After another moment of sitting in the relative safety of the car, watching as the activity around us slowly petered out, I opened my door. More and more people had started to drift toward us, staring hard at the strangers sitting in a familiar car. I supposed I could understand the feeling.

Shane murmured, "They're closing the gate."

An uneasy tremor—one I had become all too familiar with—shivered its way down my spine. My eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror, my shoulders tightening. There was no other way out except through that gate.

We finally stepped out of the car, looking around warily. I could smell smoke along with something savory, and my stomach growled loudly enough for Cassidy to hear from where she stood beside me. 

Shane leaned heavily against the car watching me, Kyle hovering just at his shoulder. His suspicious green eyes darted from person to person, cataloguing everything I couldn't.

"Come on," you said, smiling in a friendly manner, "let's get ya'll settled."

"You and I need to talk first, Raleigh," Dad cut in, stepping ahead of you. 

Shane and I exchanged a knowing glance, and he sighed before I'd even opened my mouth. "No," I said evenly. "I'm going to take care of Shane first." My gaze hardened. "Then we'll see about talking." 

"You seem to have misheard me." Dad's voice took on a stubborn quality that was uncomfortably familiar. "We need to talk."

All that did was make me dig my heels in even more. Keeping my expression bored, I gestured to the people around us, raising my voice just loud enough for a handful of the bravest or most curious to hear. "If I don't treat him, someone else might catch it."

Of course... that wasn't strictly true. Actually, it probably wasn't true at all. If Shane really had bronchitis, or even if he had pneumonia, he wasn't contagious by that point. But I got the desired effect. People started murmuring, looking at Shane and Kyle uncertainly. The skin around Dad's eyes tightened minutely, and my mouth tugged toward a smirk.

That look generally meant I was about to get what I wanted, in spite of Dad.

His gaze darted around to the people who were still whispering, some even going so far as to draw a little farther back from us. My guess was, living as tight as you all were, you'd had your run with sickness before.

You all were already skittish because we were new, and probably pretty rough-looking, and that made you even more wary.

Which made sense. We were back in the Dark Ages where disease was concerned. They spread fast and hit hard. Maybe you lost some people that way, maybe it was just ugly and scary. I don't know, and I don't really care to, but either way it worked in my favor.

Dad pursed his lips, then motioned for us to follow him with a wave of his hand. Shane fell into step beside me, pressing his lips to my hair before he whispered, "Anyone ever tell you that you're pure evil when you want to be?"

"I remember something about being the devil," I murmured back, a half-smile playing around my mouth. Of course he'd seen right through what I'd just done.

"You're still awful pretty to be a devil." Shane draped his arm across my shoulders. Whether it was because he was feeling tired, sore and sick, or because of the people—including my father—watching us, I didn't know. I didn't particularly care.

I just wanted him to keep holding on to me. 

Dad and you led us into one of the buildings lined up along the wall. The interior was dim and a little stuffy. I blinked, trying to get my eyes to adjust.

There was a brief shuffling sound, then the rasp of a match accompanied by a flare of light. The tiny flame floated through the dark, sliding off the shine of glass. You touched it to the cotton wick, and golden light bloomed in a small pool that couldn't quite touch the deepest shadows in the corners.

The lamp was aided somewhat by the open door, but it was still pretty dark, giving me an uncomfortable bout of claustrophobia.

You shook out the match, the smell of sulfur hanging in the air, then gestured to a row of cabinets. "Medicine's all in there," you said quietly. "Take what you need."

"Just what you need," Dad stressed, ignoring the foul look I shot him. 

So much for 'we have enough to spare'. That generosity hadn't lasted very long. Of course, the novelty of me being alive had probably worn off and it was back to same old Dad.

I gestured for Shane to sit on the examining table you must have pilfered from a nearby doctor's office. He leaned against it, making me narrow my eyes, but I didn't feel like fighting that battle. Instead, I started shuffling through the gazillion pill bottles you people had.

I know I'd asked Lisa about antibiotics, but if Shane had bronchitis they weren't really going to help anything. Then a sudden, vaguely dreadful thought occurred to me, and I whirled around toward Shane. He cocked his head, raising an eyebrow at the fierce stare I sent him.

"How long have you been sick?" I despised the fact that I even had to ask that question.

He shrugged. "A week or two. I wasn't counting days."

My glare didn't faze him as much as I would have liked, but we'd already argued about that. So I said, "Tell me your symptoms again. All of them."

It was slim, but I was thinking a misdiagnosis was possible. Mostly I had been thinking about the wheezing, but that didn't make bronchitis the only possibility. Though... the other option really wasn't great either. More dangerous, actually... but probable with how long he'd been sick.

