Archive of Our Own

“i’m moving through the dark of a long black night, i’m looking at the moon and the light it shines but i’m thinking of a place and it feels so very real…” - thinking of a place , the war on drugs

the cold woke you before the light did.

it always did now. the heating had died on the fourth day, around the same time the power went, and since then the stockroom of summit outfitters had settled into a temperature somewhere between refrigerator and grave. you'd stopped being able to feel your nose sometime around day seven. you'd stopped caring around day eight.

you lay still inside the sleeping bag, a four-season mummy bag that had cost three hundred and forty dollars according to the tag you'd ripped off it, and listened.

nothing. wind against the loading bay door. the tick of the metal roof contracting. somewhere far off, down toward what used to be the bus station, a sound that might have been a dog or might have been something that used to be a person.

nothing close. good.

the rifle was where you'd left it, on the concrete floor beside your head with the safety on, a ruger from the locked case behind the gun counter. you'd broken the glass with a fire extinguisher on the first night, crying so hard you could barely see what you were grabbing. you had since become a lot calmer about the whole thing, which probably said something about you that you didn't want to look at too closely.

you sat up, and your leg reminded you it existed.

it had been two days since the fall. you'd gone out onto the shop floor for water purification tablets, the good ones in the camping aisle, and one of them had been waiting in the fishing section, crouched so low and still behind a display of rods that you'd walked right past it. you'd got it, eventually. you'd also gone backward through a glass display case full of pocket knives, and the case had opened your thigh from just above the knee to halfway up the outside of your leg.

you'd cleaned it with bottled water and a first aid kit meant for weekend hikers. you'd closed it with butterfly strips and prayed. it was hot to the touch this morning. you decided not to think about that yet either.

the whiteboard on the wall still had the staff rota on it: derek – tills. kayla – footwear. manager on call: steph. along the bottom edge, in your own handwriting, were eleven short black lines.

you uncapped the marker and added a twelfth.

your routine took about forty minutes, and you'd started to cling to it the way you imagined people clung to prayer. boil water on the camp stove, with the stockroom's one high window cracked an inch for the fumes. eat something from the freeze-dried pile, today beef stroganoff, which tasted like salty cardboard with ambition. check the dressing on your leg. check the rifle. count the ammunition you had left, even though you knew the number, because counting it was something to do with your hands.

forty-one rounds for the rifle. a pistol with one spare magazine. a hatchet from the camping aisle that you'd never used on anything that wasn't already dead, and hoped you never would.

the snow had started again overnight. you could see it through the high window, fat grey flakes drifting past a sky the colour of dishwater. downtown had gone quiet under it. that was the worst part, if you were honest with yourself: how quiet a city got when nobody was left to make noise in it.

you'd tried the radio every morning for the first week, a hand-crank emergency one from the aisle by the tills. static, mostly. once, on day five, a man's voice reading out coordinates for an evacuation point, so broken up you'd only caught half the numbers, and you'd sat with a map from the hiking section trying to work out where he meant until it got dark. you never heard him again.

after that you stopped cranking the radio. hope was heavier than the rifle, and you only had strength to carry one of them.

you were halfway through re-wrapping your thigh when you heard the engine.

at first you thought you'd imagined it. you'd imagined things before, especially at night: footsteps on the roof, someone calling your name. you froze with the gauze in your teeth and waited for the sound to dissolve back into wind.

it didn't. it grew louder. a big engine, something diesel, labouring through the snow on the main street out front, and behind it a second, lighter one. then the engines cut out, and in the silence after them came something you hadn't heard in twelve days.

voices.

"clear on the left."

"watch the corner, there's two by the bank."

"hello? anybody in here? we're with the medical camp up at fairview, we've got food, we've got doctors—"

your heart was going so hard you felt it in your injured leg. you finished tying off the gauze with shaking hands and reached for the rifle.

the thing nobody tells you about surviving on your own is that after a while you stop being able to picture other people as anything except a risk. a group meant noise. noise meant infected. and anyone still alive in this city, still healthy enough to be driving around it in trucks, had done whatever it took to stay that way. you had seen, on day three, from the roof, what some people had been willing to do.

doctors, the voice had said. food. of course it had. what else would you say, if you wanted someone to come out?

you dragged yourself to the corner behind the steel shelving, where you had a clear line on the stockroom door and your back to solid wall. you sat with your bad leg stretched out and the rifle across your knee, and you breathed through your nose, slow, the way you'd been taught a lifetime ago, and you waited.

the voices spread through the shop floor. boots on tile. the occasional flat crack of a gunshot, and the wet sound afterward. someone laughed, too loud, and was shushed. they were methodical. that was either a good sign or a very bad one.

then, much closer, just outside the door: footsteps. one set. slow and uneven, like whoever it was kept stopping to look at things.

"okay," a man's voice said quietly, to nobody. "okay. stockroom. stockrooms are good. there's always something good in the stockroom. or there's a guy in a hockey mask. it's fifty-fifty."

the handle turned.

the door swung inward and a man came through it sideways, torch in one hand and a handgun in the other, held so far out in front of him with his elbows locked that it looked like he was trying to hand it to someone. he was younger than you'd expected, wearing a puffer jacket with a medical courier's logo half-peeled off the chest, and he was, very clearly, about to walk straight into the shelf beside him.

he swung the torch across the room. it found your sleeping bag, your camp stove, the twelve black lines on the whiteboard.

then it found you.

