Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

You’re just Bro. Who gives a shit about last names? You look back over your shoulder and wave your hand saying, “Come on.” Dave quickens his pace to catch up with you and you put a hand around his shoulders even though you know you should be hugging yourself to keep out the cold. There’s nothing ahead of you two for a long time. An empty and cracked highway. Wind throws everything that’s dead across your path. Dave keeps his head turned to the left, his hood blocking the harsh air.

A while later Dave says, “I’m so tired.”

“Town’s just up ahead.”

“I’m tired.”

You check his eyes and sure enough they’re red around his irises from rubbing and he sways easily into the rush of wind. If you weren’t there to block it he’d have fallen over by now. You flip your backpack onto your front like some baby-carrier and then hoist Dave up onto your back.

“You’re getting big,” you say.

He says nothing because his head is already on your shoulder, his cheek squished. You reach back and tug his hood down more to keep his face safe, and then you continue forward. The sun will set soon, even if you can’t see it behind the constant overcast, and you want to find shelter before then, and you know you’re risking it by not stopping now to set up camp, but you’re confident you can carry Dave, yourself, and your supplies to an abandoned house before the cold sets in.

You wish you could say you were tired too whenever Dave gets exhausted. You’re the adult, though. You’d have killed yourself years ago if it weren’t for him, and you don’t regret that. You don’t mind holding your tiredness in. You don’t mind carrying him. It’s easier to get to the town in time when you feel his breathing on your ear.

You set Dave down on a couch that’s lost its color and spring, but your little brother continues sleeping nonetheless. You put your backpack down on the floor next to him before you start to search the house, even if you’re sure the place has been searched through by many others.

There’s empty tin cans on the floor in the kitchen; bones in the garbage. A dead generator. In the bedrooms there’s no clothes except for warm weather clothing. Tank-tops and dresses do nothing in this world anymore, but you do tear a dress down from a hanger because you could cut it up and use it to keep your hands or feet warmer, or to protect your face when the dry dirt of the world is blown up in whirlwinds.

The windows are broken in the bathroom. The medicine cabinet has been emptied except for some Q-tips and a tweezer. You take the tweezers. You don’t know why, but you turn the handles in the shower. There’s no water.

There’s no blankets in the house, but that’s okay. There’s a fireplace, and that’s what matters tonight. You lay on your back to check up the chimney and make sure it’s not full of dead animals or soot, but it seems clean. Dave is fast asleep. You try to be quiet as you destroy chairs in the kitchen to burn.

Dave wakes up when the sun is gone and the fire is strong. You found chopped wood a few houses down, and they’re extremely dry, which means you’ll be constantly keeping an eye on the fire, but heat is important.

You have a can of pears ready for Dave when he wakes up, already cut open. You take a sip of the syrup before handing it over to him with one of your forks. He slips off of the couch as he takes it from you, wanting to sit closer to the fire, and you watch him eat, and you don’t bother fighting him when he offers a pear out to you after he’s eaten one. You make him drink the rest of the juice in the can though. The fire makes him warm, and he takes off his blanket along with his coat that’s a size too big for him.

Later on Dave digs through his backpack and pulls out a few toys. A small horse and a plastic crow. He doesn’t say his dialogue aloud, but you know he’s making them talk and play in his head, and while he’s busy you get up and find a few broken nails in the kitchen and put them in the empty can of pears. You set it next to the front door, right under the doorknob. If anyone walks in on you two while sleeping, you’ll be ready.

You put another log on the fire and then grab Dave’s waist, tugging him back a little. “Not too close, you’ll melt your crow.”

He doesn’t reply, but he obeys.

Before you lay him down to sleep you make him drink some water. You pull the couch closer to the fireplace and then have Dave lay down, using his jacket as a pillow as you drape the blanket over him.

“What about you?” he asks as you tuck the blanket in under his chin.

“What about me?”

“You gonna sleep?”

“Yes, but I’m not tired yet. I need to keep an eye on the fire.”

“I can watch the fire.”

“No, no. You sleep.”

“Are you going to leave and do things while I sleep?”

“No. No, of course not. I’ll be right here, I promise.”

“Alrighty.”

You run your fingers back through his hair as he closes his eyes. Then you put more wood on the fire. It burns up hotter and you take your own jacket off. You organize things in your backpacks.

A few cans of food, a lighter, a pocketknife, a beer bottle full of gasoline that’s plugged with a cork on the top, some rope, a pair of scissors. There’s your tarp for when it’s raining, and you usually strap your one big blanket to the back of your backpack. There’s a few other things here and there, and you end up sadly leaving behind a box of matches. You knew they were ruined when you first grabbed them, and you need to learn to stop having hope in every little thing you find.

You look over your dirty hands and pick at grime under your nails. Dave is breathing softly with sleep now. The wind blows outside, causing some type of low whistle through the chimney. You throw two logs on the fire before you climb up onto the couch, surprisingly not waking Dave as you lay down behind him and pull him in close to your chest. You feel him breathe, and your own breath comes out in relief.

He walks all day with you. His hand sometimes holds yours, and then it slips away so that he can hold the strap of his backpack. You get out of the town and reach the highway where there’s nothing but trees and openness for miles and miles. You’re always checking over your shoulder. Always checking the tree line.

“Tired?” you ask.

Dave shakes his head no, continuing to trek along with you. Then he says, “Tell me something.”

“Something.”

“About the old world.”

“Ah. Hm… The sky was so very blue.”

“I know, you always say that.”

“I know, I just liked it.”

“Something else.”

“Okay, okay. Uhhh… We used to get lots of crows at our old apartment. Up on the roof. I used to go up there a lot, so they got real used to having me around, and sometimes they’d land only a foot away and just stare at me.”

“I want a pet crow.”

You chuckle and look at Dave. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

You make camp a little ways into the woods next to the highway. Dave helps you gather up branches and wood after you clear away dead leaves in the dirt. You start a fire and heat up beans over it, and then you give it to Dave. He eats half and then you eat some, but you give it back to him so that he can have the rest. You tell him you’re not hungry.

You watch him as he draws in the dirt with his finger and makes a barn and a paddock for his horse. This time he does the talking aloud, but it’s very soft.

You do lessons with him. You give him a stick to keep drawing in the dirt. You have him spell different words out. Then you both lay on your back and you point at the black clouds and teach him about space.

“Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune,” Dave recites.

“Good job.”

You draw the planets in the dirt for him. You remind him that it’s not too close to scale, but that you haven’t been in school for quite a while so he’ll have to bear with you.

“Are there places like us?” Dave asks.

“Hm?” You’re drawing the asteroid belt with the stick.

“You said there’s trillions and gajillions of stars in the universe,” Dave explains, “so are there any stars with their own planets?”

“Of course.”

“Are there planets like ours? Are there other people out there?”

“It’s a bigass world, kiddo. I don’t doubt it.”

“We could go to one. Would you be able to?”

“What do you mean? Like, take us both to a different planet?”

“Yeah. With trees and animals. There could be animals out there.”

You never answer his question. You poke your stick into your drawing on the ground, ruining Earth. Dave is looking up at the starless sky.

You feed the fire and tuck Dave in to sleep. You join him and hour later, pulling the tarp up over the both of you and tugging him to your chest where you can feel his breathing and his warmth. He stops shivering after a minute and you join him in sleep.

It rains all day long. You walk with Dave pressed against your side, the tarp over your heads. You haven’t passed a house or town or even a gas station in quite a while, but you suppose that’s better since there’s probably less people around then.

“I’m cold,” Dave murmurs into the scarf that’s covering his hands and nose.

He’s walking on the road, and you’re walking in the dirt alongside it. You can’t see where you’re walking, so you stare at your feet and make sure he’s on road, you’re on dirt. It’s the only way you’ll stay on track.

“Just a while longer,” you huff out.

“My feet are wet.”

“I know, hon. Just a little longer.”

He makes a small noise, and that’s it. No more requests or begging.

You know you need shelter, so very badly. So you make Dave walk even after the sun goes down. You’re so exhausted, you know you can’t carry him. He’s sniffling into his scarf, trying to hide his tears from you.

“Come on, hon. Come on,” you keep encouraging.

You find a barn finally and head inside. It’s empty. There’s a single body hanging on a rope, rocking from one of the beams.

“Don’t look,” you mutter while the rain pounds around you.

Dave does look though. He stares at the swaying dead man while you take his backpack off along with yours and start setting things up. Getting a fire going, shaking off the tarp, keeping an eye on Dave. He’s shaking and still staring at the dead guy.

“Why’d he do that?” Dave asks after you’ve started the fire.

“You know why,” you say.

“We won’t do that, right?”

“No, we won’t. Come here.”

He approaches you, his eyes tear-stained. You sit him down and take off his damp coat and then take off his shoes. You pull out the cloth you’ve stuffed in his shoes to keep his feet warm and spread them out by the fire so that they can dry. You set up your own bare feet by the fire and then hold Dave’s ankles and press his feet to your bare stomach under your sweater, hiding your flinch at the intense chill. He needs the heat more than you.

His shivering slowly stops and you gently rub your thumb on his feet, feeling the tough skin and blisters.