Shane sighed, the breath ending with a bone-rattling cough. When it stopped, he started talking, sounding weary. "Nasty cough—"

"With mucus?" I interrupted.

"Yes." Shane gave me a look that said I knew that already. But it's important to be thorough.

"Nasty cough, with mucus," he said, a little sarcasm worming its way through. "A fever, I'm achy, I get chills. A low-grade headache."

"Does your chest hurt?" I asked, eyes straying back to the cabinets and their veritable cocktail of drugs. I'd seen everything ranging from antidepressants to heart medications.

"Sometimes." He nodded. "It's worst when I'm coughing."

I rubbed a hand over my face, sighing deeply.

"What?" Dad asked, instantly making me bristle. 

I had the sudden, irrational urge to kick him out so he couldn't be privy to all this. But it was back to his house, his rules. And I've learned over these last two years that sometimes sucking it up and playing nicely is a better course of action. It's not my favorite course of action, but it is what it is.

"It might be pneumonia instead of bronchitis, which..." I dug through the pills until I found a half-empty bottle of amoxicillin, "means that antibiotics will help."

I stood, glancing down at the pill bottle, then frowned.

"What?" Shane asked warily.

"Well." I hesitated, not wanting to complicate this, but all avenues had to be explored. "It's... I don't have any way to know if it's bronchitis or pneumonia. The symptoms are too similar between them, and it's not like I can just send a culture out to the lab."

"So what are you saying?" Kyle said from the doorway. 

I sighed, aggravated by, well, everything at that point. 

"I'm saying that if it's bronchitis, antibiotics aren't going to help. If it's viral pneumonia, antibiotics still aren't going to help. They will if it's bacterial pneumonia. But I don't know what you have." Directing the last part to Shane, I shook the bottle, making the pills rattle around. 

Shane stayed quiet, recognizing that I just needed to think for a moment. Dad, unfortunately, couldn't seem to stand the silence.

"Well if you don't know what he has, how will you know what to give him?" Dad crossed his arms. "You can't just waste medicine hoping it'll help."

I stayed quiet for a long moment, pondering that. Much as I hate to even say it, he was right. Waste, of any kind, is a huge no-no in our world. Finally, a long sigh gusted from my nose. Holding up the pill bottle again, I said, "How much of this do you have?"

Dad opened his mouth, but you cut him off, moving to stand near me as you pulled a clipboard off a nail in the wall. "Jody keeps a pretty tight ship around here."

"Jody," Shane asked, blinking hard. He looked exhausted, with bloodshot whites and dark shadows under his eyes. Not that that was surprising.

"Yeah." A small smile touched your lips as you flipped through a handful of pages on the clipboard. "She keeps an eye on all this stuff, dispenses it. All that jazz."

"Why her?" I asked out of curiosity. After all, one more person with a little medical know-how would be a rather welcome relief to me.

"Probably my OCD," a cheerful voice said, "but also because I was going to school to be a vet tech. I'm the only one who can pronounce half of these things."

A little blonde whirlwind breezed into the room, bumping her hip into yours to nudge you out of the way. You readily handed the list over, but she didn't even look at it. Her hazel eyes locked onto the bottle in my hand, and she smiled at me.

"Amoxicillin." Jody's smile grew for a moment, then dimmed as her attention went to Shane, who was struggling to suppress another round of coughing. She said, "Looks like there's someone else who knows how to pronounce the other half."

I couldn't help the wry smile that tugged out of me, but it died a rapid death.

"They want to know how much we have," Dad said, his voice getting progressively frostier the longer this went on.

"Oh, sure!" Jody looked down at the first page, her finger tracing from one side of the paper to the other. Then she grimaced lightly. "That we don't have a ton of." Her gaze flicked to Shane. "But... we could put him on a regimen for at least a week?"

"And what if they don't do anything?" Dad snapped, making Jody quail slightly. "Should we just waste antibiotics on a maybe?"

"Well they're certainly not going to hurt anything," you hissed back, stepping protectively in front of Jody, who had lowered her head.

I decided it was about time to step in. "His symptoms are closer to pneumonia than bronchitis. And she's right," I nodded toward you, "either way it won't hurt and is more likely to help than anything."

Of course... that's conveniently ignoring all the evidence on drug-resistant viruses... mostly because of the over-prescription of antibiotics. But I digress. If Shane had pneumonia I, ironically enough, wouldn't know until the antibiotics cleared up whatever was ailing him or not.

"If it doesn't start to clear up within the week, you'll try something else," Dad ordered, making everyone except maybe Jody bristle.

