finally, the stables came into view, horses lined up and ready, steam curling from their nostrils as stablehands bustled around with brushes and saddles. 

“So, you’re gonna be on the board?”

You practically stumble in the opposite direction of the voice, your boots slipping slightly in the packed-down snow as you twist on instinct, one hand flying to your chest.

“Jesus—”

And there she is. Dina, bundled in layers with a bag slung over her shoulder and a heavy set of coats draped across one arm. Her cheeks are flushed pink from the cold and the effort of hauling gear, but the grin she’s wearing is nothing short of delighted. You barely have time to catch your breath before she bursts into laughter.

“Oh shit,” she says between chuckles, “sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you heard me.”

You shake your head, trying to keep your heart from punching through your ribcage. “No, no—God, you’re fine. I just wasn’t expecting a ninja with great comedic timing.”

She shoots you a look. “It’s part of my charm. Stealth and sarcasm.”

You roll your eyes, brushing snow from your coat as your breathing steadies. “You got everything ready?”

“Yup,” Dina says, holding up the pack with a satisfied shrug. “Rations, maps, spare meds, and Ellie’s got the ammo squared away. Horses are almost done getting saddled. Just waiting on you, board member.”

You groan, actually groan, and throw your head back dramatically. “No. Nope. Don’t start. That’s not happening.”

Dina raises an eyebrow, clearly amused. “C’mon. Maria brought it up again, huh?”

“More like ambushed me with it,” you mutter, rubbing the back of your neck. “It’s just… it’s silly. I’m not board material. I’m barely holding the clinic together with duct tape and hope.”

“You took out an appendix, right after you brought someone back to life,” she says, leveling you with a look. “In the dark. With a man who probably calls a ribcage a ‘chest bone’ reading from a dog-eared anatomy book.”

“Okay, fair, but—”

“Nope,” Dina cuts in. “Not even gonna let you finish that. You’ve done more for this town in the last year than most people do in a lifetime. And you’re still out here trying to keep people safe, still willing to go on supply runs in the freezing cold with me and chaos incarnate.”

You blink at her. “You mean Ellie?”

“Oh yeah. You know she tried to pack a machete she named?”

“She what?”

“Don’t ask,” Dina says, deadpan. “I’m not even sure she was kidding.”

The two of you share a laugh, the kind that’s too short but still warm in the chest. Then, more quietly, Dina adds, “Listen… if you do end up on the board? That wouldn’t be a bad thing. People respect you. Even if you don’t see it, they do.”

You glance away, the weight of that sitting a little too heavy. “Yeah… maybe. Still feels weird though. Like, if I say yes, suddenly I’m part of this… thing. And people already say the Millers run Jackson. I don’t want to be another reason they’re right.”

Dina tilts her head, her expression softening. “There’s a difference between earning a place and having one handed to you. You didn’t inherit anything. You fought for it. Don’t forget that.”

You meet her eyes for a long beat. There’s something steady in her gaze, grounding.

“…Why are you always like, emotionally supportive right before we do something potentially life-threatening?” you ask, teasing just to keep from tearing up.

She smirks. “Balance. Keeps the universe in check.”

“Great. Well the universe owes me a nap and some pancakes.”

Dina laughs again, “Survive the patrol, and I’ll make you pancakes myself.”

“Deal,” you say, grinning despite yourself. “But I want chocolate chips.”

“Oh god, I don’t think I’ve even had one of those since I was like…three??”

—

Being someone who had grown up within the exposed reality of the infected, you didn’t flinch much anymore—not at off-handed noises, not at rustling brush, not even at the occasional distant scream that drifted in on the wind like an old ghost. Your instincts, honed by necessity rather than choice, no longer cried out in panic at every cracked branch. You could tell the difference between a twig snapping under the careless stumble of a stalker versus the light hop of a rabbit. The former had weight, stagger, a hesitation like it was remembering what it used to be. The latter was innocent, fast, gone before the echo even faded.

In that same vein, you could hear an infected nearly a mile away—sometimes more, depending on the terrain. You knew the cadence of their breaths, the guttural clicking, the warped gurgle of something that had lost the right to be called human. You knew the smell too—not just of rot, but of fresh rot, the kind that lingered near collapsed safe houses or hidden dens. You could differentiate that from the scent of a months-old corpse baking in the sun. You knew, intimately, how decomposition worked in the open. You knew because your earliest memories were built beside it.

You could still recall the days when the safest place for your parent to leave you wasn’t behind walls or inside a guarded post, but pressed close at their side beneath a mound of reeking cloth and discarded bones—anything to mask your scent, to make you less noticeable to the monsters that wandered the dark. You’d been taught to stay still. To be silent. Breathe through your mouth. You learned early that infected weren’t the only thing to fear—sometimes, it was the sound of a voice calling too sweetly from the woods, or the flicker of a lantern far off the trail that promised safety and delivered anything but.

So now, as the patrol moved through a frozen glade north of Jackson, your group jerked to a halt at every snapped branch or rustle in the brush. The horses snorted and stamped their hooves nervously, sensing what most of the riders couldn’t name. But you didn’t pause—not really. Your hand may have flexed around your shotgun strap, but your steps stayed sure. You knew the land. You knew the signs. This wasn’t it.

And, unsurprisingly, Ellie didn’t pause either.

She rode just behind you, rifle slung casually across her back, hands loose on the reins. You didn’t even need to look over your shoulder to know she was still there—she moved like someone who had survived on instinct alone, someone whose silence wasn’t cautious, but confident.

When the others hissed whispers—“Did you hear that?” and “Should we circle back?”—you and Ellie exchanged nothing more than a glance. Not defiance. Not recklessness. Just understanding.

You pressed on. 

Because between the both of you, you’d seen enough of the world to know: real danger didn’t announce itself. Real danger wasn’t a twig. It was the moment after—the quiet. The sudden absence of birds. The feeling in your gut that something wrong was breathing just out of view.

After a while, the snow-thick trees gave way to an old, cracked main road, barely visible under the powdery frost. The world stretched wider here, open sky above and fields of brittle grass pushing through the edges of the pavement. It should’ve felt safer—visibility was better, and the risk of ambush was lower—but instead, it just made you feel more exposed. Every echo seemed to bounce off the silence like a warning.

You rode a little further front now, giving Ellie and Dina the space they didn’t ask for but clearly needed. They’d been trailing just behind, low voices carrying in and out like the rhythm of a tide, never quite reaching you. It was that soft, familiar kind of tension between people who care too much and say too little. And you, being smart enough to know when someone needed breathing room, had quietly eased your horse back to ride with the others—Dillon, Freddy, and, unfortunately, Kat.

You knew them. They were all decent enough.

Well. Mostly decent.

