“I know.”
“Hey.” She brushes a lock of blonde hair off her daughter’s face. “I don’t want you to worry about this. All you need to know is that I’ll make sure you eat and that you’re safe.”
Those words sound smaller every time she says them. At the compound, there were other women. Other walls. Structure. Now there’s nothing between her and Emma, and whatever mood Vincent walks through the door with.
Addison’s never felt like more of a failure.
“Come here,” she whispers, opening her arms until Emma leans into them. “We’re gonna be okay, me and you.”
She murmurs soft reassurances, knowing she can’t keep them safe alone.
It’s why she hasn’t poisoned Vincent already. Found a whole can of rat poison in the shed that she could slip into his meals. Consequences are different now, but starvation isn’t. She balances that option with the new life growing inside her and wonders what she’s doing.
He could cast them out if he decides they’re more of a liability than a help. And out there, being alone is a death sentence.
Maybe she’ll use the poison when he comes back and see what happens.
They could make it, she tells herself. She could learn to be brave and keep them fed… and then she remembers how easily she panicked the first time she saw one of the dead.
One of the elders turned in the night. Addison had been sent to fetch water from the storage shed when he stumbled toward her, jaw working open wide, eyes empty. Locking herself inside while he threw himself against the door until others came running is the only reason she made it out of that alive.
She hid. She didn’t fight. She didn’t warn anyone fast enough. She shook and prayed while he beat his fists bloody against the wood.
How would she make it out there on a supply run? She’d get herself killed, and then Emma would be alone. No, she can’t kill her husband. Not yet. They need him, and they’ll keep needing him until she figures out how to stop being so useless. Or until he decides they’re no longer worth the burden.
Which might be right now, if the fact that he hasn’t shown up in forty-eight hours has anything to say about it.
The room gets darker with every passing second. Wind whistles outside and blows through hairline cracks in the walls while those foxes fight in the distance.
Foxes. Possums. Squirrels. She isn’t sure what, but then one of them squeals like it lost the scuffle, then there’s nothing but silence until the telltale sound of sticks crunching under heavy boots fills the air.
Emma rushes to the window, but Addison grabs her, backing away from the glass as they stare at the door. It could be Vincent, but he moves with a familiar lightness. These steps are heavier and far more intentional.
There’s a shotgun on the wall with no bullets. That’s the only reason she has access to it. Still, she yanks it down while her heart races and urges Emma into the back bedroom. She shoves them both into the corner and aims the gun at the door like she has any idea what to do next.
All it’s good for is tossing at an enemy, but she’s a decent liar. Maybe she can bluff their way out of this.
“It’s okay,” she whispers. “It’s probably your father, then we’ll feel silly, won’t we?”
Emma only squeezes further into the corner behind Addison and grabs the back of her shirt in her small fist.
When the front door is kicked open, they both jump, and she loses all ability to have a coherent thought. Her hands shake as they hold the rifle and her pulse pounds hard enough to give them away clear across the house.
Someone is here.
It can’t be one of the dead, and it can’t be Vincent.
Whoever is creeping around the halls could murder them both, or worse. Each door hits the wall one by one until the knob in front of them jiggles against its screws. She might blackout on the spot.
A firm kick splinters the wood across, and then she’s face-to-face with the end of a revolver.
She isn’t sure when she stood up and aimed her empty shotgun at the man threatening to shoot her, but somehow, Addison is in a stand-off she’s about to lose.
“This place doesn’t belong to you,” the stranger says, his tone gruff and gun steady compared to her trembling one.
Is she expected to reply? Can’t be sure, so she stays silent.
“It belongs to me. Came a long way to get here and I ain’t leaving. Anyone else with you?”