“I’m sorry,” you say eventually. “But we really needed shelter.”

“I know.”

“We can stay here tomorrow if you want. So we can rest our feet.”

“Do we have enough food?”

“Yeah,” you say.

“I hate when you lie to me. Because you told me I’m not allowed to lie to you. It’s not fair.”

“You’re right. You’re very right. I won’t lie. We only have a few more cans left. But we’ll be okay.”

“Is that a lie too?”

“No. It’s not.”

He nods and hugs himself. The fire crackles and the rain drums. The beam that the dead man is hanging on creaks softly.

Later on you cook up green beans over the fire, and while Dave eats he continues to stare at the hanged man. You wish you could know what’s going on inside his head. You can’t make him look away, though. This is the world now. You let him stare at the man’s bulged neck and stiff limbs and sunken eyes.

You keep an eye on the fire later while Dave starts to tilt over and doze off. You wrap him up in the blanket and then lay him down, his head in your lap. You run your fingers through his dirty, thin hair and massage his scalp until he falls asleep. You close your eyes and listen to the noises around you while your left hand twirls a strand of hay between your fingers.

You wake up to Dave gasping. You make your own gasp as you come back to yourself and reach out, your hand pressing to his chest. He’s alive. Now that that’s been established you roll over to where he’s lying next to the dimming fire and you push the blanket from his face.

“Shh, shh, what’s wrong? What’s wrong, kiddo?”

“I was hanged,” he whispers harshly. “I was hanged and you weren’t there.”

“I’m here. I’m here.”

You continue to shush him and pull him into your chest, the both of you wrapped up in the blanket. He cries against you and you rub his head and his back and swear to him that you’re there. That he’s okay.

The next day it still rains, so you stay with Dave in the barn through the day. You feed him half a can of beets and then drag a huge barrel from outside into the barn. It filled with rainwater overnight and you use it to wash your clothes and Dave’s clothes. While he’s butt naked you put one of your sweaters over him and remind him to watch out for any nails or sharp rocks, but he takes off to go exploring while you do the washing.

You keep an eye on him though. You stand with the blanket around your shoulders, the fire still burning. You’re using fallen beams to burn since everything outside is soaked. The frames of stalls were also rotten and falling apart, so you kicked them down and have them ready to burn too. You have the fire on a concrete stall floor so that you don’t burn the place down.

You hang all of the wet clothes up on the railing of the stall to dry. Thunder rolls in the distance.

“Dave?” you call out.

“I’m here,” comes the echoing reply. You follow the source of the voice and find that Dave’s climbed a large stack of hay bales. Surprisingly, he smiles at you. You look at him, wearing your own oversized sweater, pale and small in it, standing barefoot in dried hay in a dead world. And you smile back.

“I’m pretty high. I could climb to the roof,” he calls down.

“Sure could. But you don’t go any higher, okay?”

“What if there’s something in the top section? The lot?”

“The loft.”

“What if there’s something in the loft?”

“Just peek, okay? I still wanna see your feet. Don’t climb all the way up.”

“Okay.”

You stay where you are and wait as he crawls over the surface of some higher hay bales until he can stand up straight, his upper body disappearing into a crawl space that leads to the top of the barn. He turns around a few times as he searches the area and then drops to his knees so he can look at you again.

“More hay. I saw some big bags.”

“Big bags?”

“Can I go look?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I should.”

“It’s okay!”

“Okay. Don’t take long.”

He nods and then gets up again, jumping and disappearing up through the little space. You know you two are alone here, and you know he’s safe, but you still find yourself counting to yourself as you wait for him. His feet make little creaks over your head as he runs across the attic.

“Watch for nails!” you yell.

“I know!”

You wait. Another creak. And then:

“Corn!”

“What?” you shout.

“It’s corn! It’s all corn!”

Dave and you eat corn and beans later. The rain still pounds outside while you both have your shoulders pressed together, passing the cans of beans back and forth. You have two large bags of corn down in the stall now. The stuff is so dry, and it takes a while to boil into softness, but you can’t complain. Dave and you have been so hungry.

Dave has a spoon hanging out of his mouth. He’s looking at the body.

“You have a question,” you say.

“Do you think it hurts?”

“What? Killing yourself?”

“Mhm.”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“The way you do it. I’m guessing shooting yourself is very fast. You might not even feel it.”

“And getting hung?”

“Hanged. Maybe. If you fall hard enough, it might break your neck. If not, then you might be strangled for a while.”

“Do you think he was strangled?”

You stare at the body with him. Wind whistles through a crack in the wall and the body sways ever so often, pulling a whine out of the stretched rope. Then you say, “No. Maybe we should cover him or something.”

“I’ve seen bodies before.”

“Eat up.”

He stops staring at the dead man finally and tips his head back to slurp up the last of the beans.

That night, you sing to him. It’s still raining, but a thunderstorm comes over. You hold Dave close against your side while you lay back in the hay, the fire still thrashing. You run your hand through his thin hair over and over again, the strands feeling greasy and dirty, but it’s no different from yours. You watch his eyelids grow heavy, and he stares up at you while he dozes off. You keep singing softly until those pretty red irises are covered and his body goes limp.

In the morning the ground is wet, so you and Dave wrap up your already ruined shoes in extra fabric and plastic so that your toes won’t freeze. You wash his hair and your own in the trough of water before leaving and then collect what you can in your empty bottles. You carry the most weight.

Dave holds your hand when you first leave the barn. He peels his small feet out of mud puddles as you both struggle to reach the road again. You tug his hat farther down on his forehead as he pushes his face and nose into his scarf. The rain really cooled down the already freezing world.

You hold Dave against your side as you walk across dead leaves and ash that scatter the highway. Dave asks if you can spend the night in a barn again, but you see none. You can’t even find a town or a rural house, so you decide on a spot in the woods a little ways off the road, and the ground is still wet so you sleep on top of the tarp.

That night there’s an earthquake. The world started crumbling because of earthquakes. They happen so often that Dave doesn’t cry or panic from them anymore. He just flinches awake and presses himself against you while the ground jerks under you. Something deep in the universe rumbles, and even though you knows it’s just the earthquake it feels like those tectonic plates are scraping and slipping inside of your chest.

A dead tree falls somewhere with a bang and Dave just makes a harsh breath. He’s quiet and you’re quiet. Finally, the world stills and you take in a deep breath and pet your hand down Dave’s arm. “Go back to sleep.”

“Mm.”

So he does while you lay awake for hours, keeping him warm. You could find no wood for a fire. You’re freezing and you can’t feel your pinky toes. Dave’s breathing.

You find a city the next day. Dave holds your hand while you pass a highway bridge that goes over a rushing river. You pause for a few minutes with him while he weaves his fingers through the link fence that lines the old bike trail on the edge so that he can look down at the water that’s brown and kind of green. Anything but a dark and lively blue.

“There’s no fish,” Dave says over all that crashing water.

“No, I don’t think there are anymore.”

“If there was, would we eat them?”

“Maybe.”

“I wouldn’t. They’re just trying to make it like us, right?”

You put your hand on his head, pulling his hood up over his hat. “Right.”

In a grocery store with broken doors, Dave and you find a grocery cart. It’s small, because the store is small, but it’ll be good for carrying more things. Dave watches you while you check the wheels and make sure they’re not too worn down or rusty. You look over at him, kneeling on the tiled floor, and he looks thin in his big jacket.

“Come here,” you say.

He shuffles closer and you pick him up, putting him in the cart. He holds the front and you begin to push him around the store. Slowly at first and then jogging and making car noises, screeching when you take tight turns. Tight turns that make Dave squeal, and when he turns his head you see him smile. His mouth open, lips pulled back. Giggling. It’s beautiful.

When you get tired you just walk him slowly up and down the aisles that are full of dust and empty of food. It was a while after the earthquakes started and it was apparent the world was ending that the looting and riots and chaos began. Food and medicine stolen from stores and taken from innocent people. You remember boarding up your door back at the apartment and hearing looters talk about how to break in and kill you so that they could steal everything. Dave had only been three and napping, having no idea that you two were close to possible death.

You push the cart into the back of the store that’s usually blocked away. There’s rotten, empty boxes and empty shelves and more empty carts. All the food is gone. You find a mug sitting on a little wooden table and put that in the cart with Dave and your backpacks.

“Office,” Dave says.

“Hm?”

He points, and sure enough there’s an office. You push him over to it and then turn the handle, but it’s locked. You move around to the side to peer through the large two-way mirror, cupping your eyes as you press your face up to the glass.

There’s food inside. Food and a few jackets and at least five different pairs of shoes lined up. Someone is living here. A heater and sleeping bags, pans and cups. Guns. Two rifles, leaning on the wall, and a box of bullets under the table.

“We should go,” you say, and you go back to the cart.

“What’s in there?” Dave asks.

“Someone lives here. We can’t be here.”

“Maybe they can help us.”

“I know. But we’re not like the people who steal other’s things. We should just leave them alone, okay? This is their home.”

“Okay. Because we’re nice, right?”

“Yes we are, kiddo. We’re nice people.”