Freddy was quiet but dependable, always checking the maps, always making sure the ammo was split evenly. Dillon had the kind of nervous energy that meant he talked too much but worked even harder. And then there was Kat. Who, on paper, was a good soldier. Level-headed. Sharpshooter. But she’d also broken up with Ellie last spring, and while you never got the full story, you knew enough to form your very strong, very biased opinion.

You’d have killed her on principle if Jackson laws and general decency didn’t stop you. Not because of the breakup itself—people fell out of love, sure—but because how she did it? In the middle of patrol, in front of Ellie’s friends, then had the audacity to flirt with someone else two days later at the greenhouse potluck like it hadn’t just emotionally obliterated the girl who barely showed anyone she cared in the first place. That was evil. Downright villain-coded behavior.

So no, you weren’t thrilled to be stuck riding beside her in agonizing silence.

Every step your horse took echoed through your skull like a ticking clock. The wind whistled, boots creaked in stirrups, and once or twice Dillon cleared his throat like he was about to say something—only to think better of it.

You tried to distract yourself by counting fence posts, checking for signs of recent movement along the ditches, anything to not go insane from how slow and suffocating the mood had gotten. You even started planning dinner in your head. Would it be worth sneaking into the greenhouse early to swipe some herbs? You were risking your life out here, surely that deserved a little rosemary.

At one point, Kat made a noise—something halfway between a sigh and a breath—and you turned your head so sharply your neck cracked.

She raised her eyebrows at you. “You okay?”

You gave her a thin, polite smile. “Peachy.”

More silence.

The worst part? No one else seemed to mind it. Ellie and Dina were still locked in that not-quite-reconciled space, and Freddy was too focused on his surroundings to make small talk. The silence was never ending, and it was all-consuming.

That was, of course, until you noticed it— a small spat of blood across the snow, vivid against the blank white canvas like someone had dragged a brush across it in haste. You squinted, pulling gently on the reins to slow your horse.. It wasn’t a lot—not enough to suggest a massacre or a horde’s feeding frenzy—but enough to mean someone got hit, and hard. A wound bleeding mid-sprint, maybe. Fresh enough to still be red, not that muddy brown blood turned into after it sat too long in the cold.

You groaned quietly, more out of habit than surprise, and signaled with a raised hand to halt. The horses obeyed, snorting and shuffling in the snow as the rest of the group came to an uneasy stop around you.

“Oh fuck,” Freddy muttered from the rear, his voice already rising with unease. “We’re going to die.”

You didn’t even bother answering. Freddy always leaned toward the melodramatic, but to his credit, he usually wasn’t wrong about danger. And judging by the way every head turned toward him—including yours—you weren’t the only one feeling that knot in your gut begin to tighten.

Behind you, hoofbeats shifted—quicker, familiar—and you didn’t even have to look to know Ellie and Dina had finally caught up. You felt it before you saw it. The air changed slightly, like the mood had shifted to something sharper, more purposeful.

Ellie rode up beside you and glanced at the blood, her expression unreadable. She met your eyes briefly, then jerked her chin forward in that clipped, confident way she always did when she’d already made up her mind.

“Let’s go,” she said simply, and without hesitation, clicked her tongue to her horse and trotted forward, her posture relaxed but alert.

You didn’t reply—just gave a single nod and nudged your horse to follow.

“Okay,” Dina said, tone rising with that familiar hum of adrenaline, a half-smile tugging at her lips. “We’re on.”

The tension cracked like ice beneath a boot.

“Wait,” Kat’s voice cut through the momentum like a blade. Her horse shifted uneasily beneath her. “We should go back and report it. Let someone else handle this.”

You turned in your saddle, expression tight, heels already nudging your horse to keep pace. “Kat, we wait, and this will be covered by nightfall,” you said sharply. “If we want to be stupid and miss whatever this leads to, sure. But I’m not walking back to Jackson with nothing except 'we saw some blood.’”

“Yeah,” Dina chimed in, spinning her horse around just enough to face the rest of the group, voice dry but amused. “We’re reconning, Kat. Let’s fuckin’ recon.”

Freddy groaned. “God, I hate it when she says it like that. It’s always right before shit hits the fan.”

You couldn’t help the small smirk that broke across your face as you leaned forward, eyes scanning the trees ahead. The blood trail might’ve been small, but it was something. A sign. And in this world, signs mattered. Hesitation got people killed. You'd all been lucky before, but luck wasn’t a strategy.

“Come on,” you called over your shoulder, your voice clear and steady, cutting through the hush that had settled over the group. When you didn’t hear the familiar sound of hooves following behind, you slowed and turned Birdie with a gentle tug of the reins.

Your fingers brushed her neck instinctively, grounding yourself. Birdie—your steadfast companion of four years, a parting gift from someone you didn’t talk about often—snorted softly, her breath a puff of white in the cold air. She was calm beneath you, alert but trusting. Always trusting.

You glanced back at the group, locking eyes with Kat, who hadn’t moved an inch from her place on the road.

“Fine,” you said, your tone sharpening just slightly. “If you guys want to stick behind and do some more investigating of this area, that’s fine. Maybe the blood spatters’ll tell you their life story.”

You saw Kat’s jaw twitch, but she stayed quiet.

You shifted in the saddle, voice firmer now. “But protocol says three at all times. So I’ll go with Dina and Ells, kay?”

Dina gave you an encouraging nod from beside Ellie, who looked like she was already mentally ten steps ahead. Neither of them questioned your call—they just waited.

Kat frowned, clearly biting back whatever argument she wanted to throw out. She glanced at Dillon, then Freddy, who wasn’t even pretending to be invested in the drama, and finally relented with a frustrated sigh. “Fine. Forty minutes. If you’re not back or we don’t hear from you, I’m coming after you.”

“Aw,” Dina chirped. “You do care.”

Kat ignored her.

“And just to be clear,” Kat added, her voice carrying that clipped, condescending edge, “I’m going to assume you’re dead.”

Before you could respond, Freddy deadpanned from the back, “You really wanna be the one to tell the Millers the girls are dead?” He gestured vaguely at the horizon. “I’d rather die out here.”

Dillon let out a strangled snort of laughter, then immediately tried to stifle it with a cough.

You couldn’t help the small, amused huff that escaped you, even as the tension still hummed beneath the surface. “Forty minutes,” you said, giving Kat one last look. 

You turned Birdie again, nudging her forward with a silent command, the mare moving with practiced ease beneath you. Dina and Ellie fell into place without a word, the three of you instinctively forming the triangle of coverage you’d fallen into countless times before. Snow crunched beneath the horses’ hooves in steady rhythm, but even that familiar sound was muffled beneath the growing pressure of the woods around you. The trees seemed to lean in closer the farther you went, their branches arching overhead like brittle fingers, casting long shadows that swayed with each icy gust.

The blood trail continued on, steady and measured—spatters spaced just enough to suggest motion without staggering. It wasn’t frantic. It wasn’t wild. Whatever had been bleeding hadn’t collapsed… yet. The consistency of it was too clean, too purposeful. Not an animal kill. Not a skirmish. A wound, maybe. Deep, but not immediately fatal. And whatever it was, it had enough left in it to keep moving.

