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CHAPTER ELEVEN


“Juniper, PFC Castañeda . . . there’s clearing, and then there’s ‘clearing,’ sir. This isn’t a one-person job . . . unless you’re Shewolf, that is. And with all due respect, sir, I am not.”

From: Collected Radio Transmissions of the Fall,

University of the South Press, 2053



We started to get more survivors up on the mountain after a muted Christmas celebration on the mountain. Not a lot of family members, though one elderly woman managed to keep all four of her young grandchildren alive by hiding in the stockroom of a feed store for three months. Unlike Temple, though, she’d had plenty of food and water. Most of her issues had been hiding from the random shambler that came close to the building occasionally, and keeping the rambunctious boys from making too much noise.

Those who weren’t with families had to be vetted by Temple. This was Sister Ann’s decision, and I supported it fully. For a man who’d survived brain cancer, he seemed to know just about everyone in and around Covington. His memory “might not be what it used to be” but it was good enough for him to know who we could trust, and the few who we’d keep an eye on. Not because they were criminals or anything, but because they weren’t what he would call “hard workers.”

One thing we quickly figured out about Temple was the old guy had a wicked sense of humor. Not inappropriate or anything like that, no. He just had a fun laugh and managed to find humor in just about every situation—as long as we didn’t talk about what he’d lost. Sister Ann suggested that he and I, along with Ulla, make a journey up the mountain to the place where I’d passed the crucible. She told me that it would be a great chance to show him what we’re trying to save. I thought that making him tour the campus and seeing the inside of the ruined cottages, as well as how much we’ve cleaned since the Fall, would be better.

But I’d learned long ago that it was a waste of time arguing with Sister Ann.

Temple, despite living almost his entire adult life in Alleghany County, had never been up to the peak of our mountain. Not that many people had, when you got right down to it. The school was secluded, and other than a narrow fire road, it was not a very easy hike up the rest of the way to the mountaintop. A large rut had formed over the years in the middle of the road and the Forest Service had never gotten around to filling it, which discouraged the random local from taking their vehicles up there.

When I’d done my crucible with the other girls and Sister Ann, we’d hiked it. With Temple’s heart condition, though, Sister Ann suggested taking the four-wheeler.

“No point in putting me in the grave sooner than necessary, am I right?” Temple joked as he helped me with the ammo box. Ulla had her .270 and I had Baby, so security was set, but Sister Ann hadn’t suggested we take more rifles.

“No, sir,” I replied automatically. He snorted.

“You can call me Temple, you know.”

“I know, sir. But Sister Ann told all the girls to either call you sir, or Mr. Kessinger,” I told him as we got the ammo box situated in the back of the four-wheeler. Between the three of us and the ammo, the all-wheel drive was going to get a workout. Still, it’d managed to bring the woodstove from the Moose Lodge to campus, so we should be fine.

“And I’m telling you that you can call me Temple,” he answered, nodding at Baby resting on the four-wheeler’s gun rack. “You run security here. To me, that makes you the boss.”

“Sister Ann’s the boss,” I reminded him. Ulla waved her hands to get my attention.

You’re in charge after her, she argued.

“Just for security,” I said, shrugging. “The student council is next in charge. Come on. It’s a drive up to the peak, and daylight’s burning.”

“I don’t see the fire,” Temple said as he dramatically looked around. I groaned.

“Dad jokes? Really?”

“I have puns, too.”

“No.” I shook my head. “No, please. Dad jokes are fine.”

“You sure? Puns are pretty lit these days.”

I groaned. “Absolutely.”

“Suit yourself. I used lit correctly, though, right?”

“Yep.”

“Thought so.”

The drive up was long. With the condition of the road being so poor, we had to go slow. There were some birds out, but no sign of any shamblers. Briefly, I spotted the Dunlap Creek when we rounded a turn, but thick pine trees cut off the view a few seconds later. It was early in the afternoon when we finally came to the point that Sister Ann had once called the crucible rock.

