Chapter Text
Sarah’s abuela used to refer to Joel and Tommy as “the boys” far more than she referred to either of them by name. Sarah thinks there was a pride in that, a recognition that her sons were still together, still looking out for each other. And they’d continue to do so even once she was gone.
She’s never been part of a collective like that in her family. There was never anyone to group her with, other than a few second cousins she occasionally saw. Now there is. It’s still weird every time she hears it.
“Hey, Joel, how’re the girls?”
“I’ll come if I can get the girls out the door in time.”
“I’ve got the girls, don’t worry.”
She’s not just Sarah anymore. She’s not just the only child of a tiny family. She’s part of something larger, something far more important to this messed up society than her family had ever been back when things were normal. Inside her family, she’s one half of “the girls.”
She’s never realized it more as she walks to her first day of school in Jackson. Joel walks by her side, his hand on her shoulder. His grip is strong, and she feels a bit like a toddler on a leash as he tries not-so-subtly to keep her beside him. She doesn’t protest. It’s better than him trying to hold her hand or something.
Ellie struts on ahead, stopping every now and then to crush the ice that’s formed overnight with her foot. Some people wave as they walk past, a few calling out cheerful greetings to Joel. It almost feels normal.
And then they get closer to the school.
She’s aware of the eyes trained on her the moment they pass the first group of kids, younger ones walking themselves to the schoolhouse. Their loud chatter fizzles down to whispers as they catch sight of her. She hears snippets of their conversation as they pass.
“Oh, shit, there’s another one?”
“...Maria’s niece -”
Ellie turns around once she’s on the front steps of the school, giving Joel a quick wave and darting inside. Sarah moves to go after her, Joel holding out an arm. “You sure you’re up to this?”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Cause if you’re not, you can always ask them to get me or Tommy, and you can leave. If you ain’t ready, that’s alright.” He moves his arm from in front of her, reaching out and letting his fingers graze the side of her face before resting them against her cheek.
“Dad, it’s just school. I’ve got it.”
He was never this… whatever this is, about her going to a new school before. She can still remember when he’d dropped her off at middle school for the first time, Tommy in the passenger’s seat and the radio blaring. He had gotten out of the car, given her a quick kiss on the forehead, and said, in earshot of other parents, “Leo Myers starts givin’ you any trouble, go for the nuts.” And that had been that.
Although, according to Tommy, he’d spent a good minute crying once they drove away.
This is something different. The hug he pulls her into isn’t the same as it was when he scooped her into his arms before her first day of kindergarten, peppering her face with kisses until she giggled. He’d been nervous then, despite his happy front. She’d heard the erratic beating of his heart as her ear was pressed against his chest. But he’s beyond nervous now.
She hears his heart again, head against his chest. It’s racing. His hands are damp with sweat as he presses one to her neck and the other against her back, pulling her into him like someone’s going to try to yank her away.
She steps back after a minute, because she’s almost certain people have stopped to stare at them again. He lets her, a hand coming up to cup her cheek again.
“I’ll be waiting right here when the school day’s over, baby girl. Listen to your teacher, be safe, and if anythin’ happens, you can go to Miss Hazel and—”
“—Dad. I know.”
They meet each other’s eyes. His face is currently showing what she's taken to thinking of as his “stranger face.” Expression tense, whites of the eyes flashing. Something that feels almost animal. Like one of the lionesses she’d seen in the nature documentaries, scrambling forward, hoping desperately that she’ll reach her cubs before the hyena.
Sarah doesn’t know him when he looks like that. She tries not to care.
She throws her arms back around him after a moment and gives him a quick squeeze, looking up. “Today’s gonna be fine. I love you.”
“I love you too.” He presses a kiss to her head before letting her go.
She can feel his eyes trailing her the entire way into the building, only gone once she steps inside, where his gaze is, of course, replaced by numerous others.
They probably don’t get many new students, she guesses as she walks down the hallway, past the colorful walls and the doors to other classrooms. The smaller kids turn from hanging up their coats to watch her, eyes burning into her side. The older kids are more subtle about it. She doesn’t know if that’s better or worse.
Her hand comes up to the doorknob as she reaches the last room in the hallway, taking a deep breath. This’ll be just like her first day of high school. Sort of. At least back then there were hundreds of other ninth graders starting with her, though.
She opens the door.
The classroom looks different with other kids inside. About half of the desks are filled up, kids twisting around to talk to each other. It’s very clearly a mixed-age class. One of the boys has a full beard. Huh.
“Sarah.” Miss Laura gets up from her desk, walking over. “I’m so glad to see you. We’ll get started in ten minutes. Why don’t you go take a seat beside your sister?”
There’s that word again. It still feels awkward. Wrong. Like a shoe that doesn’t fit, no matter how much she tries to squeeze her heel through the back. She listens to Miss Laura, though, walking to the middle of the room where Ellie is sitting. She slips into the empty desk beside her.
“Wait, is that her?” The girl on Ellie’s other side leans forward. Ellie nods. “No way!” The girl’s gaze shifts to Sarah. Her eyes are friendlier than any of the others have been so far. But there’s still something sharp to them. Something different than most of the kids she had been around in her own time.
“Uh, hi?” Sarah says.
“Hi, I’m Dina. I’m Ellie’s best friend.”
“Jesse’s my best friend,” Ellie says, Dina elbowing her in the ribs. Ellie lets out a laugh, sliding her chair closer to Sarah’s and out of elbowing reach. “He is right now. He let me copy his history homework yesterday.”