The trail led into the edge of a town, one you recognized. A half-forgotten place that had been picked over long before you were ever old enough to hold a rifle. A few houses sat in silent ruin, their walls leaning, roofs half-caved under the burden of years and snow. The windows were empty sockets, glass long gone, and their insides looted of everything useful. You’d passed through before—maybe twice, maybe more. There’d never been anything left worth taking. Until now.

The blood turned toward the supermarket. You felt it before you saw it—that creeping pull in your gut. The shift in atmosphere. The kind of pressure that always came right before something awful.

And then you saw them.

Clickers. Three of them, sprawled just outside the shattered doors of the market, their bodies still and sunken in the snow. The growth of fungus had overtaken their faces entirely, rendering them faceless, eyeless—heads crowned with thick, crusted blossoms of cordyceps. Their limbs were twisted unnaturally, arms bent at angles that suggested the fight had been swift, brutal, and close. Snow had gathered on the exposed parts of their bodies, but beneath that dusting was blood—thick, dark, and still wet enough to shine faintly in the light.

They hadn’t just been taken down. They’d been torn down. Brutally. Viscerally.

And in the center of the massacre, lying awkwardly across the frozen concrete, was the bear.

It was young—its body not yet filled out to full size, but strong, thick-furred, heavy with muscle. Or it had been. Now, it was a ruin of what it once was. Its face was half-eaten, the snout gnawed down to the bone. The lower jaw hung slack, exposed. One eye was missing entirely. Its ribs had been split apart at the center like a butcher’s cut, the cavity inside hollowed and savaged, innards spilled out in coiled ropes across the ice. The stomach cavity was jagged, uneven, torn as though by hands—or claws—too strong to be anything natural. Blood had soaked deep into the snow, spreading in every direction like an inkblot, staining the white until it looked almost painted.

The stench was unbearable. Metallic, sharp, and layered with the sickly-sweet rot of exposed organs and cooling bodies. The smell of fungal decay mingled with the blood, clinging to the air in a way that made your throat tighten.

No signs of dragging. No other footprints.

It hadn’t been moved. It had died here.

And around it—the clickers. Also dead. Not from gunshots. Not clean kills. Their necks were twisted. One had its skull smashed in, the fungal bloom crushed flat against the sidewalk like someone had stepped on a mushroom and kept stepping until it stopped twitching.

The horses grew restless. Birdie pawed at the ground, ears twitching. Ellie’s horse let out a sharp huff, and Dina’s grunted, side-stepping once before settling again. Even they knew. Something was wrong here.

You dismounted slowly, eyes sweeping the area, and noted that the blood trail didn’t end here. It continued. Fainter now. A drip here. A streak there. As though whatever—or whoever—had done this hadn’t been untouched.

“How many infected does it take to bring down a bear?” Dina quipped, the edges of her voice still sharp with unease, but softening just enough to let in that familiar humor she used as armor.

To that, you huffed, shaking your head slowly. “More than what we’re seeing for sure.”

Your eyes remained locked on the scene, scanning every limb, every streak of red, trying to find an answer that made sense. None did.

“Check out that van.” Ellie’s voice cut in, calm but focused. She gestured with her chin, and both you and Dina followed her gaze to the rusted-out vehicle parked crooked just outside the market’s entrance. From a distance, it looked unremarkable—one of a thousand decaying shells you’d seen across dead cities—but something about the angle of the doors, the black smudges near the back, made your stomach knot.

“So they’ve been sheltering in the market,” Dina murmured, as if finishing a thought that had been forming between you all.

“And one of them—or god, maybe more—got back in,” you added, voice low as your eyes scanned the darkened windows of the building. “Maybe while they were sleeping. Maybe just hungry.”

“Probably needed a nap after chomping on that poor thing,” Dina said with a slow, almost sarcastic nod, her eyes flicking back to the bear.

You tilted your head slightly, staring at the disemboweled mass again. It was unsettling—not just because of the violence, but because of how much had been left behind. The ribs were split, the organs torn, but the flesh… too much of it remained. Like the infected had started feeding and then decided they didn’t like the taste. Like something about it wasn’t right.

Your thoughts were still trying to piece it together when Dina spoke again, too cheerfully for the setting.

“Hey,” she said, her eyes still fixed on the corpse, a light suddenly sparking across her face as a grin spread wide. She turned to Ellie with mischief in her voice. “What do you call a grizzly’s ribs?”

You groaned—long. Loud. Dramatic. The kind of sigh that could power a windmill.

“Holy fuck,” you muttered, dismounting as your hands moved to unbuckle Birdie’s reins. “You two are just made to get along. Like it’s disgusting. A curse upon my house.”

Dina didn’t even flinch. “Bear-B-que,” she finished triumphantly, grabbing the reins from you as you passed them over.

Ellie blinked, taken aback, and for a moment, she looked like she might resist—might preserve some shred of her hardened reputation—but then the smallest, most helpless sound cracked out of her throat, somewhere between a scoff and a laugh.

“Did you just… make that up?” Ellie asked, a laugh threatening at the corners of her mouth. “Bear-B-que?”

“Yeah!” Dina beamed, unapologetic and radiant in her success.

And so, as you slowly walked towards the bear, which was something that would probably get you yelled at by Joel, you hear them both laugh about the stupidity of their joke and damn, if they weren’t made for eachother than who would be. 

“Starshine,” Ellie called, and when you looked back to her she motioned to the building, “You think the hungry boy is still in there?” You scrunch your nose as you look at the scattered bodies of the infected, and you grumble, “Probably,” you murmured, eyes still on the mess in front of you. “And I’m thinking more like a hungry family—but, like, small family, you know? Two-and-a-half infected, tops.”

That earned a grin from both Ellie and Dina—just that small spark of shared humor in the middle of horror—and you stood a little straighter, brushing snow from your coat as your breath fogged the air.

Just as you did, the sound of hooves crunching through the snow grew louder behind you, and you turned to see Kat, Freddy, and Dillon arriving. They came into view with slow, wary steps, their expressions shifting the moment they spotted the scene you’d found.

You offered a cheeky smile. “Hasn’t been forty minutes. Get bored?”

Kat glared at you in that way that only she could—like she wanted to snap back but couldn’t quite summon the energy. Her eyes moved to the bear, then the clickers, then slowly back to the blood trail leading into the supermarket. Her expression faltered.

“You guys happy now? Content?” she asked, voice flat.

Before you could answer, Ellie dismounted with a fluid motion, boots hitting the snow with a soft thud. She didn’t meet Kat’s eyes. She just moved toward her bag, fingers quick and sure as she gathered her things. “Hey,” she said quietly, but firmly. “Can we go back now? Please?”