"don't," you said, and put the rifle's sight exactly between his eyes.

he went completely still. his torch stayed on your face, which was annoying, because you couldn't see his expression past the glare.

"okay," he said. "hi. okay, wow. you're, uh. you're a person. that's great, honestly, that's the best-case scenario, because the other option was that you were a thing, and i was not ready for that, i only went in here because i thought it might have a bathroom."

"put the gun down."

"yep. totally. doing that." he crouched, extremely slowly, and set the pistol on the floor, then straightened up with both hands raised, the torch still clutched in one of them and pointing at the ceiling now, so that the whole stockroom filled with thin white light. "i'm bryan. i'm with the camp. the medical one. we actually are the good guys, i know that's exactly what the bad guys would say, but in my defence, look at me. it’s not like i could beat that rifle if i tried."

you looked at him. skinny, pale, snowmelt in his hair, hands visibly trembling above his head.

it was, you had to admit, a fairly strong argument.

••☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

you didn't lower the rifle. not yet.

"the camp," you said. "where."

"fairview. the old hospital up on the ridge, well, it's more tents than hospital now, but there's a fence, and actual doctors, and a guy called terry who makes soup out of basically anything." bryan's eyes flicked down to your leg, to the gauze and the dark stain already coming through it. "which, no offence, it kind of looks like you need. the doctors. not the soup. although the soup is also—"

"stop talking about the soup."

"stopping."

you studied him down the sight for another long second. then you breathed out, clicked the safety on, and let the barrel drop.

his whole body sagged. "oh, thank god. okay. cool. do you want a hand up, or is that going to get me shot, because i genuinely can't tell with you."

you considered refusing. then you tried to stand on your own, and your thigh lit up white-hot from knee to hip, and you grabbed the shelf so hard it rattled.

"hand," you said through your teeth. "fine."

he crossed the room and got an arm under yours. he was stronger than he looked, which wasn't saying much, and he smelled of cold air and cheap coffee. up close, you could see a split in his bottom lip and the kind of shadows under his eyes that took weeks to earn.

the radio clipped to his jacket crackled.

"bryan. bryan, where the hell are you?" a woman's voice, clipped and breathless. "we've got a lot of movement coming off fifth street. a lot. we're pulling back to the trucks, right now."

he fumbled for the button. "yeah, dana, hi, i found someone. a survivor. she's hurt, we're in the stockroom—"

"then get her out the front, fast. they're coming in through the—" the rest dissolved into gunfire and shouting, and then, much louder than the rest, the sound of the enormous front windows of summit outfitters giving way all at once.

you both went still.

from the shop floor came a sound you'd learned to hate: dozens of feet, dragging, stumbling, running, and underneath it a wet rising moan.

"cool," bryan whispered. "cool cool cool."

"is there a back way to your truck?"

"it's a van. and no. it's out front. everything is out front." he swallowed. "we have to go through the store."

you looked at the stockroom door, at the forty-one rounds in your pocket, at the man beside you who was holding his pistol like it might bite him.

"okay," you said. "stay behind me."

"shouldn't i be in front? you're the one with the—" he gestured at your leg.

"stay behind me, bryan."

••☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

the shop floor was grey and flickering, lit only by the snow-light spilling through the broken front windows. the infected had come in like water, filling the gaps between the displays, and the first one saw you the moment you limped out of the stockroom corridor.

you shot it through the eye before it had taken two steps.

the second one came around the end of the footwear aisle. you shot that one too. then a third, lurching up out of the kayak display, and a fourth behind it, and you were leaning on the end of a shelving unit with your bad leg barely touching the ground, working the rifle's bolt in a smooth, steady rhythm you hadn't thought about since you were sixteen.

breathe. squeeze. work the bolt. breathe.

behind you, bryan fired twice at something and hit the ceiling both times.

"sorry! sorry. they move so much more in real life."

"aim for the head."

"i am aiming for the head, the head is just very small and bad at standing still—"

you didn't have time to answer, because the camping aisle was ahead and the camping aisle was full.

you'd built half your survival out of this aisle. there was the gas canister display you'd raided on day two, and the tent you'd pitched as a joke on day six just to have something to laugh at, a bright orange two-man dome still standing between the shelves. four of them were shoving through it now, tearing the fabric, tangled in the guy lines.

you dropped two of them before they got free. bryan got one, somehow, with his eyes screwed shut and his whole face braced. the fourth went down when the tent pole it was fighting snapped and it pitched forward onto the concrete, and you put a round into it on the way past.

"did that count?" bryan asked. "do i get that one?"

"no."

"harsh."

his pistol clicked empty. he stared at it, then scrabbled in his jacket and pulled out a magazine and tried to jam it in backward, then upside down, then dropped it entirely and swore and dropped to his knees to find it among the scattered tent pegs.