Dave nods and you push the cart towards the back door that used to be used for stocking and loading the semi-trucks that would come once a week. You try to imagine some teenager working their way through high school, wearing an apron and stocking boxes of cereal. As much as teenagers hated their jobs, the same way you did, you miss it. Because there was food everywhere, and other teenagers to talk to and chat with and joke with.

You push the door open and drag the cart out behind you. Against the back of the grocery building there’s a large freezer, and there’s a hum coming from it. It’s actually working.

When you walk towards it Dave says, “Bro, that’s theirs.”

“I know. Don’t worry. I just want to see. Maybe if there’s a lot they won’t mind sharing just one little thing.”

“Because maybe they’re nice like us?”

“Exactly.”

There’s a lock on the freezer, but it’s undone. You slip it from its loop and then push the top open.

And then you gag and drop it closed again.

“What is it?” Dave asks. He’s standing up in the cart.

“Nothing. It just smells bad. There’s nothing in there.”

“How weird!”

“I know.” You smile at him, even though you want to throw up.

You let Dave see bodies that have been hanged, but this is different. You don’t know if you’ll ever tell him about the frozen human body in that box. One was young and naked and fully intact, looking like they were sleeping, curled up on the floor. They were using bags as a pillow. Plastic bags, filled with cut up parts of another human.

You grab the cart and look up towards the road again.

There’s people there. Three of them, walking towards the store.

“Hey, is that them?” Dave waves at them.

“No,” you blurt. “Dave, put your head down. Dave, put you fucking head down!”

He whimpers at you, but he obeys and curls up in the cart. You drag it back inside the grocery store and move quickly, but you don’t run because you don’t know if the people actually saw you, and you don’t want to terrify Dave anymore. He’s already so scared, and no one his age should be this scared unless it’s from an innocent nightmare about ghosts or monsters under the bed.

The doors are opening behind you, and that’s when you run. There’s yell behind you, and Dave’s gone frozen in the cart, just like the frozen girl in the freezer. You weave through a few aisles, trying to somehow confuse them. They’ll search the whole store unless they think you’ve left…

You stop and rip Dave out of the cart, throwing him over your shoulder, and pick up only one of your bags and your sword. You grab the cart’s handle and give it a very hard shove so that it rolls and smashes into the front doors, shattering glass and giving the image that you’ve bolted out. You listen to the strangers yell and run towards the front door while you try to match their footsteps and rush farther into the grocery store and into a supply closet.

You put Dave down and pull the door closed. It’s pitch dark.

“Bro. Bro.”

“Shh!”

You put a hand over his mouth and sit down in the corner, leaning on a few brooms. Dave’s trying to breathe hard, so you loosen up on your grip over his mouth and listen. You listen for a long time and Dave’s crying quietly, only because you can feel his tears touching your hand, and you pull it away completely after a while, and he’s silent. He knows to be quiet now. Even if he doesn’t know what’s going on, he knows there’s danger.

Then you hear the footsteps. A few sets of them. You give a very, very soft shush to Dave, holding him close to your chest and he lets out a whimper before going quiet again.

You wait. The footsteps are a few aisles away.

“Check the bathrooms,” a man says.

You breathe slowly and calmly, even though you’re not calm at all. There’s light coming in from the bottom of the door. Then there’s a shadow. Someone is standing in front of the door.

Can you do it? Can you convince yourself that it’s out of love?

You hold your sword and you press the blade to your little brother’s throat. His pale, little neck. His tears are hot on your blistered and scarred hand that’s clasped over his mouth.

This is because you love him. This is because he is your world. He is your world, and you will love him and care for him by slitting his throat and not letting him die frozen in a freezer. You won’t let his precious limbs be food. You won’t let those little fingers that you’ve held every day be crunched on as some filling. This is now how you let him go out.

Dave lets out a muffled sob into your hand. The shadow moves a little, and you hear empty shotgun shells clatter and tink across the floor.

You bury your face in Dave’s hair and breathe him in. You think about the day he was born, the day you first held him, about all the times he’s smiled and shared food with you.

You can do it, because you love him. In the afterlife, he’ll thank you, oh God, you hope he can forgive you.

Your hand is shaking, and you’re ready to do it, you’re ready.

The footsteps walk away when someone calls out, “Check the back room again!”

All of the footsteps run back to the stocking room. You gasp and shove the sword down in your belt, pull the backpack up on your shoulder, scoop Dave up under your arm, and slip out of the door. The main grocery area is empty. You try your best to make your footsteps light as you rush to the main entrance, hop over broken glass, and then run. You just run.

Dave is sobbing, bouncing in his grip under your arm. The backpack you left behind in the grocery cart is gone and stolen. You have Dave’s backpack with you. He just keeps crying and wailing while you desperately shush him over and over again as you just run. You run behind buildings and through backyards, doing anything to put distance between you and those strangers.

You finally stop running when you find a shed in someone’s backyard. You shove the door open with your back and then put the backpack down and collapse to your knees, clutching Dave to your chest.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay,” you mutter to him.

He keeps sobbing and you hold him and rock him, kissing his wet cheeks and petting his dirty hair.

“I love you so much, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Dave, I love you so much. I’m here. It’s okay.”

You’re crying too, but you can’t sob or give too much notice. You have to be strong for Dave.

There’s only a pink line across his neck. You rub your thumb over it and then go back to clutching him and you sway while he weeps and whines into your jacket. You sway and hum until he goes limp with exhaustion.

Dave holds your hand, walking down an empty street. It’s been a while, and his eyes are red from his irises and not from crying. He hasn’t spoken since what happened. You both have only shared a can of bacon and beans since then, and it’s been two days.

It’s a cold day. There’s a very gentle snow sifting down.

What’s the point? What are you two looking for besides a warmer area down south? What will you do when you get there? Look for more food? Watch Dave grow up and not understand you when you talk about dead celebrities, or about old music? He’ll grow up not knowing what grilled cheese is, and imagine pictures of dogs and cats instead of real dogs and cats when you mention them.

What are you doing?

You camp underneath a tall bridge. The river rushes farther down and you kick dirt and rocks around until you can make level ground to set up your tarp and get a fire going. When the sun is gone and the fire is strong, Dave gets up and starts looking at graffiti that’s all over the pillars that hold the bridge up. There’s only a can of chili left in Dave’s backpack. The rest of your food and supplies were taken by those strangers back at the grocery store so all you have right now is your lighter in your pocket, along with your pocketknife. Your one katana, one blanket, one tarp, the corked beer bottle that’s still half full of fuel, one canteen of water, extra rags for blocking out dust or for wrapping your feet, a roll of gauze, an expired tube of Neosporin, a wad of thick string, two of Dave’s children books and his two toys, the crow and the horse.

It’s not much, but it will last you until you can stock up again. You’re thankful that you even survived the ordeal back there.

“Don’t go door far, Dave,” you call out.

You get the top off the can of the chili and put it on the fire before turning around to look for Dave. He’s looking up at a pillar that’s fifty percent beautiful art and fifty percent angry writing. Spray paint saying “they lied” and “it’s the end” and “kill yourself now.”

“I can read these,” Dave says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I’m good at reading. That one says ‘save the children.’”

“Yeah. It does say that.”

“What’s that?” he asks, hand pointing at graffiti that’s very high up the pillar.

“That’s… that’s an elephant. You know what that is.”

“The long nose?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.”

“Come back here, kiddo.”

He obeys and climbs over rocks until he slips down beside you in front of the fire. You share your blanket with him, pulling him in against your side before you go back to shifting some of the logs on the fire and then turn the can of chili that’s making light pops from the heat.

“Bro.”

“Hm.”

“Were you going to kill me because you didn’t want them to eat me?”

You swallow and don’t speak. You wish you had something to busy yourself with, but there’s nothing around since you’ve lost all of the main supplies that are in your backpack. He’s getting bigger, though. This is his world now.

You reach over, rubbing his head and petting his hair down.

“Yes,” you say.

He stares at the fire and you tug his hat farther down his head. Then he says, “I know. So it’s okay.”

“Okay,” you say, but you want to cry. You want to apologize a million more times.

You share the chili with him and then pin edges of the tarp under some of the rocks until you make a shelter next to the fire. You put a new pile of logs on the fire so that it’ll last a while and then share your one blanket with Dave under the tarp, holding him to your chest and pulling his hood up, your hand spreading on his chest so that you can feel him breathing.

In the morning you walk with Dave towards the next town. You can’t risk not having supplies. You don’t have any food left.

You share the canteen of water with him and wish you had that canteen and your backpack. You also wish you hadn’t held a sword to Dave’s neck.

You pass a park and Dave asks if he can play on the swings.

“Are you sure? You look tired, kiddo.”

“I’m okay,” he says and already jogs away.

You follow him, checking over your shoulders before giving him your attention. He deserves moments like this after everything you’re putting him through.

How much more can you put him through until one of you snaps?

“Push me!”

“Okay, okay. Keep your voice down.”

Dave kicks his legs back and forth. He’s getting big, and he never learned how to properly swing like you did way back in elementary school. You give him a few pushes to start him off and then you sit in the swing beside him that’s full of rust, but it still works. His swing creaks loudly every times he goes back and forth.

