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Max didn't really know why they stopped.
Lucy swore she heard something and no amount of him trying to explain that there was literally no one out here but them, and if there was it was probably someone they didn't want to meet, would deter her. Even pointing out that every second they wasted Thaddeus got further and further away didn't convince her.
“We should at least check,” she said, walking off without waiting for him to answer.
Max closed his eyes, sighed, and followed. Thaddeus was injured. They could probably spare five minutes. He hoped.
Naturally, they didn’t find anyone.
The place had been ransacked a long time ago. Everything of value was long gone, nothing left but dirt and shattered windows, bits of green growing up through cracks in the walls and floor, twisting around broken furniture.
“It was probably some animal,” Max said, turning around.
“Wait,” Lucy grabbed his arm. “We need to look.”
Of course. Fine.
They checked the first floor and found nothing but scratched obscenities in the walls. Lucy made a face at some of the more vulgar ones but carried on, hand on her gun. She found a set of stairs with a concerning slump in the middle and marched right up, not noticing or maybe just not caring when Max hesitated at the bottom. He looked around, half-expecting someone to jump out at them.
“Titus?” She was staring at him. “Are you coming?”
“Uh, yeah,” Max said. He put a foot on the first step, and when it didn’t split in two, cautiously inched up after her.
The first door Lucy opened was a bedroom. A big window, lined with barely an inch of jagged glass, lit up the room. The walls were so faded Max didn’t know what color they were supposed to be, the floorboards warped and crunching with dirt and shards of wood and glass as they walked in. There was a bed, broken in the middle and on one of the legs with a disgusting blanket on top, and beside it a table with its drawers ripped out.
That was probably the wood, then.
Lucy stopped in the middle and looked around. Max waited near the door as she went to the window and leaned out, then came back and knelt beside the bed, and even from the other half of the room, opposite her side of the bed, he could see her nearly shoving her head underneath it.
“What are you looking for?” Max asked.
She popped back up. “I don’t know,” she said. She stood up.
“You shouldn’t do that,” he told her, gesturing to the bed. “There’s a lot of… things… that like to hide. You should be more careful.”
She looked back down. “I’ll… keep that in mind.” She smiled. “Thank you, Titus.”
She started to walk away, then stopped. She turned back.
“What are you doing?” Max said as she knelt back down.
Lucy didn’t answer. She reached under the bed and pulled something out, brushing it off. She sat back on her haunches, her face twisting sadly as she looked at whatever she’d found.
“Lucy?”
She lifted one arm and set it on the bed. In her hand was a teddy bear.
“Not exactly a person,” she said. “But still in need of rescue, I think.”
Max walked over. She stood as he approached, the bear hanging limply at her side.
“I don’t -” he started.
“I wonder whose room this was,” she said at the same time, and he cut himself off. “Must have been a kid’s. I wonder what happened to them.”
Max looked around at the destroyed walls. “Nothing good,” he said.
Lucy nodded. She set the bear on the broken bed, and with a pat on the head and a sad sigh, she said: “I’m going to go check the other rooms.”
Max watched her leave, something stopping him from following. He stood there in the empty room for a few more seconds before he turned.
He picked up the bear and turned it in his hands. It wasn’t so much a bear as a collection of fabric in a vague, bearlike shape. It was missing an ear and an eye, its fur filthy after years of collecting dust and being chewed on by whatever crawled through. On the back of one of its arms was a black mark, the color different from the rest of the dirt. Max pulled his sleeve over his thumb and scrubbed at it, clearing a patch of dust off. He tipped his head and brought it closer. If he squinted, he thought that was a ‘p’.
This was probably some kid’s name, he realized. Written on the bear before it was left behind and forgotten as its owner fled, like most things were up here. He rubbed his fingers over the crusty fur and sat down, the bed creaking ominously under him, and held the bear between his knees with both hands.
It was better to think it was forgotten. The alternatives weren’t as pleasant.
As a general rule, Max didn’t like to think about what life might have been like before the war. His opinions on it started and ended with the Brotherhood and their endless quest for remnants. It was a long time ago. Everyone who could have survived had either died in the aftermath or lost themselves as a ghoul. There was no point in thinking about the people, just the lessons they could learn from their failures. That was what he was told, and that was what he convinced himself to believe, because the alternatives weren’t as pleasant.
But sometimes he did think about it.
Sometimes it was hard not to.
Sometimes he wondered how many kids like him there had been, before it all ended.
See, when he was a kid, a couple years before the bomb, this caravan came to Shady Sands. It had all the usual stuff: clothes, weapons, a handful of scrap, bits of food no one really wanted but someone would inevitably buy because even in the city people couldn’t afford to be too picky. The day was sunny and bright, and his dad took him down to see what they were offering, carrying him on his back as they made their way through the streets, waving at people as they came and went.