“This is it,” I said as we pulled up. Making sure the parking brake was engaged—Rohena had forgotten once and had to chase it halfway down the road, much to our amusement—I hopped out and checked out the surroundings. The area around crucible rock was clear of leaves, which had probably been blown away during the winter storms. Keeping an eye out for any shamblers, I moved toward the rock.

It was flat and stuck out just a little over a steep drop to the valley below. If one sat on the edge, it felt as if there was nothing between you and the valley floor. From here one could see most of campus, the old ranger station, and even the Jackson River. While on the crucible with Sister Ann and the others, watching the sunrise from the peak was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. It had also been a life-changing moment.

“This sure is something to behold,” Temple said as he gazed out across the Blue Ridge Mountains. “I can see now why the school founders built up here.”

“Yeah,” I said, looking at Ulla. Her bright blue eyes were wide as she stared off into the distance. She’d never been up here, either. While her sister Celin had done the crucible like I had, Ulla had been too young. If the world ever returned to normal, it would be another year or two before Sister Ann would let her.

But this little drive up to the peak wasn’t about Ulla. Not today, at least.

“Why’d she choose you, anyway?” Temple asked as he stared off into the distance.

“What do you mean?” I asked, though I had a suspicion I knew what he was asking.

“The shooting of the zombies and security stuff . . . why you?”

I thought it over for a moment. It was something I hadn’t really considered. The role of security had pretty much fallen on me in the early days of the Fall, when we still had quite a few shamblers running around campus. I’d definitely become more comfortable with the role when we found Mr. Stitmer’s gun safe. Shooting shamblers from a distance felt a little more disconnected, like it wasn’t really me doing it—unlike when I’d had to bash a few heads in with my field hockey stick.

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “It just sort of fell on me. Nobody else was going to do it.”

“You have a strong sense of duty or something, girl?” Temple asked. I shook my head.

“Nothing like that.”

“Then why?”

“Did you know they used to call me Mad Maddie when I first came here?” I asked.

Temple snorted. “Yep. One of the girls mentioned it to Rosalind. Said something about you used to get a little crazy.”

“Yeah, something like that,” I admitted. “But yeah, I think Sister Ann remembered that when she put me in charge of security.”

“I don’t think it’s that at all,” Temple said. “I asked because I wanted to know what you think. I have a decent idea what Sister Ann thinks . . . which is to say, she saw you as a vengeful but protective girl who would do anything to keep the others safe. Which, to be fair, you come across as.”

“Vengeful?”

“Protective.” He stressed the word as he turned to face me. “When you’re out there servicing targets—and that’s what you have to see them as, targets—you aren’t thinking about anything other than making sure the zombies can’t hurt the girls at the school. You get in a zone and your protective streak comes alive. It’s one of those mixed-blessings kind of deal.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. But that’s just one old man’s opinion,” he muttered and sat on the fender of the four-wheeler. “I doubt I’ll ever really understand a woman’s thought process, though. Much less a nun’s.”

“Yeah.” This sort of talk was the kind I tried to avoid. After a few moments of awkward silence, I looked at Temple. “So . . . got any good dad jokes?”

“Dad jokes? It’s hard to make dad jokes when you’re in the middle of a forest,” he said, waving a hand around at the scattered trees. “Mountains are easy.”

“Why?” I asked, suspicious.

“Well, because they’re hill areas.”

I stared at him for a full minute until it clicked. “Really?” I managed to sputter at last.

“You asked for it. Besides, you can’t ever take a mountain for granite.”

“Oh, come on!”


One of the worst parts about leaving campus and scavenging for more supplies wasn’t the shamblers, but the dead. Specifically, the kids.

I considered myself pretty lucky in that regard. My brain would see the body and immediately forget it for some reason. As long as it wasn’t moving, it was nothing but a corpse. Human remains. Gross, but nothing more. It was pretty easy for me to not dwell on what it had once been. Getting caught up in the gory details was not something I wanted to do, and my imagination complied.

Others, though, weren’t so lucky.

