Chapter Text
The world does not end in fire. There are no demons breaking through the earth’s crust, no proclamations of doomsday from tin-hatters in the street. It ends on a Monday, as if the whole universe is laughing at people dreading the work week ahead, as if to say you think this is bad? Watch what I can do next.
It’s a typical day in San Francisco, and Hope Van Dyne drinks too much coffee and drives to work with the windows rolled down, fingers drumming out the bass of the song on the radio on the steering wheel. It’s a hot day, sunshine pouring into her car and later, into the windows of her top floor office at Pym Tech. In the streets below, businessmen hurry to meetings, college students sit out on the green and pretend to study, people visit stores and attend yoga classes. Birthdays are celebrated, deaths are mourned, promotions are earned. It’s life, in all its big and little moments, and it’s taken for granted. Nobody pays attention to the blacked out windows of the warehouse in a bad part of town, where twelve human-sized cages are being filled as a part of an experiment which eight scientists have waited a lifetime to complete.
Hope eats lunch at her desk, eyes focused on the sixty-page report on her computer, turning her eyes fuzzy with concentration. The twelve people are dragged, screaming, from their cages one by one, injected with something bright pink. There’s a little girl of seven who cried when the needle makes contact with skin, an old man of eighty who stares the scientists down until his eyes glaze and the serum takes hold. After two hours, the scientists are satisfied. They leave the building, leave the doors wide open behind them. The rest is up to fate.
Hope spends the afternoon in the lab, doing the practical work she loves best, leaves around six-thirty and heads to her parents’ house. They make chicken pot pie and then all three of them work on some work problem of Hope’s, a puzzle piece she can’t quite work out.
Hope drives home to her apartment, noticing nothing out of the ordinary except for maybe a few more sirens than usual. Hope chalks it up to some car accident on the freeway, pushes it from her mind. She falls asleep around midnight, dreams about being six years old and lost in the city, wakes up in a panic at five a.m and checks her phone. She doesn’t know that she’s just lived the last ordinary day of her life.
“Dad,” Cassie Lang holds the wire up in front of her face, fiddling with the knot. “Is this right?” It’s a snare, ready to be set near their makeshift home in the woods, where they’ve been for the five months, trying to live through the winter. Before that, they spent months just walking, just trying to survive. Nobody expected a damned zombie apocalypse, it’s not like it could really be planned for.
“That looks great, Peanut!” Scott smiles, mussing up Cassie’s hair like she’s ten again, not a fifteen-year-old who’s almost as tall as he is.
Cassie looks at him like she’s just been told she made the varsity soccer team or something, and Scott feels a little sick. He has no idea if he’s doing this right, but there’s no guide on how to raise a kid at the end of the world. Half of him wants to shelter Cassie from every type of harm or sadness she could encounter, wants to keep her inside the cabin in the middle of the woods, miles from civilisation, for the rest of his days. The other half of him knows that it’s important she knows how to survive. The first half of him is the reason the cabin is their base, the reason he keeps them here rather than looking for one of the safe zones he had heard chatter about before they cut themselves off from the outside world. The reason they don’t go in search of any kind of normal life, or use the old radio Scott had once used to try and track down other survivors. It’s too dangerous to do that anymore.
The second half of him is the reason he plucked a gun from Paxton’s barely cold body after they left the city, the reason he stocks up on ammo whenever he can, the reason he taught Cassie how to load the gun, unjam the barrel, affix a silencer and shoot at a moving target without breaking a sweat. (After learning how to do all of this first himself, of course.) The second half of him is the reason he teaches her how to make snares in the woods and cook rabbit and open cans with a knife and dress a wound and, most importantly of all, never ever trust anybody. Not a single soul. Scott teaches Cassie to run in the opposite direction if she even suspects there’s another person around.
Scott tries to maintain some sense of normalcy too, as impossible as it seems. He rigs up solar panelled lights and a system to collect rainwater, pockets nail polish every time he loots a store that sells any and helps Cassie paint her fingernails all colours of the rainbow. There’s a library in the nearest town which Scott collects books from, bringing them back to the cabin in stacks. Together, they read about Paddington Bear and nuclear physics and everything in between. They doodle with a pack of broken crayons and stick the terrible art on the walls, and Scott teaches himself to do eight different kinds of hair braid in Cassie’s hair (see, he tells Cassie, the apocalypse has its uses. He didn’t even know there were eight types of braid before this.)
Every day is entrenched with fear, both of them trained by this point to react to so much as a twig snap in the vicinity. They string up tin cans around the nearby trees so they’ll hear if anyone, or any thing is coming. Neither can remember the last time they had a proper night’s sleep. But still, it’s a carved out life. It works. Until the water system gets jammed, and there’s more zombies than Cassie alone knows how to deal with. Until Scott falls off the roof.
There’s a kid in the back of the pharmacy Hope’s planning to raid. At first she thinks it’s a zombie, snarling around some human remains or stuck on it's rotting limbs. Then she thinks it’s an adult woman, spending a split second to check whether or not it’s Gamora, as she has every time she comes across a woman in the past few months since the midnight argument which Hope regrets more and more with each passing second. Then the person tilts their head up, catching the light, and Hope can see she's a kid , no older than sixteen - maximum.
Hope stands in the doorway, door hanging off its hinges and pushed aside, hitching her backpack up higher on her shoulders. This is a dilemma. Hope works alone, had done since Gamora left, can’t risk matching up with someone who might be a liability. The only thing that matters anymore is staying alive. She doesn’t want to enter the pharmacy. The girl might try something stupid or be part of an ambush or, worst of all, beg Hope for help. And then she’ll have to say no, and walk away, and try not to break her own damn heart.
But this is the last pharmacy on the edge of this crap town before the area turns from brick buildings and cracked roads to woods and mountains and silence. Hope’s planning to disappear, stick to forest for as long as she can. But she’s out of bandages and antibacterial gel, and her lungs feel heavier every day, probably an infection. She needs supplies, or she’s scared she won’t make it out of the other side of the trees.
Her decision, as it turns out, is made for her. There’s a groaning sound on the road a little ways back, and Hope snaps her head to the left, watching a lone zombie ambling in her direction. It hasn’t seen her yet, but within another couple of feet it will pick up her scent, drawn to the one living thing amongst miles and miles of death. Hope could deal with this right now, shot to the head, but she doesn’t want to risk attracting any more of the undead. So instead, she steps inside the pharmacy, heaving the door closed behind her as quietly as she can.