"in the game," he said, a little hysterically, "this happens automatically, you just hit a button—"

"bryan."

he found it, slammed it home the right way, and came up just as something lunged out of the fishing section at your left.

you saw it too late. you'd been watching the front, watching the aisle, and it came from the one place in the store you'd trained yourself not to look at: the rod display, the shattered glass case, the dark smear on the floor where you'd bled two days ago. it caught your jacket and your bad leg buckled and you went down against the shelves with its weight on top of you and its teeth an inch from your face—

there was a flat, hollow bonk, like someone hitting a garbage can.

the infected jerked sideways. there was another bonk, and a third, and it slid off you onto the floor.

bryan stood over it, breathing hard, holding a bright green canoe paddle in both hands like a baseball bat.

"it was right there," he said. "on the wall. it was just. right there."

you stared at him. he stared at the paddle.

then he tossed it aside and pulled you up, both arms this time, and didn't let go once you were standing.

••☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

the front of the store was chaos. the windows were gone, the floor white with glass and blown-in snow, and between you and the doors were more of them than you could count, drawn by the noise, still flooding in from the street. beyond them, through the swirl of snow, you could see headlights, a truck, the van, someone standing on the running board with a rifle.

"bryan!" dana's voice, over the radio and through the empty window frame at once. "we can't hold this forever!"

there were too many. you knew it with a cold, clear certainty. forty-one rounds had become twenty-something, and twenty-something wasn't enough.

then you saw the emergency display by the tills.

"bryan. red box. third shelf."

he grabbed it without asking, which you'd think about later, and ripped the packaging open with his teeth. road flares. marine flares. a flare gun in a plastic case.

you took the gun, loaded it, and fired it over the heads of the crowd into the rack of camping fuel by the door.

the flare hit, and the store went bright.

the fuel didn't explode the way it would in a movie. it caught instead, a sudden sheet of blue-orange flame that roared up through the display and sent the nearest infected staggering and howling and spilling back out into the snow, and for three seconds there was a gap, a narrow burning corridor straight to the doors.

"go," you said.

you went. he half-carried you, your arm locked over his shoulders, your rifle swinging, heat on one side of your face and freezing wind on the other. you shot one that lunged out of the smoke. he kicked another off its feet with a noise you didn't know a person could make. then you were through the doors and into the snow, and the cold hit you like a wall, and the van's back doors were open and someone was reaching for you.

hands pulled you in. bryan fell in after you, landing half across your good leg, and the doors slammed, and the engine roared.

for a long moment the only sound was the two of you breathing.

then bryan pushed himself up on one elbow, soot on his face and snow melting in his hair, and looked at you like he'd never seen anything like you in his life.

"okay," he said. "who are you?"

••☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

you didn't answer him right away.

partly because you couldn't. the adrenaline was draining out of you all at once, the way water drains out of a bath, and what it left behind was the leg. the leg, and the cold, and a shaking that started in your hands and spread until your teeth were chattering.

"hey. hey, okay." bryan sat up properly. "hollis, can you crank the heat back here?"

"it's cranked," said a gravelly voice from the driver's seat. you twisted to look: an older man, grey beard, both hands on the wheel, eyes on the road. he glanced at you once in the mirror, flat and assessing, then back at the snow.

your hand went to the rifle.

bryan noticed. he didn't comment on it. he just shifted, very slightly, so that he was sitting between you and the front of the van, and started pulling open cabinets.

the back of the van was nothing like you'd expected. it was fitted out like a tiny, battered ambulance: straps on the walls, a stretcher folded flat, drawers labelled in black marker. gauze. splints. misc (don't ask). bolted to the floor by the back doors was a heavy white cooler with a faded logo on the side, a running figure and the words lightfoot medical transport.

"that's my old job," bryan said, following your gaze. "i used to drive organs around. hearts, kidneys. once a cornea, which was weirdly the most stressful one, because it's so small." he pulled out a trauma kit and a bottle of saline. "now it's mostly insulin. blood bags when we can get them. and people. we do a lot of people."

"i didn't answer your question," you said.

"you don't have to. you can just be scary rifle lady for now. i'll adjust."

despite everything, something in your chest loosened a notch.

you told him your name.

he repeated it quietly, like he was filing it somewhere, and then he looked at your leg, and all the colour went out of his face.

•☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

"okay," he said. "okay. so. i'm going to be honest with you, and i need you to not take this personally."

"you're squeamish."

"i am so squeamish."

"you drove organs around."

"in boxes. sealed boxes. nobody ever opened the box." he unwrapped your old gauze with the tips of his fingers, then made a small strangled noise at what was underneath. "oh. oh, that's a lot of leg that's supposed to be on the inside."

"it's fine."

"it's really red. is it supposed to be that red?"

"no." you leaned your head back against the van wall and shut your eyes. "it's infected. regular infected. i've had two days of pocket knife glass and hiking-kit antiseptic. saline first. flush it out, all of it, don't be gentle."

"i feel like i should be gentle."

"if you're gentle it'll take longer and hurt more."

he flushed it. it hurt so much your vision went black at the edges, and you made a sound you'd never admit to, and his other hand found yours and held on without being asked.

you talked him through it after that. saline, then the antiseptic, then packing, then fresh dressing, pressure, tape. your voice came out low and even, and you realised partway through that you were using the same tone you'd used on the infected in the store. breathe. squeeze. work the bolt. breathe. it seemed to work on him too. by the time he was taping the last dressing down, his hands had almost stopped shaking.

