We wadded up our blankets and threw them in the truck. I just wanted to get away from here as soon as I could. I handed out the IDs and our weapons, then grabbed the keys from the cupholders. My heart fluttered when I pressed down on the gas a little too hard. The back wheels started to spin until I reached the pavement again. I let off the gas, bringing my hand up to my face.

  “They definitely saw that,” I shook my head. I don’t know why I cared so much about how people still saw me, especially some random soldiers. I shook my hands, trying to wake myself up a little more.

  “My arm looks a little bruised. Is that normal?” Phoebe held out the area where Ellie had taken her blood. I glanced over. She overthought a lot when we were younger, especially when she felt slightly under the weather or a tiny cut looked a little too yellow. Clearly, she hadn't changed.

  “Yes, it looks okay, don’t worry,” I looked back ahead. The road went upwards and then down again, blocking the long fence and gate from our sight. Even the top of the tower that had spotlighted us was blocked now. The road kept curving down. With each hill on the endless straightaway, my stomach leapt.

  It was still dark outside. Seeing the silhouettes from the trees gave me an eerie feeling. They were darker than the sky. They almost looked pitch black with no highlights at all. My headlights suddenly caught on something red and reflective. A stop sign a ways ahead. I slowed down as I realized we were about to pass the church. This town had a lot of sheds and vacant houses, but the last time I was here, there was a handful of elderly people living here. My cousin, Jacob, had warned me about a couple of them who liked to sit outside and shoot at people. This was before the beginning of the end had started, though. I doubted any of the elderly had survived the first wave of disease. If they did, they had been crazy from the start. With the military base nearby, I'm sure they were given narrower restrictions. They couldn’t go around shooting at people anymore, not with a declining population.

  I rolled up to the stop sign and looked at the old, broken shed next to me. Every Christmas, we would come see my grandma, and this shed was our favorite landmark. The toilet bowl in the middle cracked us up. It’s the kind of humor that only children have, but now I enjoy the memory. I looked to the right, where the rest of the town was. Nobody was out and about, but that was normal. Finally, something was still the same. I turned left and went onto the gravel road. I could see my grandma‘s house from here. The nerves started to kick in again. I felt my stomach turning as my nerves grew worse. My stomach was hurting. I turned into her driveway and drove past the silos, parking by the old Apple tree. We used to play baseball with apples when in the right season. The apple would shatter into hundreds of pieces when it made contact with the baseball bat. Memories came flooding in, but I pushed them down into my churning stomach. I turned the truck off, but I didn't open the doors. I was so nervous, but I didn't understand why. “What if he’s not here? What if something happened to them?” I leaned my head on the top of the steering wheel. Nobody wanted to get out of the car yet, not until we were all ready.

  “You can’t live on a what if,” Phoebe grabbed her door handle. “You just have to do it,” I released a sigh and opened the door. Breelyn and Emma opened theirs soon after. They each walked behind me while I approached the house, but something was coming from the field. We shone our lights, and I drew my weapon, each of us aiming into the woods. I was the first to quickly lower my gun. A dog was standing there. A medium-sized, black and white sheep dog, staring at us. He hunkered down, his face pressed to the dirt and the rest of his body following. He was surrendering to us. I remembered this dog from years ago.

  “Hey, Rox,” I whispered. Slowly, I approached it. I took slow but sure steps and didn’t turn my back until finally my hand met its head. Its tail and ears instantly shot up, and it began to lick me. “We’re alright,” I said, standing up. I stepped back while it jumped up on me. Each time, I would grab its paws and push it off. “Shh, get down,” I pushed him off. He ran up to Phoebe, then Breelyn, and sniffed Emma a little longer than the rest of us. Rox smelled her dog on the bottom of her jeans. “Alright, let's try this again,” I walked up to the door. I went to knock on it, but the sliding door was already slightly cracked open. I could have gone through the garage door that was swaying in the wind, but it wasn't open for visitors. It was broken, always had been. The second door behind it, they always kept locked. I slid open the front door and stepped inside, but was immediately met with a strong force. My head slammed on the wall. My temple immediately started to sting. I felt something wrap around my wrist and drag my arm behind me, twisting until I lost my grip and dropped my gun.

  “Let her go!” Emma pressed her weapon against my attacker. Phoebe and Breelyn were behind her, but they were in the same situation I was in. There were a lot more people in here than just my attacker. We were at a stalemate, each of us aiming at one another, and I was pushed against the wall.

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  “I’m not here to hurt anyone,” I coughed. “I’m trying to find my cousin, Jacob,” I felt the pressure immediately release.

  “Oh my- Amelia? Dude, you- How did you get here?” It was Jacob's voice. Everyone relaxed, lowering their hands and releasing the tension in their arms. I took a deep breath and leaned my back against the wall. That was terrifying. I could feel my heart beating in my throat.