There was something fragile under her voice—not panic, not quite—but fear, layered beneath her usual steel. It was rare enough that it made everyone pause. Kat looked away. Even Freddy sobered up.

You opened your mouth, but Ellie beat you to it, standing upright again with renewed focus. “Yeah. We will. Promise,” she said, nodding once. “We’re just gonna listen real quick. See if anyone’s inside.” She turned toward the supermarket, pulling a shotgun from the saddle and tossing it to you without looking. “Which is definitely recon.”

You caught it by reflex, blinking. “Yeah! Yeah, I mean, what if there’s like… a normal person in there? Someone injured? They probably need medical—yeah!”

“What if there’s a family in there?” Dina added quickly, already hoisting her rifle over her shoulder as she trotted up beside you.

“With children!” you nodded emphatically, falling into step with Ellie as she moved toward the shattered entrance.

“With babies!!” Dina finished, her tone perfectly sincere despite the obvious dramatics.

You couldn’t help but snort, even as you carefully scanned the windows and doorways for movement. The three of you moved together now like clockwork—an exaggerated march of purpose and bullshit, your banter keeping the fear at bay, if only barely.

Behind you, Freddy whispered to Dillon, “That’s terrifying. They’re like… weirdly synced.”

Dillon just nodded. “We’re all gonna die.”

You didn’t hear it. Or maybe you did, and chose not to answer. Either way, the doors loomed ahead, and you were already inside the story—following blood and bad jokes straight into whatever waited beyond.

Jackson was known as a haven, or perhaps more accurately, as a living testament to the virtues of freedom and community—a sanctuary steadily blossoming into one of the largest and most hospitable enclaves around. In this unique place, life moved with an air of unencumbered possibility; unlike the strict rigidity of QZs, here people were free to wander in and out as they saw fit. There was an unspoken agreement that every person who arrived, regardless of their background or training, would contribute in some way, enriching the fabric of the community.

Over time, the spirit of Jackson grew contagious. The town’s ethos was built not on enforced conformity but on an organic, ever-evolving tapestry of contributions. Mechanics diligently kept the essential machinery humming, ensuring that the gears of progress never ground to a halt, while construction workers transformed raw materials into dwellings and communal spaces that stood as monuments to collective effort. Medical personnel offered healing and hope not merely through their expertise, but through a gentle, empathetic touch that reassured the weary and infirm alike. Even educators, nannies, and chefs played their parts, each role a crucial thread in the narrative of resilience and self-governance.

The diversity of skills and the willingness to share them imbued Jackson with a vibrancy that transcended conventional societal boundaries. Patrols, manned by those trained to maintain order without suffocating freedom, roamed the streets with a sense of duty tempered by compassion. Beyond these watchful guardians, gardeners coaxed life from the earth in communal plots, turning barren scraps of land into flourishing oases, while artists and builders reimagined the urban landscape into a living canvas of creativity. In Jackson, every contribution—be it technical expertise or a humble act of nurturing—was celebrated as a step toward a more cohesive, supportive society.

Community life here was expressed through everyday rituals that reinforced a deep sense of belonging. Evening gatherings around crackling fires, spontaneous street festivals, and shared meals brought neighbors together, transforming simple acts of daily living into opportunities for collective celebration. In Jackson, the freedom to come and go was matched by an enduring invitation to give back, creating a cycle where each newcomer soon discovered that their efforts were valued, their skills indispensable, and their individuality a vital ingredient in the communal stew. 

Even then, if someone crossed into the city walls—those same walls painstakingly erected by the founders, the original survivors whose very hands were stained with the gore and sweat of the outbreak—they were met not with exclusion, but with a measured welcome. Even if such a person appeared to lack the talents or qualities that could immediately contribute to the thriving community, the citizens would not cast them aside. The true measure of a town was not merely in the sum of its skills, but in the spirit of inclusivity that defined its very nature. If the inhabitants were to dismiss those who did not prove their worth at once, what remained would be less a town and more a grim penitentiary—a place where the weak were all too easily deemed disposable, left to be metaphorically fed to the wolves.

In the heart of this sanctuary, every soul was seen as having inherent potential. The founders had built these walls not as barriers to keep humanity at bay, but as a shield against the relentless chaos outside—a testament to their belief in redemption and transformation. Here, every newcomer, regardless of their immediate utility, was afforded the opportunity to grow, learn, and eventually contribute to the collective strength of the community. This unwavering commitment to nurturing latent potential was what set the town apart. It was a place where value was not measured solely by apparent skills but by the capacity to evolve and to enrich the community in myriad ways. 

“I’m sorry,” you force out a laugh as you spin around on your creaking chair, your eyes narrowing playfully at the man slumped across the makeshift treatment station. “You broke your wrist…”

“Pottery,” he deadpans, his lips curling into a rueful grin that hinted at a lifetime of misadventures and unforeseen consequences.

“Pottery,” you echo with a gentle nod, as if acknowledging both the absurdity and the stubborn pride behind his words. Rising from your seat, you retrieve a well-worn, sanded-down piece of wood and a faded, yet dependable, bandage from your improvised kit. The room—once a humble bedroom now converted into a rudimentary clinic—smells faintly of antiseptic mixed with the lingering aroma of burnt wood and memories of better times. You push the rolling chair aside with deliberate care and reach for his very…very broken wrist. Despite the inflammation and bruise marring its surface, nothing in the injury screamed for an invasive procedure; a sturdy splint would suffice.

“Whatcha make?” you ask, half in curiosity and half in an effort to distract him from the pain etched across his weathered face.

The man hums thoughtfully, his gaze drifting to a small, uneven crack in the wooden wall as if seeking counsel from its silent testimony. “Whatever is wanted. I mostly do it for free, though that’s not getting me very far these days,” he confesses, the lilt in his voice mingling gratitude with resignation. His words carry the quiet weight of countless sacrifices in a world that rarely rewards kindness.

“Kind man,” you chirp, securing the bandage with practiced precision, winding it around itself until it snugly supports his splinted wrist. Your tone is both affectionate and admonishing—a reminder that even in suffering, there is dignity in compassion. “Kindness will always end up coming back around for us, you know? Now, I want you to come back in two weeks so I can see how it looks. If it gets worse or starts aching more than a little, if you feel even a hint of sickness—come back sooner. And if I’m not here, just head over to the Miller house on Main, okay?”

With a small nod, he agrees and walks out of the clinic room, leaving you alone with the sterile hum of machinery and the soft shuffle of wounded survivors. You finish scribbling down your notes with deliberate precision, carefully tucking them into the aging hallway filing cabinet—a repository of stories, failures, and small triumphs. Stepping down the creaking stairs, your boots sink slightly into the muddy residue of neglect, each step stirring memories of the days when this place pulsed with hope rather than a quiet resignation.