I opened my mouth to argue, but Shane jumped in. "Fine."

His haggard look in my direction was about the only thing that kept me from arguing further. Mostly all I wanted was to get some medicine and fluids in him, then get him in bed. While the medicine might help, sleep absolutely would.

After a moment of intense silence, Dad finally nodded. Jody quickly handed me a water bottle, while I squinted at the label on the pill bottle to figure out the dosage. I finally tapped a single pill into Shane's palm, then handed him the open water bottle.

For once, he took his medicine without complaint. I motioned for him to keep drinking, and he did that thing only men seem to do where they drain the whole thing in like two seconds.

"You're not going to like this," I said, making Shane frown at me. 

My gaze flicked to Dad and I crossed my arms, leaning back against the cabinets. "Bedrest. Lots of it." I ignored Shane's displeased muttering. "Fluids. Tea and some kind of sports drink would be preferrable. Advil or ibuprofen or whatever you have to control the fever. But," and here I held out the cough suppressant to Jody, "not this." 

Dad nodded stiffly. "You can get settled, and then we need to talk."

I didn't so much as bat an eyelash, making Dad scowl. He turned to you and said, "Take Jody to storage and check out what they'll need."

"I... wait." I frowned. "Where exactly will we be staying?"

"The rest of the buildings are barracks that we've partitioned," you explained. Then you gave us a wry smile. "It's not the epitome of privacy, but it's still something."

"Divided by what? Sheets?" Kyle said in disbelief. I was right there with him.

"Your people are already worried about this sickness spreading," Shane said, his voice ragged. "You really want me packed in tight with them?"

"Well none of your people are sick," Dad said. "That would lead me to believe that it's not something that's likely to spread." Then he gave Kyle an unimpressed glance. "And it's drywall, actually."

"All the rest of us were sick long before Shane was," Kyle replied, not even touching the drywall comment. "We're already immune."

Dad glanced back at him in disbelief. To my astonishment, it was Jody who piped up, her voice still small. "That makes sense. Having the sickness would give them antibodies that would make sure it doesn't—"

"So what would you suggest?" Dad interrupted. "We don't have anywhere else for you to stay."

"We'll go back to town," I responded. "Take one of the houses until he's better."

"But that's not safe!" Jody all but gasped.

"Neither's staying here if I'm going to get everyone sick." Shane pushed himself away from the table, looking like the only thing keeping him standing was sheer force of will.

"There are closer houses," you supplied. "Closer than the town. More secluded."

"But there are more of the dead," Jody said in her small voice. "They wander around out there, moving toward the town."

"We'll be fine." I gave her as much of a smile as I could manage. Kyle nodded his agreement, then met my gaze before he slipped quietly from the doorway. There was a low murmur of voices as he relayed the news to the others, and I heard what sounded like Cassidy muttering her agreement.

Dad scowled, but it wasn't really his decision. It was the best option for all involved—I'd get Shane set up and taken care of, we would be separate from your group but not completely isolated... and Dad would still get his conversation.

Kyle appeared in the doorway, nodding subtly at first Shane, then me. The others were unsurprisingly on board. We all liked the idea of, ironically, not being pinned in by those walls.

It's kind of an oxymoron if you think about it. We liked the safety of the walls, we just didn't want to be stuck inside. We didn't like feeling trapped. How do safe and trapped kind of feel like the same thing?

Maybe by that point we had just gone feral.

But we couldn't leave just yet, anyway, so I'm kind of jumping the gun. 

I shared a long-suffering look with Shane, which just made him grin, then I turned to Dad. "Well..." I sighed, crossing my arms, "we can't just leave right now anyway." I looked at Jody, softening my expression just to be rewarded by a friendly smile. "I'd like to get some things squared away to treat him if that's okay with you?"

"Absolutely." Her smile grew.

"We'll wait for Aaron and Vik to get back—"

"And Lisa," you added, making my gaze flick over to you. You raised an eyebrow, and I just shrugged. That made you furrow your eyebrows, possibly perplexed at how little I cared. 

"Sure." Then I looked at Dad, my expression as sour as my stomach. "Which means I suppose we can have that chat now."

"About time," he muttered, turning toward the door. He glared at Kyle, who finally gave him a little smirk before he stepped to the side. Dad motioned for me to follow him.

"I've been summoned to the principal's office," I muttered to Shane, who gave me a half-smile, lightly swatting my backside as I walked past him. I elbowed his shoulder, unable to stop a smile of my own.

You and Jody had not so subtly turned away, giving us what privacy you could, which I appreciated. As I left, I overheard you start talking to Shane about getting us whatever else we needed. 