It’d been two weeks since I stumbled upon Colton and had the mess at the Boyd farm go down, and a week after we’d gone up to crucible rock. Sister Ann had been upset with me for not paying attention at the Boyd farm. The lecture had been pretty epic, as predicted. I hadn’t admitted why I’d been distracted, only that I had been. She put me through a few drills to keep my guard up and how to properly breach and clear a room. She’d shown me before but apparently felt the need to hammer the lesson home.

Colton and I got along well enough, considering it was the end of the world. The late January afternoon was a cold, wet one. I was returning back from another scavenging trip, though this time I hadn’t gone alone. Colton had tagged along with me, which made it less work somehow. He still didn’t want to come up to the campus, or let Sister Ann and the others know he was around, so we’d found an abandoned house not too far away near the Moose Lodge that was in great shape. The previous tenants hadn’t fouled it up when they’d turned and nothing had been inside since. A quick search had turned up plenty of blankets, a working fireplace, and running water. How they had running water was beyond me. Another mystery I wanted to throw at Emily—except with Colton living there, I couldn’t really bring her down and show her.

Besides, Colton liked the place. He said it reminded him of home. The boy also liked it because he said it was closer to me.

The feelings . . . were starting to be mutual. A little. Which was terrifying because of what had happened with my ex-boyfriend, and the path that particularly abusive relationship had led me down.

The climb up the path was a slippery one but I managed without killing myself. Deep down I was a little worried. I’d been using the back path so much that it was starting to grow more noticeable. I needed to take a break from walking up it for a few weeks once spring hit, to give the undergrowth a chance to hide it better once more.

Up on campus, Lucia was waiting for me outside the dining hall. Her expression was troubled. I couldn’t tell if she’d been crying and only just stopped, or was just really cold. She wiped her face with a hand as I drew close.

“Hey, you okay?”

“Y-yeah.” She sniffled. “Maybe.”

“Bad find?” Definitely crying. Lucia hated the cold as much as I did. If not for the tears, she’d be in the bunker, where it was warm and dry. There wasn’t much that made her cry these days.

After we’d stolen the BearCat from King Dale and had our heart-to-heart moment, she’d changed. The rough, abrasive girl who had enough of an edge around her that made the younger girls nervous had chilled out a bit. Not a lot, of course. But enough that they talked to her even when they didn’t need anything.

Sometimes I was a little jealous. They were all still afraid of me, and probably avoided me because of it. I didn’t care what Emily said.

“Dead kids.”

Ah. That would do it. “I’m sorry.”

“I knew I’d see some more eventually,” Lucia said in a quiet voice. Finding Jacob in the nurse’s office bathroom had shaken us both for days. I didn’t know what to tell her now, so I stayed silent. After a moment she continued. “But these two managed to barricade their room shut. Shamblers didn’t get them. They stayed in there and just . . . died.”

“You didn’t go in, right?” I asked, worried. Nobody had gotten the flu since the initial outbreak, but after Rohena’s infected spider bite Sister Ann had told us to be more careful than before. We had no idea what else could be lurking in the homes besides shamblers. Copperheads were a problem up here, though the time of the year was wrong for them.

“No. I checked out the rest of the house before I found their room. It was barricaded from the inside. Went outside and looked in through the window. It’s up on the hill so the water didn’t hit their house. Once I saw them, lying on the floor holding hands, I left. They were sisters. Young. I don’t . . .”

“Damn,” I whispered.

“Language,” Sister Ann said from right behind me. I didn’t jump, though. After three years of this I’d grown accustomed to her simply appearing out of nowhere. However, instead of scolding me further, she wrapped an arm around Lucia’s shoulders and pulled her close. “I know what I say won’t ease your pain this moment, but they’re both with our Lord in Heaven, together, just like they were in life. Try to find some comfort in that.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Lucia mumbled. “Why let us live and those girls die? God’s not fair.”

“It seems like that sometimes, but could you imagine if God was fair in the way we view things?” Sister Ann asked as Lucia pressed her head into the nun’s shoulder. I perked up. I’d never really gotten one of the deep philosophical lectures from Sister Ann. Before the Fall, Sister Margaret had given me a few, but back then I’d still been Mad Maddie (as my mom had put it before sticking me on a plane and flying me across the country). I hadn’t been ready to listen. Not just yet. No, I hadn’t wanted to hear what the nuns had to say either, at first. By the time I did, the lights had gone out and we were fighting for our survival.

