Chapter 17 (Anna’s POV )

  Joshua and I sprawled on opposite sides of the oak?scarred kitchen table, the lantern between us casting patient halos on the patched walls. Soap, tampons, fresh socks—tiny kingdoms of comfort—surrounded us in careful stacks, a ridiculous monument to normal life. I ran my thumb along the seam of a new T?shirt, scarcely able to process the softness. Cotton. Real cotton.

  Joshua smiled, exhaustion softening the edges of his features. “When was the last time you had clothes that didn’t scratch like sandpaper?”

  “Fifteen,” I said before I’d even thought about it. “Pre?outbreak. My mom bought me a cherry?red hoodie for homecoming week.” The memory cut sharper than expected. I folded the shirt and set it aside. “Haven’t owned anything that comfortable since.”

  He uncapped a bottle, slid it across the table. “Apple juice. Not exactly champagne, but it’s pasteurized.”

  I took a tentative sip. Cold sweetness sparked across my tongue. Tears pricked behind my eyes—ridiculous, but I couldn’t help it. “Tastes like skipping class,” I whispered.

  Joshua leaned forward, elbows on the wood. “Tell me about—anything. The you before all this. High?school Anna.”

  My first instinct was to shut down—memories were fragile artifacts here, easily shattered. Yet something in his voice, steady and earnest, invited honesty.

  “High?school Anna,” I echoed. The lantern hissed faintly. “She worried about SAT scores and whether her varsity jacket smelled like cafeteria grease.”

  Joshua chuckled. “Exactly what I pictured.”

  I traced circles in a grain of sawdust. “I had a boyfriend then. Luke Whittaker. Quarterback. Not the bad?boy type—he practiced calculus between drills.” I inhaled. “He lasted two weeks into the outbreak.”

  Joshua’s face sobered. “Roamer?”

  “Yeah.” The memory lurched free like a dislocated bone—painful but familiar. “We sheltered in the school gym with maybe two hundred students. Someone’s kid brother turned overnight. The teachers thought they could handle one infection. They barricaded him in the locker room.” My nails bit my palms. “Locker doors didn’t hold. Luke stayed to help a PE coach. I ran.”

  I remembered the glass doors shattering under the weight of bodies, Luke’s scream cut short by the wet crunch of bone. I spared Joshua the sound effects. He closed his eyes anyway, as if hearing them.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

  I shrugged, though the motion felt brittle. “It’s been seven years. Grief calcifies.”

  We fell silent, punctuated only by the soft drip of the faucet and the distant moan of wind over broken shingles.

  “You mentioned—someone else?” Joshua asked gently. “Three years ago?”

  “Gideon Taggert.” I exhaled through my teeth. “A scavenger.” The lantern’s glow warped, painting old blood on the walls in my mind. “We weren’t… official. You don’t date when survival’s a coin flip. But we watched each other’s back.”

  Joshua nodded once, urging me on but giving space.

  I swallowed. “Gideon died in Empire territory—Queens College ruins. They’d set up a checkpoint, extorting pearls. We tried to bypass through service tunnels, but they caught us topside.” My throat tightened.

  Joshua leaned closer. “What did they do?”

  I stared at my clenched fist. “You want the clean version or the truth?”

  “The truth,” he said, voice steady.

  “Empire rules are simple,” I said. “Give pearls. Or give a show.” The words tasted of ash. “They beat Gideon with rifle stocks, took his pearls anyway. Then—” My pulse hammered. “They made an example. Stripped him down, nailed his wrists to a fallen traffic light. Poured accelerant. Lit him at twilight so every scavenger in a ten?block radius could watch.”

  The lantern flickered. Joshua’s knuckles whitened around his mug.

  “I tried to reach him,” I continued, voice shaking despite myself. “They laughed—said I could free him if I could lift the cross?beam before the flames. I got close enough to grab his ankle.” I could still feel the blistering heat, the way human skin shrank in fire. “He told me to run.”

  Joshua stood abruptly, paced once, then gripped the counter, back to me. “I—don’t have words,” he said hoarsely.

  “I don’t share for sympathy,” I replied. “I share so you understand why I flinch at red armor.”

  He turned, eyes bright. “I won’t forget.”

  Silence pooled again—thick, suffocating. Finally Joshua exhaled, rubbing his face. “You’ve lost more than I can fathom.”

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  “Loss is the currency here,” I said. “You learn to spend it wisely.” I managed a thin smile. “But tonight, Joshua Reeve, you brought me soaps and soft cotton and water that tastes like nothing. That’s… priceless.”

  His shoulders loosened, and he half?smiled back. “Mission accomplished.”

  I raised the juice bottle. “To the ridiculous luxury of clean water.”

  He tapped his cup to mine. “And to not dying tomorrow.”

  We drank. The lantern hissed. Outside the plywood?clad walls, roamers shuffled through streets littered with their own bones, and firelight smeared the horizon where the Empire burned another neighborhood to cinders. But inside our improbable cottage, two survivors shared apple juice and stories—fragile proof that hope could grow from cracked concrete.

  Joshua eased back into his chair, rolling the cup between calloused fingers as though absorbing its residual heat. “You know,” he said after a moment, “I used to think trauma came with a half?life. That eventually it decayed into something less dangerous.” He shook his head. “Hearing you… I’m not sure. Maybe it just mutates.”

  I traced a knot in the tabletop. “It mutates, yeah. Becomes leaner, sharper. Like a blade you never sheathe.” I glanced up. “But blunted grief gets people killed here. A dull knife doesn’t cut ropes—only palms.”

  Joshua huffed softly, rubbing the bruise on his forearm where he had rammed the hand?truck through the doorframe earlier. “Guess I’m still learning how to swing mine.”