"there," he said. "look at that. i'm a surgeon now."

"you're really not."

"i'm a little bit a surgeon."

you almost smiled. he saw it, and grinned back like he'd won something.

•☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

the city fell away behind you. outside the small rear windows, the snow thickened and the buildings gave way to pines, and the road started to climb. the heater rattled. the cooler hummed. up front, hollis drove in total silence, which you were beginning to suspect was just how he was.

you kept your hand on the rifle anyway.

"so what's it like?" you asked, eventually. "the camp."

bryan was sitting across from you with his back to the cabinets and his knees pulled up, picking dried soot off his jacket. he thought about it for longer than you expected.

"you know how in games there's always a safe room?" he said. "like, you've been running through some horrible building for ages, everything's trying to eat you, you've got two bullets and a sad herb, and then you open a door and the music changes. and it's just this little room with a save point and a box to put your stuff in, and nothing can get you in there. that's what it's like. it's a safe room."

"that sounds too good to be real."

"yeah," he said. "i thought that too. first night i got there, i sat in my van in the car park with the doors locked and my hand on the key, just in case." he laughed, a small, strange laugh. "still kind of do, honestly."

you studied him. "you live there?"

"technically."

"and you still sleep in your van."

he opened his mouth, closed it, then pointed at you. "okay, you're really observant, and i don't like it."

"you've got a pillow stuffed behind the stretcher. and a toothbrush in the cup holder."

"that's a travel toothbrush. travellers use it. i travel." he rubbed the back of his neck. "i do a lot of runs. it's easier to just be ready to go."

you didn't push it. you knew a thing or two about sleeping with one hand on the exit.

the road levelled out. through the windscreen, past hollis's shoulder, you could see lights: floodlights on tall poles, a long chain-link fence topped with wire, the dark block of an old hospital with rows of white tents crowding its car park like a village. figures moved behind the fence. someone on a watchtower lifted a hand, and hollis flashed the headlights twice in answer.

your grip on the rifle tightened without you meaning it to.

"hey," bryan said, softer now. "those are good people in there. i promise. and if anyone gives you a hard time, you have my permission to do the scary rifle thing at them."

"do i need your permission?"

"no. no, you absolutely don't." he paused. "who taught you to shoot like that, anyway?"

you looked out at the fence, the lights, the long white rows of tents, and thought about a frozen field and a patient voice beside you and a sky much bigger than this one.

"i'll tell you some other time," you said.

and bryan, who had talked almost without a break since the moment he walked into your stockroom, just nodded, and let it be.

the gates rolled open, and the van pulled through.

•☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

the camp swallowed you whole.

that was how it felt, anyway. the second the van doors opened, there were people everywhere: a woman in scrubs and a parka, two men with rifles, a teenage boy with a clipboard, all of them talking at once and all of them, it seemed, talking to bryan.

"you're late."

"was that fire? dana said there was fire."

"did you get the insulin?"

"you look like hell, hodukavich."

"thank you, marcus, i love you too." bryan climbed out first, then turned and reached back in for you without making a big thing of it. "okay, everybody, this is—"

he said your name. a dozen faces turned toward you at once, and every muscle in your body went tight.

someone reached for your rifle. you pulled it closer.

"hey, hey, it's fine." a woman stepped through the crowd, short and broad-shouldered, dark hair scraped back, a rifle slung across her back and a radio at her hip. you recognised the voice before anything else: dana. "we log weapons at the gate, that's all. it goes in the armoury, it's got your name on it, you get it back. everyone does it." she held out her hand and waited, and didn't grab.

you looked at bryan.

he nodded, very slightly.

you handed it over. it felt like handing over a limb.

•☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

the medic was called dr. achebe, and she had the calm, unimpressed face of a woman who had seen every possible version of stupid and had stopped being surprised by any of them. she peeled back bryan's dressing, looked at your thigh for a long time, and then looked up at bryan.

"you did this?"

"i did do that."

"it's good." she sounded mildly offended by it. "who taught you to pack a wound?"

bryan pointed at you.

dr. achebe raised her eyebrows, then got to work. antibiotics, the real kind. a proper clean. stitches, finally, which hurt worse than anything in the store, and you gripped the edge of the table and stared at the ceiling and counted rounds in your head until it was done.

"right," she said, snapping off her gloves. "two weeks. no weight on that leg for at least the first one, antibiotics every eight hours, and you come back to me every morning so i can check it."

"two weeks?"

"minimum."

"i can walk on it. i walked on it today. i ran on it."

"yes, and you've undone half the healing it managed on its own. two weeks." dr. achebe glanced at bryan. "and you, don't encourage her."

"i didn't say anything!"

"you were about to."

•☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

the medical tents were full. there was a family of five in one, a man with a broken arm and a very loud opinion about it in the next, and every cot in the old hospital's ground floor ward was taken. you sat on a folding chair with your bad leg propped on an upturned crate while dana and dr. achebe argued about where to put you.

"what about the staff block," dana said eventually. "hodukavich's bunk."

bryan made a small noise. "what about my bunk?"

"you never use it." dana didn't even look at him. "you haven't slept in it since march. it's right by the ward, she can get to dr. achebe easy, and you're just going to go sleep in your van anyway."