Sister Ann sighed and gently stroked Lucia’s head. “Back during the so-called Dark Ages, the Church was a beacon of light in a world of darkness, standing tall with faith as a shield. We weren’t perfect, not by a long shot, but lots of friars, monks, and nuns did their best to bring hope and faith to the masses who were surrounded by death and despair. They, in turn, were hounded by enemies of God. But they all believed with every fiber of their beings that He was watching them, that His love would save them, if not on Earth then in Heaven.

“Things happen that are part of God’s plan that we cannot begin to understand. Our minds aren’t made to understand. We’re simple beings, flesh made in His likeness. Since we can’t even begin to imagine what God thinks, only His word through the Bible, we do our best to understand and obey. Or not. Humanity is a strange thing. We pray for fairness, then curse in anguish when we suffer. Our own wants and needs are not the same as someone else’s, nor are they remotely in mind with what He intended for us. Do you know what He gave us that is the greatest gift of all?”

“Free will?” I answered for her. Sister Ann smiled but shook her head.

“While a gift, that is not what I had in mind. He gave us faith, girls. Faith and hope, so that even in the darkest of nights, we have a beacon to lead the way.”

Lucia lifted her face from Sister Ann’s hoodie. “Even when there’s no beacons?”

“The beacons are lit. Gondor calls for aid,” I muttered, only half sarcastic. Sister Ann had told me to read the books during my down time between leaving campus. Weirdest. Nun. Ever. Lucia giggled and even Sister Ann smiled a little at this.

“Almost. Why do you think our school is on top of a mountain, Lucia? Right now, we are the beacon. Remember that. Your faith, all of our faith, lights the way for those still surrounded by darkness. And in the dark of night, we will lead the way.”


After dinner and our daily Devotionals and all of the refugees had returned to their assigned cottages, Sister Ann gathered the student council down in the main bunker for a meeting. It promised to be an interesting one.

“All right, girls,” Sister Ann murmured quietly, interrupting our conversations and effectively bringing the meeting to order. “Lucia brings news, and while I would normally make the decision here, this is something that the council must decide as a whole, since some of you are over eighteen and should be getting ready to graduate. Finlay, Fiona? Even your votes will count here.”

That got everybody’s attention.

It was weird. We all knew we could leave, since all of us seniors had turned eighteen months before—or in the case of Lucia, nineteen—but it was another thing entirely to hear Sister Ann say it. We all exchanged glances but said nothing. What could we say, anyway? It wasn’t as if we were simply about to bail on the younger girls. Or Sister Ann, even though she was more than perfectly capable of taking care of herself.

Well, I couldn’t speak for the others, but I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. The rest of the world was gone. Sure, Wolf Squadron had actually made some sort of daring raid on London—details were sketchy over the radio about what had happened, but there was now a legitimate King of England, which was weird but cool at the same time—but they could only be in so many places. We were inland, over two hundred miles away from the closest naval base. Unless Wolf Squadron really wanted to tempt fate by trying to navigate the James River, we were still on our own with nowhere to go. If they even knew anyone this far inland was still alive. While we could receive on the radio, we still had no way to broadcast.

Plus, this was a home worth protecting. Leave? To where? No, I was good right where we were, and I was pretty certain that the others felt the same.

“Okay, so, you know that new chica who’d bought that house down near the transfer station back before the Fall?” Lucia started. Kayla rolled her eyes and grimaced.

“That narrows it down.”

The transfer station had been down by the Jackson River before the flooding hit. It’d been the place where everyone could simply dump unwanted stuff off for free. Loads of the locals would bring their junk that they couldn’t sell for scrap and dump it there. It would be weighed and measured, and the locals would drive off and the people working at the transfer station would take care of it by shipping it somewhere else, probably Roanoke. I’m not sure.

