Deliberate? Menacing? But the presence of the girl didn't add up.

I couldn't remember the last time I felt this out of control. Something was happening that I wasn't privy to. I knew I couldn't tell Blaze. Not yet. Not until I knew something more substantial.

As we drove back to Valtown, I found myself watching the roads, scanning for another hint of the Brotherhood.

Chapter 4.

4 years earlier When we met him, we were at our worst. Years later, when Blaze and I were alone and feeling bitter, we said that like it explained everything.

"We were at our worst," Blaze would say solemnly, her lips hovering against whatever bottle of bathtub alcohol she'd traded for on the streets. "We couldn't have done anything else."

It had been a month since Blaze and I had seen other living people. We were sticking to the back roads and small towns, raiding anywhere we could for supplies. Living nomadically was becoming increasingly difficult. Buildings and houses were succumbing to the forces of nature without human aid, often ruining whatever supplies they might hold. Animals wandered into them. Previous raiders looted them dry, leaving only family photos and other memorabilia that served no use.

For all we were worth, we were struggling. Blaze with her need to find Beau, and me with my desire to be with her, and both of us incapable of growing food. It left us with few options and a sensation of hopelessness that would drive us into the ground.

We were in a tiny town, the kind you drive by in a blink of an eye, when we heard the rumble of engines. Against the stark quiet and occasional zombie groaning, it was unsettling. Two trucks crept into town. We watched them from behind tattered curtains and broken glass as they exited the trucks in careful formation and began raiding houses. They looked good. Healthy, even. They had guns, obviously loaded by the weight and care in which they handled them.

Our clothes were loose against our bodies. I found myself winded after a long sprint. I couldn't remember the last time we had more than a few rounds of ammunition between us. Whatever the men had going on was better than what we did. And, in that moment, I was painfully aware of my life, my meager life, and how I wasn't the man I used to be. There was a time when I'd challenge anyone and know I'd be the victor. I was the person who others asked for help. I was the one.

But help wasn't something I'd ever imagine asking for, pre-apocalypse or post. It just wasn't in my vocabulary, nor Blaze's. Despite my jealousy and the gnawing hunger in my stomach, I'd never ask for help.

We watched as the men carried out a dining room table. It was a strange thing to be taking. Perhaps they wanted it for firewood? Others followed, bringing chairs, then smaller kitchen items. One of them stood back between the trucks and houses. He had close cropped hair and a carefully groomed beard. Leader, I thought, recognizing the confidence in his stance. He calls the shots.

"What if we-" Blaze's voice caught in her throat, as though the words were jagged. "What if we went out there?"

I studied her face, searching for sarcasm. None. Her brown eyes were dull and serious.

"They could be dangerous. We have seven rounds. We'd have to kill each of them on the first shot, and even then there'd be three left. I can't take more than one hand to hand."

"No, Cyrus." She took a breath, turning her face towards the window again. "What if we ask for help? They look normal."

"Do you remember the guys in Renton? They looked normal, too. They had kids and women with them. They were nice, until they tried to kill us." I set my hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off. "You're desperate right now. It'll pass."

The group of men were only two houses away, drawing nearer.

"Yes, I am fucking desperate, okay?" she whispered. "I'm so fucking desperate I'm willing to take a chance and ask them for help. If they kill us, fine. At the rate we're going, we'll die anyway."

I stood, my knees cracking as I left the crouched position. My movement drew attention. The men standing guard caught sight of me. They didn't raise their guns, but pointed at me and took cover near the truck.

"If it's what you want, I'll do it." I sheathed my machete and walked past Blaze, hands raised in peace as I left the house and faced the men, ready for them to kill me, help me, or eat me.

And even though it was her idea-even though she was the one who actually said the words-Blaze would blame me for everything she hated about Valtown and Arbuckle's people. For staying with them too long, for being with them in the first place.

It was in the still moments, when her guard was down, when her thoughts were uninhibited, that she'd whisper the words.

We were at our worst.

Chapter 5.

Welcome to the post-apocalyptic world. Survivors still believed we could make things normal again, even though we sure as fuck couldn't. We were far enough away from Z Day that it's a memory, but not far enough that we'd forgotten how life used to be. What it could be.

Venti coffees, reality TV, happy hour after work. Weddings, vacations. A whole fucking life spent in front of a computer.

Me? The only things I missed about life Before were ordering stuff off the internet and an endless supply of junk food. Even those were unnecessary luxuries. I always thought the zombie apocalypse would weed out the weak, allowing the strongest to survive.

That seemed to be the case. At first.

I'll admit Valtown was an impressive city. It began in a storage unit complex months into the apocalypse. Arbuckle, the owner, saw potential in making it a permanent safe haven for him and his family. The basic structure was already there: surrounding concrete walls almost six feet high, sectioned buildings to turn into homes, open space for gardens. He started with building up the walls, making trips to construction stores to raid for concrete and rebar. Forced to work in small segments to avoid gathering a crowd of Zs, Arbuckle and his friends took a year alone to add width and height to the walls. From there they cleared out storage units, turning it into a town. Many units yielded valuable tools, weapons, and supplies.