There’s a gasp. The girl has heard her. Hope twists around, presses her fingers to her own lips, eyes sliding to the window as the breathy groans of the undead creature grow louder.
The girl looks half starved, dark hair falling into her face, a bandage wound tightly around her arm, spots of fresh blood flecking the white. Hope worries that it’s a bite. If it is, it would be kinder to shoot the kid right now. And Hope really, really doesn’t want to do that. But she will, if it comes to it.
“Don’t hurt me,” the girl hisses, eyes wide, hands shaking around white bottles of pills. The creature outside ambles past.
“Don’t bother me, and we won’t have a problem. Ok?” Hope tries to keep her voice even and commanding. She’s got the upper hand here, and she knows it. She’s got martial arts training, the array of weapons about her person which she mentally runs through and checks on twenty times a day.
“I…ok. Ok,” the girl nods, eyes still affixed on Hope.
Hope frowns at her, pushing her too-long hair behind her shoulders. “What are you looking for, anyway?” She doesn’t know why she asks. She doesn’t need to ask. She needs to get her stuff and get out of there, find shelter in the woods by nightfall.
The girl bites her lip, hesitates. “Antibiotics. For my dad. Some pain meds. Something antiseptic. I-I don’t know. I just need him to get better,” her voice cracks at the end of the sentence, eyes swimming with tears, and god, the kid is so soft. She’s never going to survive this world.
“What happened?” Hope hates herself for following up.
“He fell. He was fixing our water system, it was clogged up with-with leaves or something, I don’t know. And then there were zombies on us, and I nearly got bit, and dad tried to save me, but he fell and scraped his leg real bad, and it got infected and now...he won’t...he won’t wake up,” there are tears leaking from the girl’s eyes now, tracking marks in the dirt on her face.
“You said you almost got bit,” Hope starts, eyes fixed on the bandage on the girl’s arm. If a zombie has so much as grazed her, Hope’s going to take what she needs and run.
“They didn’t touch me. I did this to myself. Killing them... with a knife,” the girl says in a shaky voice, like she can’t believe it’s a sentence she’s actually saying.
“Ok. Ok,” Hope nods slowly, and then begins searching the small room for the items she needs. There’s not much left, mostly having been looted already, likely at the very start of the chaos. She thinks that most of the people who stole from here are probably dead by now.
“I don’t...I don’t know what to do,” the girl is frozen in place.
“And you think I do?”
“ Please. Please,” she’s half sobbing now, hands shaking so much that the pills are rattling around in the bottles she’s holding.
Hope’s going to say no. That’s her rule. Say no, stay alive. For all she knows, this is a trap, and she’s going to be dragged off somewhere to be murdered.
But something about the kid reminds her...well, of herself. The world is an awful, awful place right now. If Hope can save this kid’s dad, extend the time this family has together, even if it’s only by a few weeks, then maybe she should do it.
“What’s your name?” Hope asks, pocketing a roll of bandages.
“Cassie.”
“Cassie,” Hope tries the name out for size. “I’m Hope. And if this is a trap, I’m probably going to shoot you.”
Scott wakes up to half darkness, ears ringing, head pounding so much that he’s sure he’s been hit with a crowbar or a falling tree or a bus. It takes him a while to open his eyes fully, to adjust to his surroundings, feel cold air on his face. When they’re open properly, he remembers. He remembers scraping his leg on the rusty metal of the roof, the terror in his heart at seeing Cassie surrounded by monsters. The horror at watching her kill them. Holding her, arms covered in blood, as she sobbed afterwards. Scott remembers the fever taking hold, his whole body feeling too heavy to move, aching, shivering, boiling. Blackness.
“Cassie?” Blind panic overtakes Scott as he tries to sit up, struggling against the spots of light popping in his eyes.
“Woah, woah, woah,” there are hands on his shoulders, pushing him back. Strong and steady, and there’s a curtain of dark hair, a face that is not Cassie’s swimming into view.
“ Where’s Cassie ?” Scott demands, fighting against the hands with everything he’s got. Unfortunately, that isn’t much, and his head meets the pillow again in no time, hands reaching up to rub the exhaustion from his eyes.
“She’s sleeping,” the face hisses, and Scott’s vision is growing clearer by the second. His eyes study the woman’s face, the bruise on her cheekbone, the whites of her eyes, the mud on the sleeve of her too-big t-shirt.
“What?” That's not the answer he had been expecting. And he’s not sure he believes it, has no reason to. “Where? Where is she?”
The woman rolls her eyes, pulling Scott up by the shoulder until he’s squinting round at the rest of the room. Still in the cabin. Good, that’s a start. His eyes find Cassie in the corner of the room, curled up on the armchair there. Scott freezes for a second, silence filling his ears until he can hear Cassie’s soft snores. The kind that have remained the same since she was a toddler.
“She’s fine,” the woman lets go of Scott’s shoulder and he falls back down, head still pounding.
“Who are you? Why are you here?”
“I saved your life . You could be a little more grateful?”
“You what now?”
“The infection. It was really bad, and Cassie was afraid you weren’t going to make it. She was right,” the woman shrugs. “But now you’re fine.” She stops, turning away from him to cough, deep and hacking and agonising sounding.
“Hey, hey. Are you ok?” Scott shuffles up the pillows until he’s half sitting, unsure why he’s concerned for this stranger. Except for the fact that she saved his life. And she spared Cassie’s.
“That’s none of your concern,” the woman says after a few more seconds of coughing, but she sits down on the edge of Scott’s bed all the same, by his feet. He watches her, noticing the way she’s trying to catch her breath whilst making it seem like she’s fine. There are rips in her jeans, arms dotted with small cuts, opening the skin over the muscles he can see beneath. She looks like she’s been through hell. She’s also sort of beautiful.
“How did you find us?” Scott asks next.
“Cassie. She was in some pharmacy looking for medication. Probably would have accidentally poisoned you if I hadn’t showed up.”
“She went into town ?” Scott’s horrified. Anything could have happened. She could have been taken by zombies or gangs or shot at or lost in the woods. She’s all he has left in the world.
“She had to. You were going to die,” Hope reiterates. “She asked me for help, and I was going this way anyway, so,” she shrugs. “Here I am. You’re welcome.”
“I… thank you,” Scott settles for, brain still wrestling with exhaustion and confusion and the dregs of the fever. “Thank you,” he finds her eyes again, looks into them so she knows he means it.
“Like I said, I was going this way anyway.”
“Would you just let me thank you? What’s your name, anyway?”
There’s hesitation in her expression, Scott can tell.
