Shane more or less held his silence for the next two days. He would answer questions when we spoke directly to him, but mostly he was just quiet and I let him be. If that's how he needed to deal with what I'd done, fine, he could have at it.

I didn't really want to talk about it anyway.

What was done was done and I'd paid for it in blood and sweat. Besides, if he was mad, he was mad.

I don't know about you, but I know that when I'm mad, talking helps nothing. Sorry helps nothing. You stay angry until you run out of it. So I just left him to it.

The evening of the second day was when he finally snapped out of it. Kyle offered to take a look at my arm, but when he got up to do it, Shane stopped him. "I'll take care of it."

I looked up in shock to find Shane standing over me. I glanced at Kyle, who gave me kind of a sideways smile, then I nodded, not wanting to look at Shane. I knew he was still mad at me. There was no other explanation for his silence, and I wondered if he finally wanted to yell at me about it.

I kind of just wished he would, and get it over with.

"I'm gonna go get some more wood for the night." Kyle stood from where he'd been crouched over a small fire, and disappeared into the thick trees and colorful leaves.

We had steadily been working our way farther from densely populated areas, and were in a small wooded area on the outskirts of a town that'd had too much movement for comfort. So we'd decided to take shelter here for the night before moving on in the morning. Moving at night's not really the best idea.

Shane sat next to me, and started unwrapping my arm. I stayed quiet, just watching him pull gently at the knots Kyle had tied two days ago.

"Did you think I wouldn't listen?" Shane asked, his voice low and a little rough. He paused briefly in unwrapping my arm, and looked around through the trees.

I didn't answer, watching as the cut was revealed inch by inch. I didn't really know how to answer.

"Why did you just leave?" was Shane's next question, and something in his voice made me look up at him. His eyes were a dark blue in the falling dusk.

I shrugged and shook my head.

"Come on, Raleigh. You can do better than that," Shane admonished, undoing the last knot.

"Because you would have stopped me and we didn't have time for a debate. They were coming through the glass," I said coolly, inspecting the skin around the stitches. It was a little red, but just from irritation, not infection.

Shane shook his head, poking gently at the stitches, checking them. He got up and grabbed the eye drops Kyle had used to clean it the first time, and sat back down.

Taking my arm again, he unscrewed the cap over the nozzle and started spraying the line of stitches, the saline burning my still tender flesh.

Finally, I couldn't take the silence anymore. "So are you saying you wouldn't have stopped me?"

Shane's hands stilled for a moment and he looked up quickly, scanning the trees again. Eventually his gaze landed on me and he said, "Why do you assume I would have stopped you?"

"So... what?" I snapped, suddenly feeling defensive." Your problem is that I didn't ask your permission?"

He noticed when I avoided his question, but he didn't call me on it. Instead, he just answered mine. 

"A little, yeah," he answered honestly. "But mostly my problem was that there was another way to do what you did, but you didn't take a moment to discuss it and then this." Shane glowered down at the cut as he patted it dry.

"What other way?" I asked with exasperation. "You running instead of me?" I scoffed. "Not on your ankle. Not yet."

"We could have used the truck," Shane said quietly. There was no venom there. Not even any self-righteousness or arrogance. Just an option I hadn't even thought of in the heat of the moment.

I'd been so desperate to fix what I'd done, that I hadn't taken the time to think through any other options.

Shane glanced up at me, then looked down, wrapping my arm back up. "I know you wanted to fix it, Rals. I get it. But you can't just go off half-cocked with the first solution that comes to mind. My biggest problem was that you didn't take the time to be aware of what you had around you." Shane finished with my arm, but didn't let go of my hand. "You can avoid a lot of trouble by just being aware of your surroundings, Raleigh. By knowing what's happening around you. By knowing what you have around you."

Can't you guess Rule #14?

Yeah. Like Shane said: Just be aware.

He looked around again, checking our surroundings, driving the point home. Looking at me again, he said, "It was a decent plan, Raleigh. It just so happens that there was a better one available."

Now what in the hell do you say to argue with that?

Shane glared accusingly at my arm again, then started to say something, but I interrupted, "So that's why you couldn't talk to me for two days?"

Shane's eyes widened, startled and confused. "What?"

"I..." I stopped, not really sure about what I wanted to say. "You were angry at me. Because of what I did. Because I didn't talk it over with you. So you didn't talk to me. Because, apparently, when you're angry with someone, you turn into a functional mute."

He actually had the gall to laugh.

I clenched my teeth, but before I could start yelling at him — like you're supposed to do when you're angry — Shane said, "I was mad. A little at you, because you freakin' disappeared, then showed back up dripping blood. But mostly at me. Because I was the one who decided to try and stay."

"So..." I trailed off, confused and irritated. How in the hell was he supposed to know a bunch of zombies would show up? "You didn't talk to me, or Kyle, because you were mad at you?"

Shane shrugged. "I guess you could put it that way."

