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chapter one: lonesome fugitive chapter two: prairie fire chapter three: i ain’t living long like this chapter four: east bound and down chapter five: the future’s not what it used to be chapter six: runnin’ kind chapter seven: highwayman chapter eight: pancho & lefty chapter nine: branded man chapter ten: a girl I used to know

archive of our own

masterlist

chapter one: lonesome fugitive chapter two: prairie fire chapter three: i ain’t living long like this chapter four: east bound and down chapter five: the future’s not what it used to be chapter six: runnin’ kind chapter seven: highwayman chapter eight: pancho & lefty chapter nine: branded man chapter ten: a girl I used to know chapter eleven: big iron chapter twelve: if loneliness can kill me chapter thirteen: wildfire chapter fourteen: down here where I am chapter fifteen: the master’s call chapter sixteen: nothing i can do about it now chapter seventeen: five feet high and rising chapter eighteen: smoke along the track chapter nineteen: a penny for your thoughts chapter twenty: devil’s right hand chapter twenty-one: live fast, love hard, die young chapter twenty-two: slow movin' outlaw

extras

Kiddo, it don’t matter if you’re down ten to one. Never let them know they broke you.

The movement sends an electric shock of pain through your chest, punching the breath from your lungs. You’re sure you look something awful. You can feel the split in your lip, the swelling of your eye socket, a warm wetness seeping across your torso. Damn it. You’d thought the bleeding had stopped.

A shout. Someone on the top of the fence calls to your captors. You flinch, but mercifully manage to keep your hands on the saddle’s horn. Still, the small movement is enough to jostle the hem of your sleeve up—just enough to show the world the bracelet of angry, red scar tissue. Despite the instinct to cover it—to hide your vulnerabilities—you leave the sleeve where it is. With all eyes on you, any movement would be tracked. Tracking would draw attention. Better to hide your vulnerabilities in plain sight.

The fence’s gate slides open slowly, grating against the snowy ground. The sound sets your teeth on edge. There’s movement in the corner of your eye as one of your captors swings down from his saddle and pulls off his hat in one smooth motion, revealing black hair that twists and curls against the nape of his neck. He hooks his rifle strap over his shoulder and grabs his mount’s lead before pulling a red bandana from one of the bags strung to the mount’s tack. With a harsh whistle, he raises the bandana over his head, waving it back and forth.

Another shout from the fence, incomprehensible over the grating of the opening gate. Then, what you think might be barking. Fuck, these assholes have dogs. Shit. Getting away was gonna be harder than you’d anticipated. Moments ago, you’d only needed to find three things: a gun, a reliable horse, and a solid escape route. Now, you needed to find something to throw the damn dogs off your scent.

Movement at the mouth of the gate, and your eyes snap to it. A man and a dog, pulling at the leash. FEDRA mutts never pulled—they were trained too well for that. But this dog, some sort of oversized beast of an animal, barks and jumps and pulls, its handler stumbling behind it.

The man with the bandana—the group’s leader, as far as you can tell—laughs. “Hey’a, Buck.” He leans down, rubbing the beast’s head with a gentle hand before unclipping his lead and pointing at you. Your stomach flips. “Check.”

The dog jumps forward at the command, eager to bite into your tender flesh. When he reaches your foot in the stirrup, your Daddy’s lessons fly from your mind and you act on instinct. With a screech, you kick the dog squarely in the snout. It yelps, but doesn’t give up, snarling and scratching at the ground as it prepares to pounce again. You rear your foot up, ready for its attack. Your hands grasp empty air, your standard-issue sidearm confiscated and currently sitting in the waistband of the group’s leader. You would glare at him for leaving you defenseless, but taking your eyes off the dog would be a mistake.

Instead, you grind your teeth and speak, low. “Call off your fuckin’ dog, ‘fore I call him off for you.” Your Texas drawl is thick as grits, a clear sign of your agitation.

You don’t see the leader’s reaction so much as hear it. A scoff, the shuffle of boots—then, footsteps. Snow crunches until his toes reach your peripheral vision. “Can’t call him off ‘til we know you’re not infected.”

“I’m not fuckin’ infected, you moron.” The dog drops lower to the ground, growling. “It’s a gunshot wound, not a bite.” He should know. He’s the idiot that shot you. Your hand drifts to your ribs, careful to move slow and not set the fucking dog off. Still wet, still bleeding. Fuck. Right-sided rib shot, bleeding like a stuck pig. You know he hit your liver, and it’s the only reason you agreed to follow him to his community. Sounded more like a prison to you, all cooped up inside the ugly fence with mandatory labor and food rations. But even the FEDRA prisons had medical supplies, and you sure as hell need to get stitched up.

“Wouldn’t’ve had to shoot you if you hadn’t tried to stab me,” he offers with a shrug. You don’t point out that you tried to stab him because his little gang of assholes had pinned you into a building after killing off your entire squad. “‘Sides, it’s standard protocol, ‘specially for newcomers like yourself.”

Standard protocol. FEDRA’s favorite phrase. You stiffen in your saddle but this time, it’s not your Daddy’s voice you hear, it’s Sarge’s.

Get that back straight, Einstein, or you’ll be doing another twenty laps.

You never liked being a soldier. It wasn’t what you were made for. But FEDRA conscription training had been beaten into you, and suddenly, you were twenty-six again, receiving orders from a commander you hated, unable to disobey. You glare at the dog, still unwilling to break eye contact with the stupid fucking animal, but you hope the group’s leader knows the glare is for him.

He snorts. “Alright, spitfire. You gon’ let my dog sniff ya or do I hafta shoot ya again?”

You wish he’d stop talking. His Texas twang feels like a bullet straight through the heart, reminding you of childhood in the Hill Country, of the mountain laurel trees, the bluebonnets, the smell of prairie grass in the heat of summer. The snow around you now gleams bright under the midday sun, a reminder of just how far you were from a home you’d never see again.

“Think I’ll take my chances with the dog.” Your voice is tight. “You’re a lousy fuckin’ shot.” The last thing you want is a slow death. At least the dog would be quick. Around you, the other riders you’d traveled with grumble, and you can feel their agitation, their restlessness. Your hesitation scares them. A sick smile almost manages to crack your lips. Good. They should be scared of you.

“Naw, you only saw me with my six-shooter.” He moves in the corner of your eye and you think you see him pat his rifle. “Sweet pea, here? I could hit you square between the eyes from a half-mile out.”

What the fuck did he scope that rifle with? You add it to your checklist. Get a gun (preferably his), a reliable horse, a solid escape route, something to throw the dogs off your scent. The dog is still tucked low, growling at you as you repeat the list in your mind like a mantra. These captors aren’t like one you’ve met before. They didn’t drag you here against your will—they’d shot you, and then offered kindness. Medical care. Help. That kindness scared you more than the bullet did.

“Alright, Buck, that’s enough.” The leader steps closer to your mount, hands inching toward his rifle, ready to shoot if the dog gave him the signal. Fuck. Should’ve just bit the bullet—literally—and asked to be shot up front, if it was always gonna be the end result. “Check.”

The dog lunges forward, front paws jumping up to rest on the horse’s flank. To its credit, your mount doesn’t flinch. It's well trained, even if the fucking dog isn’t. The dog’s nose pushes against your ankle, snuffling at the shredded fabric of your fatigue pants. Your heart pounds in your chest as Buck whines, nose digging for the scent of infection. The dog searches for so long, you’re starting to consider the possibility that you may be infected, that somehow the fungus had mutated and found a new way to spread. You had no bites, no contact with infected blood, nothing. Unless the stuff was in the air, you were safe, and FEDRA had made it very clear that the fungus couldn’t transmit any way other than blood or bites. Or infected food…

You shudder. The amount of devastation from the contamination of the food supply had been instant. A week of distribution was all it took before the world came crashing down. Still, people had survived. Enough of them had, at least. And then the attacks started. People going feral, all teeth and fangs, any trace of humanity gone from their eyes.

You know the statistics. One hundred percent transmission rates by bite and blood. Ninety eight percent by food. In all your years in labs and hospitals, it was by far the most contagious infection you’d ever seen. The only saving grace of the Cordyceps outbreak was that when the fungus mutated, spreading from ants to humans, it lost the ability to produce spores. Instead, it relied almost entirely on the aggression of its host bodies to spread.

The dog yipped once, before dropping away from your mount’s side and sitting, the very tip of its tail twitching in an almost-wag. You can almost feel the sigh of relief from the riders around you, as the dog declares you un-infected.

“Good boy,” the leader said, giving the dog a pat. “Hank, wanna take him back in?”

The dog’s handler scurries forward, leash in hand, and clips the dog up before leading him back to the gate. Unlike before, when it pulled and tugged and jumped, it walks calmly, keeping a perfect heel. Hmm. Maybe the dogs were better trained than your thought. Maybe they weren’t supposed to be leashed for check protocol, and the handler made a mistake. Was he new at his post? You like the thought of that. Untrained personnel would make your escape that much easier. Get the leader’s gun, a horse, an escape route, and something to throw off the dogs.

You glower at the leader before eyeing his rifle. It’s nothing special, just a solid hunting model, wooden stock with a base kit. The scope, though… that’s different. His half-mile estimation probably wasn’t too far off. He smiles at you, bright and unbothered, as if he hadn’t backed you into a corner, shot you, then promised food, shelter, and medical assistance if you came with his group. You still didn't know why, or what his group wanted with you. You had your suspicions, though.

“Well, looks like you’re good to go. Maria should be right inside—she’s in charge of things ‘round here. She’ll help you bandage up.” He swings back up into his saddle with practiced ease.

Maria. A woman’s name. It startles you, though you don’t let it show. You know how these groups operate. They declare an area their land, settle onto it, and kill or kidnap anyone who happens to be unlucky enough to stumble across them. Women are generally exempt from the killing rule, our bodies reserved for something worse than death. Your wrists burn as you push away unpleasant memories. There are no good people out in the wilderness—not anymore. The scars littering your body are proof enough of that.

Still, even you have to admit, this… prison of theirs, this compound hidden in the middle of nowhere, stashed away in plain sight—it’s impressive. Your group passes through the gate and comes to a stop, and the leader slips from his mount, disappearing into a throng of people with an instruction for the group to wait.

You glance around, taking stock of your surroundings. They’ve got electricity, and strings of lightbulbs crisscross overhead, casting a warm, yellow glow onto the streets, the snow cleared away and shoved into narrow alleys between what looks to be shops. Actual fucking shops. With real glass in the windows instead of warped, rotten plywood boards covered in graffiti.

It's a fucking town, you realize with a start. Not a compound. Not a QZ. An actual fucking town.

“Shit.” The word comes out of your mouth in a breath, a puff of vapor clinging to your lips in the winter air.

One of the riders in your group smiles at that, cheeks flushed with pride. “Cool, right?”

You don’t answer. Your eyes dance down the street, taking in all the people wandering around, unguarded. Laughing, smiling. Kids—kids—chase each other, throwing snowballs and playful insults through the air without a care in the world.

“I’m Jesse, by the way.” The smiling rider moves his horse closer to yours. Your instincts hitch, muscles tensing, nostrils flaring, eyes widening. You pull your horse back a step, an equal-opposite reaction to Jesse’s intrusion, and his hands go up. “Just trying to be polite.”

Polite. It’s a foreign concept in a world of raiders and infected.

“‘Polite’ would’a been giving me your name the day I joined your group.” Your voice is pure ice, like the snow blanketing the landscape. “‘Polite’ would’a been giving your me your name the day your boss gut-shot me.”

“Those were the same day.” Jesse frowned, toying with his reins. You don’t know why he bothers splitting that particular hair. Irritation flashes in your chest. “Besides, it’s not like you were exactly interested in talking with any of us.”

“Oh right, sorry, I forgot I’m supposed to be polite to the people who fucking shot me.”

“We could have killed you, you know.” It’s a statement, not a question.

You scoff, a low, ugly grumble in the back of your throat. “Not without losing a few more of your men.”

Hurt flashes across his face as you dredge up the memory. His people, your people. Both dead. Bodies collapsed on the ground of the burnt-out lecture hall in the backwoods about thirty miles west of his little town. You’d lost more and the memory hurts you, but you push past it. Y'all hadn’t been close, just a group of misfits and escapees who’d banded together in a lonely world. You weren’t mourning friends, you were mourning the absence of loneliness. You sit up straighter, staring Jesse down, refusing to flinch at the strain across your ribs.

A new voice cuts across the street, and you and Jesse break eye contact, heads swiveling to find the speaker. “Welcome back, everyone.” A woman cuts through the crowd, trailed by the group’s leader. This must be Maria. “Stable your horses, then make your way to my office to give report.” Her dark eyes take stock of the group. Eight horses, six of her people, and you. She stares at you, a frown tugging at her brows.

A grumble, then resigned movement as the riders lead their horses down the street. You go to follow, more on instinct than anything else.

Maria’s voice cuts again. “Not you.”

You stop, hackles raising, eyes darting back to her face. She’s a beautiful woman, sure, with dark brown skin and locs, but there’s something else about her that commands attention. Her demeanor holds the usual pragmatism of a leader, and it almost reminds you of the various FEDRA commanders you’ve been forced to serve over the years. But there’s something else there, something… warm, almost. You frown, puzzling it over. This world is cold, and warmth is weakness. Someone willing to show a stranger warmth must have been very stupid indeed.

Or very safe. Your mind whispers the argument. If someone knows you can’t hurt them, why would they bother to protect themselves.

Her gaze falls to your ribs and your hands go to shield yourself from view. The makeshift bandage, nothing more than a few rags strapped to your torso with some ancient duct tape someone had scrounged up, had slipped, the wetness of your blood loosening the tape’s grip on your skin. Red had soaked your through your old coat, showing everyone exactly how injured—how vulnerable—you were.

“Leave your horse with Tommy.” Maria waves to the black-haired leader next to her. “Let’s get you patched up.” She turns on her heels and walks off. You blink, but your trained body acts on instinct, sliding out of the saddle and handing your reins to Tommy before following the town’s commander-in-chief to wherever the fuck she was taking you.

As you walk away, Tommy cups his hands to his mouth and shouts after you, “Welcome to Jackson!”

You ignore him. He ain’t your friend. Not in this world.

The room doesn’t seem very Cannibal Chic, though. It’s bare, with butter yellow wallpaper and white trim. No decorations hang on the walls, and there’s an old, wooden dinner table serving as a desk near the door. Everything is clean, cleaner than you’re used to. Even in the QZ, with the sanitation crews and maintenance laborers, there was always a fine layer of dust coating every surface, sand tracked into every entryway. This room, though? It’s spotless. Sure, the wallpaper is faded, giving away its age, and the concrete floor has a narrow crack stretching from the door to the sidewall, but it’s obviously been well maintained. Loved, even. The metal fixtures gleam, as though someone took the time to polish them. You have a hard time wrapping your mind around the idea of loving a room. You’re so used to buildings being a resource, you’ve almost forgotten what it means to care for a home.

Doc huffs and rolls her eyes at you before striding to the corner to wash up at a small sink. There’s a low hum in the room, emanating from a mini-fridge next to the sink. Maria appraises you, lips pursed before seeming to decide that you aren’t gonna move on your own. Stepping forward, she wraps a gentle hand around your arm, and you flinch away, ripping yourself from her grip and twisting to glare at her.

Concern flashes in her eyes and her hand falls to her side. You prepare for it to curl into a fist, to slam into the side of your head, but it doesn’t. There’s no sign of aggression at all, actually. It’s a remarkably sedated reaction on her part, and it makes your stomach churn. Is she used to this? How many other captive women has Tommy brought into this town? How many people have they promised care and shelter to? What strings does their aid come with?

“Lay down,” Doc barks. “Jacket and shirt off.”

You remove your old, bloodstained jacket before the command fully processes in your mind, letting it fall to the floor in a puddle of tan and scarlet. Your hands drift to the hem of your worn fatigue shirt. It’s ancient, barely more than a loose network of patches and threads, the same shirt you wore when you went MIA all those years ago. You don’t want to take it off, don’t want to reveal the exact extent of your damage. You know you’re fucked up. Doesn’t mean Maria needs to know, too. There’s no reason to give your enemies ammunition, especially when you’re vulnerable, and Maria is certainly your enemy.

Maria misinterprets your hesitation. “I’ll give you some privacy.” She dips out of the clinic’s door, and through the frosted glass, you see her frame lean casually to block the entrance, arms crossed.

Her consideration, it’s odd. Unexpected. It makes you nervous. Skittish. The kindness must be a ruse. A way to trick you into complacency, to make you more accepting of… something. Whatever they’ve got planned for you, they seem to take the catch flies with honey, not vinegar approach.

“Shirt. Off. Now.” Doc is an asshole. You almost appreciate the honesty in her tactlessness. Almost.

You steel yourself, mechanically undoing the buttons and letting the shirt fall to the ground. Left in nothing more than your bra, pants, and boots, you sit on the mattress, scooting yourself back to lay down completely. On your back, staring at the ceiling, you feel exposed. Like a trapped animal, your limbs tighten, ready to throw you from the bed at the first sign of danger. Your breathing shallows, your pulse quickens, your eyes dart around the room, scanning for any intrusion.

Doc moves to your side, dragging an old wooden chair with her. It scrapes across the floor, reedy and unpleasant. She swings it around and plops into the seat, rolling up her sleeves. “Got yourself good, didn’t you?” You don’t argue, don’t bring up Tommy. You’re tired of thinking about him, about your injury.

Doc leans forward, inspecting your ribs with a steely expression. She wears wire-rimmed glasses with a beaded chain that dangles and wraps around her neck, disappearing into the mountain of stone-gray curls pulled away from her face with a stained headband. With a hard finger, she pokes your ribs.

A strangled groan breaks past your tight lips, giving away your secret—you’re in pain. Scared. Trapped. She frowns and her lips purse in concentration as she continues to palpate over your injury. Your ribs burn, and you know in that moment, Tommy fucked up more than just your liver. You’d been praying his shot had angled just right, that the bullet had managed to slip past your bones without shattering them, but as her hands press across the injury, you know: this doctor’s visit is gonna end with you losing some important parts.

Your suspicions are confirmed when Doc announces you’ve got two shattered ribs. “Now, we’ve got a couple options…” Her voice fades as she pokes a particularly sore spot, and your vision goes fuzzy.

A crack next to your ear, and then the smell of death assaults your nose. You sit bolt upright, the screaming in your ribs muffled by the sudden adrenaline coursing through your veins. “What the fuck is that?” You throw an arm over your nose, gagging, as you see the small, white container in her hands. Are those fucking smelling salts?

Doc clicks the container closed and tucks it into the pocket of her flannel shirt. “Can’t have you passing out on me just yet.” She leans forward, hand outstretched, reaching for your ribs again. You shy away, heart still racing.

“Relax,” she says, hand dropping to rest on your knee. You want to shove it off. “I’m just doing my job.”

You want to grumble. No, you want to yell. You’ve had a terrible fucking day. All your friends are dead, you’ve got a bullet somewhere in your abdomen, and two shattered ribs. Hopefully, there’s some sort of narcotic waiting for you around the corner because if you aren’t sedated for the removal, you just might snap. Instead, you cover your injury with your hand, eyeing Doc carefully.