“Okay, yeah, fair. Jesse’s my best friend then too. He gives me the strength to put up with your dumb ass.”
“I’m not the one who got beat up by a sheep last week.”
“I didn’t get beat up! It was a draw! And it was a ram, for the record.”
“It’s the same thing!”
They’ve turned their attention completely away from Sarah at this point, trading insults and jokes. She looks away.
There’s a flash of something dark in her stomach. A slime threading its way through her gut and sending everything plummeting for a few quick seconds. She thinks of Brittany and Eliza goofing around behind her seat. Nicole slipping her a note from the table beside her, an eyebrow raised as she goes to open it. Evan Rosen giving her a smile from across the room. Her giving him one back.
It feels like it was a month ago. It feels like it was forever ago.
It’s been 21 years.
She looks down at her desk. There’s a sketch in the bottom left corner of a stick figure in a hat, pointing a gun at another stick figure with twisted fungal plates sprouting from its head. She takes her eraser out of her bag and rubs at it. The image smears and smudges, the end of her eraser going gray. The stick-figure with the gun disappears altogether, lost in a cloud of smoke. The one with fungus on his head doesn’t, no matter how many times she pushes the eraser against it.
“I want to say we’ve heard a lot about you, but we really haven’t heard much.” It takes her a moment to realize that Dina’s talking to her again. “You’re from a QZ, right?”
“Yeah, Boston.”
“Cool. Guess you traveled pretty far, then? Like Ellie.”
“Yeah, it was… far.”
Dina motions to the empty seat beside her. “Jesse usually sits there, unless we all get separated for being disruptive or some shit. He’s on an early patrol, though. He’ll be back in the afternoon.”
She thinks about the patrol that had brought her in, and the way they handled the Infected without a moment of hesitation. Their guns held out in a steady, trained manner. The horses they rode, giant hoofs clipping against the ground and crunching through the leaves.
“They let kids go on patrol?”
“Only really close ones,” Dina says. “And you have to be at least 16 to even start. Not like the QZ’s with child soldiers and stuff.”
Jeez. Sarah thinks about any of the kids she’d known before killing things on horseback. They’d probably accidentally shoot themselves before they hit any target.
Miss Laura starts the class from the front of the room and they all shut up. Sarah sits up straighter, fingers tapping against the side of the desk. It’s just school. She’s done school before.
It takes her less than an hour to really get a feel on this school.
The basic subjects they’re going over are just that. Basic. She learned some of this stuff in middle school. She flies through the arithmetic problems the teacher goes over, writing out her work on the crumbly, homemade paper that was passed out. Miss Laura reads a chapter of Jane Eyre to them, which Sarah already read last year. Or 22 years ago. Whatever.
There’s a little more talk about farming than she remembers school having before. As well as an intensive focus on local geography. Other than that, school is school. She’s always been on top of it. At least that hasn’t changed.
The kid in front of her accidentally knocks against his backpack while they’re working independently on labeling the maps in front of them. Sarah has absolutely no idea how to label anything and has been partnered with Ellie as a result. The other girl doesn’t do a very good job of explaining things, though, just slides the map towards herself and starts adding labels.
The kid’s backpack falls onto its side. Something falls through the opening, landing on the floor with a clatter.
It’s a gun.
Her muscles seize up at the sight, the air leaving her lungs. There was only one reason someone would bring a gun into school. It didn’t matter that her dad had always turned off the TV whenever people on the news would start talking about it. She knew what it was.
The boy scrambles to pick it up, Miss Laura catching sight of it from the front of the room. She walks over in a calm, unhurried manner.
None of the other students even look up.
Miss Laura kneels down and picks the gun up, checking it with practiced hands. She says something to the boy, soft enough that Sarah can’t hear. Then she puts the gun in one of her desk drawers and walks him out of the room.
“Where’s he going?” Sarah whispers. Ellie doesn’t respond, Dina jumping in after a moment.
“Who?”
“The boy with the gun.”
“She’s taking him to Miss Hazel,” Ellie says without looking up from their map. “They’ll get one of his parents to take him home and have a talk about acceptable behaviors and “adjusting” and all that shit.”
“Yeah.” Dina smirks. “Ellie would know.”
“Shut up.”
This leads to a brief kicking-fight under the desks, Sarah’s legs getting caught in the crossfire.
The school breaks at noon and the students file out of the building, stepping into the freezing air. It’s going to snow soon, Tommy had claimed. More than just a few flurries too. She’s kind of looking forward to it. There was never much snow in Texas.
Most of the little kids stay in the school yard, negotiating game rules with the seriousness of global leaders discussing nuclear war. Sarah follows a few paces behind Ellie, cutting through the groups of kids and heading towards the street.
There’s a clicking noise from behind them. It’s light but guttural, the sequence of sounds disjointed.
She freezes.
Ellie’s hand goes to her hip, reaching for a weapon that isn’t there. She’s not the only one who does. Within seconds, there’s a crackling tension.
The sound rings out again, this time easily pinpointed to one of the younger kids, who’s darting on and off of the play equipment by the school with a few other kids his age. The adult closest to them walks up, an eyebrow raised. “What’re you doing?”
The boy stops midway up a wooden ladder. “We’re playin’ clicker tag. I’m the clicker. Again.”
“Your clicker sounds are very good, but not everyone wants to hear them right now. Could we try and make a different noise?”
“But clickers click! What else am I supposed to do?”
“Couldn’t you just say it out loud?”