“Tuck your legs in,” you say, and you do it yourself, starting to swing lightly. “Okay, now stretch them and lean your body, kiddo. There you go, look at you. You’re doing it by yourself.”

He makes that smile that heals the world, going back and forth, back and forth. The clouds are still thick overhead, but you can see the spot where the sun is. It’s the thinnest the clouds have been in a very long time.

While Dave swings, you walk around the park and think about when your parents used to take you to the park when you were Dave’s age. You put your hands on your knees and then bend over, looking down into a crawl tunnel, and your hand goes over your mouth and nose to block out the horrible smell. There’s a body inside, two of them. A dead woman, only in pants and a tank top, and a dead baby wrapped in her jacket.

You drop to your knees, still covering your nose. You muffle a sob, or a gasp. You just muffle pain.

“Bro!”

You cough into your fist and blink back tears, making sure your voice doesn’t crack. “Yeah, kiddo?”

“What’re you doing?”

“Nothing. Keep swinging.”

You hear his feet scrapping the ground through so that he can stop swinging and join you.

The baby looks like it died recently. The mother probably died of cold overnight, leaving the baby for a few days. It was fresh…

You’d rather starve, though. If you die, it’s with your morals.

“Bro?”

“Dave, stay right there,” you say, holding your hand out towards him when he approaches you.

“Is it another dead person?”

“Yes. Stay there. We need the clothes.”

“Is that mean?”

“They’d want us to. They are good people. If you died, wouldn’t you want another kid to use your jacket for warmth since they’re cold?”

He nods, hugging himself. You nod back at him and then crawl into the tunnel, holding your breath and forcing yourself not to cry or throw up whatever emptiness is in your stomach as you gently unwrap the jacket from the baby’s body, along with an extra sweater. The sweater is pink and purple and has a small cat patch on the front. You take the mother’s hat and your hand is shaking almost violently as you brush blonde hair from her pale cheek that used to be a dark color. It feels wrong leaving the baby naked, so you ask Dave to give you his sweater under his jacket.

You swap them since the lady’s sweater and jacket seem newer and warmer. You give Dave the new sweater and jacket. The women had a very small body and they fit Dave well, even if they’re a little big, and you use his old ripped and worn sweater to wrap the baby up that still moves easily as if it’s just a doll. It was a girl. Her eyes are open. Irises of lavender, unique like Dave’s fiery eyes.

You wrap her up in her mother’s arms again and then get out of the tunnel, taking the women’s shoes off. You have Dave try them on and if you tie them up tight enough they fit him well. You keep the shoe strings from his old shoes and then leave then on the ground.

“Let’s go,” you say.

“Where are we going?” Dave asks.

“Let’s find a house. We need more stuff and a place to sleep.”

“I mean in the end.”

“The end?”

“Yeah. Is all this bad stuff gonna stop? Like, will we find a really nice place with grass? Or flowers, like my books. With nice people. Where no one eats each other and there’s cake and stuff.”

You stop walking and Dave holds your hand, waiting for you to lead the way. You look at the sky and gasp gently, doing everything you can to not sob. You can’t break down right now. You’re Dave’s rock, his protector, his leader, his teacher. You can’t fall apart. Find a house. Just find a house.

You squeeze his hand and start walking again. Then you say, “Let’s practice your spelling. Can you spell pear?”

He looks back at the playground before he says, “P-A-I-R.”

“Good job. I was thinking of the food.”

“P-E-A-R?”

“Good job, kiddo. Good job.”

You sleep in a house with a fireplace. Dave sleeps while you search nearby houses for food. Every five minutes you go check on him though, because you’re so terrified someone will take him and use his preciousness for food.

You find no food, though. He’s getting so hungry. You’re obviously starving, but his smaller body needs all the nutrients it can get, but you’re too nervous to search farther from the house, so you head back to see Dave still safe on the blanket in front of the fire. You put a new log on it and pull Dave’s head into your lap. You hum until you’re not scared.

In the morning while you’re packing things up into your single backpack, Dave calls for you from the kitchen. You pull the backpack onto your back and see him standing in the doorway that leads into the garage that you never searched in yesterday, and you hold a hand on his back while you enter it.

There’s a van in there, dark blue and full of rust. You check around the shelves first and start picking up some tools you may need. You find a second backpack hanging up on a hook and start putting things in there, carrying both backpacks for now until you can separate your supplies and make Dave’s backpack lighter for him to carry. He’s looking around the garage for something, pushing boxes and shoving against heavy shelves. You leave him to his searching and continue looking for food, or a weapon.

You dig through a box of scrap metal and wires, hoping to find something useful on the bottom. Dave taps your shoulder.

“What is it?”

He holds out a key.

“What’s this?”

“Found it taped under the bumper of the van.”

You smile at him and kiss his cheek as you stand up. “Great job.”

Sure enough, the key fits into the slot for the van, unlocking the door. You unlock every door and then climb into the front seat and start digging through the glove compartment and pulling down the sun visors. You find a pen and a broach that’s pinned up. You take it down and rub your thumb over the metal that’s in the shape of an angel, a road wrapped around it, with a quote on it that says “Never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly.” It doesn’t say who the quote is from.

You pin it back up and flip the sun visor back in place, not caring to read it again. In the glove compartment you find actual gloves though. Real ones made of deerskin, new looking. You leave behind the ones that were ripping on your fingers and pull those on.

“Bro, there’s a kit,” Dave says.

You look in the rearview mirror. Dave is holding up a small bag for you to see. You crawl into the backseat with him and unzip the bag. It’s a kit that’s supposed to be used when your car is trapped in the cold. A blanket and granola bars, a bottle of water, an emergency Trac phone, three cans of food with peel-back tops, a wireless phone charger, and a first aid kit with Band-Aids, disinfectant spray, sterile gauze in wrappings, and thread with a needle.

You put almost all of it in your new backpack, telling Dave he did a great job again. You can’t find anything else too important in the car besides some kids toys. While you search the front of the van again, Dave crawls up into the passenger’s seat holding onto a stuffed animal of a dirty, white bunny.

“Can I keep this?” he asks. “Do you think that’d be okay with the old owner?”

“You can keep it,” you say, checking under your seat for anything else. There’s just an old umbrella. “He’s gonna need a good owner.”

“Okay. Put the key in the hole.”

“Hm?”

“Put the key in the hole and turn the van on.”

“Dave, the gas was probably already taken from the van.”

“I know. Just try.”

“Okay.” You sit up in your seat and get the key again before putting it in the key and turning it. It grinds and Dave covers his ears. You try again. On the third time the engine rumbles and the needles shoot up, bounce a little, and then settle down. The tank is half full, holy shit.

“Want to go for a ride?” you ask Dave.

You drive all the way to the next city, Dave buckled up next to you. He hasn’t been in a moving vehicle since he was an infant and he just keeps smiling, looking out the window and then up at the thick, gray sky. You can’t see where the sun is behind it. When it starts to rain, the windshield wipers work well and Dave’s lulled by the sound until he sags in his seat, a granola bar falling from his lips and hitting his lap. You smile.

You park off of the highway and fold down the back seats, spreading out a blanket so that you and Dave can lay down. The heat is still trapped in the van so you both sit in your sweatshirts for a while sharing a can of peaches. You read one of Dave’s books to him and then teach him a little history, but it’s more like a story as he lays down, his head on that stuffed bunny. When you finish your story, he’s asleep.

You stay up a while and organize all of your supplies and then glance out the windows, as if someone dangerous might be out there. You pull a blanket up over Dave and then lay with him, your hand in his hair as you fall asleep.

You wake up in the middle of the night, needing to relief yourself. Your eyelids are heavy as you drag yourself out of the van with a yawn and go into the woods by the highway. When you’re done you stretch out your back, staring at the sky.

A sky full of bright, bright stars. A completely clear sky.

You rush to the van and throw open the back of the van, giving your sleeping brother a shake.

“Dave! Kiddo, get up, look at this.”

He groans and sits up, rubbing his eyes.

“Dave, come here, look. It’s the moon and the stars, come here.”

He crawls to the edge quickly and you pick him up, holding him on your hip. It’s cold and your breaths come out in puffs of white, but neither of you mind. Over your head is a completely clear sky, showing a wide, wide view of millions and millions of stars. The moon is a quarter moon, the sun making it shine brightly.

“There’s so many!” Dave cries out.

“I know. Look here, follow my finger hon. Look there, you see that? It looks like a spoon. See the cup?”

“Yeah, there’s the handle! Is that the Big Dipper?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“The moon?” he asks, pointing.

“Yeah, that’s the moon.”

“It looks like someone took a bite out of it.”

“No, see how we have a shadow on our backs because the moonlight is on our fronts?”

“Oooooh. The sun is on that side and the dark side is the moon’s shadow.”

“That’s right, kiddo. You’re so smart.” You pause and then hike him up more on your hip and smile. “You’re right though. It does look like someone took a bite out of it.”

“Like the peach slices.”

“Just like the peach slices.”

You look at Dave’s face. The freckles on his cheeks are lit up and he stares in wonder, his pupils trying to memorize every star as quickly as he can, because you know it won’t be long before the clouds come back and hide your view of space for another few months or years. You brush a knuckle down his cheek and he ignores the touch, too captivated with the sky.