“Hope,” she says quietly, studying the dirt under her fingernails.
“Hope?” He coughs. “That’s ironic.”
“Hmm. Is it?” She stares him down until he has to look away.
“I...It’s good to meet you, Hope. I’m Scott. Lang.”
“I know. Cassie told me.”
“Oh. Did she tell you my social security too. Is this all an elaborate scheme for you to rob me?” Scott elicits the ghost of a smile from Hope at that. It’s gone a second later when she starts to cough again. But Scott thinks that her smile’s beautiful, and there’s not much beauty in the world anymore. He makes it his mission to see it again.
Hope wants to leave after another few hours, as Scott continues to improve, but he can tell that her cough is worsening, her skin feels a little too warm whenever it makes brief contact with his. He’s known her for less than a day, but the way he sees it, life is incredibly precious now. It always has been, he knows, but he never really registered it before, the value of a human life. Especially the value of a good human life, of a person who would do something for you and expect very little in return. He wouldn’t feel right if Hope walked back out into the world like this, feels some sort of strange attachment to her. He’s pretty sure it’s because she saved his, and his daughter’s life. Figures he owes her now, that he’s doing them both a favour by suggesting that she stays for a few more days. It takes some convincing, but she eventually agrees to it, settling back into the couch with a fork and a can of peaches.
One day of Scott knowing Hope turns into one week. He regains his strength on a diet of rabbit, which Cassie proudly catches and prepares herself, tomatoes grown in the small yard of the cabin, and cans of fruit from the stockpile in the pantry. Scott’s been careful with food since they got here, he and Cassie never eating more than they’ve needed to, planting seeds as soon as the sky warmed up enough to soften the earth. He’s glad of it now, able to eat two helpings per day and offer the same to Cassie and Hope.
Scott fixes the water system, climbing back into the roof of the cabin, feeling a little more relaxed about doing it now that Hope’s on the ground, able to help out if there are monsters lumbering towards them out of the trees again. But there aren’t, this time. There’s just the wind in the trees, the sound of an axe hitting wood as Hope chops logs for the fire, Cassie on the perimeter of the property, checking the snares. It’s not that Scott trusts Hope completely, but there’s a certain sense of ease he feels when he’s around her. He knows, logically, that’s how he would feel with anyone who had been given the option of using Cassie for their own gain, or killing her on sight, but instead helped her find the right medication, helped her get home, and helped her save her father’s life. And he also knows, logically, that Hope being here makes him feel lighter because she’s an extra pair of eyes and ears, extra pair of hands to wield a weapon. There’s safety in numbers to some extent, Scott has to admit. What he doesn’t know, can’t find a logical explanation for, is why he can’t imagine having spent this week with anyone else. Doesn’t think he would have invited anyone else to stay if they’d wanted to leave, cough or no cough, lifesaver or no.
They keep their distance over the week, emotional rather than physical, because it’s difficult to do that in a tiny cabin. Scott offers Hope the one bedroom which Cassie has been using before whilst he slept on the couch, but she declines, citing his need to get his strength back up. Instead, Cassie takes the couch, Hope takes the thick rug on the ground behind it. Scott feels terrible about it, but it’s an argument he’s accepted he isn’t going to win, at least not while he’s still recovering, still a little shaky on his feet.
They settle into some kind of routine. Hope wakes up the earliest, leaves to check the perimeters and nearby trails whilst Scott and Cassie cobble together a breakfast. It’s late spring, by Scott’s best guess, the sun getting warmer with each passing day. They’ve survived the winter, by some sort of miracle, thawed out like the ground underfoot, and spring somehow still manages to feel like a new beginning even when the planet has given up on those.
Hope teaches Cassie to throw knives in the woods, etching targets into trees and nodding stoically when Cassie hits them. They forage for berries and mushrooms in the woods, Scott checking them religiously against the drawings in their plant books, terrified of having survived the onslaught of the apocalypse only to be brought down by some kind of poisonous plant.
Hope leaves for long swathes of the afternoons, never telling either of them where she’s going or when she’ll be back, but she leaves some of her stuff every time, and they have no choice but to believe she will come back. She’s growing restless, Scott can tell. Despite the fact that she looks paler than ever and has to stop to take a breath every time they walk for too long, or that he catches her coughing so hard she has tears in her eyes when she’s done.
“Where are you headed that’s so important, anyway?” Scott asks, on day seven, book ends on the couch, Cassie curled up with an old magazine between them. It’s a National Geographic with a feature about global warming, and Scott can’t help but wonder whether the earth, as a whole, isn’t better off now.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Hope responds, and her eyelids are drooping a little as they sit in the dull of the string lights. The heavy curtains are all closed, windows and doors locked and double checked. But night time still fills Scott with a deep uneasiness.
“We’ve seen some weird shit, Hope,” Cassie points out, turning the page of the magazine.
That ghost of a smile is back on Hope’s lips, and Scott’s stomach does a stupid swoopy thing he doesn’t have an explanation for. It doesn’t make sense, because it’s not like he likes Hope. She’ll be gone as soon as she’s confident Scott is well enough to be left alone, anyway, as much as he’ll tell her she doesn’t have to go.
“It doesn’t concern you two, anyway. It’s not something you need to worry about,” Hope tells them. And Scott’s sure she’s got a thousand reasons not to tell them. Maybe she’s worried they’ll want to come too, or that they’ll try and take whatever she’s headed towards before she gets there. He doesn’t know. What he does know is that he’s pretty sure he’s going to feel a little more empty when she walks out of their door for the last time.
“Hope,” Scott stops her, later, when she comes out of the bathroom, changed out of her grimy clothes into the oversized t shirt and shorts she’s been sleeping in.
Her hair is tumbling around her shoulders, and Scott takes a second to pretend they’re anywhere but here. They could be back, one or five or ten years ago, in a house in a city, with mains electricity and running water and neighbours who you can at least partially trust. A different world, where there are no undead monsters outside and they have to wake up early to go to work.
“What is it?” She asks, and Scott’s eyes flicker to the couch where Cassie is sleeping.
“Your cough.” He's been wanting to talk to her about it for days. Partly it’s wanting to repay her for everything she’s done. Mostly, he’s just concerned about her.
“What about it?”
“It sounds… bad ,” he’s leaning out of the doorway out of the tiny bedroom, fingers gently tapping the soft wood of the frame.
“It’s fine. It’s just a cold,” she brushes him off, but she’s standing so close that he can hear the crackle of infection in her chest when she takes a breath.
