The boy woke screaming.
Dana's rifle was in her hands before she registered the sound—a raw, animal noise that clawed its way up from the root cellar beneath her feet. She'd moved him down there at dawn, away from the windows and the sight lines that carved through her kitchen. The cellar was safer. Darker. It swallowed sound.
But not that sound.
The screaming cut off abruptly, replaced by the wet gasp of someone choking on their own breath. Dana counted to thirty, then lifted the trapdoor.
He huddled against the far wall, pressed into the corner where stone met earth. His eyes reflected the lamplight like a cornered animal's, wide and unfocused. The blanket lay twisted around his ankles where he'd fought free of it. Blood had seeped through the bandages on his leg.
"You're safe." The words came out flat, automatic. She'd said them before to other broken things. They'd never been true then either.
His gaze snapped to her face. Recognition flickered—she could see him placing her, remembering the wire and the snow and the needle biting through his skin. His breathing slowed, but his shoulders stayed rigid against the wall.
"Where—"
"My cellar." Dana descended the wooden steps, her boots scraping against stone. The space closed around her like a fist. Stone walls. Stone ceiling. Shelves lined with mason jars full of preserves and antiseptic. The air tasted of earth and old apples and something metallic that might have been fear.
The boy tracked her movement but didn't speak. Smart. Questions led to answers, and answers revealed too much.
Dana set a bowl of thin soup on the shelf within his reach. Canned broth stretched with water and whatever vegetables hadn't rotted. It would keep him alive. Nothing more.
"Terms," she said.
He waited.
"Leg heals, you eat what I give you, you leave before the first heavy snow." Dana counted off each point on her fingers. "Two weeks. Maybe three if you're lucky."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you leave now."
The boy studied her face, looking for softness he wouldn't find. Dana had carved it out of herself years ago, along with the part that believed in saving people. What remained was function. Efficiency. The cold mathematics of survival.
"I accept."
No argument. No negotiation. No promises he couldn't keep. He understood the transaction—shelter for compliance, healing for departure. Clean terms. Simple.
Dana nodded and climbed back toward the kitchen, leaving him in the amber pool of lamplight. The trapdoor settled into place with a sound like a coffin closing.
She spent the day checking her perimeter. The snow had covered most of the blood trail, but not all of it. Dark spots still showed through the white where he'd bled heaviest. Someone with the right eyes could follow those spots. Could find the path that led from her wire to her door.
Dana kicked snow over the stains until they disappeared.
The fence line held. Twelve-gauge wire strung between steel posts, some electrified when the generator ran. Razor wire crowned the top, rusted now but still sharp enough to flay skin from bone. She'd built it herself, post by post, her hands bleeding into the frozen ground.
It wasn't meant to keep the infected out—they climbed over anything eventually. It was meant to slow them down. Give her time to put bullets in their skulls before they reached the farmhouse.
But the infected weren't her only problem anymore.
Dana found fresh tracks near the eastern boundary. Boot prints, human-sized, leading away from her territory. Someone had been watching. Waiting. Testing her defenses.
She followed the trail for half a mile before it vanished into the stone bed of a dried creek. Whoever it was knew how to move without leaving sign. Military training, maybe. Or just years of practice staying invisible.
The sun died behind the tree line as Dana trudged back to the farmhouse. Inside, she heated another bowl of soup and descended into the cellar. The boy had barely touched the first one. The liquid had cooled to a greasy film, untouched except for a few sips that had left a ring around the bowl's edge.
"You need to eat."
"I know."
"Then eat."
He met her gaze without flinching. "Hard to keep food down when you don't know if you'll wake up."
Dana set the fresh bowl next to the cold one. "You think I'd poison you?"
"I think you'd do whatever kept you alive." His voice carried no accusation. Just fact. "Same as anyone."
He was right. Dana had poisoned people before—dripped oleander extract into canteens, laced rations with nightshade. Always for the right reasons. Always to protect something worth protecting.
But she hadn't poisoned him.
"Suit yourself," she said, and left him with two bowls and his suspicions.
The night stretched long and cold. Dana dozed in her chair by the kitchen window, rifle across her knees, one ear tuned to the sounds below. The boy moved restlessly, his breathing sharp and irregular. Sometimes she heard him whisper—fragments of words that might have been names or prayers or apologies.
Around midnight, he started thrashing.
The sound drifted up through the floorboards—fabric tearing, wood scraping against stone, the wet thud of flesh hitting the wall. Dana opened the trapdoor and peered down.
He fought invisible enemies in his sleep, his fists striking air. Blood had soaked through his bandages again. His lips moved soundlessly, forming words she couldn't hear.
She could have woken him. Could have pulled him back from whatever battlefield haunted his dreams. Instead, she watched. Calculated. Measured the violence in his movements against the fragility of his frame.
This wasn't ordinary trauma. This was something deeper. Something that had carved itself into his bones and made a nest there.
Dana had seen it before in soldiers who'd crossed lines they couldn't uncross. Who'd done things that stained their sleep with blood and screaming. She'd seen it in mirrors, back when she'd bothered looking.
The boy's body jerked once more, then went still. His breathing deepened. Whatever demons had been chasing him through his dreams had finally let him go.
Dana closed the trapdoor and returned to her watch.
Outside, snow fell in thick curtains that blurred the world beyond her windows. The wind picked up, driving ice crystals against the glass like thrown sand. Weather was coming. Real weather that would bury the roads and trap them both in the shrinking circle of her defenses.
Two weeks, she'd told him. Maybe three.
But looking at the storm building beyond her walls, Dana wondered if either of them would live that long.