"You built your cabin right in the middle of it. That seems deliberate."
"Maybe I liked the view."
"Or maybe you're punishing yourself for something."
She's too perceptive for her own good. I should deflect, change the subject, but there's something about her that makes me want to tell the truth.
"I was a wildfire firefighter," I say slowly. "Before the outbreak. Hotshot crew—twenty of us who went into the worst fires, the ones regular crews couldn't handle."
"And?"
"And when the outbreak started, we were in the middle of a major fire season. We got separated from our base during an evacuation, tried to shelter in place." I stare into the fire, seeing different flames, hearing different voices. "The zombies found us. Overran our position."
"You're the only survivor."
It's not a question. She already knows.
"I made the call to hide in a burnout zone. Told them to follow me. But when the zombies came, I..." I swallow hard. "I heard them dying. Screaming my name. I tried to get to them, but it was too late."
"You survived."
"I let them die."
"You made an impossible choice in an impossible situation."
"They trusted me. I was crew boss. They followed my orders right into—"
"Stop." Her hand covers mine, and I realize I'm shaking. "You didn't kill them. The zombies did. The apocalypse did. You surviving doesn't make you responsible for their deaths."
"Then why does it feel like it does?"
"Because you loved them. Because survivor's guilt is a bitch. Because it's easier to blame yourself than to accept that sometimes terrible things happen and there's no one to blame." She says it with the confidence of someone who knows. Someone who's carried her own guilt.
"Dave," I say quietly. "Your driver."
"Yeah." Her voice goes soft. "He had a family. I should've been driving—I was learning stick shift. If I'd been behind the wheel instead of him—"
"You might both be dead."
"Or we might both be alive."
"Exactly. You can't know. That's what makes it so hard." I turn my hand over, lacing my fingers through hers. "So we carry it. The guilt, the what-ifs, the voices we hear in the dark. We carry it and we keep going."
"Is that what you've been doing for so long? Just carrying it?"
"I've been existing. Working myself to exhaustion so I don't have to think. Building this place on the grave of my crew because... I don't know. Because I couldn't leave them behind completely."
"That's not existing, Mayson. That's penance."
"Maybe I deserve it."
"Bullshit." Her voice is fierce now. "You deserve to live. Really live, not just go through the motions. Your crew wouldn't want you suffering like this."
"You don't know what they'd want."
"I know what Dave would want. He'd want me to survive, to thrive, to find reasons to keep going. To be happy if I can." She squeezes my hand. "Your crew would want the same for you."
We sit in silence, hands linked, both of us carrying ghosts we can't put down.
