I run up the stairs, with every step a bullet lands not far away from me. I frantically knock on the bedroom door and I'm let in.

"I thought you said you were gonna defuse the situation?" Eli asks.

"Never said that. All I wanted to know was if they were good people."

The men bang on the door, Zander comes to help block it.

"The window, send April out first." I say.

"Why me?" She asks.

"It's not that far, get onto the roof and jump. If we're lucky we can leave with the van."

April leaves, then Ally then Serafina. As more people leave the door gets harder to keep closed.

"Is there not a lock on this thing?" I ask.

"House was probably made three-hundred years ago." Ria replies.

"Move the bed against the door."

"It won't hold." She moves toward the window and steps onto the window sill.

"Not for long but it'll buy us time. Ria and Eli will go next then we can move the bed and get out of here."

After Ria and Eli exit, Logan holds the door so Zander and I can move the bed. It buys us just enough time so that I can jump down before the door is kicked in. We run to the driveway where the van's already started and Serafina's in the driver's seat. As we drive away, someone from the house shoots at the back window, breaking the glass and landing a bullet into one of the seats.

"I liked that house." April says.

"Yeah, me too but it obviously wasn't gonna last for long." I respond.

"You think we can find a boat?"

"A boat? Sounds hard to manage."

"One of my brothers was in the Navy. I read lots of books about boats at school too."

“They can live underwater. Or die, but it’s still dangerous.”

“Maybe there’s less in the water because there’s less people in the water.” She kicks her feet back and forth, her shoes lighting up different colors.

“That’s possible.”

The van stops, it must be out of gas, we’ve come a long way. We’ve driven for 11 hours, it’s nine in the morning and we’re stopped on a highway. There’s cars that must’ve stopped from people panicking or traffic and dead bodies, some conscious, some not. In the distance shielded by a fair amount of trees a big house with orange lights on inside looks dangerous but oddly safe simultaneously.

“You see that house?” Ria asks, sitting on the ledge of the highway, facing the house.

***

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” Zander grunts.

“Would you rather talk to them?” Ria asks.

“No, but I really don’t think Ally should, or anyone. Someone’s gonna die today.”

Ally interjects, “Don’t say that. I know you guys will cover me if anything bad happens.”

“The plan?” Zander crouches behind a bush on the front, exterior wall of the house.

“I’ll just knock and talk to them.”

Before anyone responds Ally stands across from the tall, white front door and bangs her knuckles against it three times. She stands there and waits until someone unlocks the multiple locks and opens the door. A blonde lady gripping a knife almost the length of her arm smiles at the sight of Ally, “What’s wrong?”

“I was hoping maybe you could offer me a place to stay, I know it sounds selfish but I’ve been on the road for so long and-”

“Come in, oh and bring your friends, we have room for all of you.”

“Friends?”

“Don’t act like I didn’t see y'all. And don’t act like I don’t know what you’re tryna do.” She grabs Ally by her hair and pulls her inside then shuts the door. From where I sit I can hear the sound of a lock clicking. We all stand up and exchange confused, alarmed glances.

“We need to find a way in there.” Zander says.

We follow Zander around the house to the back yard. There’s a glass door that leads inside but it’s locked and someone’s behind it, a man holding a shotgun but more focused on Ally than us.

“We can’t go in there.” I say.

“How else are we supposed to save her?” Zander asks, pacing.

“We could find a different way in” Ria’s cut off.

“No, it’s just two people, we kill them and help Ally.”

“I don’t know, Zander…”

Zander barges in through the unlocked back door and shoots the man, his gun going off and shooting the ceiling as his body falls down. The woman rushes over, not with Ally. She punches Zander, his gun being flown out of his hand. She backs up facing us and grasping Zander, who’s clawing at her.

“Stay there.” She says and keeps backing away.

We all know if anyone took a shot or even aimed she’d kill Zander. After bringing him upstairs she returns to the kitchen and drags out Ally then brings her upstairs. The woman stands behind the glass door with her rifle aimed back at us, “Like I said before, we have room for all of you. Come with me you little shits.”

We follow her up a winding staircase to a bedroom, on the balcony Ally and Zander sit tied to the railing.

“Who am I killing first?” She smiles again, differently than before, in an angry, almost sad way. She steps onto the balcony and closes the door behind her then unties the two. She forces them to stand and sneers, “You kids are awfully quiet.” She pushes Ally harder against the railing and harder until her feet hover above the ground. Logan reaches for the doorknob.