You know you’re being an idiot. The whole reason you came with Tommy and his group willingly was for a doctor. But something about the day you’ve had and the kindness your captors keep offering adds insult to injury. Your gaze must shift because Doc’s eyes soften, and she leans back in her chair, pulling her hand away. Something in your chest loosens, and you take a steadying breath through your nose.

“Alright,” Doc says, “let’s try a different approach.” She reaches forward, and for a moment, you think this is it, this is when they take the mask off. You expect her to grab you, to hold you down, to knock you out and do whatever the fuck it is they’re planning to do with you. After all, it’s happened before.

But Doc’s hand passes by you, reaching under the bed to retrieve a notebook and pen. Clearing her throat, she crosses her legs and rests the notebook on her lap, opening it and setting the pen to paper. “Tell me, how much have you pissed since you got shot?”

What the actual fuck? You squirm. You know why she’s asking—she’s checking on kidney function—but for the love of God, why is everyone in this town so fucking weird about everything? You mumble an answer, and your cheeks flame. She rolls her eyes and writes something down, bitching under her breath about patient shyness. Irritation flares in your gut at the insinuation that you’re an idiot, that you don’t understand a differential diagnosis or the organs at risk in your body. But you keep your indignation to yourself. You haven’t figured this town out enough yet to know if making yourself useful would be a blessing or a curse. On the one hand, being useful means they might not kill you as quickly. On the other hand, being useful means they might hold onto you tighter, force you fully into servitude. With your expertise, you’d probably end up working for Doc, and you’re not sure you want her as a boss.

Besides, you’re not a doctor. Before the world ended, you were a medical scientist. You knew the human body inside and out, and knew exactly how to test for anything wrong with it. Then, chaos erupted in the form of a deadly infection, and the world turned hard. Medicine was useless against a disease with a one hundred percent transmittance and one hundred percent mortality. The hospitals were overwhelmed, and you remember the fear. Patients breaking through glass windows, tearing your coworkers apart. The hum of the chemistry analyzers disappeared under the terrified screams. You’d been lucky to get out alive, you’d thought at the time. Then, the government shut down the hospitals. There was no point in treating an incurable disease, and the ERs were turning into ground zero’s for infection spread, and you realized your luck had been a curse.

Martial law was declared, for the safety of the people. The QZ’s came next, the military setting up ringed quarantine zones around cities they deemed saveable, before dividing the zones further into sections and subsections. Then, something happened in the government. You’d never learned the exact details; you just saw the change. One day, the National Guard held the keys to the city, managing the population of the QZ. The next, their familiar camo uniforms were replaced with black fatigues, their US ARMY patches replaced with FEDRA ones. You knew then, America was gone. Any hope of things returning to normal disappeared along with the camo.

Then, the conscription started. Soldiers were needed to fight infected. The willing ones had joined immediately in the fallout, but over time, the fight had killed many of them. Their numbers were dwindling, and without enough soldiers to fight infected and maintain an iron grip over the QZ’s population, FEDRA was desperate for people. You were among the first to be forced to join, on your knees and with the threat of a bullet in the back of your skull. And so, at twenty-six years old, you exchanged your lab coat for fatigues, and joined the ranks of the dictatorship that had ousted the president. Two years into the outbreak, and you were nothing more than a pawn. A warm body to throw at the infection ravaging the world.

Looking back, you wish you’d let them shoot you. It would’ve been easier then, before the world weighed you down. Now, you’ve been through too much. All the pain, all the suffering, all the sacrifice. It has to have meant something.

Doc clears her throat, yanking you back to the little room with the yellow wallpaper. “You’re pretty restless.” She raises an eyebrow, appraising you.

She’s looking for hemodynamic instability, trying to assess how likely you are to survive your liver injury. Any sign that you’re not worth the effort to save. Still, you’re annoyed. Of course, you’re restless. Who wouldn’t be? “You can’t really think that’s relevant right now.”

“Is it?”

You hold her gaze for a moment, before shaking your head.

“Good.” She writes something on her paper. “You seem fine mentally. Restlessness aside.”

“Thanks.” You’re being sardonic. You should be more polite. The doctor is the most understandable, if unlikeable, person you’ve met so far in this weird town. Straightforward and blunt. “What’s your differential?”

The curiosity is clear on her face. “You’re a doctor?”

Asking had been a mistake. Curiosity led to questions; questions led to danger. At least you don’t lie when you shake your head. “Just spent some time around them.” Good. That was vague enough.

You can see she wants to ask more questions, but decides against it. “Obviously, I don’t have radiology or lab here, so any medicine I practice has to be done old-school.” You bite back the questions bubbling at your tongue. “Liver trauma and shattered ribs. I can’t ascertain kidney damage until you piss for me. You noticed any blood?” You shake your head. Not that you’ve been checking. You’ve been a little distracted. Doc hums, satisfied. “As it stands, if your kidneys are fucked, you’re fucked. Way I see it, we go ahead and remove the ribs and the bullet, stitch your liver up.”

That made sense, even if it sounded fucking awful. God, this was the sort of thing you’d see in an old action movie. The hero gets injured, has to perform bathtub surgery on themselves, before going to save the day. It’s a funny thought—you’re no hero, after all—but the joke dies when you think about the reality of what Doc is saying. You’re gonna lose some ribs. Sure, it could be worse. You could be dead. But it’s not ideal, either.

“I’m fresh out of dissolvable stitches, so we’ll pack your injury and leave your side open for a few days, give your liver time to heal. Sew you up after we remove your liver sutures.”

Definitely not ideal. You’ve seen patients get left open before, usually when the wounds needed to drain. But that was in a world of IV antibiotics and NSAIDs, not this one. Infection risk is high here, especially with your liver exposed. You’ll have to wait for your side to get stitched up before you can escape. You can survive a lot of things—sepsis in the wilderness is not one of them. Fuck, you were gonna be here a lot longer than you’d anticipated.

“Please tell me I’m gettin’ knocked out for this.”

A smile tugs at her lips for the first time. “I’ve got oxy or special K, take your pick.”

You don’t remember the shelf life of oxy, but you’re pretty sure ketamine doesn’t last long. Whatever supply they’ve got, it was made within the past few years, and the only facilities still producing any pharmaceuticals belong to FEDRA. Your shoulders hunch as wariness settles over you. How’d they get FEDRA drugs out here?

She notes your sudden tension, and writes something down in her notebook. Anxiety, no doubt. Another symptom of hemodynamic instability, another reason for her to think you won’t live long. You want to scream. Instead, you clamp your tongue, force your shoulders to relax.

She taps the pen on the paper, looking back at you. “One of our community members has some… unique experience, shall we say, with sourcing medications.” Unique experience is a hell of a sugarcoat on former smuggler. “No one died in our acquisition of supply.”

You knew a few smugglers back in the QZ. They were always whip smart—had to be, the idiots got caught—and the worst to deal with. Some of your fellow soldiers would trade with them, ration cards for the good pills, things like that. The smugglers usually knew not to push boundaries too much with the soldiers—didn’t want to put FEDRA targets on their backs—but occasionally, a soldier known for dealing would turn up dead in some back alley, pockets emptied and a bullet in their skull. The memory of danger makes you nauseous, your fingers balling into fists. Still, if the town’s source was a former smuggler, that meant the drugs were definitely FEDRA made.

You mull over your choices. Oxy or ketamine… neither were great. The whole fucking procedure was decidedly not great though, so you suppose you’ll have to get over it. No point in mourning a few ribs when the alternative was ending up alone, six feet under.

“Ketamine.” The choice is easy when you know the meds are quality. Your personal issues with FEDRA aside, at least you know they make the good shit.

“Good choice.” Doc turns, reaching to open the mini-fridge behind her and selecting a FEDRA standard-issue vial. From under the bed, she produces a box filled with injection supplies. “Lie down. Let’s get this show on the road.”

You’re floating, but you’re not. You’re still in the same room, still laying on the mattress next to Doc, but you’re not. She’s talking, you’re pretty sure. There are words drifting in the air, but you can’t grab them. They pop, like bubbles, disappearing into nothingness as something touches your ribs.

You know you feel pain. You know your ribs are on fire. But the sensation is foreign. Disconnected. Your mind can’t wrap itself around anything, can’t grab the slippery threads of any feeling, any sensation.

It’s the best you’ve felt in years.

The losses of the past week, the loneliness threatening to overtake you, the fear of finding yourself locked in captivity again—all of that disappears, smoke drifting toward the ceiling, dissipating into the vents above.

The mattress beneath you draws you in, and you sink, letting the gravity pull you deeper and deeper as time shifts, forward and backward, up and down. Time trips and stumbles as Doc works. It collapses and expands, and you remember a physics lecture from another life. Gravity bends time, changes the very structure of the universal order, bends the laws of physics so completely, physicists had to rewrite them entirely.

So this is why the other soldiers put up with the smugglers. It’s the only coherent thought you can hold onto. This feeling of lightness, the gravity of the mattress sucking you in, everything else melts away. You don’t forget about Cordyceps or FEDRA or the death and destruction you’ve come to wear as a second skin, but you can’t feel the weight of the burden anymore. Like the pain you know is in your ribs, you can’t reach the heaviness of despair. You don’t want to reach it. So you let it go, and it floats away, motes of rainbow dust spinning in the air. You understand why the other soldiers would risk their lives, trade everything for a taste of this moment. This freedom from everything.

You don’t know how much time passes. For an eternity, Doc works her way through your ribs, pulling and pushing and tugging and stitching. The sensations are there, but they’re not. You don’t bother reaching for them, letting the control slip from your body in a way you know should terrify you, but it doesn’t. Nothing can reach you in this bed. Nothing.

And then, Doc is gone. She was never there. There is pain in your ribs, and there was never pain. There was loss, but no aching hole in your chest to match. You are whole, for the first time since the outbreak. You drift, eyes fluttering. Someone speaks, but the words… you can’t. You try to raise your hand, to reach for the words, to grab them, but the gravity beneath you is so heavy. So comforting. So warm.

Gravity wraps around you, tendrils of comfort tugging you under, and you sleep peacefully for the first time in decades.

Words again, this time sharp. Angry. Deep. Not Doc. You frown. Sleep had been so peaceful. The intruder is ruining something perfect.

“…spilled somethin’…” The deep voice again, a rumble. Your body is starting to wake up, instincts beginning to flare. You shouldn’t trust a deep voice. Still, your muscles are slow to respond. They don’t tighten, don’t flinch away. You will them into action, but they don’t listen.

“I don’t know, man!” A kid’s voice this time. “It was one of the fuckin’ kitchen cleaners!”

You frown. Good, some muscles are responding. Your eyes squeeze tight, and you’re not sure if it’s irritation or fear. At least it’s something.

Doc’s voice. “Hop up, let me look.”

A shuffle, a thump. Fabric… squishing? Moving? Like someone pushing up a sleeve or pulling aside a shirt. You track the sound, counting the people in the room. There’s Doc, Deep Voice, and Kid. But there’s another, too. You concentrate, honing in on the sound of weight transferring from one foot to the other, of fabric rustling, of soft breathing. There’s four people in the room, five including you.

A whistle. “Damn, kid. That’s impressive.” Doc.

“I know, right?” There’s pride in Kid’s voice. Like she thinks something’s cool. “Isn’t it gross?”

Doc laughs. There’s a sigh, you think it’s from Deep Voice. It’s a mix, exasperation and affection, all laced into one little breath. Your hands clench. Good. Your muscles are coming back under your control. As subtly as you can, you test your body, trying not to show the room you’re awake. You want to let yourself get full control before they know you can hear them. You squeeze your hands, feeling the strength returning. Wiggle your toes in your boots. Tense your thighs, your arms, your torso.

Pain rips through you, drawing a gasp. You hope no one heard it.

Footsteps. Shit. Someone, you think it’s Mystery Person, strides across the room. There’s a noise as they settle into the chair Doc had used earlier. “You awake?”

It’s Maria. So much for her giving you privacy.  You suppose you don’t need it anymore, now that Doc has fixed you up. You know you can’t lie, though. Your face is scrunched in pain, breathing ragged.

“Ketamine’s wearing off,” Doc calls. “There’s an oxy tab on the fridge for her.”

A shuffle. Something presses to your mouth. A straw. You wrap your lips around it without thinking, taking a sip of cool water. Swallowing hurts.

“I didn’t go to all that trouble to get those pills just for you to waste them on strangers.” Deep Voice grumbles.

“Ignore him.” Maria says softly, her hand brushing against your forehead. You think she’s checking your temperature. “He may be an asshole, but he’s harmless.”

“Nuh uh,” Kid pipes up. “A big ol’ softie, maybe, but not harmless.”

Deep Voice makes a strangled noise at that assertion, but doesn’t argue. You imagine he’s rolling his eyes at Kid.

Maria snorts. “Fine, not harmless. But we won’t let him hurt you.” She takes the straw away, and touches your hand, uncurling the fingers to put something in your palm. Small, round.  A pill. “Take that.”

You go to follow orders, clench your hand around the pill and tense your arm, but the movement sends a shock of pain through your chest. You gasp, and the pain worsens, eyes flying open. Maria’s face greets you, eyes full of the same pragmatic warmth you seen earlier.

She’s got an old Coke bottle filled with water in her hands, a hole punched through the plastic cap with a straw running through it. She puts the bottle on top of the fridge, and leans toward you but otherwise doesn’t touch you. You’re thankful for that. “Can you do it on your own?”

You don’t respond. You can’t. You open your mouth, but the words don’t come.

“She’s still coming down from her trip,” Doc throws out. You don’t lift your head to look at her, your gaze caught on Maria’s face. Light streams from the frosted window of the door behind her, framing her silhouette. The edges of her locs glow golden-orange, a soft hearthfire. She really is beautiful. Beauty is a dangerous thing in this world. So many people are desperate to desecrate beauty, to tear it down, sell it for parts. You wonder how she’s survived this long, how she’s kept the warmth in her eyes.

“What’d you give her?” Kid asks. “Can I have some?”

“Absolutely not.” Deep Voice shuts that down instantly. He must be her father. Who else would care that much?

“Aw, come on!” There’s movement, rustling, like Kid’s waving an arm. “Look how bad this is. I totally need something to knock me out.”

“What, can’t handle a little surface burn?” Deep Voice’s tone turns teasing, but stern. “Might hafta rethink lettin’ you go on patrols. You could get a papercut or somethin’ out there.”

Kid groans, and an argument ensues between her and Deep Voice. It’s light and fun, and takes you back to better days. Deep Voice’s accent is subtle, but there. Texas. Warm breezes and bonfires and rolling hills. Home. You breathe deeper, trying to shove down the longing, wishing the ketamine had lasted just a little longer.

Maria’s fingers touch yours lightly, and you don’t flinch. There’s something soft about her, something inviting. You shouldn’t trust her. She’s Tommy’s boss, and Tommy shot you, made it so your only chance at life was to join him. She’s the enemy. She’s evil. She’ll lock you up, tie you down, force you to work.

And she’s looking at you with genuine concern. Not concern for a possession, like some of your captors have before. Concern for a person.

“Let me help.” Her voice is soft and kind, but it’s still an order. It’s an odd mixture, one you’re not used to. You’re used to one or the other. To harsh orders and barked commands. Softness is punished, kindness extinguished. You know how to respond to someone who gives orders out of a desire for control. You don’t know how to react to orders given from a place of kindness.

Your hands go limp, fingers loosening. Maria pulls the pill from your grasp and retrieves the Coke bottle, bringing it to your lips again. You sip, holding a bit of water in your mouth.

“Open.”

You do, and she drops the pill onto your tongue. You swallow, wincing at the pain.

“Good.” She leans back, turning toward where Doc, Kid, and Deep Voice are. Still, when she speaks, you know it’s for you. “I have some questions I need to ask you, but I’ll wait until we’re alone. I’ll come back for you in a little bit—show you where you’ll be staying.”

Ah, so this is when the bell tolls for you. You knew it would happen sooner or later. All of this kindness had a price. You wonder idly if you’ll be a standard prisoner, or a laborer. Why did they bring you here? What sort of prison cell awaits for you?

She must see the wariness in your eyes, the tension in your shoulders, because her lips purse. Still, she doesn’t say anything. Good. At least she doesn’t lie. You’d rather have an honest captor than a dishonest friend.

She stands, pushing the chair away from you as she does so. “I’ll be back. We’ll talk then. I’m sure you have questions, too.” She turns to leave, and your eyes follow her form as she goes. When she passes through the door, shutting it behind her with a soft click, you let yourself look at Kid and Deep Voice.

Kid sits perched on the edge of the table at the front of the room, dangling legs swinging back and forth. She’s a cutie, probably about fourteen or fifteen, with a round face and button nose. Her brown hair catches the light, fiery at the edges. Loose strands falls into her eyes, and she pushes it back with a flat palm roughly, the way a kindergartner would.

Deep Voice stands behind her, arms crossed over his chest as he leans against the wall. There’s something familiar about him, but you can’t quite place it. He’s handsome though, with tan skin and salt-and-pepper curls pushed back from his face. He wears a frown, eyes narrowed as he watches Doc work over Kid’s arm, but you catch the subtle twitch in the corner of his mouth every time he looks at Kid. You must’ve been right when you guessed he’s her father, but you’re struck by how different the two of them look. Kid must've taken after her mama.

Kid’s threadbare flannel has one sleeve rolled up, and there’s a gnarly red, mottled burn covering the length of her forearm. She catches you looking at her and smiles, proud, gesturing at the injury with her free hand. “Spilled cleaner on it. Freaked Dina out real good. Doesn’t it look cool?”

You don’t bother to ask who Dina is. Kid's tone, though… she reminds you of yourself as a child, catching toads on the back porch and proudly waving them in your mama’s face. Her disgust, which she’d always purposely overplayed for your enjoyment, had delighted you. You see that same instinct in Kid, the same light in her eyes. There’s something else there, though. Something deeper, hungrier. It’s well hidden behind the jokes and the ostentatiousness, but you can tell—she needs the scar to be… something. You’re not sure what.

“Yup,” you grit out, ribs flaring. “Real cool.” You’re not sure why you bother giving her what she wants. Maybe it’s because she reminds you of yourself. Maybe it’s simply because she’s a kid, and it’s been so long since you’ve seen childlike joy. Maybe you’re just getting soft.

A small wave of lightheadedness. Or maybe the oxy’s kicking in and loosening your tongue.

Whatever the reason, you’re glad you give her what she wants. She smiles, shoulders loosening a little, legs kicking just a little further. “Cool.”

Deep Voice doesn’t move from his position, but his eyes do move to your face. It’s silly, but you feel the urge to cover your injuries, the split lip and swollen eye—not to hide your vulnerabilities, but out of a sense of vanity.

Fucking vanity? Jesus Christ. Why should you care what you look like? It’s the fucking apocalypse, for God’s sake. Vanity’s a luxury you haven’t allowed yourself in years. Why do you care now?

Deep Voice’s eyes drift over your frame, moving from your face to your ribs to your feet. You know that look, and the familiarity of it is both a comfort and a threat. He’s taking stock, measuring you up, trying to ascertain what you’re capable of. You do the same to him. He’s tall, taller than you by a good margin, with broad shoulders and scarred hands. You remember what he said, how he put in effort to get the pills for Doc. He’s the smuggler. Has to be.