"i—" he started, and then seemed to realise he had no argument, and closed his mouth.

the staff block was a converted corridor of the old hospital, a row of small rooms that must once have been offices. bryan's was at the end. he pushed the door open for you with an odd, sheepish sort of reluctance, and helped you through it on the crutches dr. achebe had given you.

it was the neatest room you'd ever seen. a narrow bed made so tight you could have bounced a coin on it. an empty shelf. an empty hook on the back of the door. no photos, no books, nothing on the walls.

and at the foot of the bed, a duffel bag. packed, zipped, straps done up, sitting with its handles upright like it was waiting to be grabbed.

you looked at the bag. then at him.

"it's a go bag," he said. "everyone has a go bag."

"since march?"

"it's a really good go bag."

you lowered yourself onto the bed, which crackled faintly, like nobody had ever properly lain on it. he hovered in the doorway, hands in his jacket pockets, like he couldn't decide whether he was allowed to come in.

you understood, suddenly, and all at once, why you'd trusted him before anyone else here. you'd spent twelve days in a stockroom with your boots on and your rifle by your head, ready to run. he'd spent months in a safe room doing exactly the same.

"two weeks," you said, mostly to yourself, and scowled at your leg. "i'm going to lose my mind."

you expected him to tell you it wasn't so bad. to say you should rest, that you'd earned it, that you should let other people take care of things for a while. everyone else had said some version of it in the last hour.

instead he said, "yeah, you really are. you're going to be unbearable."

you blinked at him.

"what? you are. you're scary rifle lady. you're going to be climbing the walls by thursday." he pushed off the doorframe. "stay there."

he was gone ten minutes. when he came back, he was carrying your rifle, a battered cleaning kit, and a paper cup of something that steamed.

"i signed it out," he said, setting the rifle across the foot of the bed. "dana says it stays in here and you don't point it at anybody, which, fair. and this is terry's soup. i'm legally required to tell you it's the best thing in the camp."

you looked at the rifle, then at him. something tight in your throat made it hard to answer.

"thank you," you managed.

"don't mention it." he was already backing toward the door. "i'll be in the van. like, right outside. if you need anything, just. yell. or throw something at the window."

he left. through the small window by the bed, a few minutes later, you watched the van's interior light click on in the car park, then off again.

you sat in his bed, in his too-neat room, beside his packed bag, and drank the soup.

bryan was right. it was the best thing in the camp.

•☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

it started with the kessler run.

you didn't know what the kessler run was. you only knew that on your second morning at fairview, sitting in the mess tent with your leg propped on a bench and a plate of powdered eggs in front of you, you heard dana say, "you're what?" loud enough that half the tent turned around.

bryan was standing by the coffee urn, holding two cups. "i'm not doing it. marcus can do it. marcus loves driving."

"marcus gets carsick."

"then marcus should face his fears."

dana looked at him for a long moment. then she looked across the tent at you, and back at him, and her face did something complicated.

"fine," she said. "marcus it is."

bryan sat down across from you and slid one of the coffees over. "morning."

"what's the kessler run?"

"nothing. boring. there's a warehouse. whatever." he pointed at your eggs. "are you going to eat those? because honestly you shouldn't, i've seen them get made."

•☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

it kept happening.

you started to notice him the way you'd noticed the infected in the store: patterns, habits, the places he turned up. he was in the mess tent at breakfast. he was in the mess tent at dinner, which, according to terry, had never happened before in the history of the camp. he turned up at dr. achebe's tent every morning while she checked your stitches, loitering by the door with his hands in his pockets until she threw a roll of tape at him.

he brought you things. a deck of cards with the four of hearts missing. a paperback thriller with the last chapter torn out, which you both agreed was a war crime. a crumpled bag of vending machine cheese puffs he said he'd been saving for an emergency, and then watched you eat with an expression of deep, private grief.

"it's not an emergency," you pointed out.

"you've been stuck in bed for four days. it's a little bit an emergency."

on the fifth day, dana came to find you both.

"he needs to learn to shoot," she said to you, pointing at bryan. "properly. he's been going out on runs for months with a pistol he can't hit anything with, and i've been letting him because nobody here's got time to teach him." her mouth twitched. "marcus says you dropped nine of them in that store on one leg."

"eleven," bryan said.

"eleven. so. would you?"

you looked at bryan. bryan looked at the ceiling.

"yeah," you said, and felt something in you straighten for the first time in days. "i'll teach him."

•☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

the range was a stretch of snowy field behind the old hospital, with a row of tin cans and paint tins set up on a fallen log and an earth bank behind them to catch the rounds. you sat on an upturned crate with your bad leg stretched out on a second one and your crutches leaning beside you, and bryan stood in front of you holding his pistol like it had personally wronged him.

"first thing," you said. "stop locking your elbows."

"they're not locked."

"bryan, you look like you're trying to hand it to someone."

he let his elbows soften, a little.

"more. you want a bit of bend. you want it to move with you." you reached up and tapped the inside of his arm, and he bent it. "better. now, where are you looking?"

"at the can."

"look at your front sight. let the can go a little blurry. the sight's what you need sharp."

he squinted. "that feels wrong."

"it's going to feel wrong for a while. then it won't."

he fired. the round went wide into the bank.