“Look, I know you’re leaving, I know you have some place to be, and I won’t stop you from going. But just stay, a couple more days. We’ll go out and get you antibiotics tomorrow and then you can leave when this starts to clear up.”
Hope hesitates, looking down at her bare feet. “There’s no more antibiotics. At least not in this town,” she tells him. “I searched three stores before the pharmacy I found Cassie in. And we gave you the last box. You were the medical priority, it made the most sense.”
Scott feels his heart drop to his stomach. She gave him the only tablets she could find, with no reason or logic for doing so.
“Hope, why ?”
He wants the tablets back. He wants to push them into her hand and make her promise to take them. This odd woman who doesn’t say much, who is in the middle of some mysterious quest which will probably get her killed. This stranger who saved his life. She’s all hard edges and determined silences and seeing her like this, late at night, feels wrong, like she doesn’t quite fit with the picture of soft t shirts and softer hair. But he guesses that was her life once, not so long ago. This is where they should all belong, not out there with bruised skin and adrenaline fuelling them. His fifteen-year-old shouldn’t know how to shoot a gun or throw knives with perfect accuracy. Scott shouldn’t know what it feels like to feel the life force leaving someone underneath his own hands. But this is where they are.
“For Cassie,” Hope answers, after a long silence. There’s reluctance in her voice, but no regret.
“What if you’re really sick, Hope? What if you… what if you die? You’d take that risk for me, for her?”
Hope studies him, and the bruise on her cheek is a faded yellow now, the dirt washed away too. There’s enough water right now for them to take the occasional wash and still get enough to drink.
“She’s just a kid,” Hope shrugs, and she seems, suddenly, to be standing very close to Scott. As if the room has been shrinking by increments over the course of their exchange.
He reaches a hand out, brushes his index finger along the bruise on her bone. “I’ll get you those antibiotics, Hope,” his voice is softer now, and not just because he’s afraid of waking Cassie. “I’ll find some. Let me find some. Let me help you, this time. Then you can go.”
She frowns a little, but doesn’t move away from his touch, and Scott can almost see the cogs turning in her mind. She’s weighing up her options, using a scientific approach. They’ve never talked about their lives, he doesn’t even know her last name or where she’s from, but she approaches problems like a scientist, so he’ll assume that’s what she is, until she says otherwise.
“We can look tomorrow,” Hope concedes. “But I’m leaving the day after. Pills or no pills.”
“Ok. Ok,” Scott agrees, happy to have got this. Happy to be guaranteed another twenty-four hours of her.
They look at each other for another beat, sizing one another up, or memorising each other’s faces. Scott isn’t sure. And then, just like that, she’s stepping back. Scott’s hand falls back to his side. The air feels cooler.
They don’t make it out to the town the next morning. Hope leaves to check the perimeters and returns ten minutes later, bursting into the cabin and making Scott and Cassie jump, freezing mid action. Cassie’s cutting up tomatoes, Scott’s working on ammunition inventory, both bleary eyed.
There’s a perimeter breach. A whole horde of zombies headed their way, passing through the woods, some cruel twist of fate bringing them down this path. The woods are wide, the area vast. Scott and Cassie have had almost half a year of peace here, zombies stumbling through occasionally, no more than five at a time. Scott guesses this is the end of the line for good luck. Seven billion people on the earth, most turned to gruesome monsters. They were bound to run into a horde eventually.
“What do we do?” Cassie’s backed herself into the corner of the kitchen, as if being out in open space, even in the cabin, is now too much.
Scott looks at Hope, and somehow knows they’re a unit now. In this together. The only wait out of this is to work as a team.
“We have to go,” Hope declares, and Scott’s reluctant, eyes moving to the bathroom door. There’s no windows there. They could barricade themselves in, wait out the storm. Hope’s breathing is shallow and marred with crackles from running here from the perimeter. He’s not sure she’ll make it if they have to flee now. “No, Scott,” Hope reads his thoughts, shaking her head vehemently. There’s something on her face he understands. It’s not an emotion he has a name for, rather it’s a gut feeling passed from person to person. Scott can tell that everything in Hope’s body, the blood in her veins, is screaming at her to get out of here, to run. And her instincts kept her alive out there, wandering the country for almost a year.
On the other hand, this is his daughter’s life he’s putting on the line here. If Hope’s wrong...if they leave and it turns out to be a bad call...her instincts will mean nothing, then.
But Hope’s looking at him with desperation, and Cassie’s relying on him to know what to do. He’s been right to trust Hope so far. So he gives a singular nod, and sets things into motion.
Scott and Cassie have kept their essentials in backpacks since they got here, a large bag filled with food in the pantry. Just in case. They grab them now as Hope pulls her bag into her back, checking Scott’s gun is loaded, pushing her knives into the slots on her belt.
“Come on,” Hope reaches a hand for Cassie, pulls her towards the door as Scott picks up the food bag.
He pauses, allowing himself three seconds to look around the space he and Cassie have called home the the past months. The terrible crayon art on the walls, the home grown tomatoes laying forgotten on the table. But he can hear the groaning outside as it draws closer, and Cassie’s reaching for him with her free hand. Scott reaches back, allows himself to be pulled outside, and says goodbye to someplace like home.
They run up the mountain. It’s slippery underfoot, a little muddy, loose twigs and leaves making it difficult to gain traction. The groaning continues behind them, sometimes getting closer, other times far away. The zombies were all human once, still live in the shells of human bodies, so they are no faster or more agile than Scott, Hope, and Cassie. No more able to scale the hill. What they are is immune to pain and exhaustion. Whilst Scott’s calf muscles burn with every step, the still-healing cut covering the length of his shin stinging every time he picks his foot up, the zombies feel nothing. They’ve picked up the scent of human flesh and they’re not about to stop now.
Hope’s struggling. It’s not like she’ll admit it, she’s still keeping up the pace, but she’s turned whiter than Scott’s ever seen her, breaths sputtering, coughing on every second intake. Truthfully, he’s not sure how much longer she can keep this up.
The three of them dart left through the trees, escaping into a slight clearing, and that’s when Scott sees the river. It’s not too wide, maybe ten feet, doesn’t look too fast flowing as it carves it’s way down the mountainside.
“The river,” Scott gasps, gesturing to it wildly.
Hope’s too out of breath to reply, but nods vigorously, so they head for it, dragging Cassie with them, jumping into the water and wading to the other side. Scott has no evidence that this will work, but it worked with police dogs on cop tv shows, so maybe it will throw the zombies off their scents, at least a little bit. He’s willing to try anything at this point. They heave themselves out on the other side, no time to recover on the river bank.