The tension in the area has fizzled out, and Ellie turns and walks away again, Sarah following. Just before they’re out of ear-shot, she hears a yell of, “click, click!” Followed by a laugh and a shriek of, “KILL HIM!”
Just normal kid games.
Dina sprints over and comes to a halt at Ellie’s side, the two speaking in low voices, impossible to hear from behind. They leave the street and cut through a few yards until they reach the wall, walking alongside it.
“Where are you going?” Sarah finally asks. Ellie and Dina turn around, exchanging a look. Dina nods, Ellie shaking her head.
“The gap,” Dina says.
"Dina,” Ellie hisses.
“What? Everyone in our class knows what it is, she should too.” Dina turns her attention to Sarah. “Up on the east end of the walls, over in the area with all the trees, there’s a little gap, just large enough to get through. It’s covered by tree branches on the inside and bushes on the outside, so if you ever need to slip out for any reason…”
Sarah has absolutely no idea why anyone would voluntarily slip outside of the walls. Not when there are creatures in the woods. She’s not sure she feels entirely safe knowing that there’s a gap in the wall either.
It feels familiar, though, like the door inside the janitor’s closet back at her high school, the one that led to the roof. All of the kids had known about it, but none of them ever told an adult that they knew. It was fun to keep it a secret.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Dina adds.
“Okay.” She traces an X across her chest with her finger. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Both Ellie and Dina give her a blank look at the phrase, then turn around and continue walking. She doesn’t follow. She navigates her way to the dining hall instead, getting lunch and sitting down under one of the trees in the schoolyard, watching the younger kids play.
They’re still doing that clicker game. There’s a lot of dramatic tackling and fake-stabbing. The physical play gets rough to the point where it would have been forcibly broken apart at her old elementary school. None of the supervising teachers seem to care, though, continuing to calmly sit and talk as a little girl falls off the edge of the play equipment and scrambles back up to her feet.
The academics are similar here. But the kids are different.
And Sarah is the odd one out.
Joel goes on his first overnight patrol since she arrived at the end of the week. And he’s even worse than he was on her first day of school.
She doesn’t get much sleep the night before, waking up over five times to the creak of the closet door as he opens it to check on her. She can hear him grilling Tommy from the top of the stairs that morning after she goes up to brush her teeth, Tommy sounding more amused than anything.
“Y’know, I’d like to think I’ve got a good track record with this kinda thing, Joel.”
“You’ve lost Sarah twice and Ellie once.”
“Okay, two of those times were 30 years ago, and 3 times out of a thousand ain’t bad.”
Sarah sits down on the top of the steps, not wanting to interrupt… whatever this is. She remembers similar, albeit less intense conversations that happened when she was little, and Joel acted like Tommy spontaneously forgot everything about childcare in between having her each time. Tommy would always soldier through the conversation, then wink at her once Joel left, usually following it with, “alright little punk, lets party” (partying meaning, of course, watching questionable late-night shows and eating a pint of cookie dough ice cream).
“Just… keep them safe, okay?”
“Of course. Both your girls will be returned with all the limbs they came with, big brother. Maria and I have got this. You be safe out there.”
“I will.”
And that’s that.
Joel leaves for the stables an hour later, pulling her into a hug before he does that squeezes her ribs so hard she thinks they might break. Her hand lingers in his, pulling on it slightly despite herself when he turns to leave. Heat rises across her face and prickles to her ears as he turns back around, cupping her face in his hands.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he says. “I promise.”
She lets go of his hand. She trusts his word.
Sarah and Ellie are moved to Maria and Tommy’s house for the rest of the day, and after not even an hour of them sitting and reading on opposite sides of the couch, trying to avoid eye contact, Tommy pokes his head into the living room.
“Get your jackets on, we’re goin’ outside.”
“Outside where?” Ellie asks, but Tommy’s already walked off. Sarah can hear him talking to Maria in the kitchen, their voices a low continuous hum, occasionally punctuated by James’s squeals.
“Are James and Aunt Maria coming?” Sarah asks when he comes back into the living room, Ellie now in her jacket and Sarah in her hat.
“Nope. Sarah, jacket. Ellie, hat.”
Sarah shrugs her jacket on. She hates it. It’s highlighter orange, tight and heavy around her arms. Ellie said she looked like a traffic cone the first time she’d put it on. But it’s what Joel got and it’s what was available, so she doesn’t complain. Externally, anyway.
“You’re covering my ears!” Ellie says as Tommy pulls her hat further down her head.
“That’s the point, darlin’.”
Ellie and Tommy go back and forth on the issue as they step outside, Tommy walking onto the street. He’s got guns, she realizes. Three of them. He passes one to Ellie, keeping the other two with him as they continue walking.
They’re heading towards the front gates.
She swallows. “Are we going outside the walls?”
“Mhm.” Tommy waves to the man on the platform, the gates creaking open in front of them. “Not far, don’t worry. Target practice is easier without having to worry about kids dartin’ in from nowhere, or old people gettin’ mad at you for all the noise.”
Target practice. Oh.
She’s shot a gun before. Once, sort of. She barely remembers it, but knows she couldn’t have been older than five. Abuela had let her do it in her backyard after showing her how. The kickback had been intense, and the sound had rung through her ears long after it was done. She remembers sobbing afterwards. She never did it again.
“Aren’t there Infected out here?” she asks as they walk through a well-worn trail in the woods. The bare branches of the trees look like crooked fingers against the sky.