  “You’re learning fast.” I gestured at the neatly stacked supplies lining the walls. “Faster than anyone I’ve met.”

  A faint grin tugged at his mouth. “Motivation’s high. There’s someone here I don’t want to disappoint.” His gaze flicked to me and away again, awkward but sincere.

  That flutter in my chest again—annoying, unfamiliar. I stood to hide it, retrieving a bar of peppermint Dr.?Bronner’s from the closest box. I unwrapped the paper, inhaled the crisp scent, and nearly laughed. Instead, my eyes burned. “Do you have any idea what it means to smell something that isn’t rot or gunpowder?”

  He took another bar, cracked the wrapper. “Smells like summer camp to me. Soap fights in the lake.”

  “Smells like the first day I helped Mom wash sheets in the backyard,” I murmured. “Sun?bleached cotton and peppermint soap flakes.”

  Joshua leaned forward. “Anna… tell me about her?”

  I hesitated. Memories of my mother felt preserved in amber—touch them and they might shatter. But his intent gaze held no hunger, just patient curiosity. “She taught middle?school literature,” I began slowly. “Read me Tolkien out loud even when I could read it myself—said heroic journeys sounded better spoken.” I smiled. “She never missed a track meet, even when the stands were empty in a snow flurry.”

  “The kind who held every broken thing together with tape and kindness,” Joshua supplied quietly.

  I nodded, unable to speak for a heartbeat. “The Empire made an example of her, too. You know that story.” The words hung like frost; he nodded once, silent respect.

  “Your turn,” I said, needing to shift the weight. “Your dad—he left that copper door, the key, the… Mirabelle mystery. Tell me about him beyond the labyrinth of secrets.”

  Joshua’s eyes found the middle distance, softening. “Dad loved three things: off?season fly?fishing, old blues records, and fixing things that didn’t want to be fixed. He’d buy a toaster at a yard sale just to rewire it—then give it back to the owner.” A wistful chuckle. “He called it ‘returning dignity to orphaned appliances.’”

  “What about your mom?” I asked.

  His expression shuttered a fraction. “Never met her, Dad said she died in a car wreck, Dad never talked about her much—said remembering hurt more than forgetting.” He rubbed the tabletop grain. “Now I wonder if Mirabelle—this woman in your world— was actually my mom.”

  I considered. “If she’s alive, she’ll be older. Maybe roamer?food, maybe Empire prisoner, maybe…” I forced optimism. “Maybe leading a colony somewhere.”

  “when it comes time where would I even start looking?” Joshua asked.

  I shrugged. “Scavenger gossip networks, captured Empire radio traffic, old city hospital records if any survived.” I flicked a glance at him. “Food and ammo open doors, but information opens the right ones.”

  He tapped the side of his mug in thought. “Which reminds me— pearls.” He pulled a cloth bag from his pocket, emptied the shimmering orbs onto the table. Twenty-five from his last spree, rolled softly like marbles. He whistled. “Halfway to the first stat boost, right?”

  “Stat boost?” I arched a brow.

  He colored slightly. “Screen in the Gate chamber said something about kill?count tracking. Game mechanics. One?hundred level?one pearls for a?0.01 stat increase.”

  I snorted. “Figures you would gamify the apocalypse.”

  “Hey, I didn’t code the cosmos.” He swept the pearls back into their pouch. “But if grinding roamers makes you heal faster or punch harder, we’ll farm XP all day.”

  I jammed the soap back into its box. “Just remember: every ‘XP event’ is a corpse that used to be someone’s kid brother.”

  He sobered. “You’re right. Keep me grounded.”

  Silence ticked between us, crackling with half?spoken thoughts. The faucet dripped still—clear, miraculous. Outside, night pressed against barricades, testing seams with frigid breath.

  Joshua stood, rubbing his eyes. “We should haul the rest of the water barrels in before freeze sets. Pipes are new; don’t want them bursting.”

  I rose, rotating my stiff shoulder. “I’ll help. Then we sleep in shifts?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You trusting me on watch?”

  “I’ve seen you swing a piece of rebar.” I shrugged. “You’re clumsy but not useless atleast not anymore. Roamers will think twice.”

  He chuckled, accepted the jab. Together we shouldered coats— new flannel for him, the Columbia shell for me—and stepped onto the moonlit porch. Frost silvered the plywood boards, making them shimmer like lake ice. Our breath puffed white. Somewhere to the east, the Empire’s night flares burned—ghostly flowers rising and dying.

  Joshua lifted one barrel rim; I grabbed the other, our gloves brushing. The cold bit through fabric. “Tell me something hopeful,” I challenged as we hefted it.

  He considered, muscles straining. “I want to put a deposit on a Kawasaki Ninja next trip. When this is over—if it ever is—I want to bring it here.”

  I huffed a laugh. “Deal. And I’ll—what? Teach you how to survive out here?”

  “Perfect.” He grinned, breath misting.

  We maneuvered the barrel inside, thumped it near the Copper Door. My arms trembled, partly from fatigue, partly from something warmer.

  He stretched, wincing. “Shift schedule?”

  “I’ll take first watch,” I said. “You drank half a gallon of water.”

  He didn’t argue. “Wake me if anything snarls.”

  I nodded. He paused at the front door, glanced back. “Anna.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks… for trusting me with your stories.”

  The lantern’s glow painted him gold and gentle. I held his gaze. “We trade scars here. Yours are welcome.”

  He opened the front door and headed out, boots thudding. I perched by the window slit, watching his shadow on the front porch a small smile on my lips, a warmth in a corner of my heart, A feral groan drifted faint across vacant streets, but shadows held.

  In the warmth behind me, peppermint soap perfumed the air; in the chill before me, ruin waited. Between those worlds, Joshua and I balanced on splintered hope, building something tenuous yet stubborn—like plywood against an endless dark.