The look in his eyes, it lines up. There’s an intelligence there, a calculation you’ve seen before. His muscles are coiled, not tense, but prepared. He’s a fighter, a survivor, and a smart one, at that. You know he’s deadly. He’s got the look most people wear these days, the haunted eyes that say I’ve killed before and I will do it again. A shudder runs down your spine.

The only thing that belies the danger written in every line of his body is the obvious love he has for Kid. It doesn’t make sense to you. Love is weakness, and this man is nothing but strength.

Doc says something under her breath, and Kid laughs. “Fuck yeah!”

“Ellie!” Deep Voice snaps, but there’s no real anger behind his words. You file the name away. “Language.”

Ellie scoffs, rolling her eyes. It’s so simple, a parent chastising a child, but the innocence of her reaction… it’s so quintessentially teenager, you almost laugh. But the oxy is working its way through your system, and your head grows heavy, your reactions slowing. It’s been days since you’ve eaten, and the medication hits your system all at once. You’d taken the drug before the outbreak, years ago after you’d broken your arm skateboarding, and you remember the way it had swelled up over you before, dragging you into an ocean of nothingness. Still, even your teenaged body had handled it better than you are now. Waves of nausea and dizziness crash into you and blackness clouds the edges of your vision.

“She’s fine, Joel.” Doc murmurs as she works over Ellie’s arm. “Lord knows you’ve got a worse mouth than she does.”

Your head sinks back into the mattress, the pain in your ribs dulling. You’re so tired; your muscles loosen and your mind swims. Deep Voice—Joel—chuckles, soft and low, and says something you don’t catch. You shouldn’t fall asleep. There’s danger in the room. You’re in enemy territory.

But you lose the battle against your own body as sleep wraps around you, pulling you under.

Standing is a chore, though. Your pain is mostly gone, but your muscles are stiff and they groan against your efforts. You force yourself to stretch, trying to release the tension by lifting your arms above your head, and you feel the skin over your wound stretch open. It’s not painful exactly, but it is disconcerting enough that you let your hands drop.

“Feeling better?” Maria’s voice makes you jump. She’s sitting in the corner of the room, legs crossed, an arm resting on the table next to her. Candlelight dances across her curved smile, highlighting the dimple in her cheek. She’s amused, as though catching you with your guard down is some sort of joke.

“I’m fine.”

“Then I guess you don’t want this.” She lifts her hand off the table. Something metallic catches the candlelight, dangling from her finger. A key. “Figured you’d be needing a place to stay.”

You narrow your eyes, crossing your arms over your chest and hunching your shoulders. “In exchange for what?”

Maria shrugs. “You tell me.”

Nothing in life is free, and you’ve paid the price enough times to know exactly how expensive safety can be.

“We’ve set aside a house for you. It’s on the west side of town, near the front gate.” She leans forward, and gives you a long look. “You’re not the first, you know.”

“The first what?”

“Scared person to wind up here.” She says it so simply. As if you ain’t been doing your damndest to cover it up.

“I’m not scared.” Your voice is harsh, arms tightening around your midsection. If she’s trying to convince you to stay willingly, she’s doing a piss-poor job.

“Of course, you’re not.” The words are soothing, something a mother would say to calm a crying toddler, but there’s something in her tone you can’t place. “How did you end up here again?”

It's a stupid fucking question. You know she knows the answer. “Your friend shot me.”

“My husband, actually.” She smiles. “And he says he had good reason for it.” Of fucking course, they’re married. Of course. Whatever little game Tommy has planned for you, she’s in on it. She has to be.

“He tell you he killed my friends?” Why are you arguing this point again? Why bother? You should be getting the fuck outta dodge, not sitting in a candlelit room, arguing with some lady about why her husband tried to put you six feet under.

She nods once, slow. Her eyes drop to your ribs. “He said they tried to kill our people first. Know anything about that?”

This is the millionth time you’ve had this conversation today, and you’re sick of going in circles. You wanna shout obviously, moron at her. You wanna throw something. Mostly, though, you just wanna fucking sleep. In a bed. With a real blanket. The drugs must have messed your system up real good because, despite being unconscious for hours, the only thing you want to do is curl up and knock the fuck out.

You know deep down you can’t blame the meds, though. In all honesty, you can’t remember the last time you had a full night’s sleep or a half-decent meal. Hell, you can’t even remember the last time you felt like you could take a full breath without having to check for clickers over your shoulder. And now? Now, you’re exhausted, and sore, and you’ve got a fucking hole in your side that wasn’t there a week ago.

The physical discomfort of a life on the run hits you all at once. You don’t remember the last time you bathed—too scared to get your hair wet when it’s shitting snow outside—and the sensation of *dirtiness *makes your skin itch. Your stomach hurts, the hunger pangs you’ve gotten all too used to shoving down screaming for your attention. Every muscle in your body, perpetually strung tight enough to snap, begs for rest.

Life on the road in the apocalypse wasn’t an easy one. Between the raiders and infected, it had been years since you’d allowed yourself the luxury of being human. And a week ago, you’d finally taken the chance, only to end up someone’s fucking prisoner again. Defeated, you slump, your hands fall to your sides, and you half-fall-half-sit back on the mattress. “It was supposed to be an easy grab-and-go…”

You stop fighting, and tell Maria your story.

A week ago, one of your squad members caught wind of a cache of supplies at an abandoned university in the middle of Bumfuck-Nowhere, America. Supposedly, some survivalist he’d traded with over the years, a friend of his from before the outbreak hit, had finally kicked the bucket, and all that shit was up for grabs. Your squad intended to pick up some necessities, get in and out, and hightail it out of town.

When y’all showed up, though, someone was already inside. Lots of someones. You hadn’t seen who shot first, whether it was your group or theirs, but quickly, the property devolved into chaos. Gunshots, and blood, and screaming, and bodies hitting the floor. You watched your friend’s skull get blown to bits, just inches from your face, blood spattering onto your clothes. Before you knew it, you were the only one standing, tucked into the corner of a closet, out of bullets, hoping your knife would be enough to protect you.

Tommy had appeared out of fucking nowhere. One moment, you were alone, hiding behind the edge of a door frame, listening for intruders. Then, a hand had clapped around your mouth.

“Shh, s’alright.” He’d said. “We don’t wanna hurt you.”

You had swung your knife blindly, barely snagging it on the corner of his jacket, but it was enough to force him to release you. You’d stumbled forward, whirling on him, ready to bring the knife down again. “You’re doin’ a shit job of it.”

He held his hands up, placating. “I swear we don’t. We’re just here for supplies, same as y’all.”

Yeah, well. Them’s the breaks. You swung, a feral noise breaking from your lips. He jerked back, narrowly avoiding your blade. In a flash of movement, his hands dropped to his sides, and the sound of a gunshot left your ears ringing.

You felt the blood gush down before you felt the pain. Tommy held the gun at his waist, aimed at your torso. There had even been a fucking puff of smoke trailing from the barrel, like this was an old-timey cartoon or something.

You’d collapsed to your knees, too stunned to keep fighting. Tommy had lunged forward, and you hadn’t even bothered to lift the knife again, hadn’t tried to defend yourself. In that moment, you’d thought you were done for. Anyone else would’ve killed you. You’d closed your eyes, bracing for it. Instead, he’d immediately gone to work, covering your injury with his hands and calling for backup.

When he’d offered for you to join them, you’d been too stunned to argue. And so, they’d handed you a mount, and you’d swung up into it, knowing full well you’d likely just willingly chosen to get kidnapped.

Maria’s expression doesn’t change as you talk. When you finish, she leans forward. “Do you know the combination for the storage lockers at the cache?”

You do. “No.”

The look on her face tells you she doesn’t believe you. “Okay.” She stands, holding the key out to you. “I’ll walk you home.”

There’s no fucking way it’s as simple as that.

It was actually just as simple as that. Maria drops you off at a small house by the town’s gate.

“If you want to leave,” she says, unlocking the front door, “you’re more than welcome to. Personally, I’d wait until Doc gives you the okay, but it’s your choice.”

“You’re not gonna stop me?”

“Nope.” She twists the handle and pushes the door open. “I’ll even send you on your way with enough supplies to last a week. That’s how we do things around here.”

“What’s the catch?” You step over the threshold, taking in the room. It’s clean, but the air is stagnant. The peace is unsettling.

“Don’t steal from us.” She smiles. “As long as you don’t take what doesn’t belong to you, we won’t have a problem.”

“And if I stay?” You don’t fully believe you’re allowed here of your own free will. It’s sounds too good to be true. You try to stab this lady’s husband, and get a free house out of it? How does that make sense?

You don’t have much of a choice though, at least not for the time being. You need to heal, to plan, to figure out where you want to go next.

“If you decide to stay,” she says, placing an obnoxious amount of emphasis on your role in the matter, “then there are some rules you’ll be expected to follow.”

Rules. You can handle rules. Those make sense. Obviously, FEDRA had rules. Hell, they’d written the guidebook on how to have too many fucking rules. But others had rules, too. Your squad, the group of former soldiers and QZ escapees you’d fallen in with over the past year, had rules. We aren’t friends, had been one. Don’t ask my secrets, I won’t ask yours, had been another. You’d liked your squad well enough, but you also knew many of them had skeletons in their closets that were better left locked away.

Before your squad, you’d been a captive, chained and locked away for the personal use of a group of hunters. They’d had their rules, too. You belong to us had been an insulting one. Don’t look us in our eyes *had earned you more than one beating. Your least favorite, though—if you run, you better not let us catch you.* You can still feel the memory of them cutting lines into your back, marking their initials into your skin.

Maria’s eyes are on you, and you swallow hard. “What are the rules?”

“You’ll be expected to pitch in, of course.”

Manual labor. You hadn’t expected anything less. “When do I start?”

She shakes her head. “Not any time soon. We don’t need you getting hurt.”

Too late for that. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.” She bites the inside of her cheek, obviously hesitating as she thinks over her next words. “Listen, we get a lot of strays through these parts.” You try not to take offense to being called a stray. “And that means we see a lot of people going through a lot of rough times. I wasn’t lying earlier when I said we’d seen people like you before, and I promise you’ll, we’ll see more again. They come to Jackson, whether by choice or by circumstance, and they see how different things are here. How different the people here are.” She smiles. “We operate by a code—‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their need’. Do you understand what that means?”

You cross your arms, not willing to admit you don’t know something.

She sees right through you. “It means, we only expect you to give what you can. When you’re able, we’ll expect you to help out around the town, if you choose to stay. Right now, the only thing you can give the community is proof that you’re willing to take care of yourself when you’re injured.”

That makes absolutely no sense to you. How the fuck does taking care of yourself—

She must see the confusion on your face, because she continues. “Every member of Jackson is valued because every person here brings something different to the table. The skills unique to each person, the personality they offer, the friendship they share—all of those are important. If you’re injured, the best thing you can do is heal, because it means you’ll be able to participate in this commune for the long haul.”

Well, I'll be damned. You could laugh. The town's a fucking commune? The world may have ended, but Good Lord, the universe's wicked sense of humor is eternal.

You shake your head. “I’m not anything special—just a soldier.” You aren’t lying. Your life as anything other than soldier and survivor is over. You wouldn’t be much help in the clinic, anyways. Patient care had never been your strong suit. Still, you almost laugh at the idea of worrying about bedside manner after the end of the world.

Maria shrugs. “We need people to defend this place. Being a solider is more than enough. If you’re willing, I’ll put you on the patrol schedule in a few weeks.”

Patrols. That’s… doable, you suppose. Better than KP. “Can I get my gun back?”

Maria laughs. It’s a small noise, a little guarded, but the humor is genuine. For some reason, the fact that she’s guarding herself just a little bit is enough to make you relax. It’s familiar to you, the idea that you can’t fully trust the people around you, and that they won’t fully trust you in return. This is a dance you know how to do, and you settle into the routine with a surprising amount of ease.

“I’ll talk to Tommy,” she says, a small smile still tugging at her mouth. “He’ll drop it off tomorrow. And I’ll see about getting you a rifle for patrols. We’ll need you to go out and do some target practice with one of our patrol leaders, just to prove you know what you’re doing, but I’ll make sure to wait until you’re feeling better before we set that up.”

You nod, leaning against the doorway, ignoring the anxiety that flares at the thought of having to talk to Tommy again. “Alrighty then. I guess… I’ll see you tomorrow.”

You say your goodbyes. Maria leaves, and you close the front door to your newly gifted house. There’s a light switch by the door, and you remember the electric lights you’d seen swinging overhead earlier. Hesitantly, as though you’re scared to hope, you reach out and flip the switch. Light flares above you, bright and clean, and you can’t help it—

You cry.

You don’t know why the simple act of flipping a light switch is what breaks you. You’ve been on the road for so long, you’d almost forgotten what indoor lighting looked like. The way the soft, yellow light illuminates the entryway, it feels like a dream. There’d been no lights when you were traveling with your squad. Even before then, when you were a prisoner, there’d been nothing but darkness. You weren’t sure if your captors had electricity or not, but if they did, they certainly hadn’t wasted it on you. And in the QZs, FEDRA controlled the electricity. Rations were strict, and as a soldier, you had mandatory lights out at nineteen-hundred sharp every evening. Electricity there was a resource, not a luxury to be wasted.

And so, when you stand in your entryway, flipping on your light switch, and enjoying your electricity, it brings tears to your eyes. You crumple to the floor, your ribs aching for the first time since you woke up, and you sob. You lay there for what feels like hours, letting the tears fall, letting yourself wallow in the pain and loss of the past week.

Your squad may not have been your friends, but they were yours, and now they were gone. You didn’t even know half of their real names. Fuck, none of them knew yours. A side effect of the state of the world—sometimes, it was safer if no one knew who you really were. You’d learned to lie, to answer to other names, to answer to nothing at all. You’d learned what it was like to have no one to call for you, to have no one to call for.

And here, on the floor, you feel the loneliness of your existence for the first time in twenty fucking years.

Eventually, you pick yourself up off the wooden floor, and wander through the house, relishing in turning on every light in the house and taking in your new world. It’s small, but clean, and importantly, it’s fully furnished. Well, as fully furnished as a house in a fucking commune in the apocalypse can be. There’s a couch in the living room, and what looks to be a small entertainment center set up against the back wall, with a combination DVD-VHS player hooked up to a small TV screen. There’s no fucking way it works, you tell yourself, but when you press a button on the front of the player, it hums to life, and you jump. The TV springs on when you press the power button under its frame, static dancing across the screen, waiting for a film to play.

Shock doesn’t even begin to describe how you’re feeling in this moment. Life, for so long, has been about survival and nothing more. And now, you have a TV. You stare at the static on the screen, knowing you don’t have a tape on hand to put into the player and watch on the TV. Your TV.

You click the TV and player off, and resume your rounds, wandering into the kitchen. There’s an electric range that turns on and an oven that works. When you hit the tap at the small sink next to the humming fridge, cold water rushes over your fingers. You relish in the sensation, watching the dirt wash from your skin and swirl down the drain.

You wonder if there are water rations in Jackson. It seems so hard to believe there wouldn’t be, but Maria hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort. You think that would be the kind of thing she’d tell you if they were worried about supplies. You turn off the tap, and wander into the hallway, trailing your wet finger across the wall. The wooden floors creak as your walk, the only sound that cuts through the silence.

The first door you push open is a bathroom. Movement behind the door sends your heart into your throat and makes you jump and hide, hands grasping for anything you can use as a weapon before balling into fists when you find nothing. You crouch behind the frame of the door, breathing raggedly and waiting for your attacker to come out into the hallway, to grab you, to throw you to the floor, to tear at your clothes, your skin, your hair, your—

You can’t breathe. What the fuck is wrong with you? Your vision blurs, and your ribs burn, and you can’t fucking breathe. You push away from the wall. Your attacker isn’t attacking—so you need to take the advantage and attack them first. There’s an animalistic force driving you, a survival instinct that says live, live goddamnit. You swing around the doorframe into the bathroom, ready to swing, only to find the movement you’d seen that sent you spiraling had been your own reflection.

It takes you a moment to recognize that that’s what had happened. You’re so used to mirrors being smashed or dirty or covered in graffiti and vandalism—the house’s perfectly intact mirror hadn’t registered in your mind. You touch your shaking fingers to the glass. There’s not a speck of dust on it.

You stare at the girl in the mirror. She doesn’t look like you—at least not a version of yourself you remember. Greasy hair falls around her dirty face, framing her desperate expression. Her eyes are wild, and a dark purple bruise covers the entirely of one of her eye sockets. There’s a split in her lip, and a bit of dried blood on her chin. She’s thinner than you remember being, a side effect of a long time without proper meals. Her chest rises and falls heavily, and you gasp to catch your breath.

You look like a fucking ghoul. Jesus Christ. You rip yourself away from your awful reflection, and instead look around the room. It’s small, with standing shower in the corner, a toilet, and a sink with a cabinet under it. You open the cabinet, and find a few mismatched but clean towels. There’s soap in the shower, and something that looks like lotion on the sink.

The urge to shower, to scrub every inch of your skin is overwhelming. You know you shouldn’t. You’ve got an open wound on your side, and after your little freak-out with the mirror, you know the last thing you should do is strip bare-ass naked and put yourself in one of the most vulnerable positions a person can be in.

But the moment you test the shower’s tap and find that it works, your hands move of their own accord, yanking your shirt off. You kick your boots off and your socks follow. Your pants and bra fall to the floor in a heap, and you step into the water. It’s ice-cold, and you don’t even know if Jackson has hot water, but you don’t care. It’s fucking heaven.

The water trails down your body, and the dirt follows in rivers of black mud, disappearing down the drain. For the first time in years, you simply let yourself be human. You don’t even bother to keep your wound dry. You’ll find Doc tomorrow and ask her to repack it. For now, you just float, resting your head against the tile wall, letting the cold water run.

You don’t remember much after the shower. Eventually, you’d mustered up the willpower to use the soap on your hair and your skin, scrubbing every inch of your body raw. When you shorizontal breaktepped out of the shower, you slathered yourself in the lotion on the sink, before drying your body and wandering naked down the hall. You must have found a bed because when you swim back to consciousness, sunlight streaming in through a nearby window, you’re wrapped up tight in a comforter, your face smushed into a soft pillow. You know you’re still naked, and you curse yourself mentally for falling asleep in such a vulnerable way, but you can’t deny a part of you is relishing in the experience.

You sit up, letting the covers slip away, and check your wound. The packing is still wet from the shower, which will have to get dealt with as soon as possible. You want to be mad at yourself for taking so much time in shower, for making you have to rely on someone else to keep your wound from getting infected, but you can’t. You’d needed that time. Still, you wince when you realize you’ve bled a little on the sheets. Luckily, they’re a dusty, muted shade of brown, so you should be able to clean it out. Later, though. You can’t be bothered with that right now, because your stomach twists, and hunger makes your head spin. Alright, clothing first, then you’ll figure out food. You don’t remember seeing any in the kitchen the night before, but maybe you can find some somewhere in town.