“Not this close to town,” Tommy says. “Everything up to about five miles out is always watched, nothing makes it up here. And even if they did, someone would make quick work of them soon.”
They continue down the trail they’re on, the only sounds the sporadic chirp of a bird or the thud of their feet against the ground. She hasn’t been outside the wall since she had arrived. It’s kind of nice, when you’re not running for your life.
They emerge from the trees and onto the slope of a ridge, brown grass crunching under their feet. A breeze cuts across her face as they reach the top, and for once she’s grateful for her stupid orange jacket.
“Look.” Tommy spins around from in front of them, pointing into the distance. She follows him with her eyes.
Jackson is visible from here, nestled between the trees and the open plain, mountains vast and blue behind it. It’s nothing like looking out at the city before, where everything seemed so big and full, the shining concrete and steel star.
Jackson is small. Alive. Just another part of the landscape. She takes a moment to watch the river, easy and playful as it steers its path into the earth.
They cross over the ridge and wind up in a smaller, flatter clearing, with multiple targets set up on logs or ancient, rotting chairs.
“Alright,” Tommy says. “We’re here.”
She turns in a circle, examining the area. They can’t see Jackson from here. The land is open enough that she isn’t worried about something sneaking up on them, though. She can hear the clipping of horse hooves from a distance.
“Does Dad know about this?”
Tommy shrugs. “More or less. We’ve talked about it before, though, you learnin’ how to handle things and defend yourself. Timing just worked out today is all. You remember anythin’ we’ve gone over before?”
“Don’t point a gun at something you don’t want to shoot?”
“That’s a good one.” Tommy holds a rifle out for her, motioning for her to back up a step as she takes it. “That there is a .22 bolt-action rifle. It’s fine for startin’ with. You ain’t gonna be able to easily kill a person with it, but it’s good for squirrels and such.”
It feels weird to just be handed a gun. Joel had mostly kept her away from them before, and had given firm warnings to both Tommy and her abuela about keeping their guns out of her reach. She thinks he might have had one. She’s not sure where it would have been, though.
“They ain’t loaded, we gotta do that first. You never point it at anyone while we’re doin’ it, you understand?”
She nods.
“Attagirl. Here, watch your sister do it first, then I’ll walk you through.” He gives Ellie a nod.
Sarah grits her teeth.
She watches the other girl clear the chamber and reload the gun with a practiced ease, lifting it up after. “Can I shoot?”
“Go ahead. We’ve only got four rounds each, though, so make it count.”
Ellie looks out at cans and logs set up in the distance, before pulling the bolt-handle of her rifle up, then forward. It’s not as loud as she thought it would be when Ellie finally pulls the trigger. Nothing like whatever she had been holding in abuela’s yard (probably illegally, she thinks as she looks back on it).
Tommy squints in the distance, a grin spreading across his face. “You got a can. Nice shot, honey.” He reaches out and taps a gentle hand against Ellie’s head before turning his attention back to Sarah. “Alright, so that’s about what you want to be doin’ overall. It’ll take some time, though. Here, let’s get it loaded and try a shot.”
They do.
She misses. Terribly.
She’s not used to this, as Tommy talks her through pulling the handle up and trying again. She’s not used to the way her fingers feel heavy and clumsy as they try to perform a basic task. She’s not used to someone beside her doing better. She’s not used to not knowing what to do.
The last time she can remember feeling like this was during dance class, which she had tried for exactly one month when she was nine, before quitting in disgrace. Soccer was definitely more of her style than dance.
Shooting doesn’t seem much of her style either.
“It’s normal to miss when you’re just startin’ out,” Tommy says “You’re doing a good job, honey-girl. Want to give it another go?”
She does it twice more. She doesn’t hit a single target. Her arms ache from holding one position for so long.
Ellie casts a glance towards her before taking the rest of her shots. She hits a can every single time. Tommy ruffles her hair once she’s done, knocking the girl into his side. “Gunnin’ to take over my spot as the best sharpshooter in the family, are you?”
“I don’t have to.” Ellie sets down her gun, flashing him a grin. “Joel’s already got you beat.”
“Oh, does he now?”
“Uh huh. You didn’t see it, there was one time he was sniping from the top of a building in this neighborhood that was like, flooded with Infected after they came out of the ground. There were people too. Everything was fighting and people were on fire, but he still got us through. Or, he got me…” she trails off.
There’s a sudden weight to the situation. Tommy’s hand falls to Ellie’s shoulder, his thumb rubbing over her shirt. He doesn’t say anything in response, the smile on his face faltering as he looks down at her. She moves away after a moment, propping her gun against the log behind them.
Sarah tries to imagine her dad in the chaos of the scene Ellie had described, with his face illuminated by flames and his fingers clutched around the stock of a gun. Her dad shooting Infected. Shooting people.
“Well, he’s gettin’ blinder everyday.” Tommy breaks through the silence. “Reckon I could take him on anytime. And I always could, for the record. I ever tell you about the time we were shootin’ bb's' as kids, and he got so mad that I kept hittin’ the targets that he turned around and shot me in the ass?”
Sarah’s heard the story a million times. He always liked to bring it up whenever he and Joel were fighting. Apparently, over 45 years and one apocalypse later, it’s still incredibly relevant.
“You probably deserved it,” Ellie says, and she’s upside down within two seconds, her hat falling off as Tommy dangles her.
He used to do that to Sarah, whenever she said something particularly sassy. Even after she started getting too big to easily pick up. She had shrieked each time, shouting about the blood going to her head and child abuse, and how he was a dick if Joel wasn’t around to hear her cuss.