By that time, I was beginning to think that maybe I liked you, just a little bit. But don't let that go to your head or anything.

After one last fortifying breath, I stepped back out into the waning afternoon light, squinting a little as the sun peeked just over the wall. Dad was already halfway across the compound, and I jogged over uneven ground to catch him.

He didn't even so much as glance sideways when I fell into step with him, so I decided to take the opportunity to look around. 

It was a nice place. Everyone looked pretty clean. Not too clean, but cleaner than we were, which of course really wasn't that hard a feat to accomplish. They also looked decently well fed. I saw patches of tilled ground, and others that were chock-full of vibrantly green plants. 

Everyone was working on something. I watched in fascination as a woman with her hair tied back in a blue bandana and some very impressive biceps poked at what looked like a coal fire, turning a crank that made heat billow up in translucent waves.

Another woman sat hunched over a pile of fabric, mending a tear in a pair of olive green pants. A boy of maybe twelve sat beside her, his tongue poking out in concentration as he worked at a blue shirt. Ten or eleven people were bent over in the gardens, weeding and watering and checking the plants.

The place positively hummed with energy. With life.

I saw a few grim faces, but mostly everyone was just focused on their respective tasks. After receiving a fair number of curious glances, I turned back to Dad and asked, "Where are we going?"

"Still impatient as all hell," he muttered. He gave me a sideways glance. "Why can't you just wait to get there?"

"Because I'm more interested in the destination than the journey," I answered dryly.

"Just like your mother." This he said under his breath, and I got the sneaking suspicion I was just supposed to let that slide. But he'd opened the goddamn can of worms.

"Speaking of Mom." My heart was beating hard in my chest—with fury, I realized after a moment. "Where is she? Shallow grave under the old apple tree? Or did you let her turn and just left her to wander around until she rotted down to nothing?"

I think the poison in my words shocked me just as much as it shocked him. His steps faltered for a second and he gaped at me before his expression turned to granite. Dad's stride lengthened, leaving me almost jogging to keep up with him.

He led me through a door leading into one of the other buildings. After a handful of steps, my hip slammed into the edge of what felt like a desk and I swore viciously. A match was struck and two oil lamps were lit this time.

"Close the door," Dad said coldly, not even reprimanding me over my foul language.

I rubbed at my surely bruised hip, scowling at the ridiculously heavy oak desk I could now see. Turning, I reached out and slammed the door shut, not caring what anyone outside thought. I stayed at the door for a long moment, letting my eyes close as I drew in a few deep breaths to calm myself.

If I went in already pissed, Dad would win the round. That's how it had always been. Cold calm got under his skin faster than any raging temper ever had, and I knew that. It's why we hadn't spoken in the last, oh... eight years before the dead started walking.

So I took a second and gathered myself before I turned to him. I was careful not to cross my arms, or let my shoulders curl forward. Looking defensive or submissive would just get his blood up. So I went to the far side of the room, still on my side of the desk, and started looking at the books filed neatly into rows.

Some titles were practical, like a few woodworking books and gardening how-tos. Others were just so plainly... Dad, that I couldn't help but scoff silently at them. Ulysses was there. War and Peace. Something either about or by Marcus Aurelius. Stuffy, pretentious volumes for a stuffy, pretentious man.   

Finally I turned back to him, raising an eyebrow. "Do I need to repeat the question?"

Dad's mouth twisted as he slowly lowered himself into the seat behind the desk. Glancing at the papers spread evenly across the surface, I found handwritten lists and accounts keeping track of what I assumed were important functions of your little society.

"You know your mother and I had been separated long before the outbreak," Dad said stiffly.

My only response to the non-answer was a snort.

"I didn't bring you here to talk about that."

"Shocker," I muttered, then leaned against the wall, loosely crossing my arms over my stomach. "What did you want to talk about then?"

Silence reigned for a moment as he just stared at me. His eyes lingered on the chain at my neck, but the tags were tucked under my shirt. Then his gaze went to my left hand, making me roll my eyes.

"The people you're with," he said. "Tell me about them."

I inhaled deeply through my nose. Tilting my head, I said, "What do you want to know?"

"How did you fall in with them?"

"Shane was a patient of mine." I carefully kept my voice and face completely neutral. "When the outbreak happened the Navy base I was working at shut down and he offered me a place to stay. Kyle's his brother. We all left the base together."

"Hmm." Dad pinned me with one of those shrewd gazes I'd so despised as a teenager. "How long after that until you started sleeping with him?"

I blinked twice because, I mean... really? I'm a freaking adult.