"you're holding your breath," you said. "you hold your breath, you shake. breathe in. let it out. squeeze at the bottom of the breath, when you're empty. slowly. don't yank it."

"you say that like it's easy."

"it's not easy. it's just simple."

it took him forty minutes to hit the first can. when he did, it went spinning off the log with a bright metallic tink and he spun around to look at you with an expression of such pure, childish delight that you laughed out loud before you could stop yourself. you hadn't laughed in so long it came out rusty.

he stared at you.

"what?" you said.

"nothing." he turned back to the cans, but you saw his ears had gone pink, and you told yourself it was the cold. "do it again. the thing. the breathing thing. talk me through it again."

so you did. you talked him through it every afternoon after that: elbows, front sight, breathe out, squeeze. by the end of the week, he could hit four cans out of six. by the end of the week, you'd noticed that half the camp found a reason to walk past the range while you were out there.

•☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

on the eighth night, you couldn't sleep.

it was the leg partly, a hot itching under the stitches that dr. achebe said meant healing. mostly it was the quiet. twelve days in the stockroom had trained you to lie awake listening, and fairview at night was full of sounds you couldn't sort into safe or dangerous yet: the generator's hum, voices from the watchtower, a baby crying somewhere in the tents.

you'd got up on your crutches to find something, anything, to read, when you remembered the book. bryan had said he had another one. it's in my bag. the good one. with the ending still in it.

his bag was still sitting at the foot of the bed, straps done up, handles upright. you'd stepped around it every day for a week. it felt wrong to open it without asking.

so you knocked on the window.

the van's light clicked on almost immediately, which told you he hadn't been asleep either. a minute later he was at the door in a hoodie and socks, hair sticking up on one side, looking alarmed.

"are you okay? is it the leg? i'll get achebe—"

"i'm fine. i wanted the book."

"the book." he stopped. "the one in the bag."

"it's your bag. i didn't want to go through it."

he looked at the bag for a long moment. then he came in, and sat down on the edge of the bed, and pulled it up onto the blanket between you.

he undid the straps slowly, one at a time, like they were harder to open than they should have been.

the book was near the top. he handed it to you. then, instead of doing the straps back up, he just kept going. spare jeans. two t-shirts, folded into perfect squares. socks. a phone charger for a phone that had died in the first week. a first aid kit. a handheld games console with a cracked screen and no batteries. a lanyard with a lightfoot badge on it, the photo on it so young and so hopeful you barely recognised him.

and at the bottom, a clipboard, with a pad of blank delivery forms still clipped to it.

"you kept your delivery forms," you said.

"old habits." he ran a thumb along the edge of the pad. "you always had to get a signature. didn't matter what it was, a heart, a box of paperwork, whatever. someone had to sign to say it got there. i used to think it was the stupidest part of the job."

"and now?"

he was quiet for a moment.

"now i kind of miss it," he said. "knowing a thing was done. that it arrived and somebody had it and it wasn't my job anymore."

you sat with that. the generator hummed. the snow ticked against the window.

"why's it packed?" you asked. "really."

he laughed, but it didn't sound much like a laugh. "i'm not great at staying places. people start counting on you when you stay. i don't really trust myself with that. i'm good at driving, though. picking stuff up and taking it somewhere else. so i just kept being ready to do that." he shrugged, looking at the pile of folded clothes on the blanket. "if the bag's packed, i'm not really here yet. it's easier."

you didn't say anything for a while. then, because it seemed fair, you told him about the field.

your grandfather's farm, three hours north of anywhere. winters so cold the air hurt your teeth. a patient old man with a rifle across his knees, teaching a stubborn fourteen-year-old to shoot tin cans off a fence post. breathe in. let it out. squeeze at the bottom, when you're empty.

bryan listened without interrupting once. when you finished, he looked at you with an odd expression.

"that's the thing you say to me," he said. "every day. that's his."

"yeah."

"that's a lot of pressure. i'm carrying on a legacy now."

"you're hitting four cans out of six. he'd be horrified."

he grinned, and nudged your good knee with his, and didn't move his leg away afterward.

at some point, you realised the bag was empty. his clothes were stacked neatly on the shelf that had been empty all week. the games console was on the windowsill. the lanyard was hanging on the hook on the back of the door.

neither of you had decided to do it. it had just happened, a little at a time, while you talked.

you fell asleep sometime after two, with the book still unopened in your lap. when you woke up, grey dawn was coming through the window, and bryan was asleep sitting up, his back against the wall at the foot of the bed and his head tipped sideways, one hand resting on the empty bag.

outside, in the car park, the van sat dark and cold.

•☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

the antibiotics ran out on a tuesday.

"not yours," dr. achebe said, when she saw your face. "you've got enough for the course. it's everyone else. there's a family in tent four with an infected burn, and the broken arm's gone septic." she said it flatly, the way she said everything. "there's a clinic in weller, forty minutes east. st. bernadette's. we haven't hit it yet because it's right in the middle of town."

bryan was standing in the doorway with two coffees. he'd been standing in doorways with two coffees all week.

"i'll go," he said.

you turned. "dana's got a list. there are other drivers."