“What the hell are you doing?” Ria asks.

“She’s gonna kill Ally.”

He swings the door open and pounces onto the lady, pushing her, she fights back but her upper body hangs down, the only thing keeping her stable being, Logan. She falls off but still gripps onto Logan. They smash the ground, so hard you could hear bones snapping, the thing is, from where we were we couldn’t tell whether it was the woman or Logan.

The woman, dead, lays on top of Logan who’s conscious but out of it, his eyes are wide, staring up at the sky, from under the woman I can’t tell much about the position he’s in but the amount of blood underneath him doesn’t look good.

“Fuck, I can’t do this.” Zander turns around, rubbing his hand on his forehead.

April comes closer and asks, “Is he okay?” In a shaky tone.

“I don’t know.”

Eli flips the woman aside, on her back, a knife from her pocket stabbed her in the chest when she fell. Logan’s limbs don’t look how they’re supposed to, they look broken and dislocated, all of them. He’s not talking, not moving at all, but his chest moves up and down, slowly.

“We should put him down…” Ally suggests.

“Shut the fuck up.” Eli responds, he sits down beside Logan’s body and leans his elbows on his knees, covering his face with his hands.

No one knows what to do so we stand there, quietly. And we stand there. Soon after Logan lowers his eyes and the chest movement slows down even more Eli picks up a fallen gun and holds it above Logan, the barrel staring back down at the half-dead boy.

We buried him in that backyard and burned the woman’s body with a lighter we found in a kitchen drawer. We decided to stay the night in that house but leave the next morning because of what happened.

Eight Seventeen at Night.

I sit on the white, worn couch next to Eli, he's barely talked since what happened to Logan. I want to say I know what he's going through or that it'll be okay but I can't, no one I was close to the way he used to be close to Logan died on me and nothing will be okay. We're fucked no matter what we do.

I reach my arms around his stomach and rest my forehead on his shoulder, looking down at my boots crossed on top of each other, leaving marks of dirt on the couch, “I’m so sorry.” I say.

“Nitro, you need to stop saying that. None of that was your fault.” he pauses, “It just doesn’t feel real, since the fourth grade I knew he’d die but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. I planned to die before him.”

“Planned to?”

“It is what it is. The day in the woods I realized he was lost, a different type of lost that couldn’t come back, he wasn’t the same person and never would be.”

“We’re all gonna die one way or another, he just did… sooner.”

“Yeah, it’s weird that I’m not more sad about this, I thought I’d be like Zander if something like this happened to Logan. I loved him, the same way you love Serafina but that changed when he did. Our friendship wasn’t gonna last forever anyway. He was a dick.”

“How do you feel about leaving this place?”

“I want to. I wanna go somewhere safer where we don’t have to wander around anymore, it’ll get us all killed if we just keep running.”

“Somewhere like a boat?”

“You considering that because of her?”

April.

“It’d be hard to find one but I want whatever’s best for her. We can’t stay on a boat forever either but as long as she’s safe until we can get somewhere secluded…. On land.”

“How are we even supposed to live like this? There’s not much you can do anymore.”

“That’s why people act like those raiders—that lady back there, the Red Easton people, The Crows. They claim it’s for survival but they’re just bored. You can survive other ways.”

“We shouldn’t have come here.”

“Where would we be if we hadn’t?”

***

“You can’t expect to find a boat!” Ria argues.

“It’s worth a shot, right?” Serafina looks down at April.

“What if there’s a storm or we drown or someone falls in and gets eaten?”

“What if there were literal monsters running around? Crazy.”

“I- How many of you are on board with this?”

Everyone raises their hand.

Ria turns to Zander first, “You can’t be serious, why?”

“None of us who are still standing should die, not here.”

“And you.” She looks at Eli, “You’re just saying you wanna go because of him.” She turns left, to Serafina, “You too!” Then Ria sighs, “April, you really want this?”

“I just think it would be a good thing.”

“Sure.” She claps her hands down at the sides of her thighs, “I’m obviously in the minority anyway.”

“Ria,” Eli begins, “you know none of us would do this without you.”

“My vote though? Does it matter?”

“Of course.”

She lowers her head then glances at Ally, “Alright… time to find a boat.”