“You’re a god,” you say.

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Look, follow my finger again. This one is supposed to be a dragon called Draco.”

His eyes go back to the sky as you teach him what constellations you remember. Your own education is failing you, but Dave doesn’t care. He listens to anything you say, and when you don’t know the name of a shape, Dave names them himself and he makes up a history and story for that shape. He’s already preparing for the new world.

When you reach the next city, you see Dave grow up. It scares you, but you’re relieved too. He helps you search houses and sheds. He doesn’t touch toys, but he grabs things like tools and supplies.

Your morals rub off on him. Dave and you find a body in a child’s room. Dave takes some of her socks for himself, but then he winds up a carousel toy that plays a lullaby and he puts it on the bed next to the body before he holds your hand and you both leave together. You both sleep downstairs next to a fireplace and Dave sleeps facing you instead of pressing himself to your chest.

His baby teeth are all gone and soon enough his jaw is going to square out and you touch his cheek, praying you did everything you could.

You drive until the van runs out of gas. You spend the night in it. Then you both get out your backpacks and start walking under the cloudy sky to the next town. You pass a dead body on the road and Dave helps you check the area for supplies, but someone already looted the man. He’s decomposing and naked.

“I would have given him pants,” Dave says. “Or something.”

“Me too,” you say.

He holds the bunny by its ear while you both keep walking. You ask if he wants you to carry him, but shakes his head and says he’s fine. He’s as tall as your ribs now.

In the city, you and Dave find a man and woman. They look terrified to see you, the two of them standing in the doorway of a library. They’re the ones with a gun. It’s in the man’s belt. He holds the woman to his side, and they look ready and scared to defend themselves.

Then Dave yells, “I’m Dave!”

You shush him and pull him to your side.

“I’m being friendly,” Dave says.

“Just keep going. Let’s leave them alone.”

“Do you want food?” Dave calls to them.

“We can’t afford to share. We don’t have a lot.”

“They look hungry.”

“We’re all hungry.”

You tug him along and walk away from the couple. Dave raises his hand, waving at them. The woman smiles and waves back at him and you see her start to cry.

Under an old parking garage next to a fire, you cut Dave’s hair and you let him cut yours. He helps you boil water from rain water and you both split a can of tuna. You use scissors and cut down his fingernails and toes. He walks to the edge of the parking garage, looking up at the sky to check for stars, and comes back when there’s nothing but darkness.

When you wake up, someone is kicking your leg. You grunt and rub your wrist on your eyes until you hear a whimper.

There’s a stranger at your little camp site. He has a kitchen knife, and it’s at Dave’s throat, and he’s holding your little brother by his hair.

“Give me everything you have,” he says.

You’re about to throw up. Dave is crying quietly. Blood is rushing to your face and your jacket feels like it’s soaked in your sweat, you’re so warm, and the morning is so cold. The man’s face looks like it’s been sunburned more than a few times even though you know the sun hasn’t really shown itself that well in years. He’s missing three fingers, probably half of his teeth, and it looks like his eyelids could come off easily like a flower petal. His clothes are as dirty as your own, but he has no supplies. They were probably taken.

“Okay,” you say. “Okay. Give him back. And you can have anything.”

Dave sobs. The stranger’s hand loosens on his hair and then grips tightly again. “The backpack,” he demands.

“Give me my brother.”

“The backpack!”

You pick it up and toss it towards his feet. He puts it on his back, the hand holding the knife to Dave’s neck not pulling away. Then he points at the cans next to the fire.

“The food.”

You roll them to him and he puts those in the backpack next. Your katana is under your blanket, but you can’t risk him killing Dave when you pull it out.

“The other backpack,” he says.

“You can’t leave us with nothing,” you say. “Please, I’ve got a fucking kid. Are you going to threaten to kill him and then leave him with no food?”

“It’s what happened to me!”

He doesn’t want to be doing this. He’s crying, and his hand is shaking on Dave’s neck. You wonder if Dave is thinking about what happened back at the grocery store. The way you almost killed him to save him from being fucking eaten, and now a man who just wants to eat is going to kill him if you don’t give him everything you have. Fucking Christ.

You toss him the other backpack and he hangs a strap on one arm.

“Your jacket,” he says.

“Give me my fucking kid.”

“Jacket!” The knife presses under Dave’s jaw.

“Sir,” Dave says.

“Dave, don’t speak.”

“Sir, I’m sorry you’re hungry,” Dave says with a whimper. “I’m sorry. Maybe we can share with you.”

The man gulps, gasps, and then pulls on Dave’s hood, dragging him away from you. “I’ll let him go when I’m at the road.”

“You’re a fucking liar,” you spit out. “You’re going to kill him. Eat him.”

“Shut the fuck up. Don’t you follow.”

You step back like you’re going to stay where you are, shoving your hands in your pockets. The man is so far gone in the head that he accepts this easily and starts to drag Dave back with him while your thumb opens up your pocketknife inside of your jacket pocket. When the man turns enough, his arm blocking Dave’s face, you take the risk.

The knife spins through the air, tip over handle, and the man starts to yell, and it turns into a scream when the blade embeds itself inside his eye. It’s not far enough in to kill him, and when he falls screaming in pain, he drags Dave down with him. Dave scrambles away with his own yell, but the man grabs at his jacket to drag him back.

You have your katana and you run over, jumping onto the man who’s dropped his knife, but he’s got his hand yanking on Dave’s hair, his other hand scratching at your face, and you don’t care because you have the blade of the katana going across his throat until you and Dave are both sprayed with blood.

He lets go of Dave’s hair and he stops reaching for your face. You pant heavily, eyes wild, and he chokes and gurgles under you, chest stuttering until his one good eye rolls back and he goes limp.

Dave is on his hands and knees, crying. You start checking the man’s pockets. You find one bar of food in his pocket and a picture of a family of four in his pants pocket. You put it back and then stand, taking your knife out of his eye, wipe it on the man’s jeans, and put it back in your pocket. You grab Dave’s arm, dragging him up and making him put his backpack back on.

“Let’s go,” you say. “Come on, let’s go.”

He’s crying and moving with you on autopilot. You get your things, roll up the blanket, and you still drag Dave with as you both leave. He stops crying after twenty minutes. You find a house to stay in for the night. You drop your things and hold him in your lap using a damp cloth to clean the blood from his face and hair.

Then you start crying and tell him you’re so sorry you’re a monster and he hugs you around the neck and pets your hair.

A few days later you’re walking with Dave next to a river. It’s been quiet a while and Dave is watching the waves. Then he says, “You’re not a monster.”

“Killing someone fucks you up, Dave.”

“Did you really think he was gonna kill me?”

“I really think he was. He would have done it to me, but you were awake before me and I would have fought more ‘cause I’m bigger and stuff. So he needed to threaten you so that I would obey.”

“’Cause you love me so much.”

“Yes.”

“It’s okay.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re worried that I’m scared of you.”

“Yeah, I am.”

“It was scary. I’m very scared. But not of you.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Do you believe in mermaids?”

“What?”

He points at the river. “Think there’s mermaids in there since the fish are all dead?”

“I think… that you should believe in things.”

“All right.”

On the way to the next town you both are lucky. You find a house in the rural land full of dead crops that has food down in the basement, hidden under boards of wood. You suppose someone hid it for later and never came back. Probably dead.

You pack up the food and Dave helps you search the barn attached. The trough is full from the night’s rain and you both take baths and warm up by a fire after you refill your lighter. You check the car and pick-up truck on the land for gasoline but it’s all been taken, and what’s left has dried away.

You both sleep on a folded out futon. It’s not too cold that night, but you both share the blankets and use some body heat between your jackets.

“We had a couch like this in our old home,” you mutter towards the ceiling.

Dave is already asleep, his head on your shoulder.

While walking towards the city the next day, you have lessons with Dave. Survival lessons. You teach him about filtering water and making it safe to drink. You teach him about how long you should cook up food to make sure that you’ve burned it up enough to eat it safely. You teach him about hiding your supplies, how to ration food, what to use to sharpen a weapon.

Dave interrupts you and says, “I hear something.”

You stop talking and realize you hear it too. You both stop walking. You’re about to pass across a bridge that takes the highway over a rushing river. Down the highway on the other side is the town you’re both trying to reach.

The sound you hear was covered up by the water below. You turn around and see it. A large pick-up truck roaring down the road. There’s two men in the back, and one fires a gun over his head, causing Dave to flinch and hold your sleeve. There’s another man driving and one in the passenger’s seat, and the ones in the back are laughing. When you meet eyes with them, the man on the left, holding a rifle, points his finger at you and then pretends to take a bite out of an invisible chicken leg.

“Run,” you say. “Run, Dave, run.”

You’re holding his hood, shoving him along as you both take off running down the highway. It’s too big, and the truck is driving too fast. Your heart races and your boots slam on the cement while Dave’s smaller feet do their best to keep up with you. He gasps and makes a whimper beside you.

A glance over your shoulder shows that the truck is gaining on you. They could shoot you from here, but they don’t.