"i know the roads out that way. and, you know." he held up the coffee, and something in his face was trying very hard to be casual. "four out of six."

you wanted to argue. you had no reason to, not one that you could say out loud in front of dr. achebe. so you took the coffee, and said, "keep your elbows soft," and he grinned and said, "yes, ma'am," and was gone.

•☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

by four in the afternoon, you'd been sitting in the comms tent for two hours.

it wasn't a conscious decision. you'd gone for a slow lap of the camp on your crutches, like dr. achebe wanted, and your lap had ended at the old hospital's front entrance, where a kid named eli sat at a folding table with a big military radio and a map of the county pinned to the board behind him. you'd sat down on the bench by the wall. you hadn't got up again.

eli didn't ask why. he just offered you half his granola bar.

the run had been going fine. you'd heard it all in pieces through the speaker: dana calling their turn off the highway, hollis grunting about the snow, bryan saying something about a billboard that made marcus laugh. then the clinic. short, clipped updates. going in. clear on the ground floor. pharmacy's on two.

then, at 4:07, dana's voice, sharp and fast. we've got a lot of movement on main street. hodukavich, where are you?

and bryan's, a beat too late. second floor. i've got the stuff, i've got the whole shelf, i'm coming—

gunfire. a lot of it, all at once, a thick ragged roar through the speaker that made eli flinch back from the table.

then static.

you were on your feet before you knew it, leaning your full weight on the table, and your leg screamed and you ignored it.

dana, talk to me, eli was saying into the handset, and his voice had gone high and young. dana, what's happening—

they came in the front. dana, breathless, somewhere with wind behind her. we had to pull back to the truck. bryan's still inside. we can't get to him. there are too many on the stairs.

eli looked at you.

you held out your hand.

he hesitated for half a second, then passed you the handset.

•☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

you pressed the button. your thumb was steady. the rest of you wasn't.

"bryan," you said.

static. breathing. a scrape, like something heavy being dragged across a floor.

"bryan, it's me. where are you?"

a long pause. then his voice, very close to the mic, very quiet.

hey. hi. you're not supposed to be on the radio.

"where are you?"

second floor. pharmacy. i pushed a filing cabinet in front of the door. it's a very good filing cabinet. it's doing its best. a thud, somewhere behind him. then another. there's a lot of them on the other side. like a lot.

you shut your eyes. you made yourself see it: a small room, one door, one filing cabinet, shelves. "is there another way out?"

rustling. his breath, too fast.

window. there's a window. there's a fire escape outside it, and the truck's across the street, i can see it. but there's some on the fire escape too. three. maybe four.

"okay." you kept your voice low and even. the stockroom voice. the voice you'd used to walk him through packing a wound in the back of a van. "you're going to open the window, and you're going to deal with them, and then you're going to climb down."

a laugh, thin and cracked. yeah, see, the second part is where it falls apart for me—

"how many rounds have you got?"

one mag in. one spare.

"that's enough."

is it?

"it's enough. you've hit four out of six every day this week."

cans don't move—

another thud. harder. something metal shrieked on the other end of the line, and you heard him swear, and eli made a small sound beside you.

"bryan," you said. "elbows."

silence. then: what?

"elbows. you've locked them. i know you have. soften them."

a breath. then, very quietly, okay. okay, they're soft.

"open the window."

you heard it: the rattle of old sash windows, a gust of wind rushing into the mic, snow hissing. and then, much closer, a sound you'd learned in the store: that wet, rising moan.

"front sight," you said. "don't look at them. look at your front sight."

they're really coming—

"i know. front sight. breathe in."

a ragged inhale, loud in the speaker.

"let it out."

the breath out, shaking.

"squeeze at the bottom."

a shot. flat and close. then nothing.

"again," you said. "breathe in."

another shot. then a third, faster. then a clatter, like something falling a long way onto metal.

oh my god, bryan whispered. oh my god, i hit it. i hit two of them.

"how many left?"

one. one, it's— and then his voice changed. the words stopped coming.

there was a sound over the radio, and you couldn't place it: a grunt, a scrape, a heavy impact, like two bodies against a wall. the mic caught a fragment of breathing that wasn't his.

"bryan."

nothing. static. wind.

"bryan."

eli had both hands over his mouth. somewhere behind you, you realised, people had started gathering at the tent's entrance: terry in his apron, dr. achebe with her gloves still on, marcus's partner, the family from tent four. nobody spoke.

you stood there on one leg and held the handset and did not breathe.

it went on for eleven seconds. you counted every one of them.

then a single shot, flat and ugly. and then his voice, wrecked and wheezing and so, so alive.

okay. okay. i'm fine. that one was on the fire escape. it grabbed me, and i, uh. a shaky breath. i used the pistol like a hammer for a second there. then i remembered it's a gun.

your knees almost went. eli grabbed your elbow.

i'm climbing down now, bryan said, and then, after a pause, in a quieter voice, like he'd forgotten the channel was open or had stopped caring: hey. i unpacked the bag. did i tell you that? like, all of it. i put stuff on the shelf and everything. i was lying up there behind that filing cabinet, and all i could think about was that i finally unpacked the stupid bag, and i didn't even get to sleep in the room once, because you're in it, which is fine, that's great actually, i'm glad it's you in it. i just. i really want to come home. and i've never had anywhere i'd call that before. so. yeah.

nobody in the comms tent said a word.