There’s a plain wooden dresser against the wall, and some clothes sit on top of it. Maria must have left them there before giving you the house, like the towels in the bathroom. You get up, retrieving the pile. A pair of denim jeans, a long sleeve t-shirt, and a thick flannel button-up. There’s also a sports bra, cotton undies, and a pair of thick socks. You get dressed quickly and spy a pair of work boots by the door that look close to your size. You pull them on, and they fit perfectly, which means you don’t have to bother stuffing the toes with cardboard to avoid getting blisters.

You lace your new boots, and head down the hall, finding your way back to the bathroom. This morning, the reflection that greets you resembles a human—at least, more than it did last night. You touch your split lip, your bruised eye. Your hair is limp, but clean. The wild look in your eyes is gone, replaced with placid curiosity. You lift your shirt up to get a better look at your wound, to catalogue the extent of the damage. There’s a bruise covering the majority of your side, and you trace the border with a finger, before gently probing along the edges of your open wound. The wet cotton packing pokes out of it, stained pink and red, and the opening itself is about the size of your palm. It’s sore, and the edges of your skin feel a little crispy, as the tissue starts to harden and scar. Ugh. Doc’s gonna have to debride it before she closes you up. That’s gonna suck ass.

You drop your shirt, cringing away from the thought of pain, and look around. There’s a cabinet next to the mirror you hadn’t noticed the night before, and you open it, finding a whole set of basic necessities neatly labeled and organized. There’s a toothbrush and toothpaste, mouthwash, some ibuprofen, saline, rubbing alcohol and band-aids, and so much more. You run your hands over the bottles and tubes and containers, relishing in the feeling of having enough for the first time in what feels like a lifetime.

You pinch the back of your hand, hard. This isn’t real. It can’t be. It’s too much. But you don’t wake up. The dream doesn’t end. There’s no nightmare waiting for you on the other side. Only reality. For the first time, you dare to hope that maybe—maybe—you’re safe.

A knock echoes from the front door, and you drop the tenuous threads of hope like live wires. There’s no point in getting attached. You’re leaving as soon as you’ve healed. Hell, you’ll ask Maria to pack you a goddamn picnic basket for your trip. You grab the mouthwash and take a swig, rinsing and spitting, before going to answer the door.

When you put your hand on the handle, the person outside knocks again, and your anxiety pulses in time with the sound. You’re sure it’s Tommy out there. Maria had said he’d bring your gun back, after all. You close your eyes, take a single breath to steel yourself, and open the door.

Tommy’s face isn’t the one that greets you. Tall, broad shoulders, salt-and-pepper curls, intelligent eyes. You scramble for the man’s name, digging through your drug-addled memories before finally snagging it.

He cuts you off before you can speak. “Tommy’s busy—asked me to drop this off.” Joel holds your standard-issue sidearm out to you. You notice the slide lock is engaged, and the mag is missing.

You take the gun, flip it on its side, and look at Joel through the hole that extends from the top of the barrel to the bottom of grip. “You forgot something.”

He reaches into the pocket of his coat, and pulls out your mag—notably fully loaded with ammo. You’re pretty sure you’d shot through all your rounds during the firefight. Someone resupplied you. You go to grab it, but he snaps his hand up, pulling it out of your reach. “Jackson is a safe place.”

You glare at him, wondering if the first impression you’d gotten of him yesterday was wrong. The doting father in the infirmary has been replaced by… what, exactly? You can’t get a read on him—his face is stone, completely impassive. You huff, crossing your arms. “I know how to handle my own fuckin’ gun safely.”

His eyes are dark. “You hurt anyone—I’ll know about it.”

Who the fuck does this guy think he is, Tommy? Is leadership community property here, too? Does everyone get to be king for a day? “I ain’t stayin’ long.”

“Good.” God, he’s a dick. “Sooner you leave, the better.”

“Why?”

“Don’t like strangers.” He holds the mag out to you again. You take it, sliding it into the handle of your sidearm with a click, and releasing the slide lock. The weight of the gun as you tuck it into your waistband soothes you.

“Well, then you’d better get off my porch, I suppose.” You give him a hard look. “Just in case. Wouldn’t want me turnin’ into a friend, right?” You don’t wait for him to leave. Instead, you step onto the porch and close the door behind you before heading down the stairs to the street. You don’t bother to lock up. Jackson’s safe, after all. No better time than now to test that assertion.

You leave Asshole McGee on your porch and wander into the streets, ready for breakfast.

A stiff wind blows your hair into your eyes, and you shiver, wrapping your arms around yourself. It doesn’t matter how many years have passed since you last set foot in Texas—winters in the north never fail to make you miserable. Fuck, where did your coat go? You remember taking it off in Doc’s office, but after that, the details get a little fuzzy.

It’s still early, the sun hanging just above the edge of the border fence. There’s a fresh powder of snow dusting the streets, and it mixes with the dirt, melting into a dirty brown sludge. Around you, people walk the streets, and you notice they all seem to be moving in the same direction. You let yourself follow the flow of traffic, boots squelching in the muddy path. Before long, you reach a squat wooden building with a low roof. The front doors are propped open with what looks to be a large cut section of a log, and warm air spills out to greet the people making their way inside. It’s not the warmth that draws you forward, though. Your feet move of their own accord, dragging you up the steps, as you follow the strong smell of…. What is that? Bacon?

You stomach growls, and your mouth waters. Dizziness hits you hard, and you stumble, knocking into the frame of a shorter woman with brown hair braided back neatly from her face.

“Sorry,” you mumble, shielding yourself from making eye contact with her. Your vision is fuzzy, and the smell of food—fresh food, not from-a-can-that-expired-twenty-years-ago food—is overwhelming. The pain in your stomach knocks your breath away.

Food was scarce on the road, usually consisting of whatever you could find or kill. Once upon a time, humanity had been nothing more than nomadic hunter-gatherers, living off the land and foraging for their own survival. It’s funny how the end of the world had brought y'all back to that. Except now, y'all hunt and gather canned goods. As the years pass, though, those cans are becoming harder and harder to find. Now, twenty-one years after the fall of industrial manufacturing, cans are worth their weight in gold. Not that gold had any worth anymore. Too soft for bullets or blades.

You lean against a pole supporting the porch roof, catching your breath. It was so easy to keep going through pain when you knew there was no relief in sight. Now that food was merely a few feet away, it was like your body couldn’t find the strength to push through.

This winter had been a hard one. Your squad had searched high and low, trying to scrounge up every last scrap of food, desperately combing through abandoned cities in search of something, anything, to eat, but there was none left. Thank the lord you’d grown up hunting, The meat you brought in was enough to keep you alive, but it still had to be split ten ways.

Worse, you had to be picky about the type of meat you shot. Deer were good, and they would’ve been more than enough meat to go around, but the leftovers would’ve gone to waste without proper curing. And your Daddy always taught you to only kill what you could eat. So, you’d stuck to smaller game—rabbits, squirrels, whatever was small enough to strap to your pack. You dressed them yourself, never trusting your companions with the work, and then cooked them over a fire, always burning the meat to a crisp. It tasted like the bottom of an old boot, but at least you kept yourself safe from tularemia. Better to eat boots than die of a preventable disease.

Still, despite your hunting prowess, you don’t know jack shit about foraging. Your veggies have been straight from the can ever since outbreak day, even when you were a soldier. FEDRA sure as fuck didn’t care about giving you fresh fruits or vegetables. In the barracks, you got what you got and you said thanks with a smile on your face. Anything less, and you could expect any number of physical punishments.

The memory of pain makes your dizziness worse. Your breaths are shallow and fast, and stars dance across your vision. Fuck, fuck, fuck. You can’t pass out here on the stairs. Not when people are walking by you. You know they’re looking, watching, judging. Some of them even hesitate, try to offer you and arm or a hand. You wave them off. You don’t need their help. You can do this. You can—

You pull your hand away from the pole, and take a step. You can push through this. You’ve been hungry before. Hungrier than this, even. If you can just get inside… You spy tables organized in a methodical manner inside the building, and people seated at them, laughing and enjoying their breakfast.

That’s what you’ll do. You’ll just go inside, and sit down for a minute. Rest your head. Let the nausea pass. Bile wells up in your throat, hot and acrid. You shove it down, falling back against the pole with a muted thud. Your eyes close, and you focus on breathing. In through your nose, slow breath out through your mouth. It’s shaky and hot, and saliva wells across your tongue.

“Whoa, you look fucked up.”

You know the voice. It’s that kid, the one from the infirmary. Joel’s daughter… Ellie. You grab her name and open your eyes. She standing in front of you. In her winter coat, she looks so small. There’s a weird look on her face, as though she’s fascinated by whatever the fuck is wrong with you. It’s not concern, though. For some weird reason, that comforts you. The last thing you want is pity. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah, right.” She snorts, derisive. “Aren’t you the lady from the infirmary yesterday? What happened to you? You looked like you got run over by a bus.”

She’s straightforward, that’s for sure. And if you’re being honest with yourself, her earnestness is endearing; her rudeness comforting. It’s almost like she couldn’t give a rat’s ass about putting up a front. What you see is what you get. And fuck you, but you think you might actually like the kid. You hate that you like her, because you definitely hate her dick dad, but there’s something about her that draws you in. “What would you know about busses?”

Ellie shrugs. “Nothin’. It’s just something Joel says sometimes. Did people used to get hit by busses a lot? Was that like, a thing or something?”

She calls her dad by his first name? You haven’t spent much time around pandemic babies. Even in the QZ, parents usually kept their kids inside—safe. There was a FEDRA school for the orphans, but you’d been lucky enough to avoid getting stationed inside it. Too busy standing watch as a gate guard. You could count the number of kids you’d talked to over the past few decades, and every last one of them was a fucking weirdo. You weren’t sure if the parents just gave up on trying to make their kids normal—after all, who cares about manners when you could get your throat torn out by infected at any moment—or if growing up surrounded by the reality of death just made a person weird. At least Ellie’s likeable, unlike the handful of other post-outbreak kids you’ve met.

“No, busses didn't usually hit people,” you say, swallowing back the bile. “Planes did, though.”

“Really?”

“No.”

“Oh, fuck you.” She huffs, exasperated. “You’re just like Joel. He does that bullshit to me all the time.”

You ignore the comparison to Jackson’s resident asshat, focusing on Ellie instead. She really does have a mouth on her. Not that you’re much better. Teasing her, though, it’s giving you something to concentrate on. The bile in your throat is receding, your vision clearing. You blink a few times before stepping away from the pole. The dizziness doesn’t assault you this time, and you think you’ll be able to manage the walk.

“You’re not gonna pass out or anything, are you?” Ellie falls into step beside you as you hobble your way inside. “‘cuz I won’t be able to catch you. I mean, I can try, but I’ll probably drop you or something.”

“Not gonna pass out.” You’re pretty sure you won’t, at least. The two of you pass through the doors, and into the main room. The tables you’d seen earlier have filled in, people jostling each other for the best spots. The smell of food is overwhelming, but the noise is worse. There are so many people here. It’s been years since you’ve seen this much commotion. This much… life. You realize, with a start, that’s what’s so odd about Jackson. It’s alive.

It's been so long since you’ve felt something like it. The last time you’d been around this many people, you were planning to desert FEDRA in the Las Vegas QZ. There were people there, sure, but the air was constrictive. Everyone watched their backs, no one trusted each other. If Jackson was alive, and the abandoned zones were dead, the QZs were a strange sort of halfway point between the two. Like…

Jesus Christ, the QZs were the zombies of this metaphor you had stumbled into. What a terrible fucking joke.

Ellie takes the lead, dumping her coat on an old rack by the door. “Maria told Joel about you. Said Tommy brought you in. I tried to ask more, but of course, Maria wouldn’t tell me anything. It’s so annoying because I’m actually pretty good at shooting and shit, but they keep telling me I’m too young for patrols and stuff like that. Anyway, I told her she should…”

You let her babbling wash over you, only occasionally bothering to interject with the odd yup or mmhm when she pauses. You’re still a little weak, knees shaking as she leads you through the food line, and you’re sure it shows on your face, but no one bothers to give you a second glance. It’s a stark difference from the way the strangers had looked at you on the porch minutes earlier. Ellie is the perfect buffer, drawing all the attention to herself as she babbles about some of the other kids in Jackson.

She leads you to a line of tables staffed by people wearing aprons and ladling out food, and shoves a metal tray into your hands, dropping a clean plate onto it. “And then Dina told Jesse that he needs to stick his big head in someone else’s business.” She pulls her own tray down the food line, holding it out for a fat serving of scrambled eggs.

Your mouth waters, and you follow her lead, holding out your tray. A burly man drops a couple slices of bacon onto it. Holy fuck. Bacon. They must have livestock in town. Do they have cows? Shit, could they make burgers? Or steak? Your mind runs through the possibilities, longing for your favorite meals. They probably don’t have much in the way of spices, just what can be grown and prepared here, but holy shit, they’ve got bacon.

“Well, Jesse decided he wanted to be an asshole, so he told Dina he’d stick his big fat head anywhere he wants to and that if she has an issue with it, she can go tell Maria.” Ellie’s hand swings wildly to punctuate her story. A lady dunks a serving of cooked apples onto her plate. You smell cinnamon, and your mouth waters, stomach lurching. “Well, Dina doesn’t wanna make a big deal of it, so she doesn’t wanna talk to Maria, but I know Maria would totally be on her side, so I figure I’ll go talk to her…”

Eggs, cooked apples, bacon, pancakes—pancakes—all of it gets loaded onto your plate as you move down the serving line. It’s an obscene amount of food, actually, and for a moment, a pang of guilt hits your gut. All of this food… there’s so much of it. And they’re just giving it to you. All they want is for you to pitch in. Is that really so bad? You’ve done a lot more for a lot less before. It wouldn’t kill you to go out on patrols, would it? If it meant getting actual fucking bacon for breakfast.

You shake your head, clearing the thought. This is how they get you. They lure you in, make you want it, and then you’ll never leave. It’s like that old Greek story you read about, the one with the lotus flowers. Or that old Eagles song.

Ellie leads you to a table in the center of the room and plunks her tray down before plopping down in her seat and digging in. “Anyway, so now, Dina and Jesse aren’t talking to each other anymore, which I’m totally cool with because fuck that guy, you know?” She’s talking through a mouth full of food, and a little bit of egg is stuck to her lip.

“Yeah, fuck that guy,” you mumble, eyes darting around the room. You don’t want to sit in the center of everything. It’s too open here, there’s no space to duck or hide. You aren’t prepared to fight—not when you’re so weak. You would have to run, you decide. You scan the room, looking for the best hiding spots, the best escape routes. There’s the main door you entered through, but if something happens, most people will run to them, so you’ll want to go a different route to avoid the crowd. You could duck into the kitchen, wait out the danger, then run through the back door, assuming there is one. But what if the danger starts in the kitchen? What if there’s a fire? Would it be easier to bust out a window? Or is the main door actually the best option? What if you—

“Holy fuck, dude, just sit down and eat.” Ellie waggles her fork at you. “Stop being all freaky.”

You do as instructed, sitting across from her. Your back is exposed. There are noises behind you, people talking and laughing and eating and walking and chairs scraping and you can’t see them and you can only hear them and they won’t stop and what if someone tries something you won’t see them coming you won’t see them coming they could come up behind you and—

You breathe, shallow and quick, scanning the room. Your shoulders hunch forward, and you put your arms on the table to protect your food, to keep someone from taking what’s yours, it’s precious and it belongs to you and no one can have it. Your gun. The weight sits against your lower back. All you would have to do is reach for it. The safety is engaged, so you’d just have to click it off. Smooth, easy. Muscle memory will take over. If anyone tries to fuck with you, you can handle it. You can definitely handle it.

There are so many people, though. You’d definitely be outnumbered. If one person tries anything, and you respond, it’ll be you against the entire crowd of people in this room. Fuck, you against Ellie. No, you like the kid. You don’t want to hurt her. You can’t hurt her.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. This is why you can’t have people around. This is why you don’t let yourself get attached. You made the mistake of liking the stupid fucking kid and now, you’re not gonna be able to defend yourself when shit goes wrong. Goddamnit. Fuck. If someone grabs you, you’ll just have to run. You can’t hurt the kid. But you’ll die. You’ll die and she’ll die and everyone will—

Something touches your back, and you launch to your feet, pulling your gun free. The safety disengages, and you’re pointing it at the offender. Your chair clatters to the ground, and your hip hits the table hard enough to bruise. The pressure comforts you, though, and your vision catches up to your motion. You’re staring down the sights of your gun, pointed directly between someone’s eyes. Someone’s brown eyes. Brown skin. Warmth and surprise in her expression.

“Maria,” you breathe. You’re still holding the gun on her, but you’re coming back into your body now. She’s holding her hands up, watching you. Analyzing you. You hadn’t noticed it before, too distracted by the warmth and compassion that should have made her a victim, but you see it now—the brains. She’s smart. She’s assessing you, trying to figure out the best way out of the situation. You can see the gears in her mind turning.

You try to drop the gun. You want to put it down. But your heart is pounding, and your mind is racing, and your muscles won’t fucking respond. The noise from earlier, the crowd of people in the room, it all disappears under the adrenaline. It’s just you and Maria, here and now.

“Alright,” Maria says, finally. Her voice is low, but not harsh. You’ve heard someone talk like this before. You remember your Daddy, the way he used to talk to spooked horses. Always quiet, always firm, always commanding. The safest way to deal with a startled animal who could kill you in an instant was to take control. Maria is taking control. “You’re not going to shoot me.”

You’re not. You won’t. You can’t start that fight in here. And fuck, there’s a part of you that doesn’t want to shoot her because she doesn’t deserve it. She hasn’t earned it. And you’re tired of hurting people. Tired of doing despicable things to keep yourself alive.

Still, your hand won’t fucking drop. You’re frozen, a statue, eyes wide, nostrils flared. A cornered animal.

Maria’s hand edges forward. “I’m going to take your gun now, okay?”

Your foot steps back. You don’t want it to. You will it not to. You beg it stay in place.

Maria stops. “I’ll give it back after you’ve calmed down. I just want to make sure you’re safe.”

Safe. No one is safe. Not ever. Not now. Your hands tighten on the grip, your breath catches in your throat.

It’s not Maria who speaks next. “Please don’t hurt her.” Ellie’s voice. It shakes, almost imperceptibly, but you catch it. She’s trying to be brave. She’s so small and so young, and she’s trying so hard. You have to try, too. You don’t know why; you just know that you do. She needs you to.

Maria must see the change in your resolve, because her hand moves forward, slowly. The urge to pull away is almost overpowering, but you push past it, teeth gritted so hard you worry they might shatter. You force your feet to stay in place, your breath ragged through your nose. Maria’s hand wraps around the barrel of the gun, and she redirects your aim to the ceiling. Her other hand touches your fingers, pulling them away from the grip.

And then the gun is gone, and you’re unarmed, surrounded by strangers in a fucking commune and there’s actual food on a plate behind you and electric lights over your head and everything is so fucking overwhelming, you could scream. The adrenaline is coursing through you, making your jittery. You look around the room. People are staring at you. Oh. So, they actually had stopped talking. It wasn’t just your nerves. Fucking fantastic.