“C’mon,” Scott pulls Cassie up, moving on to grip Hope’s hand and tug her to her feet. She struggles, but is up and adjusting her backpack before the groans have drawn any nearer to them.
Scott grips her fingers, following Cassie’s lead as she swings more to the left, running out of the eyeline of the zombies.
“You’re ok,” he tells Hope, squeezing her hand tightly, “you can do this.” She shoots him a grateful glance, squeezing back. They both know she has no choice. She can do this, or she can die.
They make it to some kind of shelter, surrounded by silence and birdsong. It’s a beat-up blue van, not something that Scott would have really classed as shelter in his old life, but it’s out of the open and large enough for all three of them to sit in the back of comfortably, getting their bearings and their breath back and recovering from the shock of it all.
“Are you ok?” Scott checks on Cassie first, scanning her with his eyes for injury.
“I’m fine dad,” she pants, side-eyeing Hope, nodding at her, telling Scott that she’s the one he should be worrying about right now.
“Hope?” He rounds on her, lifting her chin.
“Give me a second ,” she gets out between breaths, one hand pressed to her chest. Scott pulls his hand back, waits kneeling in front of her, half focused on the sounds outside and half on Hope and Cassie, breaths slowly growing steadier.
“Ok. I’m fine, you can stop looking at me like that,” Hope says, one or ten or thirty minutes later. However long it was, it felt too long for Scott.
“Yeah, you seem great ,” Scott retorts, and Hope hits him lightly on the arm. “That the best you can do?”
“You can’t handle the best I can do.”
Scott smiles. Hope might still be wincing in pain, but she’s ok for now. They sit in the quiet for a little longer.
“So where do we go now?” Cassie asks, once they all feel a little calmer. No groaning coming from outside.
“Well,” Hope starts, hand finally moving from her chest, “I know where I’m going.”
Scott and Cassie exchange a glance. His first instinct is to go with Hope, find her some antibiotics along the way, watch each other’s backs. He thinks they’re starting to become something, the three of them, something like a team. Or rather, there’s the flicker of it, the three of them beginning to turn from together by coincidence, to together because it works better. But Scott’s not going to do that if it’s going to risk Cassie. He wants her to be all in on this too; needs to know she’s ready to handle a journey, ready to fight if it comes to it.
“Where?” Cassie asks, sitting up straighter. Scott takes that as a sign up.
Hope hesitates. “I shouldn’t involve you in this. I’m not supposed to. My dad…” she stops, and Scott’s interest is piqued. It’s the first scrap of information she’s given.
“We just escaped the jaws of death. I think you can trust us, newbie,” Scott teases.
“Newbie?” Hope wrinkles her nose.
“You’ve got nothing on these fifteen years,” Scott holds out a hand for Cassie to fist bump, and somehow, in the midst of all of the chaos, makes everyone feel normal again.
“Ok, ok,” she rolls her eyes.
“But seriously, let us come with you. We can have each other’s backs,” Scott says, and Hope surveys him carefully, considering.
“Can you both keep up?” She asks, doubtfully.
“Hope, we both outran you on that hill,” Cassie points out.
“Yeah, but I’m… not at full capacity right now.”
“We can help you get there again,” Scott suggests.
Hope sighs. “If either of you give me any reason to doubt my trust in you, I’m leaving. There’s no second chances.”
“You can trust us,” Cassie promises, with a reassuring smile.
“She’s right,” Scott reiterates.
“Then you better listen carefully.”
Hope tells them a story, in as few words as she can, about her mother and father, and a scientist named Bruce Banner. She tells them about the thirteen weeks at the start of all of this she spent locked in a research facility with a handful of survivors from the science community, about the tests they carried out on infected blood and the back-channel network they kept with other research facilities across the country. She tells them about the radiation in the bloodstream, the fact that all of the connected facilities eventually came to the same conclusion. The fact that this conclusion came with the potential, the edges, the ghost of an outline of a cure.
There were ten connected facilities at the start, Hope tells them, but by the time her Los Angeles facility fell, it was one of only three. One was taken out by an accidental fire, one by disease. The rest were taken by the undead. Hope doesn’t tell them what happened to hers, doesn’t discuss her parents again. Cassie and Scott fill in the blanks.
“We shortlisted five scientists who could help us,” Hope says, as excitement burns in Scott’s stomach. “There were more, of course, but research facilities kept falling. We got to five before mine...well, we got to five.”
“Five. Five, that’s better than nothing, that’s promising,” Scott nods, his imagination running away with him as he imagines what this could mean.
“It was five,” Hope stops him in his tracks. “One lives in China, another in Alaska. I’ve looked for two, and they’re both… well they’re not an option anymore.”
Scott’s heart sinks to the bottom of his worn out boots. “So that still leaves one, right?”
“Yeah. One. One last option.”
“So where is he?” Cassie wants to know.
Hope takes a deep breath, seemingly reluctant to answer.
“Hope?” Scott presses her.
“On the day of the outbreak, Bruce Banner was on a working visit to a disease centre. The centre had a strict lockdown policy in place, so we have no reason to believe he ever left that building,” she pauses. “The centre is around 500 miles away from this very spot.”
“Five- I’m sorry, Hope, did you say five hundred miles ?” Scott splutters. “As in far, far away from Oregon?”
She swallows, “yes. Five hundred miles. East.”
“That’s like a month’s walk away,” Cassie groans, head sinking to her hands.
“Give or take. Less if I can find a bike, or a gas station with something left in it, or a horse.”
“You’re going to ride a horse for five hundred miles?” Scott throws his hands up in the air.
“If I have to!” Hope says through gritted teeth. “I have to at least look for him, Scott. This is saving humanity we’re talking about. The rest of human history. Which I might be able to help save. Don’t you think it’s worth four weeks, for that?”
Scott lowers his hands. “It’s not just four weeks, Hope. It’s four weeks out there . In case you hadn’t noticed, there are literal undead monsters walking around. And the ones who are still alive aren’t much better.”
“So stay here! Maybe the zombies didn’t tear apart your cabin. Maybe you can fix it up. Stay here and live your half life pretending nothing’s wrong, it makes no difference to me,” she stands up rapidly, almost hitting her head on the ceiling of the van, swaying as she gets to her feet so she has to close her eyes for a second.
“Hope?” Scott’s concerned, getting to his feet too, one hand on Hope’s shoulder.