At the base of the stairs, you reach for a sheet of paper suspended on the hanging system—a crude schedule for check-ups that, despite its makeshift appearance, speaks volumes about the effort to hold on to some semblance of order. Your eyes scan down the list, and as you reach the next name, your smile falters, your breath catching on the syllables written on the paper. The name shimmers in faded ink, and with a sudden jolt, you exclaim, “Ellie!”

You quickly read over the note that trails below her name and age, your heart thudding as old worries and new concerns battle in your chest. Your gaze snaps toward the waiting area—a cramped room where survivors sat huddled on an overstuffed sofa and scattered benches. There, amid the low murmur of anxious conversation, Ellie had popped up like an unexpected ember of defiance. A stupid grin plastered across her face, her features marred with smears of dried blood that she wore almost as a badge of honor.

The room held a stark collage of vulnerability and resilience. Faces etched with weariness offered fleeting smiles at the sight of someone who defied the odds, and the quiet banter of patients waiting for both you and the nurse filled the space with tentative life. Ellie’s grin, despite its crudity, was infectious—a silent rebellion against despair.

You set the paper down with a soft sigh, the weight of responsibility anchoring your thoughts. Stepping forward, you navigate through the crowd, your eyes locking with hers. In that brief, charged moment, time seemed to pause: you saw not just a patient, but a fighter whose spark illuminated the dullness of the day. “Ellie,” you call gently, your voice a blend of concern and warmth, “let’s get you taken care of.”

The corridor, the faded notes, and the murmurs of those waiting all faded into the background as you led her toward the clinic. She happily settles onto the bed, a spark of mischief in her eyes despite the scars life had etched on her. You watch as she relaxes, her posture betraying the rough resilience of someone who’s seen too much yet still manages to smile. You retrieve the bottle of alcohol and a threadbare towel from the counter—a silent arsenal against both infection and despair—then sink into the chair before drifting over to sit directly across from her.

“Should I ask?” You teases, tone light despite the battered evidence of a recent tussle lingering on your face.

“Eh, it was a scrimmage,” She reples, y voice carrying an amused skepticism as you unscrew the cap and dampen the cloth for a cleaning. 

Your eyes narrow with a half-grimace as you bring the wipe close, studying the smear of dried blood and the careless smudges that told their own story. With a scowl, you add, “And it looks like you got fucking owned. Poor Dina—her girlfriend is a dumbass.”

A flash of indignation crosses her features, a blend of anger and hurt pooling in her eyes. “Did not?! And! And Dina is not— I’m not—” she begins, words tumbling out in a rush before she stops, caught in the weight of her own frustrated laughter and the absurdity of the situation.

You pause, your gaze holding hers steadily as if waiting for her to find solid ground in the storm of teasing and reprimand.

 The silence thickens the space between your jabs and gentle care. Finally, leaning back slightly and softening just a hint, she retorts, “Shut up, I came here to check in, haven’t seen you in like a month.”

To that, you fall quiet, the kind of silence that stretches—grows heavier the longer it lingers. You shrug after a moment, not out of dismissal, but because the weight of what you want to say sits awkwardly between your ribs. You double-check your work with mechanical precision—swelling, signs of infection—anything to delay the next part. Then you scoot back to the supply table, the legs of your chair scraping softly against the scuffed wooden floor. You reach for your clipboard, jotting down post-meeting notes and marking off the medical supplies used, all while your mind pieces together the words you’ve kept tucked under your tongue for weeks.

Finally, as the pen slows in your hand, you say it—soft but honest. “Well, Ells… you’re the one who stopped coming by.”

Ellie falters, visibly, her fingers twitching against her thigh as she huffs and leans back against the wall, her expression tight. “Fuck. Yeah. I guess so. But c’mon—you can’t blame me for that.”

Your eyes flick up to meet hers, and for a long second, neither of you looks away. “No,” you admit quietly, “I don’t. We’re growing up. I…I get that. And maybe part of that means splitting off. Becoming our own people.” You pause, bracing yourself with a shaky breath before continuing. “But even I know I’m not gonna magically stop being ‘Joel’s girl.’ That’s not something that washes off, y’know?”

Ellie shifts in place, her brow creasing, but she doesn’t interrupt.

“And like it or not,” you say, voice catching a little, “you fall into that same category. Whether you like it or not, you’re his, too. Maybe not by blood, but it doesn’t matter. He called you ‘kiddo.’ He loved you.”

You bite the inside of your cheek to keep your voice steady. “I don’t know what happened between you two. I don’t know what he did or what you did or why it broke everything so bad. All I know is one day you just… stopped talking. Family dinners stopped. Movie nights became ‘read alone in your own damn corner’ nights. And I didn’t say anything because I figured maybe you’d come around.”

You swallow. “I get it if you hate him, I do. But he’s my dad, Ells. And I can’t choose between you and him. I won’t. It’s not fair. And… and I’m sitting here spilling my heart out like this is some kind of therapy session, so—”

“Eh,” Ellie cuts in, trying to soften the blow with a shrug and a small, forced grin. “Good place to do it. Soundproof walls, right?”

You snort a laugh through a sigh, pressing the heels of your hands against your eyes. “Yeah. Best perk of this makeshift clinic, honestly. No one hears me yell at my patients.”

“Or cry,” Ellie offers quietly, and it’s said in a teasing tone, but there’s something raw underneath it. Something vulnerable. “ I just… when it all happened, I didn’t know how to be around you without seeing him. So I avoided it.”

You nod, fiddling with the edge of the clipboard like it holds all the answers you wish you had. “Yeah. I figured it was something like that.”

There’s a pause, a thick kind of silence that settles after something honest has been said. Neither of you really knows what to do with it. It lingers long enough for you to notice the distant hum of conversation downstairs, boots scuffing wood, someone laughing too loud in the hallway. Then, you clear your throat, unsure if you're ready to break the fragile moment but doing it anyway.

“I’m going on a patrol,” you say, quietly at first. “There’s a chance… I mean, there’s word that there might be a pharmacy further out—past the ridge. I’m heading out with a couple others. I haven’t… told my dad yet.”

Ellie immediately sits up straighter, eyes narrowing. “Joel? Letting little baby Starshine out of Jackson?” She grins, devilish and teasing. “Dude, he’ll have a stroke right there on the porch.”

“Oh my god, shut up,” you groan, smacking her leg lightly with the clipboard. “Don’t say shit like that, seriously, you’re gonna jinx me. But for real—I’m trying to be smart about it. If there’s even a chance we can find stuff—antibiotics, insulin, trauma meds—anything, it’s worth the risk.”

Ellie’s smile fades into something softer, more thoughtful. “Yeah. It is.”

You glance over at her, hopeful. “Do you guys know what medications we’re low on? I figure if I’m going, I should at least grab the right stuff—wait, you are still on the patrol rotation, right?”

Ellie hesitates. That twitch of her brow, the way her mouth presses into a thin line—dead giveaways.

“I’m… talkin’ to Tommy about it,” she says vaguely, avoiding your eyes.