Maria slides the barrel back and engages the slide lock, flipping the gun upside down to empty the chamber. A bullet falls into her waiting palm, and she flips the gun back up, ejects the mag, and slips it and the loose round into her back pocket. Disengaging the slide lock, she clicks on the safety and sets the gun on the table, outside of your reach. You realize she never once put her finger on the trigger, instead resting it on the side of the trigger guard.

So, she clearly knows her way around a pistol. It’s not an uncommon skill these days, but knowing the basic safety rules certainly is. Finger off the trigger unless you’re gonna shoot. Always treat the gun like it’s loaded, even if you know it’s not. Unload the chamber and dump the mag before you release the slide lock. Never point the barrel where you don’t want the bullet to hit. It’s not military training, it’s… Texas. It’s the knowledge passed from parent to child through the generations, rules written in the blood of accidental losses over the centuries.

You take a shaky breath. You can’t let yourself find comfort here. You can’t find familiarity. You can’t look in the faces of your enemies, praying to see friends. That’s how you get burned.

But Maria’s looking at you with the same patience she had yesterday. We’ve seen people like you before, her eyes say, and we’ll see them again. “Sit.” She speaks softly, then turns to the room and announces, “Everyone, go back to your breakfasts. Things are under control.”

Your chair is still on the floor, on its side. Mechanically, you pick it up, setting it right, and settle in.

“I’m going to go get food. I’ll be back in a moment. You stay here.” Maria leaves, striding to the food line.

You stare at your tray. There will be consequences for your behavior. You wonder what consequences look like in a place like this. Maybe they’ll take away your house. Fuck, maybe they’ll kick you out. What if they execute you? FEDRA would have. You try to imagine what would have happened if you’d pulled a gun on any of your FEDRA commanders, and cringe at every possibility. A court martial, bullet to the back of the skull, slit throat, being put to work until your body finally gave up… none of them are pleasant.

It's why you went on the road, after all. You were a soldier, and you fucked up bad, and rather than face the consequences, you ran. You try to push away the memories of the woman’s desperate pleas, the way you’d pulled the trigger on the man, his body collapsing to the ground—

Your throat is tightening, your fingers digging in to the edge of the table. Your gun is on the table. You could reach for it, but it would be useless. No rounds means no safety. And someone’s talking. You can’t catch the words but the voice… it’s a kid. The kid. Ellie.

You look up. Ellie’s eyes are wide as she speaks. You force yourself to focus, and her words finally start to process.

“…glad you didn’t shoot yourself or something. Or Maria, obviously. Thanks for not shooting her, by the way.”

Why would you have shot yourself? Your gun was trained on Maria the whole time. You’re a trained marksman. You practically grew up with a gun in your hand. There was no way you would’ve accidentally shot yourself.

“Oh, shit, Tommy’s gonna be so mad. And Joel.”

Why would Joel be mad? What the fuck does he have to do with this?

“Why do you call him that?” The words are forced, your tone harsh. But you need to try to come back down from whatever your little freak out had been.

Ellie stops. “Call who what?”

“Your dad.” It wouldn’t be weird to call Tommy by his name, unless Jackson wants kids to use Mister and Missus. You were obviously talking about Joel. “Why do you call your dad by his first name?”

“Who, Joel?” Ellie’s brow furrows. “Nah, he’s not my dad. He’s my… I don’t know. My guardian, I guess?”

“Oh.” That’s… unusual, to say the least. At least it explains why they look nothing alike.

Mercifully, Maria returns, tray of food in hand. You notice she intentionally takes a wide path back to the table instead of taking the straight shot, swinging around into your field of view so you could see her coming before she arrived. She sets her tray down next to Ellie.

“That can’t happen again,” she says to you as she sits. “You can’t pull weapons in the dining hall.”

It’s an underwhelming reaction, to say the least. You brace yourself, waiting for the worst you’re sure is yet to come.

“Now, we have a counselor available in Jackson for you to speak with, if you need help controlling yourself.” A fucking shrink? She can’t be serious. Who the fuck has time for therapy? “Jackson will tolerate many things, but what we cannot abide is a safety risk.” She digs into her food, cutting her pancakes with practiced precision. “You have two choices. One, you can work on getting your emotions under control. You can do this with our counselor’s help, or on your own. Or two, you can choose to not try.”

You cannot believe there’s a fucking therapist here. It’s so… commie of them. Good lord. Your gut clenches. You can almost hear your Daddy laughing at you from beyond the pearly gates above.

“If you have another episode like that,” Maria continues, “the consequences will be judged by the amount of effort we see you putting in. If we see you making time for therapy, you will be given the most amount of grace. If we see you trying without therapy, we will critically analyze how capable you are of handling yourself. If you do not try at all, you will be asked to leave.”

Liver. Open wound. Sepsis. A million reasons to stay run through your mind. Irritatingly, you find yourself adding house, electricity, and bacon to the list. You can’t let those keep you here. But your traitorous mind adds them anyway.

“So,” you say, leaning forward in your chair, arms braced on the table. The words are forced, your throat tight. “That’s the deal, then. I make an effort, I get to stay,” long enough to heal, you add in your mind. “I don’t, I’m out.”

“Think that’s something you can handle?” Maria asks, brow raised at you.

It’s almost like she doesn’t think you can do it.

That’s the thing that tips you over the edge. You’re not sure if it’s the Texas fire in you, or your own tendency toward competitiveness, or something else entirely, but something about Maria doubting you pisses you the fuck off, and you have to prove her wrong.

“I can fuckin’ handle myself.” You stare her down, daring her to argue. Daring her to kick you out. Daring her to tell you you’re not worth the effort.

She doesn’t. Instead, she smiles and with one hand, slides your mag-less gun across the table to you. “Then eat up. You’re gonna need the calories.”

Fuck, you can’t keep staying here, motionless in Jackson. You need to get back on the road, find a way to escape the sins of your past that followed you here. But you can’t leave, either. Your ribs are on fire, the muscles knitting themselves together across ruined bone are angry at you for your current position. God, you’re so royally fucked.

There’s a little window lining the ceiling of the wall, not enough for anyone to see in, but just enough for you to see out. You rest your cheek on the toilet seat, waiting for the next wave of nausea to hit, and stare out at the moon overhead. It’s a crescent, but you can’t remember how to identify whether it’s waxing or waning. Does the moon grow to the left or the right?

You haven’t really given yourself the space to think like a scientist in a long time, and you’re starting to think that may have been a mistake. A lot of the details are fuzzy when you try to drag them from the cesspool that is your mind. You can remember the broad strokes, the theories behind how things work, but when it comes to the small details, you can’t seem to get them right anymore.

You’d tried to challenge yourself earlier while you did your daily sit-and-stare-at-the-wall-for-hours routine, drawing on the basic pathways you’d once known like the back of your hand. The Krebs Cycle was too hard. You could remember the general structures involved, what went in and what came out, but the individual steps are lost to time. Glycolysis was easier, though you couldn’t quite remember how many NADs were produced at each step. You didn’t bother with anything else after that.

It's hard, realizing you’ve lost something so fundamental to who you used to be, and you find yourself mourning the version of you that you buried long ago. What would she think of you now? Of the things you’ve done to survive?

Nausea wells up again, and you tilt your head back into the bowl of the toilet. What does it fucking matter what your dead self would think? She’s dead, and you’re not. C’est la vie, or whatever the French used to fucking say.

Hours pass and you stay on the floor of the bathroom, alternating between emptying your guts and resting your damp face on the cold tile floor. After a while, the moon dips below the edge of the window, as the last of the horrible memories slips from the forefront of your mind. The nausea passes soon after, and you’re able to stand on shaky legs. When you reach your bedroom, you collapse into your bed, and when you fall asleep, the dreams don’t return.

You’ve slept too long.

The angle of the sun shining through your windows is wrong, hitting you square in the face. Wait, the sun’s up? Shit, you haven’t just slept too long, you’ve slept way too fucking long. You sit up, scrambling for your clothes. Maybe you can still beat the breakfast rush, avoid the crowd. You dress quickly, throwing whatever you grab on haphazardly, and slip your feet into your boots, lacing them tight. You don’t bother brushing your teeth, you just throw back a mouthful of mouthwash, running for the front door. Running onto your porch, you spit the mouthwash over the railing into the grass below.

Any hopes of beating the morning breakfast crowd are dashed when you see the sheer number of people wandering the streets, all moving in the same direction. You hesitate, one foot hanging over the top step, ready to carry you along with them. The sun shines down on you, warming you despite the winter cold. It’s a far cry from your usual ass-crack-of-dawn walk, where the moon still hangs low overhead and the last of the stars twinkle low in the sky.

You stomach growls. Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck. The ease of Jackson, with its readily available food and cushioned mattresses and running water, it’s making you soft, like a hard-won callous peeling away from the skin. You lean against the beam supporting the porch overhang, crossing your arms. How badly do you need food?

Badly, unfortunately. Your stomach aches from a night spent upending itself, and against your will, your feet move, carrying you into the street. You tell yourself it’s your survival instincts, the hunter-gatherer part of your mind trying to provide for you, but deep down, you know it’s because Jackson is slowly eroding your self-control.

 Ugh, how are you supposed to survive on patrols if you can’t handle going a little hungry for a few hours? Joel will get a kick out of your weakness, you’re sure. You can imagine him now, telling Maria and Elllie all about how much your stomach whined and complained the whole trip. How it grumbled so loud, it caught the attention of infected in the area, drawing them after y’all—

You cut the thought off. You’re not scared of infected. If anything, you’re looking forward to the chance to practice your shooting, and infected make damn good targets. It was your single solace in the mess that would be New Girl and Uncle Grumpy’s first patrol together.

You’d finally mustered up the courage yesterday to ask Maria to switch you to a different patrol partner.

“Sorry,” she’d said, bouncing Benji on her hip. “We match partners based on skill level, and set pairs on appropriate runs accordingly.”

You’d try to argue that there was no way Joel and you were matched. You hadn’t seen the man shoot, but even if he was at the same level as you, you still didn’t know what the fuck you were doing on their patrol routes. You know FEDRA’s protocols, not Jackson’s. You didn’t mention that part, though. No need to bring FEDRA into a place like this.

“That’s exactly why we need you with Joel.” Maria’s shoulders were tight, and you wondered how long it would be until Tommy came back. She wasn’t going to relax until then, you were pretty sure. “You’re good with a gun, and he knows the rules. You’re a good match, whether you like it or not.”

You’d given her a look. “You know damn well that’s not true.”

She’d half-laughed, half-sighed. “It’s not, but I really don’t have much choice. You two are the only ones with the marksmanship to handle West River, if Joel’s assessment of you is to be believed.”

And damn it, but you weren’t going to sell yourself short. If being a good shot was the whole reason you’d gotten stuck with Joel, well… there wasn’t anything you could do about it. You weren’t going to pretend to suck, because pretending to suck would get you pulled from the good patrol routes. Maybe in a few weeks, when Tommy got back with the other patrollers, Maria would find you a new partner. Then, you’d get a good run and a non-asshole to spend the trip with.

You’ve been thinking like that a lot this week, you realize as you walk. Planning for the future. Looking forward to the good patrol routes and—hopefully—a new partner at some point. You shouldn’t be letting yourself pretend. It’s only going to make leaving harder. But you find a bit of solace in the fantasy. Of staying here, settling in.

You’ve been imagining what your house would look like if you actually treated it like a home. You’d indulged yesterday, imagining a patrol trip where you managed to scavenge some knick-knacks and tchotchkes in the old abandoned houses outside of Jackson. You would hang a shelf on the wall by the TV and set your prizes on it, arranging them by color, then size, then shape, before finally settling on color again.

You’d join one of the activities Maria keeps trying to shove down your throat. Maybe paint a portrait, though you’ve never been the best artist. It would be fun to hang it on the wall. Maybe you’d ask Ellie to draw something for your bedroom. You’ve seen her doodling in her journal and know she’s talented.

You’d go to the Tipsy Bison for parties, attend the Holiday Dances that Maria is so insistent you should be going to. You’d make friends with the other Jackson residents. You’d be part of the community.

You climb the staircase in front of the dining hall, and someone jostles your elbow as they pass by you. You flinch, and the fantasy slips away, replaced by the reality of where you are and where you should be going. February. You have to hold on to February. You can’t let yourself get suckered into staying here. You won’t.

The dining hall is absolutely packed, and people mill about with trays of food in their hands, searching for empty spots to sit. You join the serving line, filling your plate high. When you reach the end of the line, you steel yourself, preparing to delve into the throng of people to find a seat.

It’s not easy. Most of the tables are completely full, and some people have taken to splitting chairs or sitting in each other’s laps. It’s homey, even for a large room, and the crowd makes the space seem closer—cozier, in a weird way. You scan the tables, finally spotting an empty chair next to a brown-haired woman reading a book. It’s tucked in the back corner of the room, away from the denser areas, and you send up a quick little prayer of thanks to the universe before making your way back to the table.

“This seat taken?” God, you’re awkward. Your voice is hoarse from sleep still, and you don’t even want to try and guess how insane your bedhead probably looks.

Thankfully, she doesn’t look up, absorbed in the story in front of her. She shakes her head, though, and you take that as permission to sit. You start tearing into the food on your tray, much to your angry stomach’s delight.

“You’re here late.”

You pause, mouth full of pancake, as you realize the woman is talking to you. Swallowing, you wince when the mostly-unchewed pancake goes down hard. “Uh, I don’t—”

She folds the corner of the book’s page and shuts it, laying it down on the table. The Odyssey. Interesting choice. “I just mean,” she says, looking up at you. “I’ve seen you around. You’re usually here before the line opens, right?”

How the fuck does she know that? You eye her, searching for any sign of danger in her face. She’s a striking woman, with olive brown skin, and eyes the color of grass. A constellation of freckles dusts her cheekbones, interrupted only by a pale, white scar that cuts from her eye to the corner of her lip.

She seems to recognize your apprehension, because she smiles, a little sheepish. “Sorry, that’s an insane way to start a conversation. I’m not stalking you or anything, I swear. We ran into each other the day you had your little…” she trails off awkwardly before clearing her throat and continuing. “Anyway, I work the serving line sometimes, and I’ve noticed you’re always the first one in, first one out.”

Vague memories of a woman with a brown braid tug at your mind. She was on the porch of the dining hall, and you… you bumped into her, right before Ellie found you. You’re not sure how you feel about being noticed. You stare at her, waiting for the right words to come to you. You’re sure there’s something you’re supposed to say, but you’re so fucking out of practice with being a human being, your mind is empty.

Her smile fades, eyes dropping back to her book. “I… Sorry, I’ll leave you alo—”

“It’s okay.” Jesus, you’re bad at this. “Sorry, I’m…” You’re what? Barely human most days? Bad at conversation? Suspicious of every living creature around you? You settle on the truth. “Yes, I’m usually here early.”

“Oh.” There’s a shyness to her, a fragility you’re not used to seeing anymore. “Decided to make a change today?”

Decided implies you made a choice. Making a choice implies agency. Agency implies you’re not completely and totally fucked in the head. “Yeah.”

“Cool.” Her smile is back. It’s subtle, barely a tilt of the corner of her mouth, but her eyes shine like stars at twilight. “I’m Rebecca, by the way. Well, Beck, if you want.” There’s a silver chain hanging around her neck, and it disappears into the front of her shirt.

“I’m…” you trail off. You don’t give your name out. Haven’t in years. “I’m the new girl, I guess.”

Beck, to her credit, doesn’t push. Instead, she tugs her book back to her and flips it open, smile still dimpling her cheek. “Nice to meet you, new girl. Welcome to Jackson.”

“Last chance to put me on a different run.” You lean back in the chair. You’re set to leave first thing in the morning, and you’re hoping against hope that Maria will finally see the light and spare you the trouble.

You’re in her office, scanning a map of the lands outside of Jackson. Maria sits in a solid, wooden chair behind her desk, reading over supply lists. She’s got a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, and every so often, she pushes them up with a finger. The sun has disappeared, the windows an inky black. Maria’s turned on the electric lights, and for once, you find you’re not terrified of the light spilling into the streets. Something about having another person around is reassuring, and you’re trying to ignore how uncomfortable that makes you.

She shakes her head absently. “I need Joel on this run, and you’re the only person who’s shooting he’s ever said anything remotely positive about—Tommy excluded.”

“Have you considered,” you muse, tracing the route points with a finger, “he said I’m a good shot because he wanted to patrol alone and didn’t think you’d pair him with Jackson’s greenest recruit.”

“Yes.” She drags her pen across the paper, scratching something out. “And I don’t care. He knows the rules.”

She’d told them to you earlier. Don’t go alone. Always stick together. Watch each other’s back. Get each other home safe. If your partner gets bit, shoot them. You don’t love the idea that she’s using you to keep Joel in order, that you’re some sort of line in the sand that neither of them is willing to cross. Joel, using you to get Maria to back off, and Maria, using you to make Joel fall in line. Still, if it means putting Joel in his place, you find you can’t blame Maria for sticking to her guns, even if it means you don’t get a say in it. Your grudge against him seems to outweigh any and all self-respect you know you should have.

“What if he actually thinks I’m a terrible shot and lied to you just to screw with you?”

She looks at you over the top of her glasses. “Are you a bad shot?”

“No, I’m just saying—”

“You’re going with Joel.” God, if she hadn’t spent the past month doing her damndest to convince you to fall in love with Jackson, you’d be convinced she was partnering you with Joel just to push you out. You’re pretty sure alone time with the man would be enough to send any sane person running for the hills. Not that you’re sane. You’re actually pretty far from sane, most days. “Besides, the West River run is pretty.”

It's also, according to her, the area with the highest levels of infected activity this time of year, which is why she wants you and Joel on it. She’d gone on some long, rambling lecture about infected migration patterns and hibernation seasons. You’d been a strange mix of horrified and fascinated. On the one hand, the fact that Jackson had survived long enough to identify and track yearly migration patterns was fucking incredible. On the other hand, there’s something chilling about infected moving through the land like animals, searching out the most hospitable areas for survival. It reminds you of chemotaxis, the way certain living cells will generally move in the direction of relevant chemical factors. You’ve never dabbled in ecology, but you wonder if animals have a similar sense, using temperature instead of opsonins. Thermotaxis, or something to that effect. Is that even a word? You’ll have to try and track down literature, see if you can find something.

God, you miss the library. And computers. And the Nature journal. What you wouldn’t give for a day with internet, to search for every question you’ve had in the last twenty years. You’d settle for a good paper on mycology, at this point. Hell, you’d even take just an abstract. Something—anything—to remind you of who you used to be.

You don’t know what it is about this town that makes you miss your old self so much. It’s been years since you’d even thought about the life you’d left behind. You remember nights spent studying for exams, how excited you’d been when your senior thesis had been approved, the feeling of accomplishment when you solved a particularly tricky problem.

You think that’s what you miss the most about science—the problem solving. There was something so satisfying about facing a complicated problem, and creating an elegantly simple solution to handle it. You can’t remember the name of the experiment, but there’s an old story buried somewhere deep in your mind of a group of scientists who proved the hypothesis of semi-conservative DNA replication, using nothing more than some radioactive nitrogen to make the DNA heavier. Using some statistics and expected weight ratios of the predicted molecules, they were able to split the DNA in a manner that could be seen with the naked eye, proving their hypothesis unequivocally. Clean, elegant, straightforward. Just the way you like it.