“I’m fine ,” she brushes him away, pops open the back door of the van. “I just need some air,” she says, jumping out.
Scott stands frozen, listening to the crunch of Hope’s boots on the gravel of the driveway the van’s parked on, letting the last ten minutes sink in.
“Daddy,” Cassie snaps him out of it. “We have to go with her.”
“The whole five hundred miles?” It almost seems unthinkable. If he didn’t have Cassie with him, then sure, of course he’d go. But she’s far too precious for him to risk.
“Yeah. We all know how to fight, how to survive out there,” Cassie gestures towards the forest. “She saved us, remember? We owe her. And she’s sick, dad. She needs us.”
Scott takes a breath, mind whirring, trying desperately to figure out what the right move is. Staying still, staying out of the way has worked for them so far. It’s been the right thing to do.
But has it , he asks himself. Sure, they’re still here, still breathing, still thinking, still surviving. But maybe that’s all it is anymore, survival. Living off of scraps in a tiny cabin, never seeing any other people, living in constant fear. They’re alive, sure, but is that enough? Is this the way Scott wants Cassie to grow up? Or should he go with Hope, try to find a better world, somewhere they can really be happy? Try to give Cassie the shot at a happy life?
“We’ll be ok. We can get there, I know it,” Cassie insists.
If Cassie thinks they can do it, then Scott is kind of inclined to believe her. She’s one of the strongest people he’s known, pre and post apocalypse, and if she believes in them, then who is Scott to challenge that? Why should he stand in the way of a brave new future?
“Hey, Hope?” He calls, sticking his head out of the van and finding her standing by the tree line. “We’re coming. We’re in.”
Her smile is back, and though it still doesn’t quite reach her eyes, it’s solid and real. Stronger than the ghost of happiness he’s seen before. Stronger than the monsters around them, the lives they left behind, the blood soaked past and unsteady feet of the future. It’s human. And that makes this risk worth it.
So, they walk. Hope helps Cassie read the dog eared map she keeps in her backpack, hands her a chipped compass, and Cassie leads the way along the dirt track that carves the mountain in half. Scott keeps his gun loaded and ready and senses sharp. Hope walks swinging knives in both hands. They share a pack of overly crumbly beef jerky between them, sipping water slowly, rationing it out. The sun moves higher in the sky, temperature creeping up. They stick to the shade. Hope’s chest crackles, Scott’s leg twinges, Cassie picks at the scab on her arm. They keep walking.
It takes them two days and four zombie kills (all Hope’s) before they reach something like civilisation. It’s a shopping mall, some place out of town, and Scott can picture the kind of people who used to come here. It’s close to a large town, a sprawling suburbia, and his theories are confirmed when they observe the parking lot from the edge of the mountain, filled with minivans and SUVs with plates from a year or two before the outbreak. They watch for thirty minutes, waiting for any sign of humans or hordes of zombies. Scott stumbled across a place like this once before, only to find it having been taken over by some kind of gang, almost being shot on sight. But this one sits still and empty.
They’re in and out in fifteen minutes, according to the cracked face of Scott’s watch, having picked through the remains of the shattered stores. By some grace of god, one’s a camping store, and they find protein bars and electrolyte-filled drinks and tablets to sterilise water. Cassie and Scott stock up, sneaking back outside to wait for Hope. She’s five minutes later than they are, having split up to look for what they needed inside. It made most sense. It didn’t stop Scott from feeling the desperate need to go with her, regardless. He paces the front of the building, counting the seconds until she reappears, only taking a proper breath when she does.
Hope brandishes a solitary pack of antibiotics proudly, and Scott’s so happy he could hug her, takes a step forward to do just that before remembering that they’re probably not there yet. He settles for clapping her on the shoulder. Hope takes the medication. They go back to the mountain trail.
They keep walking. Days keep ticking past. They try to sleep out of the open, picking barns or abandoned RVs in lots, occasionally risking breaking into a house. The first time they do this it’s an old farmhouse, the shell of an elderly couple attempting to bite out their throats the second they step inside the front door. Hope takes the woman, a knife to the skull, Scott shooting out the man in one fluid motion. They’re a team now, all three of them, pooling resources and communicating wordlessly, figuring out the safest way to get from A to B.
Hope starts to teach them martial arts, they find a field of sunflowers all taller than Scott, a cat follows them for five miles, they creep past a huge car wreck on a too-busy, too-risky road at dusk, trying not to listen to the zombie shrieks from mangled metal. They put one foot in front of the other. They stay alive.
“At least we get to see the country, you know,” Scott points out, late on night seven, sitting on the ground outside the moving van they’ll be sleeping in. There’s nothing inside it, but it’s spacious and has a door that closes securely.
“That’s what you’re taking from this?” Hope raises her eyebrows, dropping down to sit beside him. Cassie’s sound asleep inside, had barely been able to keep her eyes open for the final hour of their walk.
“Sure. It’s one of those things you always plan to do but never get around to it. We’re getting around to it now,” Scott shrugs.
They’re somewhere deep in Idaho now, having spent the day walking along a long, straight, country road, passing acres of unkempt crops, fields glowing with flowers, clusters of cows keeping to themselves, eating grass like the world is unchanged.
“You have a weird way of seeing the world, you know that?” Hope tilts her head at him, hands busy unwrapping a protein bar. Her chest is starting to improve, no longer crackling every time she takes a breath. They haven’t seen any undead all day.
“What can I say? My elementary school teachers labelled me ‘creatively minded’,” Scott grins, reaching out and breaking off the top of Hope’s protein bar whilst she’s busy frowning at him.
“Hey!” She reaches for it too late as Scott tosses it into his mouth.
“You snooze, you lose.”
“Just you wait, Lang. Just you wait.”
They sit and chew in a comfortable silence. It’s so dark out that they can see the stars, something Scott’s used to by now. It took some adjusting, knowing that he could look up anytime and see the entire twinkling universe blinking down at him. But there’s no more light pollution. No more smog obscuring the sky. Just a planet full of dying beings, haunted by the already dead. Illuminated by the sky. Scott knows that the stars are far enough away that the light he sees from them was shed long ago. Some of those stars might not even exist anymore, it might be their final rays of light making their way towards earth right now. It’s comforting to know that it will be a very, very long time before the starlight hitting the iris of anything on earth is as old as the outbreak.
“Cassie’s a great kid,” Hope comments, voice soft.
“Yeah. She is,” Scott will always agree with that.
“Did her mom… did she…” Hope doesn’t need to finish that sentence. Scott knows that she’s asking.