You blink, eyebrows rising. “Right. So what—you think Joel’s gonna let you go gallivanting past the ridge when you’re not even cleared for patrol?”

She looks at you, jaw clenched, and for a second you can see the storm gathering behind her eyes.

“He is not my dad,” she snaps, a little too loud, a little too fast. There’s that fire again—half hurt, half fury. All Ellie.

You stare at her, then say, softer but firm, “He might as well be.”

Her mouth opens like she’s going to argue, to throw something sharp and final at you—but the words die in her throat. Instead, she scrubs a hand down her face, frustrated. “It’s not that simple,” she mutters.

“I know it’s not.” You lean forward, elbows on your knees. “But you can’t keep pretending like he’s just some guy who happened to keep you alive a few years ago. You know damn well that man would burn Jackson to the ground if something happened to you.”

Ellie huffs, not denying it, but clearly wrestling with the weight of it, “Yeah well he’s a piece of-...He’s Joel, he’s your dad….still figruing out how I play into this.”

You nod, understanding more than you let on. “You don’t have to have it figured out. But don’t shut him out because you’re scared of what forgiving him means. Or what not forgiving him means.”

Ellie tilts her head at you. “Since when did you get all wise?”

You smirk. “I treat bullet wounds and dislocated shoulders for a living. Comes with a side of unsolicited life advice.”

She laughs at that—a real one this time—and then leans back on the bed, arms crossed behind her head. “So… you’re really going?”

“Yeah. Day after tomorrow. Early.” You hesitate. “You could come, y’know. If Tommy signs off. It’d be… nice. To have you there. Plus…I’m pretty sure Dina is coming.”

“I was already sold you didn’t-” 

“Oh but I wanted to, I so so sooooo wanted to.”

-

“I come bearing gifts!” you call out as you shoulder the door open with a little more force than necessary, the wood groaning under the pressure. Your voice carries through the room like sunlight filtering through a cracked window—familiar, teasing, and just enough to disrupt the quiet.

Turning around, you find your father exactly where you expected him: hunched over that overstuffed desk in the far corner, glasses perched on the tip of his nose, eyes squinting down at paperwork covered in numbers, scribbled timelines, and blocky handwriting that looked like it hadn’t changed since the outbreak. The desk itself is a mess—organized chaos, really—with loose files, maps, ration logs, and the occasional empty coffee mug that had seen better days. A few knick-knacks are scattered around—an old photo in a cracked frame, a pocket knife, a carved wooden elk. It’s the kind of clutter that says someone lives here. Someone stayed.

Despite the dried blood that still lined your sleeves and the faint yellow stain of iodine on your fingertips, you carry the Tupperware container full of cooked meat into the room like it’s a peace offering to two war strategists. Probably because it is.

Joel glances up at the sound of your voice, brow lifting just slightly in that way he does when he’s half-expecting trouble and half-hoping it’s just you being dramatic. With a casual flick of his hand, he motions for you to come closer.

You oblige, setting the Tupperware down on the nearest clear corner of the desk. Then, with a grin, you lean over and press a kiss to the top of his head, the way you always have—since you were little, since before Jackson, since before everything. He grunts at the affection but doesn’t pull away.

Your eyes trail over the cluttered mess he’s buried in: outlines of patrol shifts, expansion routes, stockpile inventories, and timelines for the repairs. You squint at the fine print and mutter under your breath, “Y’all should print these in English next time.”

Across the room, your aunt Maria stands by the wide-paned window, arms folded, gaze locked on Main Street below. She hasn’t said anything yet, but you can tell by the tension in her shoulders and the way her jaw tightens that whatever conversation had been happening before you walked in wasn’t exactly a fun one. She doesn’t look away from the view, but her presence fills the room just the same.

With a small hum, you tilt your head toward the desk, eyes scanning the mess with feigned interest. “You guys look like you’re in the middle of a very interesting conversation,” you remark, voice dipped in sarcasm but light enough to pass for a joke.

JJoel lets out a short, humorless breath—almost a laugh. “If ‘how the hell are we gonna stretch five gallons of gas across three outposts’ counts as interesting, then sure.” He rubs the back of his neck and leans forward, squinting at the latest update scrawled in rushed handwriting. “But back to it—the school and the library by spring, right? Both need new roofs. With the manpower we’ve got, I don’t see any of this gettin’ done ‘til summer, at best.”

Even though Maria stood by the window like she was listening, it was painfully obvious her thoughts were elsewhere. Her fingers tapped anxiously against her arm, and her voice cut in abruptly. “This window isn’t keepin’ the cold out anymore.”

Joel blinked at the sudden shift, his brow furrowing. “Chalk—it’s high up on my list,” he replied, gesturing vaguely toward one of the lists you’d been flipping through. “We’ve been burnin’ through a ton of it patching the new residential stretch—”

“We need to build faster,” she interrupted.

That caught your attention. You looked up from the supply logs you'd been scanning, the ones filled with crossed-off names and absences—reminders of the last flu outbreak and the dwindling labor pool. Even with good weather and no new crises, the odds were steep. You didn’t need to be a genius to know that “build faster” wasn’t a request grounded in reality. It was desperation, plain and simple.

Joel straightened in his chair, eyes flicking to the page you’d been reading before settling back on Maria. “Faster?” he repeated, voice low with disbelief. He tapped the edge of the desk once, then again, as if grounding himself. “Sure. How much faster? See, we got this dial called the constructo-meter.”

“Joel,” Maria warned, not even turning her head.

He grinned—just barely—but kept going. “The more you turn it, the faster we go.”

“Joel.”

You had to bite your lip to keep the laugh in. The way his voice dipped into mock-enthusiasm and the faux-serious glint in his eye made it worse.

Maria turned slightly, catching your expression out of the corner of her eye. “Starshine, do not egg him on.”

You raised both hands in mock surrender, forcing your grin into something that resembled composure. “Yes, ma’am,” you said, a little too obediently, and Joel snorted behind his hand.

—

The sky had already dimmed by the time you and Joel made it back home, the golden wash of sunset giving way to the soft gray hush of evening. The walk back had been quiet, not in a tense way, but the kind of comfortable silence that settles between two people used to surviving side by side. Jackson had quieted too—doors shutting, boots scraping porches, the faint hiss of fires being started in hearths. It felt like the town was exhaling after a long day.

Joel pushed open the door to your shared home and stepped aside to let you in first. You kicked your boots off at the threshold, flexing your aching feet with a tired grunt before hanging your coat on the hook near the door. Joel followed behind you, rubbing the back of his neck, already drifting toward the small kitchen.

“You hungry?” he asked, already reaching for the pan you’d left drying on the counter.

“I brought meat earlier, remember?” you said, flopping onto the couch and letting your head fall back against the cushion. “You and Maria were too busy arguing about the constructo-meter.”

