Page 5

Nothing comes, and the waiting is worse than the violence would’ve been. I brace for patrols, for something feral to rush in and end it, but the dark stays still. No monsters finish the kill. The silence isn’t empty—it’s studying me, learning how long I’ll hold my breath.

Inside the line, the air shifts. Not safer. Just known. Dirt that remembers my boots. Wind that smells like smoke and damp wood instead of rot. The house waits ahead of me, sagging and stubborn, light leaking through the windows like it’s trying to convince the dark it still belongs here.

I stop with my hand on the gate.

The metal is cold.

I know better than this. Fences don’t keep anything out—not really, not the things that matter. Monsters don’t negotiate property lines. The world has never once asked before it takes and takes and takes.

But Cass is inside. Scarlett is inside.

There’s a fire lit and something cooking and a dog who still believes joy is a thing you’re allowed to have if you catch it fast enough.

So I do the only thing that makes sense. I step into the light and pretend it can’t see me. I close the gate behind me. The sound is small. Final. Like a promise I already know I can’t keep. And for tonight—just tonight—I let myself believe that inside these patched walls, with the fire snapping low and my sisters’ voices waiting, the world might forget where we live.

It won’t.

III

Horny Bats and Firelight

Home isn’t much, but in a world that’s gone belly-up, we live like royalty.

Our farmhouse sags, roof shingles curling, paint peeled down to the gray bones beneath. But it’s ours. The fences are patched with scrap metal and rusted truck doors. The gate hangs stubborn and crooked, barbed wire wrapping the posts like thorns.

Inside that line is the only place that still feels like us.

Our parents always said gadgets were just things waiting to break. “Old ways last longer,” Daddy used to tell us, tightening a bolt on the windmill. We learned how right he was when the lights went out for good and never came back.

We’ve got solar panels Scarlett bartered for with preserves and shotgun shells. A rain catch up on the roof. A hot water rig Cass and Scarlett cobbled together with scavenged copper and stubbornness. The latch on the back door clicks smoother than it did yesterday. New nail. Fresh bend in the metal. I don’t ask.

Mama was the kind of woman who believed in being ready. Summers, the whole kitchen smelled like sugar and vinegar, her apron stained and hair stuck to her neck while she worked over the stove. Down in the cellar, shelves sagged under what she’d put up—peaches soft as sun, beans that still snapped clean, applesauce Scarlett made me stir until my shoulders burned. It wasn’t fancy, but it meant we never went hungry. Not if Mama could help it.

The gate creaks as Cass and I slip through, boots crunching gravel worn smooth by years. Soap and supper drift from the open window, and there’s Scarlett at the back door, towel in hand, drying her palms the way Mama used to when she was thinking. Her gaze goes to Cass first, clocking every tension line, every fleck of blood, every near-miss.

Then she looks at me.

Her eyes soften in that tired, fond way that makes me feel eleven again, sticky with jam and shame, convinced I’m a burden and a miracle in the same breath.

Shadow bolts straight to her, tail wagging like he didn’t almost get me eaten alive.

Scarlett and I are cut from the same cloth—long black hair, sun freckles, indigo eyes that never learned how to lie. Even share that stubborn dimple in our chin. Cass, though, is all light and lean grace—gold hair, brown eyes, a body built of wind and willpower. You’d think she was the oldest, the way she squares her shoulders and faces the world head-on. Truth is, she just refuses to bend, even when everything else does.

Cass stops at the bottom step, boots sinking into soft dirt, jaw tight. “One got to Ms. Cooper.”

Scarlett doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t curse the sky. Just stills—towel twisting once in her hands before she sets it on the rail. A breath leaves her, slow and heavy. Then she gives Cass a small, sorrowful smile—the kind you wear when the world’s taken so much one more name hardly surprises you.

“Did you bury her?”

Cass lets out a short, humorless laugh, jabbing a thumb my way. “No. I was a little busy saving sister dearest from getting her face chewed off like a damn piece of rawhide.”

The words hit harder than a slap. My jaw tightens, heat crawling up my neck, but I don’t answer.

Scarlett starts toward me, worry etched deep into her brow, but Cass’s hand snaps out, fingers clamping around her arm.

“We’ve had this conversation,” she says, voice sharp as barbed wire. “You keep coddling her, she’s going to end up dead. Or worse.”

Scarlett jerks free, face flushed, voice low and trembling—not with fear, but fury. “She’s not a soldier, Cass. She’s our sister.”