You trace your finger across the trail drawn on the map, imagining it’s a strand of nucleic acid snaking away under your fingers. You wonder, if you asked Maria, would she help you find some textbooks? You wish you could force yourself to trust her, to believe that she would be willing to help you, but the words stick in your throat. Instead, you pivot, focusing on tomorrow’s run. “Anythin’ else I should know about the trip? Aside from it bein’ pretty, I mean.”

She chews her inner lip, thinking. “We think there might be a storm rolling in, but it’s a fifty-fifty shot right now. West River run is prone to flooding in the spring, and in the winter, snowstorms can make it difficult to traverse.”

Great. Fucking wonderful. “And you’re sure you want me on this run?” Please change you mind, for the love of god, please. The last thing you want is to get snowed down with Joel, far beyond where anyone from Jackson could intervene. If his default setting is curmudgeon-y asshole on a good day, you don’t want to imagine what he looks like when the weather turns for the worse.

Maria levels you with a look you know you’ve given Ellie before. It’s a look that says you’re being the world’s biggest baby, and I’m begging you to suck it up. “You’re going to be fine. Besides, I think you’re just about the only person in Jackson—family notwithstanding—who’s not scared to tell him to fuck off.”

Well, shit. You can hear a note of admiration in her tone, buried deep under the suck it up. You don’t consider yourself brave, not even close, but you know you’ve got a temper, and Joel’s got a special talent for setting it off. You just hope Maria isn’t confusing hotheadedness for courage.

The small cuckoo clock over her door chimes, and you check it. Ten o’clock.

Maria shuffles her papers into a pile with a sigh. “Go to bed. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”

You fold the map in your hands and tuck it into the pocket of your button-down, dreading sleep. The sooner you sleep, the sooner you going to wake up, and the sooner you’re going to get quality time with your least favorite person in Jackson. Fucking ugh. You just hope Maria doesn’t stick the two of you together permanently.

You rise before the sun from a blessedly dreamless sleep. You go to check the window, to see if the stars are still out or the moon still high, but you can’t see beyond a thick haze of clouds. This day just keeps getting better and better, huh?

You dress, putting on the clothing you’d laid out the night before. You opted for lighter-colored clothing, hoping to blend in better with the snowy surroundings. Growing up in Texas, camouflage had always been a sandy, olive-green blur. You don’t have much experience with what’s passes for invisible in the snow, though. You just have to hope you’re making the right call.

Maria had given you a pair of long johns, and you pull them on. You’re lucky to have a sports bra that fits—lord knows an underwire would just piss you off today—and you pull it over your head. A white, long-sleeve thermal covers your arms, and the sleeves are long enough to tug down over your hands. Maria’s hunting kit she’d given you came with a faded pair of coveralls, and you hope the soft beige color will blend well into to the snow. A pair of thick woolen socks comes next, and you make sure to pull them up over the cuffs at your ankles, a weak attempt to keep your skin covered throughout the day’s expected activities. Your boots slip on easily over the top, and your tie them neatly, tucking the loose ends of the laces away.

You check yourself in the mirror as you brush your teeth, pleased to find you appear almost competent. It takes you back to hunting with your Daddy as a kid, and if you didn’t know any better, you’d say there was excitement in your eyes. You braid your hair back, tucking the tail into your shirt. You look… good, almost. Post-apocalyptic good, but good. Your cheeks have started to fill out over the past few weeks, and the sunken hollowness is gone from your eyes. The split lip you entered Jackson with disappeared weeks ago, and the last bits of the bruise across your cheek are almost entirely gone.

You test a smile, and the sensation is foreign but not entirely unwelcome. It’s been a long time since you willingly chose to smile. The girl looking back in the mirror… you could almost be convinced she’s happy. A far cry from the wild animal you’d first encountered there, all those weeks ago.

You pull yourself away from the mirror, and wander down the hallway, retrieving your pack from the kitchen counter. You’d stuffed it with necessities the night before—ammo, water, some trail snacks, anything that might make the day a little easier. There’s also a little green kit, a gift from Doc during your last checkup with her.

She’d shoved the pouch into your hands with a gruff heard you might need that. You’d pulled the snap, frowning in confusion. What could you possibly need?

A first aid kit, as it turned out. A fucking good one, at that. It held the standard gauze and medical tape, alcohol wipes, saline drops, and a shit ton of other basic medical supplies, all neatly organized in dedicated pockets and tabs. But when you flipped it open, a plastic bag full of extra supplies slipped out, and you barely managed to catch it. Inspecting it, you’d realized Doc had given you some definitely-not-standards supplies, shoved into a kit they were not meant to fit in. Latex gloves, suture packs, a travel-sized bottle with the words sterile water written on it sideways in sharpie—hell, she’d even thrown in a pair of suture clamps.

You’d stared at the supplies in your hands, mouth gaping open. It was so… it was… Doc… Tears had welled, and you’d blinked them back. A kit like this… it was the difference between life and death.

“Merry early Christmas.” Doc’s voice was stern. “Don’t die.” Then she’d shoo’ed you out of the clinic, like she hadn’t just given you the nicest gift you’d ever received.

You touch the green kit now, reminding yourself that it’s real, that you actually own it. With a sniffle, you zip your pack up, and grab the thigh holsters Maria lent you. You strap them on, one on each leg. You slip your sidearm into the one on your dominant side, glad to have a fully loaded gun on you. Maria had returned your mag last night, along with a handful of other weapons to take with you.

You tuck her revolver into the other thigh holster. The shotgun gets strapped to the side of your pack, and a switchblade is tucked into your back pocket. You throw on your coat, a set of leather gloves, and a thick, knit cap. Swinging your pack onto your shoulder, you pick up Maria’s rifle. Alright. You’re as ready as you’ll ever be. Might as well get the show on the road.

The stars are still hidden behind dark, gray clouds above, and Jackson is quiet. The porch light above you glows, orange light flooding the space. In a few months, when the snow melts, you imagine moths will flutter around the bulb. For now, though, you’re alone with your thoughts.

It’s painfully cold, even with your layers, and you curse your Texan sensibilities internally. God, you wish you could handle the winter weather the way everyone else does, instead of having to suffer through it. The moisture in your breath seems to stick to your skin as you walk, little clouds of vapor turning to icy needles against your face. You tug your scarf over your nose and mouth, trying to cut through the cold. It’s a short jaunt to the stables, though, and before you know it, you’re ducking into the squat, wooden building.

You can feel the flush in your cheeks, the smile threatening to crack across your face. The smell of hay is strong in here, and you let yourself enjoy the sounds of life stirring as the morning dawns. The barn reminds you of a home you’ll never see again in this life, but for once, the memories don’t fill you with sadness, with that god-awful longing. You imagine your Daddy would like it here, feel at home surrounded by wood and animals. You wander past stalls, petting the horses who stick their muzzles out as you walk by. You’re so lost in thought, you almost miss the lone figure standing at the end of the walkway, petting a beautiful chestnut filly with a white stripe stretching from her eyes to her nose.

Joel is so relaxed, so open as he pets the horse. You can hear his deep voice murmuring to her, too low for you to catch the words but the tone… it’s all warmth and comfort. He’s gentle with her, kind in a way you can’t comprehend. It’s so entirely opposite of the version of him you’ve come to know.

You close your eyes, trying to muster up the energy to break the spell cast by the early morning. This is the calm before the storm, and you’re tempted to stretch the moment out, to linger in the quiet. But you’ve got a job to do, and the sooner you do it, the sooner you can get home. Besides, from the looks of those clouds outside, you’re racing against a fucking monster of a snowstorm.

You clear your throat, opening your eyes. The change in Joel is instant. His posture stiffens, his hand snapping to his side, caught in the mortifying crime of… having human fucking emotions, you guess. Good Lord. He turns around, expression guarded as he catches sight of you.

You spy his gear off to the side of the walkway, neatly organized. Of course, he’s a neat freak. You wouldn’t expect anything less. “C’mon. Sooner we leave, sooner we get back.” Sooner he’s not your fucking problem anymore.

And the sooner you can get the fuck away from his shitty attitude. God, today’s gonna be a long, miserable day.

And for the love of all that’s holy, he’s still not opening his fucking mouth when he stops in front of the stall of a dark brown horse, setting the saddle on top of the half door. You want to cross your arms, but you’ve got the rifle in your hands. Instead, you stand there, awkwardly staring at him, waiting for him to tell you which fucking horse you’re supposed to take. From across the stable, you watch him hold his hand out to his horse, murmuring to it, before you decide fuck this and put your shit on the ground.

You stride to the horse’s stall, and put your hands on your hips. “Which one’s mine?”

“Not my problem.” Great start, Joel. Great fuckin’ start.

You tap your foot on the floor, waiting for him to… you don’t know, grow some manners or something. Pass whatever emotional stone is leaving him so verbally constipated. He doesn’t budge. You refuse to beg. So, the two of you stand at an impasse, waiting for the other to break.

The horse in the next stall over sticks her head over the door, watching you. She’s a beauty—an appaloosa, you’re pretty sure. You think you remember her coat pattern is called red roan, but it’s been while since you’ve seen her breed and it’s difficult to be certain. Red legs, red face, with a white body dotted with splotches of copper. She leans her head toward you, snuffling your shoulder. You reach to pet her, holding your hand out for her to inspect first. She sniffs, then butts her nose into your hand, her breath warm and sweet.

“Hey, pretty girl.” You’re whispering, stepping closer to her stall and away from Joel. “How’s your morning goin’?”

She chuffs, as if to say it’s going. You can’t help it. A smile splits your face in two.

“What happened to ‘sooner we leave, sooner we get back’?” And there Joel goes, killing your good mood twice in one morning. You glare over your shoulder. “I’d love to. Sure would be nice if my patrol partner would tell me which fuckin’ horse I’m allowed to take.”

He gives you one of his long, unreadable looks before scoffing and striding to the tack rack. He throws two sets of bridles and reins over his shoulder before grabbing another blanket and saddle, and coming back to the appaloosa’s stall, where he stops short, staring at you. This time, his expression is clear. Move.

You sigh, stepping away from the mare.

“C’mere, Gracie girl,” he murmurs, low enough that you’re sure he doesn’t intend for you to hear. He opens the stall, and sets the saddle down on the door. With an unexpected grace, he swings the blanket over Gracie’s back, smoothing it down with a firm hand. Taking one of the bridles off of his shoulder, he tosses it to you. His throw is a little on the rough side, and you barely manage to snag it in the air. “Hurry up.”

You genuinely don’t know how to feel in this moment. You’re simultaneously pissed the fuck off at Joel, ready to punch him, and also overjoyed at the chance to ride again, especially when your mount is as pretty as Gracie. You choose happiness, for now. There’ll be plenty of time for anger later.

It’s funny, the things you never forget. God forbid, you remember the steps of the biochemical pathways you spent years of your life studying. No, you remember horses, how you used to prep them for ranch work as a kid. How to saddle a horse. How to get the bridle over her head. How to earn her trust. She’s got beautiful, big brown eyes, and you can see that she’s got fire in her. God, you can’t wait to take her out.

She’s got a surprising amount of attitude, too, nipping and nudging at you when you deviate from whatever plan she’s got. You laugh when she manages to catch your braid with her teeth. She doesn’t pull enough to hurt you, just enough to grab your attention. You remember the word Tommy called you that first day you’d arrived in Jackson. Spitfire. It suits Gracie—certainly more than it suits you.

When you’ve got her tacked up, you retrieve your pack and rifle, and swing up into the saddle. You can feel the fire in Gracie’s muscle, the tension begging to be sprung. She’s a spitfire, alright. You scratch the side of her neck, smoothing her mane, and grab the reins.

Joel’s one step ahead of you, nudging his horse forward into the walkway. You follow, clicking your tongue and squeezing your heels in.

“Don’t click at her.” Joel’s words are a quiet snap.

Why the fuck—

You take a deep breath, trying to calm yourself down. It’s way too early to be getting upset over nothing. You need to chill the fuck out, or you’re gonna spend the whole day absolutely fucking miserable. “Why not?”

“I’m sure you can figure that one out yourself.”

You pull a nasty face at his back, shooting him the finger where he can’t see. It doesn’t occur to you until you pull Gracie to a stop in front of the fence gate, watching Joel call up to the guard, that… fuck, he has a point.

Click commands were commonplace where you’d learned to ride, but of course, you’d learned to ride before the outbreak. In a world of monsters that identify prey by fucking clicking, it would be a pretty stupid idea to train your horses to respond to anything close to that sound. God, you don’t want to give him any credit for anything ever, but damn it, he’s right about this.

The gate slides open, and Joel nudges his horse forward. You keep close, following him into the open world. A breeze kicks up, blowing strands of hair Gracie had knocked from your braid. Out here, the land is blanketed in snow, undisturbed by footsteps or shovels. Even in the dim twilight, you have to admit, it’s beautiful.

You haven’t taken much time to admire the area you’ve found yourself stuck in, but you do now, following Joel as he heads west. The land is flanked on both sides by dark forests, and a sharp mountain range splits the two, peaks reaching up to meet the horizon. Hazy grayness hugs the world, and it’s hard to tell if it’s a refraction effect off of the snow or if a fog is settling in, but you find it comforting either way. It’s like someone took a layer of frosted glass and placed it over everything, softening it. The snow dampens the sound of horse hoofs—another comfort. Everything around you feels pleasantly distant, like you’re looking at a painting of a landscape rather than riding through one.

What was this place like before the outbreak? There are no signs of prior humans in the immediate area, no structures or signs or burnt out buildings. Just wilderness. You can’t imagine it looked all that different before the infected wrecked the world. It’s a relief, almost, the idea that the outbreak wasn’t all consuming. Sure, the odd infected stumbles through here occasionally—you’ve seen that yourself—but it’s not like the urban areas. The environment here feels untouched, unblemished.

Your thoughts wander as you ride, and you let the peaceful feeling carry you as Joel leads you into the forest west of Jackson. The snow is sparser here, blocked from reaching the ground by the foliage, but occasionally, you come across drifts that appear to have slipped from boughs above. You don’t catch the sounds of any critters scampering through the brush, but that doesn’t surprise you. It’s still twilight, and you’d only expect to see deer this time of day.

Joel straightens up in his saddle and motions to you without looking back. You watch as he points into the dense thicket of trees, and spy a skinny river cutting across the land. That must be your route.

Joel doesn’t look back to see if you’d paid attention. Instead, he drops his hand back to rest on his thigh, his posture ramrod straight. He rides like a cowboy, you realize with a jolt. Stiff spine, loose hips, one hand on the reins and the other on his thigh. The few times you’ve seen horses since you left Texas, they’ve been FEDRA property, ridden by FEDRA soldiers. For whatever fucking reason, FEDRA training seemed to lean more toward the formal, almost dressage style. It never made sense to you; you’d always thought western riding suited warfare more than polo did. But Joel rides western, like you do. It’s comforting, in a weird way.

Comforting? What the actual fuck?

Nothing about Joel is comforting. He’s terse, and rude, and he makes you want to stab him. Or yourself. You haven’t actually figured out which option would make your misery end the fastest. Either way, Joel is a lot of things, and comforting sure as hell ain’t one of them.

His horse thwips its tail as it jumps down a small overhang, and Gracie snorts. You lean over to pet her, whispering “I know, right? So rude.”

You reach the riverbank just after Joel does and check your six, trailing your gaze along the path of hoofprints you’re leaving in your wake. If it weren’t so fucking cold, you’d walk Gracie through the water, hide your tracks better, but as it stands, you’re not subjecting her to that. It doesn’t help that the river opens up into a set of small rapids, and droplets of water and spraying onto your leg as you ride by, freezing onto your pants. It’s fucking cold outside—colder than it’s been since you arrived in Jackson—and even though the sun is beginning to cut through the grayness of twilight, it seems like it’s getting colder. The breeze that had greeted you upon exiting the fence is picking up, and you can feel the moisture in the air building. Fuck, it’s totally going to snow. You just have to hope y’all can beat the storm back to Jackson.

It's about a half hour ride before you reach a point where the river snakes around a bend, and you catch the shape of a stone building tucked into it, hidden behind a tree. The first checkpoint. Joel confirms this as the two of you move closer by sliding off of his saddle and leading his horse to the porch. You follow his example, jumping down and grabbing Gracie’s lead. When she’s tied up next to Joel’s horse, you join him on the porch, politely ignoring the way he’s cursing under his breath as you move to stand next to him.

He's got one glove off, and with his bare hand, he’s jiggling the knob of the front door, aggressively trying to… Jesus, what the fuck is he trying to do?

“Need help with that?”

“No.”

Alrighty, then. Not even a nope, it’s a full-blown no. You’re starting to build a Joel Mood-Meter in your brain, and you add the no as a tier, one step below nope. “What are you doing?”

“My job.”

“Clearly.” It looks like the knob is stuck. You cross your arms over your chest, letting your breath fog in the air, the moisture stabbing your skin. Fog. Moisture. Fuck, the handle’s probably frozen. If that’s the case, Joel’s wasting his time trying to manhandle the door open. You know a trick, but you let him struggle for a few more seconds, just enjoying watching him suffer. Finally, he gives up with a curse, his hand red as he yanks it away.

“Find a window.” He slips his hand back into his glove. “I’ll boost you.”

“Better idea—got any alcohol?” You sound smug, and you know it. You’re enjoying every second of this.

His permanent frown deepens. “This ain’t a party.”

For him, maybe. For you, getting to one-up him is practically heaven on earth. “I can get the handle open.” You hold your hand out, expectantly. If you’re gonna help him, you’re not gonna waste your first aid supplies to do it. Besides, he’s a smuggler. His type always carries a flask. It’s practically a stereotype.

The two of you hold that stand-off for an eternity before he finally cracks. With an irritated huff and a sideways look that says this better be fuckin’ worth it, he pulls a silver flask from his back pocket. You take it with a sunny smile, unscrewing the cap, giving it a sniff. Whiskey. Strong whiskey. Goddamn. The proof is definitely high enough to drop the freezing point.

Carefully, you pour a little bit of the alcohol out onto the handle, aiming for the seam of metal where the knob meets the door. With your free hand, you twist gently, putting pressure on the icy metal. You’re tempted to dump the whole flask out right there, use every last drop as a small fuck you to Joel, but even your pettiness can’t override your pragmatism. It only takes an ounce or two, but the moment the ice melts, your careful pressure is enough to twist the handle, and you pull the door open.

“Work smarter.” You recap the flask, tossing it to Joel, who barely manages to catch it. Ha. Asshole. “Not harder.”

Oh, he’s pissed. Honestly, you didn’t need to waste alcohol to open the door, his glare alone could’ve melted the ice. As he pockets the flask, you head into the building, smiling wide. The room is nothing special, just an old cabin, with a rack of basic supplies off to one side, and a desk pushed against the wall. There’s an old, stone fireplace, but no ashes in it. It’s been a long time since anyone’s lit a fire in here. You hope that’s a good sign, that no one has recently had to hunker down along this trail, but you know better than to get your hopes up. On the desk, you see what you assume is a log book. Flipping it open confirms your suspicion—pages upon pages of dates, names, and status updates greet you. There’s a pen clipped to the cover, and by the time Joel joins you in the little room, you’ve already filled in today’s update.