But two could play at this game and I could make this just as uncomfortable for him as he'd just tried to make it for me. Smirking, I said, "Not long. We'd been interested in each other before, and the world going to hell moved us right along. Lucky for me, I can't get pregnant." My smirk widened. "Maybe I should say lucky for him."

Dad shifted in his chair, clearing his throat as his gaze left mine to peer down at the papers on his desk. He'd never liked to talk about the accident. He'd been behind the wheel that day. 

I waited for the next question.

"He's military?"

Pretty sure I didn't like his tone already, I nodded. "A Marine," I clarified. "Kyle was in the Navy."

"A Marine," Dad said, distaste clear and present in his tone.

"And probably the only reason I'm not dead," I snapped. "We found Vik and Sacha pretty soon after. Danielle was with them." I couldn't bring myself to mention Sam. "Then we ran into Cassidy and finally Aaron, who's also a Marine."

Dad's lips pursed thoughtfully, a finger tapping against the top of the desk as he mulled over what I'd said. 

"So would you say your boyfriend is your people's leader?" Dad asked, making it clear that he was considering the thought that perhaps it should have been Shane he pulled in here instead of me. 

In fact, he would have if I hadn't happened to be his daughter.

"My husband prefers that we make decisions as a unit." I smiled slightly when he started at the word. "But for all intents and purposes, yeah. Shane, for the most part, is the shot-caller."

"For the most part?" 

"If he knows he's out of his depth, he doesn't mind taking orders instead of giving them." I bristled at the smug gleam that passed behind his eyes, but didn't say anymore.

What Shane could grasp that my father never could was that admitting when you don't know takes more balls than merely pretending that you do. 

"You said you left the base," Dad said, changing tack.

"Pretty much the night of the outbreak," I agreed. "Cities on the east coast went to hell pretty fast. What about out here?"

"Fast enough." Dad's expression grew grim. "I tried to get to Aria's house—"

I scoffed, shaking my head.

"Don't believe me if you want," Dad said. "Your mother and I might have had our differences—"

"Would one of those differences be the fact that you were screwing around on her?" I snapped, then shook my head. Chewing on my tongue to keep from saying anymore, I decided it didn't really matter. Mom was dead and long gone, no reason to set her rolling in her grave.

Dad sighed deeply. "That's not what I brought you here to talk about."

"Yeah, you've already made that perfectly clear." I resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of my nose in an effort to stave of a headache that was already brewing. "So what else do you want to talk about?"

Leaning back in his chair, Dad rested his chin on his fist. "So you left the base in..." He raised an eyebrow.

"Maryland." I wasn't surprised he didn't remember where I'd landed. Hell, maybe he didn't even know. Maybe Mom hadn't told him. "After that we ended up heading south. We came across a settlement."

I stopped there, not wanting to crack open that hornet's nest of emotion.

"Why didn't you stay?" Dad asked.

My left eye twitched a little, making my eyelashes flutter weirdly in my vision. "Didn't pan out," I managed. 

Dad took another moment to study me, and must have judged that it wouldn't be worth his time to push harder into that. "After that?" he asked.

"After that we just wandered, trying to keep fed." My eyes met his. "Keep safe. We were headed to Colorado when we ran into you."

"Colorado?" Dad said in surprise.

"Yeah." My voice was short. "We figured we'd... find some place out west. Less people before, less zombies now."

Dad just nodded, then tilted his head in thought. "And what are your plans now?"

That, admittedly, caught me by surprise. My arms loosened and fell to my sides as I stared at him. Then I shook my head, recovering. "Wait until Shane gets better. After that, I don't know."

"You won't stay?"

"Maybe," I replied, possibly too quickly. "It's not just up to me."

"So should it be Shane I talk to instead of you?"

I just sent him a dull glare in answer. Again, silence filled the space between us. But it grew too long this time. I moved toward the door, opening it before I said, "Unless there was anything else?"

"Not for the moment."

I managed one step out the door, before something important plucked at my memory. Turning back to him, I half-closed the door. Dad had already picked up one of the papers on his desk, and put his glasses on. He glanced at me over them, obviously impatient.

"As we were driving, we noticed something odd on the doors of some of the houses."

Dad just raised an eyebrow.

"Alphas and omegas. Know anything about that?"

He blinked once, and hesitated over the answer just long enough to make suspicion raise its ugly head. "No," he finally said. "I can't say I do. I'll make sure we look into it the next time we make a run."

"And when will that be?" I pressed.

"Not for a while." He used that tone, you know, that one that just rang with finality.

I itched to keep picking, to keep digging until I had my answers. 

But it could keep until Shane was back on his feet.

So I nodded, saw myself out and made my way back across the compound.