Sometimes the words had been hard to get out through the giggles that were coursing through her body.
“Let me down, asshole,” is all Ellie says, the end of her words caught in a small laugh. Tommy flips her back over and sets her on her feet, looking over at Sarah.
“Something to be said for fightin’ practice too. If a guy’s runnin’ up to you with just his hands, you gotta know what to do.”
“Kick him in the balls,” Sarah and Ellie say in unison.
Tommy falters for a moment, raising an eyebrow. “Well, yeah. But then what?”
“Stab him,” Ellie says.
“Run away,” Sarah says.
“What if he grabs your hand and takes your knife?” Tommy reaches out and takes one of Ellie’s hands, holding it up. She pulls back, shoes skidding against the dew-wet grass. He’s not even using half of his full strength, Sarah can tell. But the other girl can’t break free. He lets go of her hand, looking to Sarah. “What if he’s faster than you?”
She shrugs. “You just die, I guess. I already did that.”
Something flashes across Tommy’s face. Like Joel’s stranger expression, but shorter. He takes in a breath. “Yeah. Yeah, you did. That’s why this is important.” He takes Sarah’s wrist this time, his hold burning against her skin. “There ain’t much form or practice to the way a girl has to fight.” He pulls her closer as she tries to yank her wrist out of his grasp. “It’s good to learn how to punch and all without breakin’ your thumb. It’s good to learn how to take a hit. But most men you come across are gonna be way stronger. So you have to do anything. Sarah, twist your thumb towards the opening between my thumb and the rest of my fingers. Lock your elbow into your body while you do it and turn yourself to the side.”
She does so. Her arm slides free from Tommy’s grasp.
“Good. Now you’re free. You can’t run, I’m faster. You can’t stab me; you don’t have a knife. What can you do?”
“Kick you in the balls?”
He gives her a fond roll of his eyes, pretending to stagger forward. “Say you do kick me in the balls. Then what?”
She shrugs.
“This,” Ellie says, picking up a particularly large rock from the ground and turning it over in her hand. She runs her finger along the sharp edges.
“That’s good thinkin’,” Tommy says. “There’s usually gonna be something lyin’ around you can hit someone with, you just gotta get to it fast. Your goal here is to get the other guy so hurt he can’t come after you again, or at least give yourself a good head start. You can do it with your fists too, if you know what you’re doin’.”
Sarah half-listens as her uncle walks through different ways to knock someone out, first, then advances to ways to kill someone. She tries to imagine the feeling of killing someone with her own hands. Of someone’s life draining out underneath of hers.
She wonders how the soldier felt that night, as he lifted his gun to her and her father. Was he scared? Dreading? Or did he think about it the way Tommy’s talking about killing someone now? Cold, detached. Just another part of life.
She’s snapped out of her thoughts by Tommy grabbing her again, pulling her into his side. She can’t help the shriek of laughter that rises up inside of her. She hasn’t laughed like that in a long time.
“What’re you gonna - oof -” He staggers forward a few inches as Ellie comes up behind him, taking a flying leap onto his back. Her arms wrap around his neck to secure herself, her feet swinging in the air as she tries to draw them up to wrap around his torso. “Well, now I just got a barnacle stuck on me. Only way to get it off is by shakin’ it, I reckon.”
Tommy lets go of Sarah and spins in a quick circle, Ellie scrambling to keep her grip as he does so. He ducks forward to try and throw her off, and she finally wraps her legs around him, letting out a cheer.
“Not today, motherfucker!”
Sarah takes the opportunity to cling to one of Tommy’s arms, digging her heels into the grass and dropping her full weight towards the ground.
He groans. “Now I got a barnacle a nd a limpet. Better keep shakin’.”
He spins in another circle, pulling her across the grass. She relaxes into it. This is the Uncle Tommy she knows. This is a game she knows.
Having another girl doing it too almost makes it more fun.
“Girls.” Tommy suddenly freezes, then points into the clearing. “Look.”
She lets go of his arm and squints into the distance. He’s pointing to a rabbit. A large brown one, currently turning its head from side-to-side as it examines the open space. It leans its head down after a moment, presumably crouching to eat whatever’s hiding in the dying grass.
“I’m surprised it came out with all the noise we were makin’,” Tommy says in a hushed voice. He looks at the rabbit for another minute, then takes one of the guns from against the log. “We got two rounds left. Sarah, you wanna give it a shot?”
“Shoot the… rabbit?” Her heart thuds sluggishly slow in her chest, each beat reverberating through her ears.
“Uh huh. You can cook rabbits, they ain’t bad.”
Ellie places a hand over her eyes to better see the creature through the weak but prevalent afternoon sun. “She’s just gonna miss.”
“She won’t know it until she tries.” Tommy lifts the gun, carefully offering it out.
She takes it.
“Alright. Do everything we were goin’ over before and keep a good eye on the rabbit. It’s stayin’ real still right now.”
She pulls the bolt-handle up and forward, taking a deep breath. Her finger hovers over the trigger.
“That’s it, Sarah-girl, go on.”
The rabbit lifts its head. It sees her. And it takes a hop forward. To it, she’s far enough away to be harmless. It doesn’t know what a gun is. It doesn’t know bullets. It doesn’t know that death can come from far away.
Her arms tremble. She lowers the gun. “I can’t.”
Tommy reaches out and takes the gun from her, giving her a nod. “Okay. That’s okay, honey.” She hates the way he’s looking at her, a flashing fear covering the usual twinkling of his eyes. The expression he’d had when she had tried to dart into the road as a kid, or held a fork near a socket.