...is this on the open channel? bryan asked. dana? is everyone hearing this?

dana's voice cut in, dry as bone and definitely smiling: all of us, hodukavich. the whole camp. now get in the truck.

a long groan from the speaker. then the slam of a door, an engine, and hollis, for the first time in your hearing, laughing.

you set the handset down very carefully on the table. your hand had started shaking now that it was over.

behind you, terry cleared his throat.

"well," he said. "i'll put the soup on."

•☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

the truck came through the gates just after dark.

you were waiting. dr. achebe had told you, in no uncertain terms, to go back to bed, and you had told her, in equally uncertain terms, that you would, and then you'd stood by the gate on your crutches for forty minutes in the snow while the floodlights buzzed and your good leg went numb.

half the camp was there too. they were pretending not to be. terry was very carefully sweeping a patch of ground that did not need sweeping. eli was sitting on a crate by the watchtower with a blanket around his shoulders and his eyes glued to the road. dr. achebe had come out twice to scold you and had stayed the second time.

headlights crested the hill. the gates rolled back. the truck pulled in and stopped, and dana climbed down from the cab first, looked at the crowd, and snorted.

"oh, for god's sake," she said. "subtle, all of you."

then the back door opened, and bryan climbed out.

he looked terrible. there was a bruise coming up along his jaw and a torn sleeve and something dark and dried down the front of his jacket that you hoped wasn't his. he had a cardboard box under one arm, stuffed with pill bottles and blister packs, and he stood in the floodlights blinking at the silent crowd like a man who'd just remembered every single thing he'd said into a radio.

"hi," he said. "so. about the open channel."

nobody said anything.

then terry leaned his broom against the fence, walked over, clapped bryan once on the shoulder, and walked back to the kitchen tent. dr. achebe took the box of antibiotics out of his arms, looked inside, and said, "good," and left. one by one, with a lot of smirking and some elbowing, the rest of them drifted off too, until it was only you and him, and the floodlights, and the snow coming down slow between you.

he looked at you. you looked at him.

"you're not supposed to be standing," he said.

"you're not supposed to hit infected with your gun."

"yeah, that wasn't in the lessons." he rubbed the back of his neck. "i'd like to formally request we never discuss the radio thing. ever. let's just take it to the grave."

"no."

"no?"

"you said it to the whole camp, bryan. you can say it to me."

he went quiet. the snow kept falling, catching in his hair.

then he unzipped his jacket, reached inside, and pulled out the clipboard.

it was bent now, one corner crushed, the top sheet damp with melted snow. he held it out to you with a pen, and you saw he'd filled in the delivery form. his handwriting was terrible, cramped and slanting, like he'd written it on his knee in the back of a moving truck.

pickup: weller, st bernadette's (and also a fire escape).

destination: fairview.

contents: 1 courier.

recipient: and then your name.

you stared at it for a long time.

"you always had to get a signature," he said, quietly. "someone had to sign to say it got there. i used to think that meant the job was done, and i could leave. but i've been thinking, and i think it might just mean somebody's got you. that you're somewhere, and you're allowed to stay there." he swallowed. "so. if you want. you could sign for it."

you'd had a plan, before today.

you hadn't told anyone. you'd barely admitted it to yourself. but in the stockroom, on the whiteboard behind the staff rota, you'd drawn a route north, and here at fairview you'd kept it in your head every night while your leg healed: two weeks, three at most, and then you'd take a pack and your rifle and head for your grandfather's farm, three hours north of anywhere, because that was where you'd always gone when things got bad. you'd been getting ready to leave the whole time. your boots were always by the bed.

you looked at the clipboard, and then at bryan standing in the snow holding it out, bruised and bleeding and nervous, having unpacked every single thing he owned for you.

you took the pen.

it was awkward on crutches. you had to lean the clipboard against his chest to write, and he held very still, barely breathing, while you signed your name and, underneath, in small careful letters: received.

he looked down at it. then up at you. his face did something open and bright and unguarded that you'd never seen it do before, not even when he'd hit his first tin can.

"okay," he said, and his voice cracked. "okay. cool. that's. yeah."

you kissed him.

it was clumsy. your crutch slipped and he caught you, and the clipboard fell into the snow, and his hands were freezing on your face, and neither of you cared. he tasted of cold air and bad coffee, and he held on like you were the most important thing he'd ever carried.

when you finally pulled back, he rested his forehead against yours and laughed, breathless.

"the whole camp's watching, isn't it," he said.

you glanced past his shoulder. eli was on the watchtower. terry was in the kitchen tent doorway. a row of faces was pressed very obviously to the ward windows.

"yeah."

"cool. great. love that for us."

•☽────✧˖°˖☆˖°˖✧────☾•

that night, for the first time since march, bryan hodukavich slept in his own room.

it was a narrow bed, and your leg took up most of it, and he ended up half-hanging off the edge with his arm around your waist and his face pressed into your shoulder, snoring faintly. your boots were in the corner, kicked off and forgotten. his jacket hung on the hook beside his lanyard. the clipboard lay on the windowsill next to the games console, the form still damp, your signature smudged but readable.

outside, in the car park, the snow settled slowly over the van, and the van stayed dark.