“Alright, buddy,” his dad said, bouncing Max up and down to make him laugh. “Remember your manners and wait for our turn, got it?”
Max gave him a thumbs up around his face. Of course he would.
One of their neighbors was already there when they arrived, the really nice one — though they were all pretty nice — who let him sit with her when he didn’t want to go on an errand with his parents. She smiled at Max, waving him in front of her before turning to talk to his dad. Max ignored them as he stretched up on his toes to see what was packed into the cart. Everything looked boring. Just the same stuff everyone always picked clean to use for… whatever. Whatever they used it for.
He was about to give up and go back to his dad when he saw it. Tucked in between a mountain of junk was a small, crumpled, light brown teddy bear. It was missing an eye and its nose was broken, but Max was smitten immediately.
“Daddy,” he said, rushing back to pull at his sleeve. “Daddy, look.”
“Whatcha got, bud?” His dad followed him over.
“Look,” Max repeated. He pointed at the bear.
“Well, would you look at that?” His dad leaned down and picked him up, hiking him onto his hip. “What do you think? You want it?”
Max nodded. He wrapped his arms around his neck and laid his head against his.
His dad pretended to think. “Hmm… I don’t know,” he said. “Have you done all your chores?”
“Yes!”
“And helped your mom?”
“Yes!”
“And gone to bed without complaining?”
Max faltered. “No…”
“Well, in that case…” His dad waited until he slumped to swing him around and laugh. “I think you can have it.”
He bounced on his toes as his dad got the bear and the rest of their supplies from the merchant. He could barely wait to be handed it, jumping so enthusiastically his dad laughed. He snatched it the second it was held out, squeaking a muffled “thank you” into its fur, and raced ahead the entire way home, swooping it around and around as if it was flying alongside him.
“Mommy!” He shouted as he burst inside. He danced in place, clutching the bear to his chest.
“Inside voice,” she called back.
Right. “Mommy?”
She appeared around the corner, wiping her hands on her stomach. “Did you guys find anything good?”
Max nodded rapidly. He held his new bear out, both hands under the arms, his whole body quivering.
“Well, look at that!” Her face lit up.
Max smiled. “That’s what Daddy said.”
“Is it?”
He nodded again.
“Well, your daddy is a very smart man.” She knelt in front of him, taking the bear from him as his dad finally walked in too. “How cute,” she cooed, then cupped Max’s cheek. “Almost as cute as you.”
He beamed. “I’m gonna go to bed good,” he said.
She tilted her head, her smile going a little confused. His dad laughed.
“Of course you will, buddy,” he said, kneeling beside Max too. He patted him on the back. “You have to set a good example, you know.” He took one of the bear’s arms and shook it.
Max considered this solemnly. He held his arms out, waiting for his mom to hand the bear back. As soon as she did, he stepped around her, not noticing his parents exchange amused glances behind him. He marched down the hall to his bedroom, pausing in the door to kick his shoes off — he forgot earlier, no shoes in the house — and held the bear down to look at them.
“No shoes inside,” he told it. It didn’t answer, but he imagined it understood.
His parents crowded in the doorway as he hopped to his bed with sock-clad feet. He climbed up onto his knees and pulled one corner of the blanket down. He set the bear under them and tucked them back up under its nose, until all that peeked out was its one eye, watching him from its misshapen head. Then he turned and sat down.
“Ah, baby,” his mom said, coming over to sit next to him. His dad followed.
“Don’t sit on it!” Max gasped as his dad almost sat on its legs.
“Oops.” His dad froze. “Sorry, bud.” He picked Max up and took his place, settling Max into his lap. Max curled up, legs kicking, leaning against his chest.
His mom smiled. She grabbed at his feet as they swung, tickling him as he giggled.
The moment froze.
Max took a shaky breath, staring down at the limp, filthy bear. It wasn’t the right color. His had both ears. The wrong eye was gone. It was a bear, but it wasn’t his bear.
He was so distracted he didn’t notice Lucy had returned until her boots stepped into his blurry line of sight.
“Don’t tell me that’s the kind of pre-war technology the Brotherhood is after,” she said, not quite lightheartedly.
Max sighed. “No,” he said, standing up. “It’s not.”
It was stupid, but he felt like he had to do it. He pulled the corner of the blankets down and tucked the bear underneath, the same way he used to when he was a kid. Lucy was giving him a strange look when he turned around, sad but clearer than she’d looked at him before. She hesitated, hand twitching at her side, and then she nodded. He waited for her to turn around before he swiped at his eyes with the back of his wrist and followed.
They had a mission.
He didn’t have time for anything else.