Joel snorted. “Right.” He set the pan down and turned back to look at you, arms crossed over his chest now. “You did good, bringin’ that in. Whole damn town’s been stretched thin. That kinda help… matters.”

You gave him a soft smile, one that flickered briefly before your expression shifted. You sat up straighter, elbows resting on your knees as you stared down at your hands. They still bore faint traces of iodine and dirt under your nails, the stubborn signs of clinic work that wouldn’t fully wash away.

Joel noticed the shift immediately. “Alright,” he said slowly, narrowing his eyes. “What is it?”

You opened your mouth, then shut it again. Tried to find the right tone—something between don’t freak out and I’m not asking for permission. You settled for honesty.

“There’s a patrol heading out tomorrow,” you began. “Northwest ridge. There's a possible pharmacy out there. Might be looted already, but it could have some meds we’re low on—antibiotics, insulin, maybe even some old morphine. Tommy signed off on it.”

Joel didn’t say anything right away, and that silence hit harder than any words could’ve.

You took a breath. “I’m going with them.”

His jaw worked, but he kept his arms crossed, like he was holding himself in place. “The hell you are.”

You blinked. “Dad—”

“No,” he cut in, voice firmer now. “You’ve been patchin’ people up all week. You’re still limping from that last run. You don’t need to be out there riskin’ your neck when we’ve got actual patrol units trained for this kinda thing.”

“I am trained for this kind of thing,” you snapped, standing up now, tension threading into your spine. “And they need me. If we find anything useful, it could save lives. You know that.”

Joel shook his head, the line of his mouth tightening. “We also need you here. What good are you gonna be if you end up six feet under some collapsed shelf or with a clicker tearing through your back?”

You stepped forward, closing the space between you. “You don’t get to keep me wrapped in cotton just because the world scares you, Dad.”

His eyes flared at that—hurt, then anger, then something deeper. Something raw. Unfiltered. Like you’d struck a nerve that had never fully healed. He turned away from you for a second, running a hand down his face like he was trying to physically wipe the emotion off of it, like if he just pressed hard enough, the truth might stay buried where it had always been safer.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter, rougher. It scraped out of him like gravel being dragged over stone.

“It ain’t the world that scares me. It’s the thought of losin’ you.”

That stopped you in your tracks.

Your mouth opened and closed once, twice. You blinked hard, because your vision had started to swim, and you couldn’t decide if it was from rage, guilt, or the sudden ache in your chest. Maybe all three.

“Damn your fuckin’ therapist,” you said, laughing through a crude huff. “The hell was that? You been rehearsin’ that line in the mirror or something?”

But the crack in your voice betrayed you.

Joel turned just slightly, catching the flicker of tears you were trying to blink away and the trembling laugh you were barely keeping under control. He didn’t say anything at first, just watched you from under that furrowed brow of his, expression unreadable—because that’s what Joel did when the feelings got too big. He locked down. He stayed quiet, like silence could protect the both of you.

You pressed the heels of your hands to your eyes, exhaling hard. “Fuck, that was... that was mean,” you said, voice muffled. “You don’t get to drop a line like that and expect me to just pack my damn bag and leave without feeling like shit.”

“I ain’t tryin’ to make you feel like shit,” he said softly, stepping closer. “I’m just… tellin’ the truth.”

You let your hands fall and look at him, really look at him. The years carved into his face. The tired eyes that had seen too much. The way his shoulders never fully relaxed. The man who had survived everything except peace. And the man who had, somehow, learned how to love again in the middle of it all.

“Yeah,” you muttered, voice quieter now. “I know.”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was full. Of grief, of love, of a thousand things neither of you had said in all the days and nights spent in each other’s company. You crossed your arms tight over your chest, suddenly unsure if you should stay or go. If the distance between you was safer than the closeness.

Joel rubbed at his jaw, then sat heavily on the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees. “You remind me so damn much of her,” he said after a beat. “Of Sarah.”

Your breath caught.

You lowered yourself onto the armrest opposite him, resting your hands in your lap, unsure if moving would make it worse. “You’ve never said that before.”

He shook his head slowly. “I don’t say a lotta things. Doesn’t mean I don’t think ‘em.”

Another silence, softer this time.

“I’m not her,” you said, not cruelly. Just gently. “I know you know that. But you gotta let me do this. You gotta let me …people need medicine.”

Joel looked at you, and whatever had hardened in his expression before—whatever wall he’d built to keep the world out—it cracked just a little. His voice came out low.

“I know I can’t stop you. And I ain’t tryin’ to keep you caged in. I just… wish I could give you a world where you didn’t have to be this brave.”

You smiled, sad and warm. “Yeah.”

He nodded, slowly. “So… you packin’ tonight or in the mornin’?”

“Tonight,” you replied, standing again with a shaky sigh. “You still gonna check my gear?”

Joel smirked faintly. “Damn right, get the rouger out I’ll clean ‘er for you.”

And just like that, the moment passed—but not forgotten. Not buried. Just quietly folded up and stored between you, like a well-worn blanket you’d both pull out when the nights got too long.

--

four years before

You always felt like the weather was almost taunting; the most beautiful of days could be overclouded with the harshest of emotions, and the harshest of days would be overcast with glee—perhaps, you assumed after a while, it was God’s humor. After all, in a world where your creations morph themselves into cannibalistic tree-like abnormalities, wouldn’t you, as a God, require something to keep the show you watch funny?

And yet, as you lingered under skies that shifted as abruptly as the moods of a capricious deity, you couldn’t shake the feeling that every element was part of an elaborate cosmic punchline. The brilliance of dawn might conceal under its golden glow an unexpected melancholy, while dusk’s deep purples and reds often brought with them a reminder that even decay could be beautiful. It was as though the universe itself delighted in a paradoxical jest—a scenario where profound sorrow twined effortlessly with unbridled joy.

Such as it was on that sun-filled day, the desolate greenscape of what had once been a large, bustling city sprawled before you, a poetic testament to nature’s inexorable reclaiming of human ambition. The urban skeleton, long abandoned to the march of time, was now overcast with the veins of earth—cracks and fissures mapping the rise of wild, unruly greenery that had stealthily woven its way through every crevice of once-proud architecture. The remnants of pavement and forgotten alleyways served as canvases upon which nature painted its slow, deliberate masterpiece.

Beams of light, bold and resolute, pierced through the dense canopy of trees in sporadic intervals, their shafts providing little but precious relief from the relentless summer heat. Each ray illuminated pockets of decay and remnants of history—a rusted sign swaying in a gentle breeze here, a shattered window catching the sun’s gleam there—reminding any observer that even in abandonment, the vestiges of the past could still whisper forgotten stories. The interplay between light and shadow cast intricate patterns on the overgrown facades, as if the city were sharing its silent secrets with the day. 