They want you alive. The meat on your bones isn’t any good to them if you’re rotten by the time they get back to wherever they’re living.

They’re going to catch you.

You only have three choices right now.

One: Stop and grab Dave. Tell him how much you love him and slit his throat. Try to slit your own. If not, they grab you and slowly eat you, one leg and arm at a time.

Two: Just keep running. See where it gets you.

You choose number three.

You and Dave are halfway down the bridge. The truck has just gotten on the bridge. In five seconds they’ll screech to a stop next to you two and beat you down until they can drag you into the bed of that truck. They might use Dave. Eat you first and touch him.

You pick Dave up and clutch him to your chest. You take a right and flip one leg and then the other over the railing that separates the sidewalk from the road.

“Don’t let go of me, hold onto my backpack straps, don’t you dare let go no matter what happens, take a deep breath and hold it, I love you so much.”

Your lips are on his ear, and he obeys, clutching around you. But he yells.

“No, no, I’m scared!” he cries. He knows what you’re doing. He’s too smart now.

“Don’t let go!”

“Bro!”

The truck screeches to a stop behind you. The men are getting out, and they would catch you if you hadn’t just jumped off of the bridge.

The air is harsh and cold and Dave lets out a yell by your ear. You both spin in the air once and you wrap your arms around your little brother who’s getting too big, and you clutch him with all your might.

The water is cold. When it soaks your clothes, it reaches through the arms first. Your face is being pricked by a thousand needle tips and your eyes are stinging from having dirty water rushed at them while you desperately look around to find the surface. All of the water is dark, and you see bubbles from your breath.

Dave is still in your arms. You haven’t unlocked your own arms from his body, clutching him like he’s a part of you. He is a part of you.

Your back hits the bottom of the river at one point. More bubbles come from your lips. You don’t know how far down the river you are, and you don’t know if your lighter will work when you get out of this.

Your bodies twist from the harsh current, and you pray you break the surface soon. Your lungs are on fire, and it hurts you more realizing that Dave is probably suffering as much as you are.

His arms aren’t holding your backpack straps. They’re limp, and his legs aren’t around your waist. He’s limp. You panic.

You break surface. You gasp violently and kick, trying to stay above the water. The bridge is so far away now. You try to glance at Dave’s face, but the water yanks you back under and you suck it in, feeling your lungs spasm. When you feel cold air again you cough out water and look around wildly, trying to find a way to reach the edge of the river. It doesn’t look like the current calms down for quite a while, and you need to help Dave. He’s still limp.

Your back hits a log in the water and you go under again. When you come up, you see a falling tree over your head and your hand shoots out, your fingers wrapping the first branch you see. Dave slips away from your arm and you grab onto his hood just in time, the water trying to drag his body down. With a grunt, you pull him up and hold his hood in your teeth, biting down until your jaw aches so that you can use both arms to start using the tree like monkey bars and drag your way towards the nearby shore.

Your teeth hurt and your fingers are being scratched by the bark, and Dave’s so pale. His eyes are closed and he’s just hanging there and you don’t know if you can live without him. He’s the reason you’re even trying to survive.

The shore is so close. You’re trying to figure out how to drag yourself up onto the tree and also lift the weight of Dave and all of his wet, heavy clothes. The branch is too big for you to let go of and attempt to do anything with one hand. You’d slip into the water again. Can you lift yourself and Dave with his full weight on your teeth?

“Hey! Grab here!”

Your head shoots to the right. There’s a man standing on the shore, an old man with a rifle, but he’s holding the butt of the gun out towards you. Next to him is a very big and white barking dog.

You hesitate, but you feel Dave’s hood slipping out of your teeth. You move as fast as you can, letting go of the tree. One hand wraps around the gun, the other hand grabs on Dave’s hood, and you hold on with whatever strength you have left, putting your faith and trust in this complete stranger as he drags you towards the shore. When your ribs press up against the side, the large dog comes at you and its jaws clamp on your jacket, just by your shoulder, and it starts jerking with its owner until you’re dragged over the side safely. The stranger kneels down, putting his gun aside and helps you pull Dave up next.

“Come on, you’re gonna get hypothermia,” the old man says.

You push him away from you and take Dave’s backpack off and lie him on his back. You unzip his jacket and sweatshirt and shove his t-shirt up to his collarbones. You feel for the part where his ribs touch in the middle of his chest, put your hand above it, layer your other hand, and start using your entire upper body to do compressions.

The stranger says nothing. He picks his gun up and just stands there, watching. The dog whines and keeps walking back and forth, able to sense that something isn’t right.

You’re crying over Dave’s body. His chest is so thin. You can see his ribs, and it feels sick shoving down so hard on his bones like this. You count to thirty and keep whispering, “Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive,” to yourself so that you do the compressions on the right beat. At thirty you lean down, tilt his head back, and put your lips around his mouth. You blow once, watch his chest rise, and then blow twice.

You return to compressions. Thirty. Breath into him. Give him your life. Compressions.

The dog barks and whines.

The river rushes, the river that might have killed him, and you let out a strangled “fuck!” and keep pressing, keep pressing. You breathe into him. He’s so limp. His fingers are so white. The fucking dog barks again and the old man rests himself on one hip.

“It’s been a while,” the man says.

“He can’t die!” you yell at him. “I’ll fucking jump back in that river without him, he can’t die!”

“Look, you two gotta get some warmth or he’ll die from the cold before he drowns in his lungs.”

You’re sobbing. Your body is so cold, you can’t feel your own fingers or your nose, but you keep pushing on his chest. Count to thirty. Tilt his head back, share your life with him, and then continue compressions.

“Look, carry him up to my place and continue slamming on him while I start a fire,” the old man says.

He’s probably right.

“One more minute,” you plead.

“If he dies of cold it’s not my fault, mate.”

You shake your head, trying to make his words go away. Thirty compressions. Breathe into him. Thirty compressions. Breathe into him. Thirty compressions. Breathe—

He vomits up towards your mouth. Water pours from his lips and his body convulses with violent coughs.

“Dave! Fuck, Dave. Dave, I’m here.”

He keeps coughing, his eyes closed tight while more pockets of water come up. You sit him up and pat against his back to help him get everything out. You’re crying in relief, but you keep on acting, because your lives are at stake if you decide to just sit and hold him for a minute. So when he stops hacking up river water and only breathes in deep, harsh breaths you scoop him up into your arms. He’s freezing and his eyes are half open, dazed. The water may be out, but he’s so cold that he’s not even shaking.

The old man is holding Dave’s backpack and jacket. He’s heading towards a path in the trees, the white dog at his heels.

“Hurry up, this way,” he calls back. “Follow my exact footsteps.”

Your lighter won’t work to make your own fire right now. You have no choice but to trust him and follow him.

The old man lives in a cabin up on the hill above the river. Your clothes and Dave’s hang on chairs that are set up by the fireplace, and all your things from your backpacks are spread out to dry. Dave is wrapped in a blanket, still limp and sleeping in front of the fireplace, but he’s breathing evenly now and there’s color back in his cheeks.

You’re wrapped in your own blanket, sitting next to him. You keep feeling his forehead and neck, checking his temperature, and you keep hovering your palm over his mouth and nose, checking that he’s breathing and then feeling his chest for his heartbeat.

“He’s alive,” the old man says. “Relax. Come in here and eat.”

The stranger is standing in the doorway that leads to the kitchen. You hesitate though, your hand on Dave’s shoulder.

“Come on, Bec will watch him,” the old man says, and he points at Dave’s body with a click of his tongue and orders, “Guard.”

The big white dog trots over to you and then sits next to Dave’s sleeping body, panting. You stare at the dog’s dark eyes and then reach up, your fingers scratching lightly under the animal’s jaw.

“I haven’t seen a living animal in years,” you mutter.

“Yeah,” the old man says. “When the earthquakes started I promised myself that I would keep two things alive. My granddaughter and that dog. My girls.”

You don’t mention that you see no granddaughter around. You just look over at the man and he lets out a sad sigh.

“Infection,” he says.

You stand up, stroking the dog’s head before following the old man into his kitchen. He has a stove that works with a fire underneath and he has something smoking in a pot on top. You sit at the kitchen table and hold the blanket around yourself, looking around the place and seeing at least six gallons of water sitting on the kitchen counters and there’s a bin of empty cans in a garbage can.

“I’ve been stocking since that first earthquake fifteen years ago. I’ve been giving a lot away lately. I’ve probably only got enough power and food to last another month. Maybe two if I’m careful,” the man explains.

“How have you not been robbed or killed? No offense.”

He just chuckles, stirring the pot before looking at you. His skin is dark and his hair is a mix of gray and black and his face shows that he carries Native American history in his genes. He has thick glasses, and the left lens is cracked. He has a graying mustache and his face is square, and under his old, sagging eyes you see bright green emerald irises that show the true kindness that his wilting lips can’t.

“We are surrounded by over a hundred booby traps, son,” he says. “The lethal ones are close to the cabin, the rest are farther out. I’d hate to hurt a child. I did it to keep my granddaughter safe, but lately I’ve been letting people in and sharing a little once I have them leave their weapons behind. There ain’t much left of me.”