“Done.” You turn to Joel, still smiling. It feels fucking fantastic to be a step ahead of him, and you’re not gonna waste a single moment of this high. He steps beside you, reading over your work with a baleful expression, as if he’s searching for any reason to bitch at you. He doesn’t find one, though. It’s not like log books are fucking rocket science. Or medical science. Or any science, for that matter.

Except… it is, in a way. Dates, observers, and observations. Weird. It’s data tracking, for the modern un-modern era. You mull that over while Joel tries to find some excuse to pick a fight.

When he clearly doesn’t find one, he snaps the book shut, tossing it back on the desk. “Let’s go.”

You win this round, and it feels fucking fantastic.

Each checkpoint follows a similar pattern. You and Joel reach the outpost, tie up the horses, and go inside. Each stop, you fill out the log book. At an abandoned gas station, Joel notes that the next supply run needs to top off some items. Snow starts falling after you leave. In an old watch tower, you note that you saw a handful of broken branches outside, with no identifiable cause. The snow comes down heavier, not enough to disrupt visibility, but enough to remind you that you’re running low on time before the storm hits.

At a run-down house, both of you note the damage along the outer wooden wall. Scratches, deep ones, gouge into the slats, as though something had tried to claw its way in.

“Could’ve been a bear.” You don’t feel confident as you say it, but you’re hoping it’s true. Better a bear than a bloater.

Joel hmms under his breath, non-committal. It’s almost as if he’s too distracted to argue. That doesn’t bode well, in your humble opinion. The earlier joys of the day are slipping away, replaced by the grim reality that, despite the few moments of entertainment, you’re still very much surrounded by a world that will chew you up and spit you out if given the chance. Literally, if an infected gets ahold of you.

You head inside and retrieve the log book, documenting the damage to the exterior, making sure to also note the damage you’d seen at the other location. It’ll make cross-referencing easier, if someone needs to review the log books later. When you finish and return the book, you head outside to find Joel still kneeling next to the scratches, tracing them with a bare hand. He pulls his fingers to his face, and sniffs them.

You kneel next to him, reinspecting the damage. There’s clumps of dirt and grime caught in the destroyed wood fibers, but also something clotted and black. You copy Joel, taking off your glove and picking up a clot and testing the texture. It’s sticky and wet, even in the frozen winter air, which means it’s fresh. If it weren’t the color of pitch, you’d swear it was a fibrin clot. A black fibrin clot… Fuck, it’s—

“Infected.” You drop it like it’s on fire and wipe your hand on your jacket. God, you miss hand sanitizer. “Must’ve nicked itself or something.”

Joel nods, pulling the whiskey from his pocket. “Here.” His tone isn’t confrontational, and you appreciate it. At least he knows how to stow his shit when it’s time to focus.

You take the flask and pour a bit on your fingers, scrubbing them on your coat to clean them thoroughly. “It’s gotta be close still. Blood’s clotted but not frozen.” You hand him the flask back.

Joel stands. “Let’s go. Next checkpoint’s just past the ridge.”

“Let me update the log.”

He doesn’t say anything, just nods and heads to the horses. You notice he keeps his hand on his revolver, and the sight sends a bolt of anxiety through your stomach. Good. Your nerves will keep you alive out here.

You head back inside and retrieve the log book, adding the blood observations to the line you’d written earlier. You’re just finishing, closing the book and clipping the pen, when you hear a loud thud followed by a single gunshot.

You drop the log book and sprint for the door, throwing it open. Joel’s standing there, calm as a fucking cucumber, gun holstered. At his feet, there’s a body. It’s thin—horrifyingly so—with the beginnings of spiny projections branching away from its face like antlers. There’s a pool of dark blood seeping into the snow around its head, and snowflakes catch there, dotting it like stars.

You groan. “Fuckin’ hate stalkers.” Because of fucking course, it had to be stalkers. Honestly, with your luck, you should be glad it’s not a bloater. Still, it’s not a good sign. “Think it was alone?”

“Doubt it.”

You know he’s right, but damn, would it kill the man to pretend to be an optimist for a few minutes? Stalkers don’t move alone, they move smart. Which means you’re probably being followed right now. You scan over your shoulder, trying to spot any movement, but you know it’s pointless. With their spindly limbs and spiny fungal projections, stalkers have built in forest camouflage. It’s almost impossible to separate them out from branches swaying in the breeze until they lunge for you, teeth bared to rip out your throat.

You appraise Joel sideways. “Did it get you?”

He gives you a look that very, very clearly says does it look like I got fuckin’ bit, dumbass, and you let the issue drop. You’ll have no problem shooting him later, if it turns out he’s hiding something.

Except, fuck, no, you will have an issue with it because Ellie will have an issue with it. Even if you hate Joel, you kinda like the damn kid, and you don’t wanna see her hurt. You shake your head. It’s the rule. If he’s hiding a bite, you have a responsibility to shoot him. It’s not your fault. Ellie can blame the protocol. You try to ignore the way guilt tugs at your heart. There’s no point in feeling guilty over something you haven’t done yet. But the thought of Ellie’s heartbroken face still threatens to tear you in two.

“We’ll walk.” Joel takes his horse’s lead. “Stow them in the garage.”

Well, if him holding his gun was a bad sign, him wanting to walk is a flashing, neon DANGER HERE light. The only reason he’d want to walk is to keep the horses safe. Great. Just great.

You don’t have much time left before the storm rolls through. Snow is pouring down now, flurries catching in your lashes and your hair. The wind is god awful, too, ripping through your quilted coat, raking over your skin. You’ve only got one checkpoint left to hit—the one past the ridge he’d mentioned—and you try to remember the map. If you’re remembering correctly, you should be able to make it there and back with enough time to retrieve the horses and ride back to Jackson. It’ll be cutting it close, but Joel’s right—you don’t want to risk losing the horses. If push comes to shove, spending a night out in the wilderness alone with Joel is a slightly less hellish option than getting stranded in the middle of the wilderness with Joel and two dead horses for god knows how long.

“Alright.” You let him take the horses’ leads, taking up the rear while he stows them in the garage. Hesitating, you make the choice to stow your rifle, hooking the strap onto the side of your pack opposite your shotgun, and draw your sidearm. Stalkers prefer ambushing, and you need the flexibility of a handgun, not the power of a rifle. You scan the forest while Joel lifts the door, watching for any signs of life. Un-life. Whatever. The sound of the garage door shutting slams into your gut as your instincts to shy away from loud noises, from danger, kick into high gear.

He doesn’t say anything as he heads back your way, just motions with his hands. Follow me. It’s a FEDRA hand signal. What the fuck? It would make sense that he’d know them, smuggler’s survival skills, but still. The fact that he assumed you’d know them… is it because he really has pegged you as FEDRA, or does he just not care if you can figure out what he’s trying to say? Hm. Smart asshole, or reckless asshole?

The two of you move slowly around the house, heading back down to follow the river. You’re on high alert, watching for any sign of movement, any indication that a swaying branch or rustling twig is actually a stalker, ready to jump out at you. The wind is strong, and every whistle singes your nerves, electric shocks in time with your pulse. Your heart pounds in your throat, your tense muscles ready to spring at any second. You feel fucking alive and damn it, you’re not going to let some infected get the best of you.

When y’all make it to the river, Joel points ahead. “The ridge.” His voice is impossibly quiet, almost silent under the howling of the wind. You follow his finger, eyes tracing down the river to where it curves. You realize you can’t see the land beyond that point. Oh, you’re on top of the ridge. Got it. The land must drop off beyond that point.

You nod, and signal to him to keep moving forward. He turns, and starts moving again, scanning the woods in front of him. Motion catches the corner of your peripheral vision, and you turn to investigate. It’s nothing, just a branch, but… you squint. Something’s off. There’s—

“Three o’clock.” You hope he can see the damaged tree.

He pulls back the hammer of his revolver. You physically feel its click in your spine. You’re a bundle of tightly wound nerves, and you know if hell breaks loose, you’re going to explode. You’re almost to the ridge now, and the roof of a building is just barely visible, tucked underneath the trees down there.

Joel moves again and you keep close, your sidearm raised. You’ve got eight bullets in it. Six in your revolver. Two in your shotgun. One in your rifle. You’re practically dripping in ammo. You’re going to be fine. Everything’s going to be—

Something slams into your side, knocking you to the ground. Blinding pain lances through your shoulder when you hit the snow with a thud, and the wind is knocked out of you. There’s snapping near your ear—fuck, teeth. You hear a shout—Joel—but you can’t see him. All you can see, all you can hear, is the infected on top of you as it growls and strains, trying to get to your throat. The thing manages to roll you just right, pinning your shooting arm under its weight, and you’re using all of the strength in your free arm to hold it back, to keep it from tearing your throat out. On instinct, you manage to jam your knee up between its chest and yours. Using it as a wedge, you push the infected back enough to lift your other leg and get a foot squarely on its chest. With a heave, you kick it back, sending it sprawling, and scramble to your feet. One second later, you’ve got your gun against its temple, and you pull the trigger, spraying black clots of blood across the white snow.

Adrenaline is coursing through you now, and you spin, searching for your partner. Where the fuck is he, why the fuck didn’t he help you, does he hate you that fucking badly—

He’s right on the edge of the ridge, with three stalkers on him. Motherfucker.

You raise your sidearm, aim, shoot. The first bullet finds its home in one stalker’s skull, and its body hits the dirt with a thud. Joel takes down the next one with a shot to the gut, and it collapses under its own weight, it’s body landing in the perfect spot to catch Joel’s ankle and send both him and the third stalker tumbling over the edge of the ridge.

You don’t hesitate, sprinting forward and throwing yourself over the edge without checking the height. It’s about a fifteen-foot drop, and you land hard, stumbling to your knees. You keep your hold on your gun, though, and when you pick yourself up, you see the stalker leaning over Joel’s prone body. You lift your gun, ignoring the screaming pain ripping through your shoulder, and shoot. The stalker crumples, and you stand up fully.

And wobble. Your shoulder… whatever your landed on, you fucked it up good. Still, you press on. You have no idea how many more infected are still out there, and with the wind and snow, there’s no way in hell you’ll be able to know they’re coming. And Joel’s prone on the ground, not moving. Fuck. You can’t let him die, you can’t face Ellie knowing it’s your fault. You can’t be the one to tell her—

You stumble to Joel, and shove the stalker’s body off of him with your foot. Leaning down, you take a glove off and check his neck for a pulse, letting out an embarrassing sigh of relief when you find one. He’s alive, at least. And frowning. Oh, thank fuck. You never thought you’d be happy to see him frowning at you, but right now, it’s proof he’s conscious.

He groans, eyes fluttering open, and you ignore the flood of relief you feel at the sight. “I’m fine.”

You don’t argue. You don’t make a nasty remark. You hold your hand out. “C’mon. We gotta get outta here.”

He takes your hand and you pull him to his feet. There’s blood on his coat, bright red. Shit. He’s injured. That’s an inside-and-safe problem, you tell yourself. Not an outside, actively being hunted problem. The checkpoint building looms in front of you, promising safety and warmth and most importantly—no fucking infected.

Joel’s swaying. Shit. He is so not allowed to die. Not when you need him to watch your back. Not when Ellie’s waiting for him back home. Goddamnit, when did you turn into Joel’s keeper?

 So, you grit your teeth and slide an arm around his waist, tugging his arm around your shoulders. “Let’s get inside.”

To his credit, he doesn’t fight you. He simply leans his weight onto you, letting you lead him inside.

And if he ever tells anyone about this, you’re gonna whoop his ass.

It was quiet outside, and a light dusting of stars hung low in the sky, dimming as the two of you walked. The short prairie grass, stiff and dry from the winter freeze, crunched under your feet, and moths fluttered by, diving for the porch lights behind you.

Just a little further. On the horizon, junipers and cedars dotted the landscape, squat and low, lining the edge of the creek that snaked through your property. You’d read books about a treehouse that magically traveled through time, and always wondered if your Daddy could build you one of those. You wouldn’t want it in the junipers though—too short, and the little branches always snagged on your clothes when you crawled under them. Cedar made your nose tickle, so you imagined you wouldn’t want that either. Your friends had oaks on their land, and you wondered if maybe they’d let you build there. Hannah loved adventures and playing make believe, so you figured she’d be the best one to ask.

But then, your Daddy squeezed your hand and pointed into the brush. You squinted, trying to see in the dim light. Look, under that branch. You listened, concentrating hard on the gray shapes in front of you, and then you saw it—

A tree house! Your Daddy had built a little wooden house in the trees. Well, it wasn’t in the trees, but under them, tucked away beneath branches and brush. You wanted to giggle and clap, but you knew that you were supposed to be quiet when hunting. Still, you wondered if the little house could time travel. Daddy was with you, too, so that meant you didn’t have to worry about things getting scary. He’d be there to protect you.

There’s the deer blind. He led you through the brush, pulling back branches to help you crawl easier. As you got closer, you could see the house was a very small. You didn’t care. It was perfect, and it was yours. And Daddy’s. The wooden door on the side of it opened with a shove, and you stumbled inside. Daddy had put two lawnchairs side by side, and you took the pink one. Your legs dangled over the edge, and you pulled them up, sitting criss-cross-applesauce like your teachers had taught you. Daddy settled into the big camo chair next to you, pulling the rifles into his lap. He smiled at you, soft and proud, and whispered. Atta girl. Now, you gotta promise me somethin’.

You whispered back. Anything. You liked your magic treehouse. The deer blind, the thing your Daddy called it. You gotta be real quiet. Don’t wanna scare the deer off. They’ll hear everythin’, so you gotta sit real still.

You’d been hunting with Daddy before. Doves, mostly. Sometimes squirrels. You knew the rules. You gotta sit real still, be real quiet, don’t make a sound. You even remembered the harder rules Daddy taught you. Sit downwind, because the animals can’t smell you there. You giggled. Sometimes, after a long day of hunting, Daddy stunk real bad, and Mama always threatened to make him take a bath outside. You imagined the animals holding their noses and telling Daddy he’s stinky.

Daddy handed you a rifle, and pinched your cheek. You knew how to hold a gun. Keep it away from your face. Don’t touch the trigger, ‘less you wanna shoot somethin’. Always keep the safety on ‘til you’re shootin’. It’s wasn’t a toy. People could get hurt.

Daddy had told you how his brother had died. How he’d messed up when trying to shoot. You didn’t know what death meant, not really, but it sounded scary. He’d said everyone had to dress up in black clothes and go to somethin’ called a funeral. You didn’t know why a funeral was sad. The word started with fun. All you knew was you never got to meet Uncle Chuck, and Granny got real quiet whenever you asked questions about him. So, you learned to stop asking.

Daddy leaned forward and pushed against the front wall of the house, and it lifted open, revealing a wide window for you to look out. You practically vibrated with excitement. Daddy thought of everything. He was so smart. You wanted be just like him when you grew up.

Alright, settle in. It’s gon’ be a bit ‘fore the deer start wakin’ up.

So, you settled in and waited for the sun to break over the horizon, happy to be sitting at your Daddy’s side.

Settling into Jackson feels a bit like settling into the deer blind on your old property. Cold, miserable, and exhausting. There’s an impending sense of something waiting for you, and you’re not sure if you’re the deer or the hunter anymore. You go through the motions, changing your wound packing with Doc every day, wandering into the dining hall at appropriate times for meals, white-knuckling it through the crowds and the noise. A few times, you see Maria give you a contemplative side-eye, as though she’s waiting for you to break.

You don’t break. You won’t let yourself. It don’t matter if you’re down ten to one. Never let them know they broke you. You repeat the words like a prayer, begging for the strength to push through. It’s hard, though. There’s so much noise in Jackson. Sleeping at night is impossible, not when the electric lights shine through your window. When the hum of the refrigerator in your kitchen seems to echo through the entire house. To makes matters worse, you’re terrified of what’ll happen when the dreams return.

You make it three days before you pull the fridge away from the wall and snatch the plug out. It’s empty, so you don’t have to worry about wasting food.

You stop turning on the lights at night. You tell yourself it’s because you can’t stand the thrum of electricity in the walls, or the way the incandescent bulbs crackle. But you know it’s because when you turn on the lights, anxiety overwhelms you. In the wilderness, one of the rules that kept you alive was no fires after nightfall, no matter how cold. The last thing you needed to do was send up a giant bat signal to anyone alive in the area, a flare that screamed hi, I’m an idiot with no survival instincts, please come and kill me at your convenience. Turning the lights on, watching the glow fall from your windows to the dirt road below, it makes your stomach churn.

So, you fall into the motions of what you think living in Jackson is supposed to be. You sleep light and wake early, dressing yourself from the pile of donated clothes Maria brought a few days after your arrival. You wear the old Carhartt quilted jacket she brought when Doc told her your old coat was beyond salvaging. Your heart squeezes every time you wear the replacement, thinking of how your Daddy had a coat just like this one when you were a kid, and how you’d borrow it sometimes. This one doesn’t smell like his aftershave, though. It’s so close to the real thing, but just different enough to hurt.

That first full day in Jackson, after your little episode in the dining hall, you’d gone to Doc for a re-packing. She’d chided you for getting your wound wet, for your irresponsibility, but went about her business and fixed you up anyway. Apparently, she’d given you a shot of some antibiotic or other during your procedure, but you don’t bother to ask what class it was. Who cares? If it works, it works. Besides, you’re supposed to be a soldier. You’re not supposed to know shit about MRSA or beta-lactamases or anything like that. You just have to trust Doc is actually a doctor, and not someone who claimed the title after the world ended. She sent you home with a tube of FEDRA-made bactritracin ointment, and told you to wipe your skin down with alcohol before applying it. When you asked where to get alcohol wipes, she tossed you a flask of something that smelled like moonshine and regret.

It's backwoods medicine, to say the least. You’ve spent years receiving the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel care, though, so you can’t be too upset over Doc’s ministrations. You fall into the routine she gives you, and try your best to prove to Maria that you can be completely normal. You only need to last a few months, after all. Long enough to heal.

So, you live a sort of half-life, stumbling through your routine the way runners stumble through abandoned alleys and tunnels. Every morning, you trudge to the dining hall before the sun is up. You make sure to be there right when they open the food line, trying to avoid the crowds of people. You eat quickly, and when you finish, you head to Doc’s for a checkup and to get your side re-packed. After Doc’s, you go home, and settle into the corner of your bedroom, on alert. You don’t watch TV, you just wait. For what, you don’t know.

You sit there every day, waiting for the sun to set. When it does, you rise, and watch the streets from your window, waiting for the people to return from the dining hall. When enough people have turned in for the night, you emerge, and steal away to get your dinner. You’re the last one to eat every evening, and you take whatever scraps are left. The scraps are more comforting than the breakfasts you eat. You’re used to nothing, and suddenly having everything sends your head reeling.

After dinner, you retreat to your house and prepare for bed. You shower every few days, only enough to keep yourself from smelling. While the shower is an incredible luxury, it’s still a vulnerability, and you don’t want to risk it more than you have to. The only thing you clean religiously is your wound.