Valtown-I'm not sure what it was called before he took over-was a small city before the apocalypse and was easy for him to repurpose. He named it after his wife, Valerie. The storage complex was near an industrial building and a gym up a hill from the main city. He developed systems for creating new walls, slowly encapsulating more and more of the old city into his new town. A bird's eye view of it would resemble a quilt-like maze.

It worked. Eventually he dominated the whole town, building walls out of anything and everything around the entire city. Apartment buildings, grocery stores, and regular houses had all been taken over and repurposed.

From what I understood, it was long, tedious work expanding the town. It took skilled, determined people to do it. They had to constantly lead Zs away from the workers and stop when their numbers were overwhelming. Fortunately the town was in a remote location and the population sparse before the shit hit the fan. In a matter of years, they'd walled and fortified a mile radius. Resources like concrete, metal, and wood were easy to come by. No one prioritized them in the earliest days of the apocalypse, so they were found in abundance at construction sites and hardware stores.

He took in survivors, protected them, and offered some resemblance of civilization. People responded well to it because Arbuckle wasn't insane. Mild, ambiguous religious motivation. No power complex. He was a good man who wanted to fix things. Even I couldn't deny that. The Arbuckle who made Valtown was smart and determined. I admired what he achieved, but people change over time.

That's where my natural selection theory failed. The weak thrive in generosity and goodness. Droves of them would've died if Arbuckle hadn't taken them in. They were burdens in life before, and they were certainly burdens now. Only keeping them alive was four times as hard, and he was finally beginning to realize it.

Blaze didn't want to go straight to Arbuckle when we got back to Valtown. I was irritated by how he ran the place. Blaze was downright belligerent. Any small move to make his life harder, she'd do. Since I didn't want a fight, I went with it.

So, after we checked through the gates and dropped off the truck, we navigated the throngs of people to the other side of town.

"Hey, Mr. Sinclair?"

I rolled my eyes and increased my pace. The nuisance tagged along, unperturbed by my obvious distaste.

"Mr. Sinclair?" Alex repeated. "I found some for you."

That made me stop. The kid almost ran into me. Blaze kept walking and I lost her in the crowd. She had a friend of her own, sort of, but they didn't have the same relationship Alex and I did.

What, you think I hadn't made any new friends in five years?

The green and yellow package was in surprisingly good condition. It crinkled as he handed it to me. The candies were as hard as rock inside the bag, creating one giant candy, but any form of Sour Patch Kids suited me these days. It was exactly what I needed after a hard day of suck.

"You snuck out again, huh?"

Alex nodded, unashamed. At sixteen, he faced the same issues all the other kids his age dealt with. The dead rose when they were so young that the new reality changed them. It forced them to grow up in ways that reminded me of my own youth. Survival and murder were second nature now, but having been robbed of their childhood, they were emotionally stunted yet physically capable of destruction. Alex wouldn't hesitate to kill his mother if she turned into a zombie. He wouldn't blink. But he'd whine and complain to her like an eight year old if he didn't get what he wanted for dinner.

People were technically allowed to leave Valtown, but most people didn't and it was frowned upon. Kids were guarded with the utmost zeal, so Alex sneaking out was a no-no.

"You get caught?"

He shook his head. "No. Since you told me about the weak point by the back gate, I never get caught. Just slip out."

"Good." I made a show of weighing the bag in my hand, inspecting it more. "What do you want for it?"

"Five rounds."

"Five? Kid, I don't use five rounds in a week. What makes you think I'll give them to you for a bag of candy?"

He shrugged. "I have something you want. If you really want it, you'll give me whatever I want."

I was bluffing. I'd give him five rounds for them, but I tested his resolve. Plus I could stop at the munitions shop to get more. I hated suck-ups, which was why I was hard on Alex. A tiny part of me thought of him as kin, since he had blazing red hair like my own.

I shouldered off my pack and retrieved a spare mag. Then I popped out five 9mm rounds and handed them over. After he pocketed them, he saluted me and darted into the crowd.

Eager to get home, I picked up the pace. I passed a junk shop filled with knickknacks harvested from the storage units. Tables were set up outside, heavy with glassware. I nodded to the lady who ran it. Since our apartment was one building over, I saw her a lot. She thought Blaze and I needed to be mothered and gave us decorations for our place. Normally she stopped us to ask if we'd been eating right or if we needed anything.

Like Alex, there was something about her not even Blaze or I could hate. She was talking to a handful of people and, lucky for me, was unable to sidetrack. In a moment, I was in the lobby of the apartment.

The apartment reminded me of my old one. Two bedrooms, an open living room, and kitchen area. This building was in remarkably good condition. Despite Arbuckle preaching equality, there was an order to things. People who did more, got more, because if they didn't, they wouldn't. Blaze and I were primo because we killed people without blinking and did Arbuckle's dirty work. Our privileges consisted of better food rations, access to all munitions and vehicles, and a third story room in the nice apartment.