You’re silent for a while, watching him stir the pot. You see a few ramen wrappers open, five packs of soy sauce, and a clipped off bag of broccoli that’s covered in frost.

“You have power?” you ask.

“I have too many generators. Even running water, straight from the well under the house.”

“Could I… take a bath later? And my brother?”

“Sure. There’s a big bathroom upstairs that you both can use. Got shampoo up there too.”

“Thanks. Name?”

“What’s it matter?”

“To tell my brother who saved him.”

“By the looks of it to me, you saved him. I wouldn’t have been able to even pull you out if you weren’t grabbing onto him so tightly. I’m too fuckin’ bloody old, what’s left of my teeth would have been pulled out and dragged down that river with the kid. I just remembered a question I had for you, though. What the devil were you even doing in that river?”

As you grow warmer you let the blanket fall around your waist. You busy yourself will touching a vase of flowers on the table, but you’re not impressed by any living plants because they look like they’ve been dead a very long time. You touch a petal, watch it fall away, and then say, “Bunch of guys in a truck were coming after us. Dave and I were on foot. Cannibals I’m guessing, because they didn’t shoot us. Wanted us alive so we were fresh and all. We were on that highway a ways down and it was either be eaten slowly or jump and risk it.”

“The highway that way?” he asks, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder to point.

You nod.

“Boy, that’s a mile away. It’s a miracle you’re alive. Honestly, it’s bullshit you’re alive. That’s crazy.”

“I think Dave is a god,” you say.

“Yeah, and I thought Jade was too until a fucking scratch on her arm killed her. Wouldn’t that be terrifying?” He scoffs. “Being in charge of a god... ‘Cause I done right fucked that up, and that’s a lot on my conscious. Those kids are just… innocent humans in a fucked up world. Like the rest of us.”

You can’t talk about this anymore, so you ask him when dinner will be done and he tells you it’ll be ten more minutes and that you can choose some new clothes from his room upstairs. You thank him quietly and pass Dave in the living room. He’s still sleeping in front of the fire, Bec’s head resting on his chest. The dog blinks tired eyes at you and then relaxes again, ignoring you as you head up the stairs.

You pick out a long sleeve shirt, a flannel shirt and new jeans that need a belt since the old man is taller than you, but thinner.

You’re sure the man won’t mind that you use his bathroom and you shave your beard and use running water to wipe grime from your face and pick dirt and sand from under your nails. You’ll take a real shower later, and you’ll show Dave how to use shampoo when you’re done.

When you’re done and head downstairs, you hear Dave talking. He’s going on and on excitedly about everything you’ve taught him about what the world used to be like, as if the old man hasn’t experience it himself. More than you and Dave put together.

“Bro always says the sky is blue,” Dave says as you enter the kitchen. He looks at you excitedly and he hops up from his chair at the kitchen table, running to you and slamming into your chest with a hug. You remind yourself that the last time he was truly conscious you were throwing him off of a bridge with you, and you clutch him tightly while stroking his hair.

“Hi, kiddo,” you mutter to him.

“Hi. We survived.”

“We sure did. What’re you doing in here?”

“I helped the old man cook. We were waiting for you.”

“That’s not polite, Dave.”

“It’s okay, he said I can call him that. He’s being all mysterious and not sharing his name.”

The old man is sitting at the table, three bowls set out along with glasses. He shrugs and explains simply, “I only live to serve others now. My personal identity doesn’t exist anymore.”

“He’s weird, but I like him,” Dave says.

You smile and stroke his cheek and pat his back, having him go back to the table and joining him. The fireplace is still crackling in the other room and Bec the big German Shepherd is eating noisily from a dish on the floor. You sit in front of your own bowl that’s full of ramen and vegetables with a side dish of apple slices that look like they came from a can. There’s a glass of water in front of you and it’s all so new and weird to see your food set up in the form of a meal. Dave and the old man are digging into their meals, and it takes you another minute of processing before you join them.

Dave speaks with a full mouth: “How old is your dog?”

“Bec? Oh, hundreds of years old,” the old man huffs out. “He’s immortal.”

“That’s not true. Dogs live to be fifteen-ish. Right, Bro?”

You shift, twisting noodles onto a clean fork before you shrug and look at him. “I don’t know. That’s what I remember, but I think that things can change sometimes. Maybe we’ll come back in thirty years and see if Bec is still kickin’. How’s that sound?”

Dave nods happily before he continues eating, broth dripping down his chin while he slurps his food down. You reach out, needing to touch his hair before you can finish your meal.

When you’re done eating you take Dave upstairs and fill the bathtub. You explain to him what shampoo is and how to use it and warn him not to get it in his eyes before you have him get in the bath and start cleaning himself with the bar of soap. You help him get his back with a sponge, rubbing away dead skin and dirt and sweat that’s all been stuck to him for more than a few weeks, and all of the water underneath him turns brown. You drain the tub and then use the showerhead to rinse him off. He looks different without all the patches of dirt and dust stuck to him, and he looks up at you after you wrap in in a big towel.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing. You’re clean.”

He looks at himself in the mirror and says, “I’m skinny.”

“I know. We’ll bulk you up, though. I’m going to get clean now, okay? Get dressed and then go ask the old man real politely if he has any newer clothes around that might fit you.”

He says okay and starts to dry himself off, along with his hair. You get into the tub and pull the curtain closed before you strip your clothes and toss them out. You use the showerhead the whole time and look down at your body while brown tinted water rushes down your limbs, pools at your feet, and then swirls down the drain. Sometimes you forget that you come from a long line of pale people, because it’s all uncovered for the first time in a long time now.

You wash your hair with shampoo that smells like coconuts. Besides having you and Dave survive what happened on that bridge, that coconut shampoo is one of your favorite things that night.

Dave is given some of the granddaughter’s clothes. Dave isn’t picky about anything pink or anything that’s a pretty green color, so he’s given some plain blue jeans that fit him, a t-shirt that has an elementary school name on it, a hoodie with the periodic table of elements on it, and a flannel jacket that this Jade used to wear out in her greenhouse.

When you ask about the greenhouse, the old man says that he tried hard to keep it working with his granddaughter after the earth started dying. A few years ago he couldn’t get a single plant to grow or a single root to hold onto the dirt. The greenhouse is just pots of dirt with dead grass, trapped in glass. It’s also where his granddaughter is buried.

Dave is allowed to have dessert later, and he sucks on Oreos from the freezer. It makes you smile when he gives you such big eyes when he first tastes the sugar of that frosting.

Dave, the old man, the dog, and you all sit in the living room around the fireplace when it grows dark outside. The river is still rushing in the distance. Dave checks the window later, looking for stars, and then he comes back in to sit next to you on the couch. The old man’s rocking chair creeks, Bec at his feet.

“May I play with your dog, sir?” Dave asks.

“Of course,” the old man says. “He’s got some toys in the kitchen, underneath the table. Don’t go outside, though. It’s dark, and I don’t want you tripping on those traps.”

“Yes, sir!”

Dave calls for Bec excitedly, and the dog bounces up when he knows that he’s about to get some attention. He trots after Dave and you listen to them in the kitchen; Bec’s nails on the tiled floor and Dave giggling while he yanks on some toy that they’re playing tug-of-war on.

“Your boy can sleep in Jade’s old room,” the old man says.

“It’s a new place,” you reply. “I think he’ll want to be near me.”

“All right. The couch pulls out then.”

“Thank you. For the food. And for helping us. We’ll be out of your hair by morning. That is, if you can show us the way through the booby traps.”

“I’ll be dead in the morning.”

You hear Dave fall heavily to the floor in the other room, but he’s laughing and the dog is growling playfully. You look away from the warm fire and stare at the old man who’s holding his fingers together over his stomach, still rocking slowly. He looks so peaceful.

“Dead?” you ask.

“Jade’s been gone so long. I know how you feel about that boy. She was my entire life. I’ve just been waiting around here, not wanting all of this food and hard work to go to waste. So every time someone passes outside, I offer food and water. Some lighters. I’ve been waiting for someone like you and that boy.”

“Why. Why us?”

“Have you seen that innocence in many others? Those who are the first alive in the new world pave the path. Where do you and I come from? Violence and hateful men. But also so much good. And you, you’re good. And you’ve given that good to him. And he’s going to start a new world with that good. And if I have a house that can help keep the good alive in such a shitty, shitty world then damn it, I’ll help. Jade would have wanted it. I knew it was you two the second I saw those crazy red eyes of his. But I knew they weren’t the eyes of a devil, oh no, those were the eyes of a new human for a new world.” He chuckles sadly as he shifts, looking over at you more. “If Jade were here she’d be telling me to split everything we have with you two fifty-fifty.”

“This… This doesn’t explain you dying.”

“I can feel it, son. I’m going to die in the morning. I’ve been waiting for people like you here, and now I’m comfortable knowing that I’m leaving everything to good people. Gods or not. I’m going to let myself pass tonight.”

You’re silent for a while. The old man looks at the fire once more and he sighs heavily, smacking his lips. Dave is talking in a baby voice in the other room, and you can imagine him rolling over Bec’s belly, roughhousing with him on the floor. You put your face in your palm, still getting used to your skin being clean and your beard being shaved.