With a short, measured sigh, you carefully hang the necklace upon the last of the crosses—a lone tribute in a barren memorial, too slight an offering to encompass all the lives lost in the relentless struggle, yet significant enough to avoid attracting any further, ironic power plays from those who thrive in chaos. The bronze pendant caught the sun’s dying rays, its engraved symbol quivering in the wind as if to mock death itself, whispering that even in their silent, dismembered state beneath the soil, the fallen still carried remnants of defiance.

For someone all of 15 years old, you had witnessed more sorrow than most could bear—a harsh education in grief wrought by a world undone. You had lost your mother to a bite, a merciless act of fate that, even in its pre-infected horror, shattered the fragile grasp you held on hope. It was a cruel irony: she had given up everything to chase a promise—a promise that the man who now lay cold and forgotten could save your irredeemable world. Her sacrifice, her desperate leap towards a better future, lingered in your memory like the fading notes of a long-forgotten song.

And then there was Gary Anderson—a doctor who had taken you under his wing, briefly intertwining his fate with yours in a world void of certainty. His care, given when you felt your own blood had abandoned the very idea of you, had been a beacon amidst the desolation. In his quiet acts of kindness, you saw the embers of a humanity that refused to surrender to despair, a courage that blossomed even in the darkest hours. He had trained you in survival, not just in the physical sense, but in the art of carrying on the legacy of hope, even when the world around you had already succumbed to decay.

“Why would he do this?” The words barely registered in your mind, yet you still heard them. You forced yourself to react—a slight turn of the head from your hunched position on the makeshift grave, where bodies had been burned and the dirt hastily overturned to bury the ashes. Names blurred together in your memory—other Fireflies who had stood by that harrowing night when the only hue in the chaos was a relentless, ominous red. Even if their names had slipped away, their grief, raw and uncontained, resonated with you. And if Abigail found comfort in their silent presences, then you, too, would strain to remember every one of them.

“I heard rumors. It was some kid he took that was supposebly—” “That wasn’t true… it’s not possible.”

Your eyes, still adjusting against the glare of a sun that seemed to mock the grim scene, swept over the line of people gathered in muted solidarity. They were scattered like shadows in the brightness of day—each lost soul marked by recent calamities and eternal regrets. As your gaze trailed over to her, a small huff escaped you as you rose unsteadily, wincing as you moved against the bandaged bullet wound on your jeans, the fabric as worn as the weight of your past.

Abigail was older than you, around 16 if memory served right—her stature slight but her resolve unmistakable. Despite the grim chatter that lingered in the air like smoke, your focus was drawn to her. 

“You feeling okay?” You asked, tone carrying the unspoken concern of someone who had weathered too many storms. The look in her eyes was all the answer you needed, so you nodded slowly, tucking your hands into your pockets. “I…I can stay. I’ll stay. Get you guys settled, I mean—it wouldn’t hurt to have someone who could stitch y’all up.” Your attempt at humor was cautious, yet genuine; for a fleeting moment, you saw a spark of light return to her eyes.

Abby shook her head firmly. “You need to leave. We can’t both be fatherless—that would just be pathetic.” The words stung, and your eyes widened in a silent plea for reassurance. Sensing your discomfort, she softened her tone with a groan. “Fuck you, man, that was a good dead dad joke.”

You managed a small laugh, the sound brittle yet sincere. “Oh, thank God; yeah, no, that was good.” You ran a hand over your face, trying to dismiss the pain behind your smile. “But I’m serious—I’ll stay, help get you all settled. I feel…fuck, Gale, I feel like I can’t leave now. You… you’re basically all I got, and if—”

“You know I’m not coming with you,” she interrupted softly, the finality in her voice echoing the truth of your shared losses.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. Even though Jackson is suuuper nice and there are cookies, and there's a wall, so it's safe, and my Aunt Maria is kinda cool—” You started in a half-joking tone.

“Sparrow,” she reminded you, her voice laced with both affection and exasperation.

“Right, sorry, Jackson is always open for you guys, Gale.” You repeated, the words a familiar refrain in your endless attempts to drag fleeting moments of normalcy out of desolation. Every conversation felt like a desperate negotiation with fate—if only you could humor the memory of Gary and the rest of the Fireflies long enough to leave, grab a truck or a horse, go back, get your uncle, and then maybe... then maybe. But he hadn’t come for you. It was safer to assume he was gone forever. Either way, Jackson was the closest thing you had to family.

“I’m serious. I don’t want to wake up in 30 years and think, ‘God, I wonder what happened to Gale.’”

“Bold of you to assume you’d make it to thirty years,” she teased, the irony of the moment hanging between you like a fragile truce.

You scoffed lightly, “Shut up. I’ll make it to sixty years old, just you watch—and it’d be nice if you popped by so I knew that you too made it past that prehistoric age.”

A long silence stretched out, filled only by the distant rustle of wind in the ruined trees and the soft murmurs of other survivors tending to their wounds. Then Abby’s eyes softened further, and she nodded. “Yeah. Of course, I’ll come by.”

“Okay.” The word hung in the air, laden with promises too heavy for one generation to uphold on its own. You exhaled slowly as you met Gale’s steady gaze, the unspoken understanding between you palpable against the weight of a world crumbling into dusk.

“I…I guess I should go, the horse is ready and I need to get out of the city before nightfall.” Your voice carried a blend of urgency and quiet resignation—a reminder that every moment wasted in this broken landscape increased the risk of yet another nightmare. The distant lowing of the horse, patiently waiting in the murky edge of the makeshift camp, underscored the relentless march of time toward darkness.

“That’s smart. You got guns? Ammo?” Abby asked, her tone a mixture of genuine concern and the dry humor that had become your shared lifeline in a world where such trivialities could mean the difference between life and death. The question, though simple, resonated like a mantra in the face of unyielding uncertainty.

You managed a wry, deadpan smile, shaking your head as if to ward off the grim inevitability of fate. “No.” Then, with a slight tilt of your head that betrayed both pride and fatigue, you added, “Not stupid, Gale. Course I do.” The brief interjection carried the irony of a desperate world—where survival often meant defying expectations even when resources were scant.

Abby’s eyes softened at your response, the corners crinkling with a mix of worry and reluctant admiration. “Don’t get bit, Sparrow.” Her words were both a command and a benediction—a small spark of warmth amid the encroaching gloom of an unforgiving reality.

A chuckle, dark and full of brittle humor, escaped you. “Wasn’t counting on it.” The remark wasn’t so much a joke as a bitter acknowledgment: in a landscape where every shadow hid potential peril, every step was a gamble with fate. Yet, within that irony lay a stubborn ember of defiance—a promise to fight for another day, against all odds.

With a small nod you take a step away and you look to your side, just to see everyone staring at you, “Uh…Innvation is open? But, I really-” You take a quick look to Abby, who simply nods and you look back to them, “Stay safe, guys.” 

It was always terrfifying on how easy it is to turn around and walk away from something, especially when you know that you probably will never see them again.