When Blaze and I accepted the space from Arbuckle, I remember thinking, we sacrificed our autonomy for berber carpet and a kitchenette. Blaze thought worse things, which I was reminded of at least once a week. I could play her, remind her that she was the one who wanted to ask for help in the first place, but it was petty. Not saying anything at all made me the bigger man. We both knew it.

I moved into the apartment quietly, listening for Blaze. Her bedroom door was shut and I heard the familiar grinding of her sharpening knives. Whenever she was frustrated, happy, or bored she sharpened her vast collection of blades and spikes. I knew it was meditative. I'd done the same with my guns for almost two decades.

Oh. Guns. That's another thing I miss. Ammo became hard to find and make, forcing everyone to adapt to knives for the most part. Valtown did refill their own ammunition, but even then resources were in short supply. People traded bullets for things they couldn't live without. Blaze hated the exorbitant amount of rounds I gave Alex for candy. I pointed out she'd do the same for a cigarette and that ended it.

After I took off my gear, I slumped into my chair by the window overlooking the town and fished out my bag of candy. At first I saved candy, just like the hoarders stashed supplies, thinking there would be a better time in the future to eat it. When I really needed it. After more than a handful of close calls, I lived by the motto 'No time like the present.'

I whacked the bag on the windowsill until the candies broke apart. They were stale. The citric acid wasn't as sour, and I couldn't chew them. So I sucked the rock hard sweets, swishing them around in my mouth and remembering what they tasted like fresh. Sweet tooth satisfied, my thoughts drifted.

These days, our biggest threats were small-time crazies traveling in groups of no more than five people. They were into the usual bad guy topics: rape, murder, cannibalizing, torture. But it had been almost a year since we'd encountered a large group of them. Our reach extended almost fifty miles from Valtown. Outposts kept us current on the movement of nonaffiliated groups as well as crazies.

They existed, but they knew not to mess around with us. But the Brotherhood? If they were here and active, we were in trouble.

They were big league crazy; at least they had been. They believed in mass numbers, and were good at recruiting all sorts of people. Kevin's doctrine appealed to some, but his guarantee they would be fed and all their sick desires indulged really did it.

If they were anything like what they had been when Blaze and I were fighting them, they could do serious damage to the settlements and Arbuckle's way of life. They could jeopardize everything I'd built for myself.

The only thing I wondered about was Gabe. Could she still be with them? Was she even alive? If she was, and if she led them, she was behind all the terror the Brotherhood caused. The abductions, raiding, and murder. Someone told them what to do. I mulled over the possibility of it being her.

"Aren't you going to see Arbuckle?"

Blaze hovered in the kitchen, watching me. I hadn't heard her exit the bedroom. She had removed her jacket and wore a black sleeveless shirt. Her dog tags hung against her chest.

"Yeah, taking a breather. You coming?"

She tapped her fingers against the counter. "No. You get this one."

Blaze came to me, standing behind the chair for a moment before leaning forward. Her hands softly closed around my shoulders. She bent down, pressing her face against the side of mine. My pulse quickened as I took in her scent: smoke and honing oil. We'd been intimate a few times over the years. Quick and cautious affairs that neither of us spoke about afterwards. I didn't like or dislike it. Just happened. Each time typically coincided with us thinking we would die soon.

"You know what's strange, Cyrus?"

Her hand slipped under the neckline of my shirt, over my heart. Her fingertips were callused.

"What?"

"Every time you lie to me, no matter how good you do it, I find out."

My body tensed. I shifted to stand, but she gave me a firm shove. She pressed her hand against the scar on my chest. "I saw a marking in the window at the house. The Brotherhood's emblem. You didn't say anything."

"I-"

"Then on the bodies, when you stopped me from checking them. Did they have scars, like you?"

"Blaze-"

"Answer me."

Her nails dug into my chest and shoulder. I jerked away, came to my feet, and spun around to face her. She didn't have a gun or knife out yet, which meant things hadn't escalated. I could still talk her down.

"Yes. They had the scar. But I wasn't sure what to make of it, so I didn't say anything."

She paced the room across from me. "What do you mean?"

"Why would they show up now, like that? A group that size could've done damage to a small settlement. Instead they killed themselves in a basement." I took a breath. Some truths, some lies. Omit the bit about it resembling Kevin's death. Add some of my own theory to make it plausible. "And the truck that disappeared. It's all off."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because what if this was an isolated incident? What if they were old members who escaped, but the Brotherhood isn't active and this was a fluke? Fuck me, Blaze, I didn't want to get your hopes up only to disappoint you when it turned out to be nothing."

Blaze knew I was right. "What were you going to do if I hadn't brought it up?"

I moved closer to her, hands by my side, palms open. "I'm not completely sure yet. I was going to try and follow the tracks by the house, see where they went. Keep an eye out for more signs of activity. I haven't had much time to think it over, you know?"

Her body sagged. Did the sight of the symbol and the basement make her hopes soar? Despite her being the strongest person I knew, her brother made her emotional and hazy.

I closed the distance between us, hesitantly reaching out to brush my fingers against her arms. She didn't resist. I came closer, pulling her into my arms for a brief embrace.