It was gone now, wiped out completely when the massive wave from the dam failure hit it. I’d made the trip down there and checked it out with Lucia two weeks ago, hoping to find anything worthwhile. There was nothing. Farther down the river we’d seen a new dam had formed, created by all the trash, logs, and debris from Covington. The Jackson River still managed to pass through, but at a much slower rate. The entire area was now a lake. That particular stretch of I-64 was almost fully beneath it, too. The new dam was also why downtown Covington was still flooded.

“The veterinarian, stupids,” Lucia said, glaring. Kayla wisely shut up. You could take the girl out of the barrio, but . . . “The one who set up back before . . . ?”

I knew who she was talking about now. Dr. Brittany Jefferson was new to the area—or rather, had been new, moving here just before the Fall. Nobody knew why she’d chosen Covington of all places to set up a new vet practice, especially since there were already two in the area. Small town, no family ties anyone knew of . . . rumors ranged from her being in witness protection to being a drug kingpin. Or queenpin, rather. Meth was pretty big in the area. Or rather, had been.

“Okay, what about her? She alive?” I asked, curious. Lucia nodded.

“Her office building’s gone but she must have moved because I swear I saw her duck inside one of the houses over by where the bowling alley used to be,” she replied. “The ones that didn’t flood, I mean. You know, next to the candy shop?”

“Could it have been someone else?” Sister Ann asked.

“Unless some other chica had a pair of giant Great Danes around here that nobody’s seen before, I doubt it.”

“A veterinarian . . .” Sister Ann’s voice trailed off as she stared at the far wall of the bunker.

“Yeah?” I looked at the nun, confused. “What about it? We don’t have pets up here.”

“To be a veterinarian, they need to study biology, though,” Sister Ann corrected me in a tone that told me she was thinking rapidly. “Anatomy as well. Sutures on small animals . . .  Do you know what the difference between a veterinarian and a doctor is?”

“Uh . . . no? Wait—medical school?”

“No. Well, yes, but no. Veterinarians are used to their patients trying to bite them.”

“Oh!” It suddenly dawned on me just where Sister Ann was going with this. “She could come up here and join us, be like a doctor!”

“I’ve got decent field medic training, but someone like Dr. Jefferson would be far more knowledgeable.” Sister Ann confirmed my guess with a nod. “She would also be more likely to have a medical go bag for emergencies with her. She might not be a medical doctor but she can hum a bar or three. We should go and see if she would like to come up here. Kayla, can we handle that with food?”

“One more person isn’t going to hurt,” Kayla answered almost immediately. Since she was in charge of our makeshift garden, she would know what we could handle. Between that and her keeping track of what we had for canned goods with Lucia, Kayla had turned into our storekeeper. Of course, they didn’t know about my pilfering to help keep Colton alive, so her numbers might have been off a little. Not a lot, though. Colton was starting to scavenge houses up past the Moose Lodge himself, and doing a decent job of it. “But you said something about dogs . . . ?”

“Yeah,” Lucia said, nodding. “Great Danes. Big ones.”

“Those eat more protein than we do, I think,” Kayla pointed out, looking at Sister Ann for help. “Probably. I don’t know for sure. Point is, we don’t have any dog food up here. I didn’t even think to check the cottages down low to see if they had any.”

“Grab some of the girls to go and check them out,” Sister Ann said. “We don’t know if she’ll agree or not, but most dog food has grain in it. Might make fertilizer? Something to look into. Remember, don’t take any of the younger girls into the Johnsons’ place. If you want, you can avoid it completely. They only had a small cat, if I remember right. No point in going through that again.”

Kayla nodded. I grimaced. The Johnsons had been one of the families living on campus. They’d been in charge of a small herd of horses that were kept down on the farm for over twenty years, but by the time I arrived there had been only one horse still here, and it had died not long after. Still, nobody asked the Johnsons to leave, so they got to stay and live on campus. One of the Johnson kids had gotten infected during the first few days of the Pacific Flu and . . . it’d gotten ugly down there. Since the whole of campus had been on lockdown, nobody had managed to make it down there until two weeks ago. By the time I did look inside, it was a mess.