I shook my head. "You know that makes zero sense right? It wasn't your fault! It was mine! I drew the stupid things. I got Kyle trapped. You might have done something to help him and gotten hurt—"

Shane trapped my face in his hands, stopping my little rant of the thoughts that had been running around and around in my head since it had happened. Bringing my voice back down, I said, "The point is, is that it was my fault. Not yours. Not Kyle's. Mine. Mine."

Shane shook his head, smiling a little. "You always this hard on yourself?"

"How do you think I got out of PT school at the age of twenty-five?" I frowned at him. Of course I was being hard on myself. Why wouldn't I be? I always had been before, why would the addition of zombies make that any different?

Shane let go of me and turned to the fire, adding a couple twigs to the small flame. "That early or somethin'?"

I shook my head in bewilderment. Was he just trying to change the subject? 

If he was, I fell for it, hook, line and sinker. "Um. Yeah. Considering most people getting into PT school are twenty-four."

Shane added some more sticks to the fire. "Hmm. That right?" He didn't sound impressed, still nursing the flame. "So, what? You were some kind of genius in school?"

He looked at me over his shoulder, a small smile playing around his mouth, and I sighed. Now I was sure he was changing the subject. Shane doesn't really linger over stuff like that.

Honestly though, I let him get away with it. I was just happy to be talking to him again, and it was a huge relief to know that he wasn't actually angry with me. Or, at least, not as angry with me as I had thought him to be.

I shook my head when he sat next to me again, wrapping an arm around my waist. He shivered a little in a cool evening breeze, looking around again.

Don't you just love his ability to move on? Honestly he drives me insane with that sometimes.

"I don't know about genius," I finally answered, leaning into him a little. "I just pushed through classes as quickly as I could. Three semesters every year." 

I wasn't really sure how we had ended up talking about this. I probably should have been more mad at him, keeping me in suspense like he had. But what would that accomplish?

That's another apocalypse life skill: Learn to pick your battles, especially with the ones you love.

I don't think either of us wanted to keep harping on it anyway.

So I nudged him with my elbow, hissing when it jarred my cut. Shane stifled a laugh and I asked, "What about you?"

"What about me?" Shane said, looking behind us.

He turned back to me and I smiled. "In school? Were you a genius?"

Shane laughed, shaking his head. "Shit no. High school was, you know, easy, I guess. Mostly I was bored or I'd end up suspended because I'd get caught fighting some prick with a big mouth and bad opinions." Shane smiled and shrugged. "No. I, uh, I enlisted right on my eighteenth. Couple months of training, then I'm eatin' sand in Afghanistan."

"I bet your parents were just thrilled about that," I said, watching the shadows grow steadily longer, snuggling closer to Shane as it got chillier.

I looked up at him when he didn't immediately answer, and was surprised by the dark expression on his face. With a heavy sigh, he said, "Mom didn't love it, but she was... she was okay. I was happy so she was happy. Just being a mom right?"

I smiled at that. "What about your dad?" I asked. "Was he okay?"

Shane's shoulders tightened. He was quiet for a while, then he blew out a harsh breath through his nose. "No. My father he, uh..." Shane clicked his tongue. "He'd been raised by parents who were conscientious objectors during 'Nam."

Shane looked out into the trees, then down at me. "He told me not to expect a home to come back to if I was hell bent on being, I think his exact words were 'a paid murderer'. Said that, uh, that his son wasn't going to be a—" Shane cut himself off, a mixed look of disgust and long carried anger marring his handsome features. "That he wasn't going to claim a baby killer as his son. Since I'd joined the Corps you know? More or less disowned me the day I shipped out."

Shane laughed, the sound much too bitter for my liking. "I'd have loved to see his face when Kyle joined up two years later. 'Course, the Navy didn't have quite the connotation that the Marine Corps did for Dad."

I bit my lip, appalled, but he just shook his head, the movement sharp. "Dad and I never got along anyway. I mean, how could we? He'd been raised, you know, make love not war or whatever other hippie bullshit, and he ends up with this kid who couldn't stay out of a fight to save his life."

I was quiet after that, just watching the flames, resting my head on his shoulder. The last two days were all but forgotten under this sudden wave of knowledge. Shane had never struck me as the type to share something like that, and I liked that he had told me.

It also got me thinking.

See, the thing is, is that Shane hasn't really changed all that much. Sure he's a little harder, colder. Has a zero tolerance policy for aggressive behavior toward our group. But, overall, Shane's pretty much the same.

Really all he's ever been is a soldier. This world is just a different brand of war.

Some people are just like that though. They're just hardwired to be fighters.

Nowadays, that's about the only kind of person left with a few very rare exceptions.

That's another apocalypse life skill though, right? It's something that can be learned?

Maybe not.

Sometimes I'm inclined to believe that some people are the wolves, and some people are the sheep, and that's just the way they are.

If it's all the same to you, I'd rather be the wolf.