  “I had to get out of Hartland. The world out there, it’s crazy,” I couldn’t help but laugh the nerves off. I could feel my heart beating, slowing down, but it was still beating against the walls of my chest. “I figured with you being the only family in a small town that it would be the safest choice.” Jacob wasn’t the hugging type, like Phoebe; he hated physical touch. He started laughing too, the nerves getting to him. I felt safe, though, hearing a familiar voice. I looked past him and scanned the other faces in the room. I could barely recognize these people, but I started to see the similarities in their faces. It had been over two years, after all. I saw one of them with very defined features and short, almost buzzed, dirty blonde hair. He was about my height. His eyes, though, there was something scary behind them. He looked like he was ready to kill. They were brown, but they filled almost all of his eye and made it look black. I imagined him a little bit younger, and then it clicked. “That’s Hunter, right? And Dylan?” I saw the boy standing next to him. Dylan was tall, very, very tall, but he didn’t have the lean look. His hair was down to his shoulders, but he had it braided in the back. It was dark in here, so it looked black, but I remembered he had dark brown hair. His mustache was very overgrown. I cracked a smile. “Of course!” Jacob stood next to me and looked at everyone in the room.

  “I’m gonna be honest here, I didn’t think I would see any of you all again." I looked over to my friends. We had thought the same, but it baffled me how little faith he had in us. "How did you get past the wall?”

  “We got here when the sun first went down. They had to clear us overnight,” Breelyn explained, but her sentence ended abruptly in a yawn. I didn’t realize how tired I really was until the adrenaline finally wore off all the way.

  “Bring your stuff inside, you can take my room,” He pointed down the hallway. It was the last door on the left. I remembered. “We’re about to go out to the school to set up for the game tomorrow night.” All of us stopped in our tracks. I could feel the demeanor in the room change. What did he just say?

  “What do you mean by ‘game’?” I placed my bag down behind the couch.

  “There’s a football game,” Hunter answered. He bent down to tie his shoes. “The football team is running it. The field needs repainting, though. It’s that time of year,” He stood up straight again and stretched, then adjusted the bracelet on his arm. I couldn’t tell what the pendant was, but it was glimmering.

  “You guys go ahead and unpack your stuff, I'm gonna catch up real fast,” I said, giving my friends a soft smile. They shrugged it off, continuing their conversation with one another as they disappeared into Jacob’s room. They shut the door, and I turned back around. “Do you have any idea what’s going on outside of the wall that’s keeping you in here?” I followed Jacob and his friends out of the door while they carried buckets of paint to put in Jacob’s truck.

  “We know about the diseases. The animals are a little nuts, the weather's thrown off the rocker,” Dylan slammed the tailgate down. They started sliding the cans of paint up to the front.

  “Phoebe’s parents and siblings are… gone,” I didn’t want to say the full word. The full truth tasted too bitter to bear. “Everyone is dead or dying. Survivors are murdering people left and right. People are dying out there, and you all have no idea?” Each of them stopped moving as I told them the truth.

  “What about our family?” Jacob looked a little bit paler. Jacob and his friends lived in this town, the town that had only experienced 2 years' worth of pain in a week. They had no idea the full extent of the world, and they hadn’t tried to leave. I’m sure they heard the news or something, right? How did they not know?

  “Alive, last I knew of. That was two years ago,” I picked up a paint can and put it into the truck bed. “I only see dad once a month. It’s too dangerous to pass through the big cities like Alvord or Bowie. Anyone who’s tried taking the main roads gets jumped; It’s not safe out there. Phoebe’s been alone for a month. Malachi left Emma and is walking to his mother’s house, the mother that he isn't sure is still living.” I slowly let go of the can. None of them was saying anything. “It’s like a war has started, and we’re forced to defend ourselves or kill everyone. There's no military or government out there looking out for us. We’re all dying out there while you all are hosting a football game?” I couldn’t help but start laughing. Each of them remained silent. I slowly let my anger slip away into something else. “It’ll feel nice to watch a game again.”

  “So, your brothers, Conner, Gunner, you haven’t heard from any of them?” I could see

  “No,” I shook my head. We walked back inside to grab more paint. “I got to see Blane.” A knot formed in my stomach. Jacob could tell something was wrong by the wavering of my voice. Blane was Conner’s best friend. Jacob had grown up with Conner and Blane. I grew up with him always at the house. Sometimes I felt like he was more of a brother to me than my actual siblings. He was the one who changed my whole perspective on the beginning of the end. I took the curve into death seriously, but I didn’t feel like it was real. How could you treat something maturely if you didn't believe it fully existed? I still messed around daily until the day I came across Blane on the streets. “He’s not with us anymore.”