He passes the gun to Ellie, who takes it eagerly, taking a second to get into position.
She shoots.
The rabbit falls.
She cheers.
Sarah watches as the other two cross the distance, Tommy lifting the rabbit up by the ears. It swings limply in its hand when they walk back over, stomach red and fur ruffled.
Sarah bends over and vomits into the grass.
It starts to snow.
She and Ellie sleep in Tommy and Maria’s guest room that night. In theory, there’s enough space for both of them. The bed in the middle of the room is large enough for one of them to sleep on each side.
In practice, Ellie chooses to sleep on the floor rather than share a bed with her.
It’s weird, sleeping in an actual bed instead of a closet. She guesses she should get used to it. Her father’s already started the process of dividing his room in two, she’ll have her own bed again soon.
Ellie falls asleep quickly, curled up under a blanket in the corner of the room. She’s dead-quiet as she sleeps. No snoring. No shifting.
Sarah closes her eyes, trying to pretend it’s a night from before, sprawled out across the spare bed in Tommy’s apartment because her father’s out of town. She hears the rumble of Tommy’s voice and the thud of his footsteps as he and Maria go to bed in the room across from the nursery, where James is asleep. It’s almost similar enough, but sleep doesn’t come.
She remains there with her eyes closed, a shiver creeping up her spine. The memories still come with renewed ferocity, like they always do at night, whether she sleeps or not.
People on fire, running out of a building and onto a street she’s walked down before.
Her seat belt pulling taut as her body slams against it. Glass cutting into her temple.
The soldier lifting his gun like she was a rabbit. Pulling the trigger.
Her heartbeat pulses dully in her ears. She digs her fingers against the quilt she’s curled underneath, sweat dripping down her face. She opens her eyes, staring at the ceiling. It doesn’t stop the memories. Doesn’t stop the panic.
Someone screams.
Someone is screaming. Her heart skips a beat as she rolls onto her side, the screaming continuing. It’s joined by the wails of the baby from the other room, and the sound of footsteps down the hallway.
Oh. Ellie’s screaming. The other girl throws her blanket off of herself, her screams growing louder as it gets caught between her legs. She kicks. Flails. Hits her body back against the wall again and again.
There are words between screams. Words that she can just barely make out.
“No.”
“Get off of me!”
“Please. Joel.”
The door is eased open, a wide strip of light falling across the floor. Sarah squints.
Tommy steps into the room, Maria lingering in the doorway with James in her arms. The baby’s hair is matted against his head from sleep, tears trembling on his eyelashes.
Tommy takes another step forward, Ellie flattening herself against the wall the way Sarah had once seen a terrified cat do when a dog had chased it to the side of her house. He goes back to the doorway, taking James.
“You’re gonna need to take this one, love,” he says to Maria.
She takes his place in the room just as Sarah closes her eyes again. She can hear her gentle murmurs, blending together with Ellie’s choked whispers. Maria says something about getting water, and two pairs of footsteps leave the room. Sarah rolls onto her back.
A hand rests against her shoulder. Her eyes shoot open.
“Hey, honey.” Tommy is standing over her, baby at his hip. His eyes are still glassy from sleep, his hair sticking out in a million different directions. “Did she wake you up?”
“No. I was already awake.”
“It’s late.” He bounces James around as he starts to fuss, shifting the baby to his chest and patting his back. “You havin’ trouble fallin’ asleep?”
“I guess.”
He lightly shoves her side. “You guess, huh? Scooch.” She sits up and moves to the opposite end of the bed, pulling her knees to her chest. He sits down beside her, the baby letting out a mumbling noise and dropping his head against his father’s chest.
They sit in silence for a minute. She leans back against the headboard, trying to collect her thoughts. “Is that… normal?” she finally asks.
“Sort of. It’s normal for her, anyway.”
“Why?”
She’s never heard another kid sound like that before. She’s never really heard another person sound like that, period. Desperate. Terrified . The only thing that really comes close is…
“That’s for her to tell when she’s ready.” He reaches out, cupping her cheek. “Outside of here, though, it ain’t a pretty picture. You’ve gotta remember that. A lot of folks have been through things that just ain’t right. It messes up your head, especially once you’re safe and you’ve got time to think about it all again.”
“Is it like that for you?”
His smile fades into something sadder, and his gaze strays down to his little son. He rubs his hand down the baby’s back. “Yeah, sometimes. I reckon it’s like that for most people, now. It’s better in Jackson, though. The kids here will have good lives.” He flicks her forehead, grinning as she goes to bat his hand away. “Includin’ you.”
She’s not quite sure what a good life entails anymore. But he’s smiling again, so she smiles, slouching back down against her pillow.
“Night, honey.” He kisses her forehead, holding out the baby so that she can do the same to him. And then he’s gone, closing the door behind him, and she’s left in the darkness of the strange room once more.
Ellie doesn’t come back to the bedroom that night.
Snow is weird. Back in Texas, it happened every once in a blue moon, just a little sprinkle of white that had her dashing around her yard with glee when she was little, head angled up towards the sky.
Here, it’s different. The snow from the end of target practice sticks about an inch to the ground. And it hasn’t stopped since.
Frost clings to the window panes, staining geometric patterns into the glass. Her toes are frozen and numb every morning unless she wears her shoes to bed. The air makes her nose run and her lungs sting, her breath puffing out in little clouds.
