"Cool." She yawns, her eyes already drooping. "You should get a tattoo of a butterfly. Butterflies are cooler than wolves."
She falls back asleep before he can respond, and I feel Stephan shake with silent laughter beside me.
"Tough kid," he murmurs.
"The toughest."
eight
Stephan
Threedaysofpeace.
More than I expected. More than I've had in years. More than I probably deserve.
Allie recovers faster than anyone expected. The antibiotics worked overtime, and her own stubbornness doing the rest. By day two she's sitting up and interrogating me about my motorcycle with the intensity of a career criminal. By day three she's asked approximately three hundred questions about how engines work and declared that she's going to learn to ride.
"Absolutely not," Iris says.
"When you're eighteen," I add.
"That's forever!" Allie crosses her arms, the picture of ten-year-old outrage.
"Eternity," Iris agrees. "Now eat your breakfast."
I teach her about the bike anyway, over Iris's eye-roll but not her actual objection. How to check tire pressure, oil levels, the basics of engine maintenance.
Watching her concentrate, tongue poking out between her teeth, brow furrowed in determination, makes my chest ache with something I thought I'd lost forever.
This is what Sabrina might have been. Curious. Fearless. Determined to understand how things work.
"The carburetor controls air flow into the engine," I explain, pointing. "Too much air, engine runs lean and hot. Too little, runs rich and sluggish."
"Like breathing," Allie says.
"Exactly like breathing."
"If zombies had motorcycles, would they ride them badly? Because they don't breathe right?"
I blink. "I have never considered that."
"They'd probably crash a lot," she decides. "Because they're stupid."
"Sound tactical analysis."
"You're good with her," Iris says that evening, watching from the doorway while Allie draws in the other room—pictures of motorcycles and butterflies and a stick figure she's labeled "STEFFF" with three Fs.
"She's easy to be good with."
"She likes you." Iris laughs, and the sound does something to me. Makes me want things I've been afraid to want for three years. Stability. Family. A place where I belong.
But peace in the apocalypse never lasts. I know that. I've always known that.
The peace ends the next day.
Bull must have been tracking us since the hospital—moving slow, gathering numbers, waiting for the right moment. The wound I gave him at Fort Nelson has healed enough for revenge.
Eight of them roll up at dawn, engines growling, the sound carrying across the settlement like a threat. Bull at the front, his scarred face twisted with fury.