“She died in the initial outbreak,” Scott says, the memory still raw and weeping and agonising. He may not have been with Maggie anymore, but god, he still loved her. They were raising Cassie together, he would always love her. Not the same as when they were together, but still, some kind of love. “With Cassie’s step-dad. Cassie locked herself in the bathroom until I got there to...well, to get her out.” Scott still doesn’t like to think about that day. He’s certain he’ll have nightmares about it until the day he dies, a week or a month or fifty years from now. There’s no telling when that’ll be anymore.
Hope doesn’t respond right away, but Scott feels her tugging at his hand where it rests on his knee. Their fingers tangle together, and her head lands on his shoulder, hair soft against his neck.
“My parents sacrificed themselves for me. At the research centre,” she says, eventually. “And every damn day I wish it was me instead. God, I wish it was me instead. This world, Scott. I swear sometimes this world is going to eat us alive.”
Scott’s pretty sure that enough pieces of his heart have broken off by now that there can’t possibly be any left. But still, there’s agony in his chest, and he’d give anything to go back, just for an hour, a minute. Back to his old life in his old home, pick Cassie up from school and take her for ice cream, watch her soccer games with Maggie and Paxton. Find Hope, wherever she was in the country, living her ordinary life. Maybe he’d find her at work or in a bar, their eyes meeting across the room. He’d raise his glass at her, she would shoot him that smile, wide enough to win a war, and then he’d turn and walk away. That would be enough.
For now, he settles for raising his free hand to her face, brushing her dark hair behind her ear, and pressing a kiss to the top of her head. She sighs, squeezes his hand, and they sit together in the black, ears filled with silence.
They walk for two more days, any suggestions of trying to find a functional car shot down. The roads are too blocked, and cars are too noisy. Instead, they wander corn fields and valleys, trace the circumference of a lake, following the roads where it’s quiet. They pass creepy abandoned playgrounds, rows of houses, ivy-laden cottages on farms. There’s a close call with a group of three zombies in the middle of a forest, appearing seemingly out of nowhere. Cassie, screaming, stabs one straight through the eye, and Hope dispatches the other two. This time, Cassie doesn’t cry after her kill, simply staring in shock at the green-tinged blood on her knife, the rotting flesh of the zombie. Scott isn’t sure what to do, but Hope puts her arm around her and tells her she did a good job, and that it’s ok to feel whatever she’s feeling, and Cassie wipes the knife down, double checks the compass, and they’re back on their way.
They’re still, somehow, in Idaho days later when their trip is interrupted. They’re in a larger town, something they try to avoid, but it’s far quicker to go through this one than try to navigate the mountains around it.
There’s a giant potato in the street, captivating all three of them. It’s fake, made of some sort of plastic, hollowed out in the middle, made to celebrate the fact that some iconically large potato was dug up here in the 1960s.
“See, Hope,” Scott pokes her as they approach it, “we’re basically tourists. How many people would drive right past this gem? Look how much we get to see on foot.” His sentiment doesn’t hold as much weight as it might have had he not been whispering, as they do in all towns they pass through. It’s not worth the risk.
“It’s just a big potato,” Hope points out, but this does nothing to eviscerate the glee on both Scott and Cassie’s faces.
“Let’s climb in it,” Cassie suggests, taking off at a run. Scott follows behind, slower with the weight of the food he’s carrying.
Hope watches as they scale the potato with an excessive amount of struggling up the textured plastic, dumps her bag by her feet and stretches her back out. For the first time since the outbreak, she wishes she had a camera. It’s strange, developing attachments to new people in the aftermath of the end of the world. She thought she was done with that. She thought she’d try and find Banner by herself, and once that was over, success or not, she’d spend the rest of her days feeling sad and angry and lonely and heartbroken. She was wrong, she guesses, warmth seeping into her bones, unable to stop the smile from settling on her face.
She isn’t sure how she feels about them yet, doesn’t know what it means that she’s happiest when she’s beside Scott, or that her hand feels right in his. Doesn’t know what it means that she feels proud when Cassie hits the target first time with her knives or when she comes up with a particularly brilliant idea. She’s never had people like this before. She’s certainly never had people who would willingly and joyously climb into a giant potato just for the hell of it.
The fondness turns to fear in the snap of a second. There’s a sound, somewhere close. Hope freezes, trying to hear past the muffled giggles coming from inside the potato. It’s not the groan of a zombie, or the death chorus of a horde. It’s...it’s human. It’s strangled and desperate and almost animalistic. But not quite. Scott and Cassie suddenly feel much too far away.
“Scott,” Hope reaches for her backpack, pulling it back on, taking giant steps towards the potato. “ Scott !” She doesn't know what’s going on, but it feels a bit like the street is closing in on her. “Scott! Cassie!” She reaches the potato, knocks on the side, waits a second too long for Scott’s head to poke out the top of the plastic.
“Hope?” His smile melts as he sees her face. “Hope, what is it?” And he’s scrambling out of the potato in record time, his hands finding her face, cupping it carefully. “What happened? What is it? Cassie,” he glances behind him, hands still on Hope’s face, “get out of there.”
“Dad?” Cassie appears.
“There’s someone screaming,” Hope explains, bringing a finger to her lips. Cassie jumps from the potato, landing on her feet, and all three of them stand stock still in the street.
The screaming starts again. The voice sounds young, like they’re maybe Cassie’s age, and Hope’s heart clenches painfully in her chest.
“Daddy?” Cassie clutched her father’s shoulder as Scott drops his hands from Hope’s face, one hand moving to grip her hand, the other holding Cassie’s.
Hope is torn. The survival part of her is telling her to run, as fast and as far away as she can. The human part of her is telling her to do something. To run towards the screaming and fight tooth and nail until it stops. Whether or not that means sacrificing herself. Cassie and Scott complicate things, because, like it or not, any decision she makes now impacts them. And more than anything, she wants to keep them safe, which is a revelation in itself. Hope pushes it away into the depths of her mind, decides it's something to try and figure out another time.
Hope and Scott look at each other, and without saying anything, know they’ve made their decision. The world, these days, is cruel and cold and every day is made up of one hundred different life and death decisions. If they don’t listen to their human sides, then what’s the point? What’s the point in being alive, if they’re just going to exist?
“Cassie, get back in the potato,” Scott lets go of Cassie’s hand, snaps his fingers at his daughter.
“What? Dad, no ! I’m coming with you! I can help, I can fight!” Cassie protests.