Sarah watches snow fall in flurries through the living room windows a week after Joel gets back, fingers pressed against the glass.
“It’s something, ain’t it?” She nearly jumps as she hears her father’s voice from behind her, turning her head to the side to meet his eyes. He’s got a mug in one hand, the one with an owl on it. She thinks it’s his favorite.
“Yeah.” She looks back outside. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much snow at once.”
“Takes some gettin’ used to. It would snow a lot in Boston too. Spent a lot of time shovelin’ it off the walkways for a few ration cards.”
That’s… lovely. She sinks deeper into the couch, staring up at the ceiling. It’s Sunday, so she doesn’t have school. Joel doesn’t have a work rotation today either. They’ve already eaten breakfast. She’ll probably spend most of today reading books while tangled in blankets, trying to stay warm.
Like he’s reading her mind, Joel’s gaze strays to the window. “Long as you and Ellie bundle up real good, y’all can go out in this.”
She perks up. “Really?”
She’s rarely done the things she’s seen in movies before, like making a snowman, or having snowball fights, or creating a snow angel that actually looks like a snow angel. Looking outside now, there should be more than enough snow to do all of those things. She wishes she had Nicole with her. Or Eliza. They would have loved this.
She has her dad, though. Her number one person. This will be fun. She takes one of his hands and gives it a squeeze before scurrying off to find her coat.
He’s still in the living room when she comes back downstairs, her scarf in one hand. “Frostbite comes fast. You need to be as covered as possible.”
It takes three layers for her to get Joel’s approval, and she can barely zip up her traffic-cone jacket over the two thick sweaters she has on underneath. The gloves he got for her are a bit too big, and they fit awkward around her hands.
Ellie’s come downstairs in the time it takes her to make the final change. She watches the snow through the windows, curled up at the end of the couch. Her face is pale.
Joel goes to sit beside her while Sarah pulls on her boots. She can’t make out what he’s saying, his voice too soft. But she knows that look in his eyes, when he finally looks back over at her. It’s the same expression he used to wear whenever he had to miss a soccer game because of work, or leave dinner because Tommy got himself into another scrape. The one she had hated as a kid, and grown used to as a teenager.
“Ellie and I are gonna stay in today, alright? You can go on out, just don’t leave our street. You could see if Tommy wants to come out.”
“Why’re y’all staying in?” she asks, finishing tying her second boot and standing up.
“Just some hard things.” He reaches out, brushing Ellie’s hair away from her face.
Yeah. She knows.
She pulls her hat over her head and opens the front door before Joel can say anything else, stepping outside.
Snow changes things fast. It looks like a whole different world as she darts down the porch steps, spinning around to see the footsteps she’s already tracked. It’s impossible to tell the road from the grass, all of it blanketed in snow. The roofs are covered in white. Icicles cling to the gutters. A kid who she vaguely recognizes from school runs by with a snowball in his gloved hand.
Normally, she would stay on their street like Joel said. She should stay on the street, she knows she should. But something inside of her feels like it’s… choking. It needs new air. Something different than their houses or the backyards, or the path to school. It’s not like he’ll notice anyway. He’s occupied.
She turns the corner at the end of the street.
Jackson’s bigger than she had realized. It still has nothing on Austin, but the streets still seem to stretch on and on, and the buildings around her shift from familiar, albeit snow-covered, to something new. The butcher, the church, something that looks like a store. Someone is skinning a chicken outside, which is pretty gross.
Most of the kids from the middle school class have created a fort at the end of one of the roads, one of them waving around a piece of blue cloth as the others try to catch him. Some people wave as she passes by. She doesn’t really know them. They probably know her from Joel. Or Tommy and Maria. Or Ellie.
She reaches one of the walls after ten minutes of following the streets, pressing a hand to it. It’s steady beneath her touch.
The gap, she suddenly remembers Dina saying. There’s a gap somewhere on the wall. It has to be close to the school, if Dina and Ellie were able to slip there and back during lunch break.
She follows the wall in the direction of the school, the guards overhead barely sparing her a glance. She just looks like another scarf-clad kid wandering around in the snow.
Eventually, a few trees begin to border the wall, followed by dead bushes and climbing ivy ivy that grow alongside them. This has got to be it.
She reaches through the brush, wincing as sharp, tiny sticks poke into her jacket. Her hand doesn’t touch solid wall once she’s managed to reach through. There’s just… nothing. This is the spot. She pushes the rest of her body through the branches and twigs, closing her eyes as she struggles against them.
For a brief, second, there’s nothing, and she feels just like she did before. Ripped from life and given to death. Cast out from death and given to life. Sliding from one to the other, her breath escaping her in a gasp.
This is different, though. She can see outside, the wind picking up the swirling snow that covers the entire land and blowing it about. Honestly, it looks about the same as inside the walls, just without the buildings and the people.
She sits in between something and something else with her knees pulled to her chest. And it feels good. It feels familiar.
A monster could come and get her right here, maybe, even if Tommy said that they never make it this close. It could see her or sense her in the gap and squeeze itself through, clicking and shrieking, drool sliding down a fungus-ridden face.
Maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing. Maybe if she dies here, she’ll go back to her home. Her real home, with her real family and her real world.
She thinks of Joel’s face, though, when she was in his arms that night the sky shone brilliantly above her, blood pooling at her abdomen. His pleas as her insides shifted and spurted and succumbed. The look on his face when he saw her again.
She couldn’t do that to him. Or to Tommy. She couldn’t leave them again. She has to stay.