Two weeks pass slowly, and you feel every second. Every beat of your heart thrums with impatience and anxiety, and panic crackles just under your skin. You’re trying, you swear you are. You’re trying so goddamn hard, you worry you’ll shatter.

When Doc tells you she can take the stitches out of your liver, and suture up your side, you could cry. She doesn’t give you pain meds this time. Says you won’t need them. You’re a little thankful. The last thing you need is the relief ketamine offers. You don’t think you can handle losing it again.

You’re sitting in the corner of your room, like you have every day for the past three weeks. You hold your mag-less gun to your chest like a fucked-up teddy bear, letting it comfort you. Sometimes, you field strip it, over and over again, letting the familiar process soothe you. Not now, though. There are people just outside your front door, talking and singing and laughing and freaking you out. Your heart is pounding. What if they know you’re in here? What if they come for you? What if they hurt you?

You’re running through escape plans and fighting options when someone knocks at your door. You don’t answer. Another knock. Every sound stabs you. More fucking knocking.

“We need to talk.” Maria’s voice is stern through the door. Your chest clenches and unclenches, emotions warring. She’s the enemy, she’s your savior. She’s going to kick you out, she’s keeping you fed. You’re too weak to leave, you’re strong enough to make it on your own.

Eventually, your body decides the safest course of action is to take the path of least resistance. You stand, tense muscles groaning against the movement, and move down the hallway to the front door. You crack it open, peering out with one eye, your foot jammed to keep the door in place, blocking anyone from pushing it open further.

Maria looks you over. Is that… concern? Again? You don’t want her concern. You want to prove her wrong. You have been proving her wrong. You haven’t had a single outburst since that first day. You’ve made sure of it by avoiding anything that could set you off. Sure, you’re a little wobbly right now, but it’s not your fault some kids decided to have a snowball fight on your front lawn.

“This isn’t working.” She’s carrying something in her arms. “Can I come in?”

You don’t want her to. This is your space, not hers. Except it is hers, and you can’t let yourself keep forgetting that. “What’s not working?”

She gracefully ignores the way you didn’t answer her question, and waves her hand at you. “This. You’re not trying.”

“Yes, I am.” You don’t mean to snap, but how can she say you’re not trying? How does she not see how hard this is for you.

“No, you’re not.” She adjusts the weight in her arms. It’s a basket with a blanket draped over it. She’s got a thigh holster on, a pistol strapped into it. She’s carrying a gun right now. You have your empty sidearm in your hand hidden behind the door, but you know it’s useless. “Can I please come in? We need to talk.”

She can shoot you. You can’t shoot her. She’s got you beat. Steeling yourself, you step aside, opening the door fully and letting her in. She pushes past you, carrying her basket to your living room. You don’t offer to lead her there; it’s her house, after all. She doesn’t need a map.

You follow after her, tucking your gun into your waistband. “What’s in the basket?”

“Supplies.” She says it like it means anything to you and drops the basket onto your couch. Her couch. Fuck. This communism thing is fucking annoying.

You touch the blanket. It’s soft, a faded hunter green fleece with the remnants of some old pattern printed onto it. Trees, maybe? Or bushes? You can’t tell.

She nods. “Go on, open it.”

You side-eye her, but do as she instructs, flipping the blanket back. A fluorescent orange, hi-vis beanie sits on the top. A raincoat. Wellie boots. A thick pair of canvas overalls. Various belts and pouches.

It’s a hunting kit. You give her a look that you hope says explain, please. You’re worried it actually says please don’t don’t do this, don’t send me away.

“You’re not adjusting.” Maria starts pulling things from the basket and laying them out on the couch. “You’re not trying. You lock yourself away in here all day doing… well, I don’t know what you’re doing. It’s not healthy.”

“So, you’re kicking me out?” She’d promised a basket of supplies, after all. So, this is it then. You’ve tried your hardest to do what she asked, to prove her wrong, but it didn’t matter. Panic begins to build in your chest. You’re still not healed enough. Doc only stitched you up a week ago. You’ve still got another week at least before infection is no longer concern. Likely another month before the stumps of ribs Doc left in your torso are capped with thick bone callouses, no longer a puncture risk for nearby organs. Your liver, too. It’s such a soft tissue, spongy and loose. You’re not sure you trust that it’ll be healed enough to withstand the road for a while, especially not without anyone to watch your back.

“Whoa, whoa, hey.” Maria’s hands flutter around you, not touching you but trying to offer comfort. “No, we’re not kicking you out.”

You don’t believe her. Why would you? She brought you everything you’d need, except for a gun. Maybe she’ll give you your mag back. It’s a kindness you know you don’t deserve.

“We’re not kicking you out,” she repeats. Her voice… it’s the same one she used in the dining hall. Kind, but commanding. Taking control. “We’re giving you a job.”

A job? You look at the supplies again. It’s redneck tactical gear, you realize.

“You’re sending me on patrols.” It’s so obvious, now. Your pounding heart settles a little. You can do patrols.

She shakes her head. “Not yet, you’re still healing. For now, I’m gonna send you out with someone, just outside the fence line in the woods so you can get some target practice in.”

Target practice. Outside the fence. No more crowds. You don’t hesitate. “How soon can I go?”

She smiles. “Doc says you can start next week.”

The knock comes a week later. You’re ready for it—fully dressed, sitting on the edge of your couch, unwilling to be caught unawares. The sun shines through the window blinds, casting strips of light onto the ground. You take a deep breath before you open the door, ready to go wherever Maria plans to take you. You’re ready to get away from the land of the living for a little while. You’ve got the gear she brought you, but no rifle. Hopefully she brought one for you.

You open the door, and groan. “You gotta be kiddin’ me.”

Joel’s got two rifles swung over his shoulder, wearing an expression that says I ain’t happy ‘bout it neither. “Let’s go.”

No good morning, how are you doing? What ever happened to southern hospitality? Did it die when the infection spread? “Where’s Maria?”

“With Tommy.” How can one man be so skilled at finding the least useful way of answering questions.

“Doing what?”

“Not your concern.”

“Maria’s supposed to take me out.” That’s not entirely true. Technically, she’s said someone would take you shooting. You just didn’t expect someone to mean Joel.

“And you’re supposed to have left town already, but you don’t hear me complainin’.”

You take a steadying breath, trying to fight the urge to punch the man. He’s absolutely fucking infuriating, and irritation makes your eyes narrow. “Lead the way, then.”

He walks at an absolutely blistering pace, and you practically have to run to keep up with him. His legs are longer than yours, and he takes wide strides, never once looking back over his shoulder to check on you. You grumble to yourself, calling him every name you can think of under your breath. Anger and annoyance push you forward, and you don’t care when people stop to stare at you as the two of you pass by them. He’s being a dick. You’re glad they’re here to witness it.

When you reach the front gates, he waves to someone up top. “Goin’ out for a bit.”

The person leans over the gate, calling to open it. You think it’s Hank, the man who brought the dog out to sniff you when you first arrived, but he’s so far away that it’s hard to tell. The gate grinds open enough for a body to pass through, and you follow Joel into the open world.

The moment you pass through the gate, something in your chest releases and you can finally breathe for the first time in weeks. Still, without the protection of the border guards, your nerves stand on end, the familiar need to check over your shoulder kicking in.

Joel doesn’t seem to have that same concern. He marches into the snowy expanse, angling for the edge of the woods about a thousand yards away. You stumble after him, slipping and sliding on the snowy terrain.

It takes a while to reach the edge of the forest, and you curse Joel internally as you walk. Why can’t he take you somewhere closer? Why’s he making you hike all the way out here? What if there’s infected? Or raiders? Or bears? The two of you are alone out here. You can still see Jackson over your shoulder in the distance, but it’s tiny. At least a half-mile away. If something happens, they won’t be able to reach you quickly. Maybe they’ve got snipers up on the fence. You remember Tommy’s scoped rifle. That must be it. Joel’s confident because Jackson has snipers.

When you reach the edge of the forest, Joel points to a felled log without a word. You’re not a fucking mind reader, so you wait patiently for him to use his words like a goddamn grownup. He huffs. You cross your arms, a clear challenge.

He gives you a long, hard look before apparently deciding this was more effort than just telling you. “Go set up over there.”

“See, was that so hard?”

He grumbles to himself as he walks in the opposite direction, pulling something from the pack on his shoulder. You settle in behind the log, pulling the binoculars Maria gave you from your own bag and train them on Joel. It’s a medium sized sack of flour with a large, red X drawn dead center. Joel grabs a stick from the ground, stabs it into the sack, then drives the stick into the dirt about a hundred yards away from you. He gives you a stern look, and points at it. You don’t hear him say it, but you can read his lips through the binoculars. Hit that.  

You yell to him across the open space. “Hit it with what, exactly? A pointed insult?”

He actually rolls his fucking eyes, like he’s a fifteen-year-old girl or something. It takes him a minute or two to reach you, but when he does, he slips one of the rifles from his shoulder and holds it out to you, not looking your way. Asshole.

You pull it from his grip and kneel behind the log, propping the rifle up to aim. It’s heavy, like your Daddy’s hunting rifle had been. The stock is wooden, and someone’s carved floral scrollwork along the metal barrel. There’s a moth hanging just above the trigger.

You lean in, staring down the sights of the barrel. Here on your knees next to Joel, he towers over you, his own set of binoculars trained on the stupid flour bag target. Does he really think you’re gonna miss? The damn thing’s as big as the broad side of a barn—a baby could hit it with their eyes closed.

You shake your head and focus, aiming dead center of the X. A hundred yards is close enough that you shouldn’t see too much bullet drop, so you don’t bother to compensate. There’s no wind, no humidity, no friction of any kind. Just quiet, frigid air, and the sounds of Joel’s breathing next to you.

You pull the trigger, and the target shudders, a small puff of flour clouding around it like smoke. Pulling up your binoculars to inspect the damage, you groan. You hit it, that much is certain, but the bullet swung low, missing the center by more than a few inches. At only a hundred yards, it’s the gun’s fault, not yours. Not that Joel will see it that way.

You bite the inside of your cheek, eyeing Joel sideways. The shots of gray in his hair catch in the light, glinting silver, and he squints into his binoculars as he assesses the damage. You do a double-take. He squints?

“You sighted this rifle, right?” You inspect the top of the rifle, checking for tool marks.

“Little late to start lookin’ for excuses,” he says, dropping his binoculars.

You’re pretty sure that’s asshole-speak for Why, yes I did, ma’am. “You wear reading glasses?” If he’s squinting to focus, he probably needs glasses for reading, and if he needs glasses for reading, he definitely needs them when maintaining his weapons. You remember your Daddy ran into that problem a few times, wearing his readers to clean his guns and forgetting to take them off before sighting. Jackson seems like the kind of place a person could get reading glasses if they needed them, so you don’t feel like it’s an insane guess to make.

He doesn’t hesitate. “Nope.”

It’s a lie. His answer came too quick, his jaw too tense. A muscle ticks by his mouth.

“Right.” You almost want to laugh. He’s too obvious. It’s refreshing. “And the sights are short because… you did that on purpose?”

“Yup.” Another lie.

“So, you willingly short sight your guns?” No one would do that. It’s dangerous and fucking stupid. That’s how people miss their shots in fights, how people end up dying. He could easily just admit he’s lying, be honest about the fact that he forgot to take his glasses off before setting the sights.

Instead, he doubles down. “Yup.”

Why do you even fucking bother? “Do you know any words besides ‘yup’ and ‘nope’?”

“Yup.”

Honestly, were you expecting any other answer from him? “How am I supposed to hit the goddamn target—”

“Maybe try aimin’ better.” Fucking asshole. “Usually helps me.”

You give up trying to be nice and pull the rifle back to your shoulder. Looking down the sights, you aim dead center of the target, then adjust for the shitty sighting, pulling the nose of the barrel up. You breathe in once through your nose, and slowly release it through your mouth. Vapor curls in the cold air, like you’re blowing smoke. You force your shoulders to relax, slip your finger onto the trigger, and pull it—

The bullet hits dead center. You don’t have to pull up your binoculars to check. You smile, turning your head to look up at Joel, waiting for him to… what, exactly? High five you? Hug you? Tell you good job? He’s doesn’t seem the type to give approval easily, and you’re not the type to search for it, either.

But when he pulls his binoculars up to check your shot, he says nothing. Just makes a noise under his breath, and drops them back down. That’s it? That’s all you get?

“That was a perfect fuckin’ shot and you know it.” Why are you trying to pick a fight with him? You’re never gonna win against the fuckin’ brick wall that is Joel’s personality. And yet, the urge to stick your tongue out at him, to stomp your foot and demand he acknowledge your ability, is overwhelming.

“Took you too long.” His expression doesn’t change as he stares straight ahead, eyes on the target you just smoked. “Can’t shoot infected or raiders if you gotta do fuckin’ breathin’ exercises to hit a stationary target.”

Forget infected or raiders, you’re tempted to shoot him. “Are you physically incapable of being polite or somethin’?”

“Nope.”

Jesus. Fucking. Christ. You’re going to commit murder and actually get yourself kicked out of Jackson. “So, this attitude of yours is a choice, then?”

“Yup.”

What is his fucking problem with you? Anger boils under your skin, crackling like a campfire. “Stop doin’ that.”

“Not doin’ nothin’.”

Your pointer finger flexes against the side of the trigger guard. “Yes, you are. You’re bein’—”

“Would you just shoot another goddamn bullet please?” His façade cracks, irritation leaking into his tone. “I don’t got all day to sit around babysitting.”

Babysitting? “You think you’re fuckin’ babysittin’ me?” You stand, whirling and stepping up to him. Poking him hard in the chest, you swing your rifle strap onto your shoulder. “Let me tell you somethin’, motherfucker. I don’t need no fuckin’ babysitter, and you can take your shitty attitude and shove it where the sun don’t fuckin’ shine.”

He glares down at you, batting your hand away. “I don’t need some stranger bargin’ in to my town tellin’ me how to fix my fuckin’ attitude.” He’s towering over you, his head blocking the sun. It haloes his frame, darkening his expression.

“If you’ve got such an issue with me, why’d you come out in the first place?”

“Someone had to.” Another non-fucking-answer.

“Why?”

“Because.”

You’re going to strangle him. You’re going to climb this man’s back, wrap an arm around his throat, and suffocate him to death. And you’re going to do it with a smile on your face. He deserves nothing less. You poke him again, glaring up at him, daring him to push you off. “Why are you such an assho—”

A snap sounds behind you, like a twig breaking, and the both of you freeze.

“Get behind me.” Joel’s whisper is almost a growl.

“Fuck you.” You pull your rifle down, turning to search for the noise. It’s hard to see between the trees, and the bright white glare of the snow makes it that much more difficult. You let your vision go blurry, an old trick your Daddy taught you, waiting for motion instead of detail. For the first time since you entered Jackson, your paranoia has a purpose, the constant edge of alert you exist on is a strength instead of a weakness.

There. It’s about two hundred yards out, easily twice the distance of the target. You let your eyes focus on the source of the motion. An infected, stumbling through the brush. You don’t bother to pick up your binoculars. You can tell from the twitchy way it’s moving that it’s not human anymore. The binoculars would only tell you how far gone it is.

You pull your rifle to your chest, ignoring Joel’s protests. Train the rifle where the infected is, track its motion just long enough to predict it’s path, then pull the rifle’s nose forward to where you know it’ll be in a few moments. At the last second, you remember to adjust for Joel’s short sighting on the gun, just as the infected steps where you need it to. You pull the trigger and the gun fires, kicking into your shoulder hard.

The infected hits the ground, and you don’t bother to check your work. You know it was a perfect shot. You turn, slinging the rifle back, and bumping Joel’s shoulder hard as you pass him. “Let’s go.”

You don’t wait to see if he follows.

The dreams were always going to catch up to you, even in perfect, safe Jackson. You haven’t had them in a while, but it’s been a few months now since your last run-in with infected, so it doesn’t surprise you when they return tonight.

You’re twenty-six, wearing newly issued fatigues. The black canvas is still stiff, fresh off the production line. The plates in your vest are heavy, and the strain in your lower back is killing you. There’s a woman on her knees in front of you, back turned as she sobs.

“Please,” she moans, voice breaking. “Please don’t.”

You hold the scanner to the back of her head. “How does it work?”

Your commander doesn’t like the question. “Doesn’t matter.”

Of course, it fucking matters. How does the scanner know if someone’s infected or not? It’s Laboratory Sciences 101. How does your test measure what it’s trying to measure? You remember the way blood sugar testing never measures the actual sugar in the blood, but instead, measures the byproducts of its breakdown based on color change. The way protein testing waits for the presence of copper to shift. Electrolytes depend on the electrical charges of ions in solution. Every test measures something, even the scanner in your hand now.

“But how do we know it’s accurate?” How do you even begin to explain the concept of positive predictive values, or testing algorithms to a neanderthal like your commander? There’s a vein bulging in his forehead, and sweat shines on his face. When he stands over you, his breath smells like onions and rot.

“Because FEDRA says it is. Now, scan.”

You do as you’re told, holding the scanner to the back of her head. The training manual said to press it to the base of the skull, where the spine reaches to meet it. You wonder if Cordyceps attaches to the brainstem first, if that’s why they test that area.

You pull the trigger, and wait for the scanner to read her. She’s incoherent now, begging.

“Please,” her words break. “Please, please, let me go. I wasn’t bit. It’s just a cut, I swear.”

A beep. A flash of red. Infected.

You swallow hard. You know what protocol says. You stare at the little screen. You’re supposed to reach for your gun, put her out of her misery. But you don’t even know how the fucking thing works. She said it’s a cut, what if she’s telling the truth? What if the scanner is wrong.

“Standard protocol. Finish her.” Your commander’s voice is disinterested. This means nothing to him. The woman’s life means nothing. She’s incoherent as she drops to her elbows, her hands coming up to shield her head. You’re still staring at the scanner. Tears well, and you blink them away.

How can he not care? How does life mean so little to him. The room is damp, and there’s a single, bare lightbulb that shines in the far corner, casting a dim glow over the green walls. It’s cramped down here. A gunshot will ring, damage everyone’s hearing. And he doesn’t fucking care.

“Did you hear me?” He steps toward you, pulling his own weapon free. “Do I need to make you do it?”

Your shaking hand loses its grip and you drop the scanner. It lands on your toe, and you curse, jumping away. On the floor, the screen flashes red, but it’s cracked now.

“You stupid bitch.” Your commander holds his weapon to the base of the woman’s skull and pulls the trigger. The sound deafens you for a few moments, the shot echoing in the small room. As your hearing returns slowly, noises cut through the ringing in your ears. A strange cracking sound. You realize it’s the bones of her skull settling into the new empty space where her brain tissue used to reside.

You vomit. It splashes on the toe of your boot. The same spot the scanner hit.

Your commander scoffs, rolling his eyes and sheathing his weapon. “Clean that shit up.” He doesn’t point to the vomit. He points to the woman’s ruined body. “Don’t make me tell you twice.”

After he leaves, you stand there for longer than you should, watching her blood spread across the floor. When it reaches your boots, you wake up in your bed in Jackson, gasping for air.