“Peanut,” and Scott’s voice is breaking, “please. Please just do this for me.”
“We don’t know what’s out there, Cassie,” Hope says, and Scott squeezes her hand thank you, then lets go to hug Cassie tightly.
“We’ll be right back. Just stay there, stay hidden, stay quiet.”
“ Dad .”
“ Please ?”
Cassie stares him down for a second, eyes swimming with tears, before turning and scrambling back into the potato.
“I love you. I love you so much,” Scott tells her, and then he and Hope are dropping their bags and running as fast as they can towards the source of the noise.
They find the source of the screaming too soon and not soon enough, a group of zombies surrounding the burnt out shell of a car, alone in a street of boarded up shops. There’s not enough of them for it to be considered a horde, but too many for Scott and Hope to easily tackle by themselves.
Scott cusses under his breath as they stand in an adjacent alley, hovering and trying to decide what to do. Hope’s ready to try just about anything to get whoever is stuck inside that car out.
“Ok. Ok, we need to draw them away from the car,” Scott whispers desperately.
“How?” Hope’s mind has gone blank at the one time she needs it to function.
“Uh-” Scott looks around them, and Hope follows his gaze to a metal dustbin lid leaning up against the wall. “I think I can use this.”
“What?”
“And...and this,” there’s a broken glass bottle. Scott picks them up, experimentally slowly hitting the two together. “That should be loud enough?”
“Scott?” Hope’s stitching the pieces of Scott’s plan together in her mind.
“I’m going to draw them away, and run around the block. I’ll meet you back here in two minutes, ok?”
“No. No, it’s too dangerous! Let me draw them away. Your leg-”
“Is fine. It’s fine. Let me do this, Hope. I’ll draw them away, you get that person out of the car, ok?”
“I-“ she’s about to protest further, make Scott understand that he can’t do this, but the screams get louder, escalate a notch.
“Hope. I’ll see you in two minutes,” Scott pauses, one foot out of the alley, and then turns back and plants a kiss on her forehead.
Hope’s hands knit into the chest of his shirt, and her eyes flicker upwards to meet his. She doesn’t want to lose him. Can’t bear the thought of it. It’s too much to think about, too much to even consider for the whisper of a second.
“Two minutes,” he whispers. “And if not...if not, get Cassie and go. Ok? Ok, Hope?”
Not ok. Not ok because he has to come back. So why is she nodding? No. “Ok.”
“Two minutes,” he kisses her forehead again, and then he’s leaving, so fast that he’s torn from her grip. Hope wants to scream at him, run after him, never let him out of her sight again. But they’re a team now, and this is their game plan. Hope’s just one moving part of this. Has to do her bit.
Instead of running after Scott, like her instincts are telling her to, she stands with her back pressed against the alley wall, listening to Scott making as much noise as he possibly can, watching the group of zombies running past the alley entrance. Instead of screaming to distract them from Scott and draw them towards herself, she waits for the groans to grow slightly quieter before running as fast as she can towards the car. She finds a teenage boy inside, still screaming, covering his head with his hands. He’s holding a broken knife, face and arms spattered with blood.
“Hey. Hey !” Hope reaches in through the busted window, shaking the kid’s shoulder. She was right, he can’t be older than Cassie by more than a year or two. “Kid!”
He stops screaming, opens his eyes, and they’re filled with terror. “Is-is it over? Am I dead?”
“No,” Hope frowns. “You’re fine. But you need to get out of this car right now.”
The kid freezes for a second, sizing Hope up, before pushing himself into a sitting position. “Ma’am… ma’am thank you. Thank you. I’m Peter Parker, I-I tried as hard as I could, there were too many of them, I-”
“That’s great Peter Parker,” Hope nods quickly, “but we have to go now.”
“Oh! I’m sorry, I’m sorry ma’am.”
“Stop calling me that. My name’s Hope,” she grips Peter’s shoulder, helping him wriggle out through the car window.
“It’s- it’s good to meet you, Hope,” his voice is shaking a little.
“What are you doing out here?” She asks, pulling him by the elbow back into the alley.
“I’ve come from the Air Force base. It was my turn for a supply run,” he shrugs. “I’m fast, so I always offer.”
“Air Force base?”
“Uh, yeah. About ten miles that way,” Peter points vaguely north. “There’s a group of us holed up there.”
Hope’s mind is working overtime, a thousand questions bubbling to the surface, but right now she can’t process anything going on. Because surely, surely it’s been two minutes by now?
“How long have you been there?” Hope asks, barely focusing on the kid as they stand at the end of the alley.
“Five months. I think. Since the winter started. It’s hard to keep track of time these days.”
“Yeah. Yeah, you don’t say,” Hope runs a hand through her hair, paces back up the other end of the alley. Maybe Scott’s waiting somewhere around there?
“Uh… ma’am- I’m sorry, Hope. Hope, what are we doing?”
“Waiting,” Hope says, pacing. “For my… my friend. He drew the zombies away from you. He should be back here by now.”
“Oh. Oh, ok. Listen, thank you so much for saving me. I didn’t know if I was gonna get out of that one, and MJ and May would’ve killed me if I’d died. You can come back to the base with me if you want? We have a little food and plenty of water.”
“What?”
“Uh...you can come back to the base. Your friend can come too.”
“Oh. Right.” Something in the back of Hope’s mind is considering it. But just like the rest of the events of the past five minutes, she pushes it away and paces.
Hope keeps pacing. Time, as much as she wills it not to, keeps moving forwards. She checks the nearby buildings. She drags the kid around the block Scott ran around. She even yells his name, as risky as that is. Nothing. Two minutes. Two minutes, he promised.
“Um, Ms Hope?” Peter looks a little awkward as they retreat back to the alley. “Don’t you think we should be going? Like, we can come back! Of course we’ll come back! But it’s not super safe here and it’s going to be getting dark soon.”
Two minutes.
But Hope has an agreement to keep. Something she’s got to do, because… because her and Scott and Cassie, they’re a team. And this is what teams do. She has to do the hardest thing she’s done since walking out of that damned research facility. She has to think logically about this, think like the scientist she’s been her whole life. She has to get Cassie and walk away. She has to leave Scott.
Two minutes.
She’s so angry that tears spring to her eyes, pushing them away with the heel of her hand, mad at Scott for volunteering to do this, mad at him for doing it wrong , mad at him for leaving her here. And somehow it seems alien that she ever travelled the country without him. Seems impossible that she ever will again. She thinks she’ll be waiting for the rest of her days for those two minutes to finally be up.