I’m glad I don’t really dream anymore, because it’d been the stuff of nightmares.

“There’s some bad news, too,” Lucia added, looking around. Specifically, at me. “I spotted some of King Dale’s guys sniffing around down by the old supermarket.”

I’d been wondering when King Dale was going to rear his ugly head again. Ever since we’d stolen the BearCat he’d been staying on his side of the river. But there had been a huge population difference between the two areas before the Fall, and he had to be hurting for food by now. Both of the big grocery stores were in Covington—one near the bowling alley, and the other closer to where downtown had once been.

“That place is trashed,” I muttered, thinking back to when the two of us had scouted it out. One half of the building had collapsed on itself after the flooding, which was the part where all of the canned goods had been stored. Unfortunately for us, anyway. There was almost too much debris to even make our way past the cashier registers.

“Well, they were poking around inside,” Lucia said. “I don’t think they had any luck, though. The water’s mostly gone but there’s too much debris in there to really get to the back. I checked.”

“Did they see you?” Sister Ann asked. Lucia shook her head.

“No, not me,” she replied, then paused. “They might have seen Dr. Jefferson, though.”

“That’s probably why you only caught a glimpse of her ducking into a building,” I said under my breath. “She was trying to avoid them.”

“Then we might have a bigger problem on our hands than we thought,” Kayla stated, saying out loud what the rest of us were thinking. “You know that King Dale’s probably gonna want to ‘talk’ to her, right? Have her go with him, like he wanted to with us.”

Wants us to go, not wanted.” Lucia glowered. “Hombre isn’t going to take being told ‘no’ well.”

“I don’t doubt it in the least,” Sister Ann said as she folded her hands on her lap. Her gaze swept over us and for a brief moment I was under her intense scrutiny. Old me would have squirmed, but that girl is gone now. I’ve changed, and I met her eyes without a second thought. Apparently satisfied, she continued. “So we’re going to ask her if she wants to come up while preparing for Appalachia Rex at the same time. We’ll ask nicely, and if she declines, then so be it. St. Dominic’s is, first and foremost, a sanctuary for young women, no matter what the faith.”

“How’re we going to convince her to come up while stopping King Dale without shooting anyone?” I asked. Sister Ann’s smile was practically serene.

“With cat toys and a little bit of gumption.”


The rest of the planning meeting with the student council wasn’t worth paying attention to. The security situation—with the exception of King Dale and his goons—was better now than it’d been since before the Fall. Which meant less work for me. With so few shamblers roaming around these days, more and more girls were willing to stand watch at the bridge or even up on the rooftop. Of course they offered to work now. It was “safe.” The heavy, nasty work of shooting the shamblers by the dozen had already been taken care of by yours truly.

Well, I mean, other than Ulla. She really seemed to enjoy shooting the shamblers and not just warning me about them. The other girls? Absolutely worthless when it came to shambler disposal.

Sister Ann liked to say that bitterness is a cavity on the soul. While I strive to be better, I’m also comfortable knowing I’m human, so being a petty bitch at times is perfectly fine by me.

After the meeting, I bailed fast. Night watch was set with Rohena up on the cafeteria’s roof, so unless a shambler somehow found its way onto the main campus, I was free to do whatever I wanted—and what I wanted was to sleep. The sooner I went to bed, the earlier I could wake up and go see Colton before Sister Ann and the rest of us headed into town to try and recruit the veterinarian.

The boy had no idea what I was sacrificing to wake up early and bring him food. Other than shooting, sleeping was my most favorite thing in the whole wide world. Seriously. If it were an Olympic sport, I’d win a gold medal.

Assuming there’d ever be an Olympics again.

Using a candle to light my way down the hall, it was easy to traverse around the old boxes containing most of the canned goods we’d scavenged the past ten months. My bedroom—nothing more than a converted storeroom—had been designed to hold . . . something a long time ago, but in the years since the Cold War ended everything from extra toilet paper to school supplies had been stashed down here. Fortunately for me, it was closest to the shelter door at the foot of the stairs, which meant should an emergency happen, I could be out there first.