She crawls out of the gap and back through the poking brush, rolling over her previous footsteps before she gets back to her feet to cover up the tracks leading in.
It hasn’t been that long since she left. She turns back to her street once she reaches it, purposefully walking by the windows of her house in case Joel has been trying to catch sight of her.
She feels eyes against her back.
Maria is staring at her from her porch when she turns around, James at her hip. Both of them are bundled up, James’s little face just barely visible under his fluffy hood. “Are you supposed to be staying on our street?” Maria asks with a raised eyebrow as Sarah approaches. She must have watched her turn the corner when she got home from wherever she’d been. Shoot.
She bites her lip. Tommy used to say that she “ain’t got a lyin’ bone in her body.”
“Uh, yeah.
Maria smiles. “Girl, come here.”
She crosses over to Maria and Tommy’s house, following Maria inside. Her boots track water on the floor, and Maria passes the baby over briefly while she goes to get a towel for drying off her snow clothes.
“I know your father.” She lays the first towel down, motioning her forward. “And I know the heart attack it would give him to think of you wandering around by yourself. So we’ll keep this between you, me, and James. Do you want tea?”
“What?”
“Tea. I was just going to make some.”
She nods, following Maria to the kitchen and taking James back the first chance she gets. He snuggles into her arms, his eyes following her hands when she helps him out of his jacket. Those topsy-turvy feelings that are always crashing through her stomach briefly calm at the sight of his chubby little face.
She momentarily thinks about what it would be like to have a brother. Probably better than having a sister. If they’re different from you, then it’s not like they took your place, right? Brothers don’t steal your clothes—or the names your father calls you: those whispered honeys and sweet things and babygirls.
“I’m surprised Joel wasn’t out with you himself.” Maria slides a mug in front of her. She leans her head in closer, breathing in the steam. It fills her lungs much easier than the biting outside air does. “He’s been pretty excited about you seeing your first big snow.”
“Ellie was having problems or something.”
“Ah.” Maria pours herself a mug of tea, sitting down across from Sarah and reaching out to ruffle James’s curls. “I get it. I had four younger brothers. It seemed like they were always getting into something whenever I had plans with my parents.”
“Yeah?”
“Mhm. They were my biggest cheerleaders, though. I used to do track. I could hear them screaming their heads off at every meet.”
Sarah takes a hesitant sip of her tea. It burns the tip of her tongue. She quickly spits it back out.
“What do you think of the snow?” Maria asks.
“It’s… something.”
“Different from Texas, huh?”
“Yeah.” She holds James closer to her chest, pressing her chin to his head. He fits so perfectly in her arms, his little body pleasantly warm from being previously bundled up. They have the same eye color, she thinks. Joel says they have the same noses too.
“Tommy spent his first couple of winters here complaining about all of the snow,” Maria says. “He looked like a wet puppy every time he came inside, dripping in the doorway with those big eyes.”
She can’t help the laughter that bubbles inside of her chest, escaping in a few light giggles. Tommy had always started complaining any time the temperature dipped below 50 degrees. “It ain’t fuckin’ Alaska. I’ve got standards, sweetheart.”
“And you still married him.”
Maria waves a hand, her eyes sparkling. “He’s got his ways.” She takes a sip from her mug, her eyes fixed on the window. After a moment, she looks back over. “What was Texas like in the window?”
Sarah’s heart skips a beat. She’s talked about Before with Joel and Tommy a handful of times. Usually as an offhanded “remember when we…” Other than that, it’s just been her, and the memories swirling inside of her head.
Maria knows what Texas was like in the winter. She probably knows most of Sarah’s life from back then. Tommy likes talking, he needs it. But she still asked, and she’s still looking at her with open eyes, like she wants to hear.
So Sarah talks.
She tells her about the slight relief from the beating sun that came with winter, but the retained heat from before. Running around in a t-shirt and shorts. Hiding the light jacket Joel got her in 1st grade, because everyone else had Ariel or Cinderella on their jackets and she had Belle, and the other kids kept teasing. The occasional cold front that rolled in and took everyone by surprise. Watching it snow in all of the Christmas movies with confusion when she was younger, and amusement when she was older.
Her memories of winter bleed into memories of her friends.
Melissa sneaking them some of her older sister’s make up after Christmas because she “got a bunch more and won’t even notice.” Eliza, Emily, and Brittany dragging her to the mall to skate. And Nicole. Always Nicole. Watching the weird claymation Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer over and over again in Sarah’s living room. Giving Evan Rosen a codename when they talked about him, Sarah stressed over if she should get him anything for Thanksgiving or Christmas or Valentines.
She takes in a long breath once she finishes talking. Her head feels… floaty, now. Like a bunch of things have come loose inside of her and are turning into clouds, fogging up her mind.
It’s not a bad feeling.
“It was good,” Maria says, having listened attentively throughout all of her rambling. And, yeah, that sums it up pretty nicely.
She nods. “It was good.”
Maria stands up and takes James, shifting the baby to her hip. She gives her son a fond look. “It’s going to be James’s first Christmas this year. Ellie’s first real one. Your first Christmas here.”
“Lots of firsts,” Sarah says, tracing a line on the table with her finger.
“Lots of firsts,” Maria echoes, shooting her a smile. “We’ll make them good ones.”
All Sarah has to do is keep smiling. Help out where it’s needed, avoid adding any more weight onto her father’s shoulders after everything she’s already caused.
Maria’s right. Things will be good.
She’ll make them good.