I watched Caiden from behind as we trudged on. His spine was a straight, stubborn line; his shoulders hunched with the effort of dragging himself into each new step.
In the daylight, with no fences or monsters or wire to separate us, he was both less and more than I remembered. Less menace, more ruin. I could see the seams where he’d split open.
I wondered if he knew how visible it was.
By sundown, we’d walked out of the dead man’s shadow but not his orbit.
We ate cold beans with our fingers and drank river water, then huddled together in a hollowbeneath a fallen tree for warmth.
I kept my face angled away from him, safe in the shadow of a root, but I could feel his eyes on me.
I wanted to ask him what he saw, but I was afraid of the answer. Instead, I asked, “Do you think he was running away, or running toward something?” meaning Steven, or maybe myself, or maybe all of us.
Caiden’s voice was a rasp. “Does it matter?”
I thought about it. “Maybe not. Maybe, if you’re lost, one direction is as good as another.”
We lay there, silent, the only sound the wind sighing through the needles overhead.
I thought I would not sleep, but I did, and my dreams crawled with the faces of the dead: Steven, the man in the cabin, my mother, Lillian—each one blinking in and out like dying stars, their eyes wide and flat.
I woke to the touch of Caiden’s hand on my shoulder, gentle as a whisper. He didn’t draw back when I startled, just let his palm rest there, warm and solid. His fingers weren’t the claws I remembered from our youth, the bludgeons of violence; they were simply fingers, roughened by the world but not by malice.
I shivered and let myself lean into him, just a little.
“When we get out of here,” he said, low enough that I had to tilt my head to hear, “I want you to forget all of this.”
“That’s not how memory works,” I said, sharper than I meant. I didn’t want him to stop. The warmth pulsing from his hand was the only thing keeping me from shattering.
He shook his head, lips twisted in a smile. “It is if you try hard enough. I did it for years. You just fake it until the memories get tired and quit.”
“Is that what you did with me?” I asked, and there was a challenge in it. I wanted him to lie, and I wanted him to confess, both at once.
He didn’t answer right away, but when he finally did, he kept his voice so low it was almost a rumor, “I tried. I never could.”
He withdrew his hand and wrapped his armsaround his knees, chin on wrist, and stared into the dark as if it would yield an answer if only he watched long enough.
A hollow ache shivered deep in my bones, some longing that had no shape and no voice, something so old and so unfinished it could only express itself as want.
The silence expanded and held, made sacred by fatigue and animal warmth.
I could sense the hunger in him too. Not the simple need for food, but the deeper, blacker hunger that had gnawed at us both since childhood.
THE PRESENT
CAIDEN
The woods felt different after a cage.
We stumbled through undergrowth with the kind of urgency that wasn’t hope. It was flight. It was my nerves still convinced the cabin had hands reaching after us.
Amelia walked a few steps ahead, arms wrapped tight around herself. Her gait was uneven, stiff. Like her joints had forgotten how to exist without concrete under them.
I kept my face calm. I kept my shoulders loose, my pace steady, like I wasn’t shaking on the inside. Like my hands weren’t still remembering the feel of a handle in my grip. Like I hadn’t taken a life and felt it end.
Every time I blinked, I saw it.
Not the gore. Not the mess. The moment.