“Designated speed bump number one,” I’d jokingly referred to my room’s position when I’d chosen it back when we first hid down here. Sister Ann, surprisingly, hadn’t corrected me. She’d known then what would need to happen for us all to survive. It was spooky how often she just seemed to know.

I set Baby on the gun rack, mindful of Sister Ann’s strict lectures about safety and storage. Since I hadn’t fired Baby today, there was no need for me to clean her. Still, just laying the rifle down on the floor felt like sacrilege, so I’d “borrowed” a gun rack from Mr. Stitmer’s house. I don’t think he would have minded. Before I’d “acquired” her, she’d been his little pet project.

Yeah, okay. Fine. I stole a heavily modified AR-15 from a dead man, then went back for a gun rack later. Also, I stole his four-wheeler. Sue me.

I changed into my nightwear and got ready for bed. Some of the girls liked actual pajamas but sweatpants and a hoodie were known to be superior. If something happened, I wouldn’t be caught dead out in the open in pink fluffy-bunny pjs. Let the other girls be unprepared and look ridiculous to boot. Hoodies and sweats—comfy survival clothing for the modern postapocalyptic girl.

I heard footsteps coming down the hall. They stopped right outside my door. Half expecting the knock, I wasn’t surprised when two gentle taps were made. After a moment’s pause, the door cracked open and a very familiar face appeared. I smiled at Ulla as she pushed through the small opening and quickly closed the door behind her.

“Nightmares?” I asked her, already knowing the answer. It wasn’t the first time, and everyone knew it wouldn’t be the last. Ulla had been through too much. All of us had, really, but Ulla was one of the youngest. Plus, she was the only girl at school who’d been forced to watch their own sibling die. She nodded and began to sign at me.

Can I stay here with you tonight?

“Sure,” I replied. She was a good kid, one nobody else seemed to fully understand. Kind of like me, but without the anger issues. I’d managed to wrangle a king-sized bed down into my room (Lucia, Emily, and Rohena had all helped—after complaining and a lot of bribes involving packets of ramen noodles) and there was more than enough room. Besides, if she started kicking in her sleep, I could always sleep on the floor. The bunker had a concrete floor, but pillows could work in a pinch to make it tolerable. Plus, as much as it bothered me to admit it, I liked the company. “Did you go to the bathroom already?”

She scowled, gave me a rude gesture, before signing again. I haven’t wet the bed since I was ten.

“Just checking.” I smirked. For a just-turned twelve-year-old, she had the sarcastic eyeroll down pat. I could take lessons. “Come on.”

Once Ulla was settled in, I blew out the candle and crawled beneath the blankets. The bunker wasn’t exactly cold, but it wasn’t necessarily warm, either. In the winter it could get downright frigid. I had a mountain of blankets but I was not equipped for winter. Give me summer any day. It’s one of the reasons I kept my door closed. It kept the heat in. That, and I liked the privacy.

Alone with my thoughts, they drifted to my mom and dad back home. What the house looked like. The neighborhood. My old school and friends. And my two younger brothers.

The sad thing was, I’d never really been close to either of them before being shipped off to St. Dominic’s in a last-ditch effort to help me do something with my life. They’d been annoying little brats who could do no wrong while I was always blamed for not helping out enough, or not watching them so my parents could do their own thing for a few hours. Sure, it was selfish of me—something I realize now—but at the time, I was angry at them. All of them.

I’d give almost anything to have them now. But like the rest of Southern California, they were gone. My only hope was that they died quickly and hadn’t been turned into shamblers.

Something moved across the blanket. I tensed before remembering where I was, and who was with me. Ulla clutched my hand in the dark. Her grip was tight but there were no trembles. No nightmares would come for her tonight. She was a good kid who deserved so much better than what life had given her. It didn’t matter, though. She’d survived and, one day, would help rebuild. Ulla was tough. I smiled. Her breathing was steady, regular. Sleep comes easy when we feel safe. She might not be blood, but thanks to the Fall she was the closest thing I had to a sibling.

The idea of having a little sister was . . . nice.


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Framed