“What about your dog?” you try.

“Your boy loves him. Listen to them. He’s a good dog. He’ll wait for you two to finish eating before he even thinks for himself. If anything survives this world it’s going to be that little boy and that dog, I tell ya.”

“How old is the dog, though? How long can he actually make it?”

He barks out a laugher, resting more heavily into his rocking chair. “I told you, he’s immortal.”

“Sir, really.”

“What’s your name?”

“Doesn’t matter. Dave calls me Bro.”

“Yeah, and I called my dad, Dad.”

“You’re not telling me your name.”

“My name doesn’t matter.”

“Then neither does mine. All that matters is that I’m Dave’s Bro.”

“Let me die with this. Who am I gonna tell? I’ll tell Jade tomorrow.”

You blink, your head tilting. “You believe in an afterlife?”

“Oh, yes. Not specifically Heaven. I believe everyone gets what they want when they die. Every religion is given to those who believe in it. And when I die, I want to see Jade, and I will. And then I’m going to dream up an amusement park for us, and I’m going to take her out hunting and camping in all kinds of places. It’s going to be lovely. Now, your name.”

You think about Dave, the day he was born. You went to the hospital with your parents. Dave was an accident, but loved nonetheless. They weren’t trying, but he showed up, and you’ve been blessed ever since. You imagine him when he’s an adult. You imagine him with that dog next to him, without you, with adults his age, surrounded by healthy kids that know what playgrounds are and can safely use them often. You imagine him with these people, standing on green grass and blooming flowers.

“It’s Dirk,” you say.

“I’ll have that die with me,” the old man says.

You nod and stand up from the couch, calling out for Dave that it’s time for bed.

Dave sleeps next to you on the pull out couch, too nervous to sleep alone in such a new place. Bec sleeps upstairs with the old man in his own bed. The fireplace is still going dimly and Dave stays up a little late reading through Jade’s old science books. You’re exhausted and dozing off, but Dave keeps asking you questions and showing you the book, wondering what an atom is and how it works and forces you to explain all the parts of a cell.

You fall asleep while Dave is muttering to you about evolution.

Bec is sleeping over Dave’s legs in the morning. You sit up and the dog blinks and looks at you, letting out the saddest whine you’ve ever heard.

You climb out of the bed and move up the stairs quickly. You look into the first room, but all of the untouched clothes and toys inside show that it must have been the granddaughter’s room. You move past the bathroom and then look into the bedroom at the end of the hall where the old man is lying on his back in his bed, clutching a picture to his chest. He’s very still.

You approach him slowly and nudge his arm. Then you touch his hand. It’s very cold. You touch his neck, pressing your fingers down. No pulse. He’s kind of stiff. Stiff and cold and dead.

You lift his hand, looking at the picture. The old man, his dog, and a beautiful young girl that must have been his granddaughter.

Dave helps you dig out a hole in the old greenhouse. A very large gardening pot that has a dead flower in it is set up in the back with black paint on it, spelling Jade’s full name and the years she was alive. Dave watches you, hugging himself while you drag the old man’s body into the hole. You wrapped him in the quilt that was lying over him in his bed.

Bec keeps whining, his head down on Jade’s grave.

Dave helps you fill the hole back up. You find the black paint out in the garage and come back to find Dave grunting while he tries to move another large pot over the old man’s grave, right next to Jade’s. You help him out and you let Dave dip his fingers in the paint so that he can write out “old man” on the pot. He asks you what year it is.

You say you don’t know.

You put a hand on top of Bec’s head, scratching his ear while he keeps whining. It hurts you seeing this precious animal so depressed. But you and the dog watch your brother together, Dave’s small fingers dragging black paint across the pot and across Jade’s. He makes dots across Jade’s and then he draws a quarter of a circle on the old man’s.

“The moon and stars,” he says. “Jade really liked science. I think they’d like space.”

“Me too. Good job. It looks wonderful.”

He stands up and looks around the greenhouse quietly. Then: “Can we stay here?”

“Yeah. For a little while.”

“There’s a paper on the shelf there,” Dave says.

You look where he’s looking and pick up the paper, a flower pot sitting on the corner of it. It’s a map of the house with little symbols surrounding it and a little path drawn through them. It’s his booby traps. It shows the way out of them.

“He knew we’d put him in here,” you say.

“What?”

“Come here, hon. Look at this. This is the house, see? See all these Xs and stuff?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Those are traps to keep out bad people. Or anyone who wants to steal our stuff, okay? So that means you have to stay close to the house while we’re here. Okay, Dave? Look at me. Okay?”

“Okay. I promise.”

“Good. See this area? This is the backyard, by the greenhouse. You can play in this area with Bec. Stay close to the house though. Don’t play in the front. Only in the back. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Promise?”

“I promise, Bro.”

“Thank you.” You hold his head, pressing a kiss to it, and then stand up with your arm around his shoulders. Bec stands up and lets out a sneeze before whining again.

“Let’s go eat,” you say.

“Okay.”

You find Bec’s food in the basement and feed him. You put logs in the stove and cook hot dogs from the freezer for Dave and you. The old man was right. There’s only enough food to last a month. Two if you ration. You two can’t live here forever, but Dave deserves a break after what’s happened to him since the day he was born.

You both eat by candlelight. Then he goes to the backyard to play with Bec before the sun goes down. You brew coffee and drink, watching him in the window. He smiles that special smile while he tosses a knotted rope across the yard, that big dog galloping after it excitedly and then running it back to him. He doesn’t jump on Dave, doesn’t nip his fingers. The dog lost it’s young, Jade. And it’s owner, the old man.

You and Dave aren’t Bec’s replacements, but you think the dog finds more purpose in looking after more young. Dave is the only young you could watch over.

You get a radio to work. It has a CD slot. You fill it with batteries you found downstairs, not worrying about using too many supplies, because you want Dave to experience as much as he can before you both have to leave this place and take to the road again. You search CDs in Jade’s room and find some old band you used to like. You play it while Dave helps you cook dinner.

He listens to one song over and over again until he has it memorized. He stands on the island counter in the kitchen and sings loudly with you. You teach him what a microphone is and give him a wooden spoon to sing into. You join in, using a whisk. Bec keeps jumping and barking, excited with the grand music.

Dave and you continue to share the couch in the living room. You like being close to the front door, and Dave doesn’t like being too far away from you.

You teach him how to use your katana. You also teach him to use the guns that the old man left behind. You don’t dare put a rifle in his hands, but you crouch behind him and hold your arms over his arms, make sure he locks his elbows, and let him shoot cans off the top of a wooden bench. Bec isn’t bothered by the banging.

Dave cries a little at first, but he does it while smiling. You tell him it’s just his body being shocked. As he gets used to it, his aim gets better. He says he prefers the sword. You show him how to use your pocketknife since your sword is still just a little too heavy for him.

He puts on weight now that you’re eating twice a day. The meals aren’t huge, though. You can’t shock his body after the starvation you’ve both gone through, and once you leave it’ll be extremely unhealthy for him to start starving all over again. He has more energy though, and he favors the apple shampoo, and he doesn’t like to sleep without Bec curled up at the foot of the bed.

You start giving him more lessons again by using old books you find in the house. Encyclopedias and textbooks. You teach him math and science and history. In the evenings you teach him how to shoot and how to defend himself. Survival skills. You teach him how to make a fire without a lighter, how to make a safe shelter and how to clean wounds safely.

One day he tells you that he doesn’t want to learn. You say okay and you both go down to the river, Bec following Dave’s heel. You both sit on a large rock and watch the water rush by.

“When I was a kid, you could see the fish jump out of the surface,” you say. You lift your arms, one arm being the water and the other arm’s hand flopping like a fish as you imitate it coming out and then splashing back in with a little noise. “Used to fish for food when all the animals started dying.”

“Is there fish in the basement?” Dave asks.

“I think I saw some frozen in the freezer down there.”

“Can we have some tonight?”

“Sure, kiddo.”

When you go back to the cabin, avoiding any traps in the woods, Dave makes you play with Bec and him. It’s been a long time since you’ve smiled like that with him. Bec gets a hold of his rope toy and plays Keep Away with Dave and you, growling and rushing around the yard until you tackle the big dog and Dave comes in for a mad dash to snag the toy away. You both throw it back and forth while Bec barks, running between you two.

You’re still grinning when you go inside. You play a new CD in the CD player, but you know the batteries are low. Dave sits at the table, reading from a book and humming while Bec slurps at his water bowl and then collapses on his side, exhausted.

You both eat fried fish together and Dave talks happily about what he’s learning from all the books in the house. You listen, feeling no need to talk.

That night, Dave reads a book about gardening. You want to tell him that it’s useless. That all the plants are dead.

Instead you ask him about it and fall asleep to the sound of him slowly reading aloud about the differences between fruits and vegetables.

You swear Dave is an inch taller. It scares you for some reason. You touch Jade’s old bed and look at the flowers on her blanket before you sit on it and put your face in your hands and begin to cry while Dave is safely downstairs reading aloud to the dog.

A few days before you know you’ll have to leave this home you give Dave a wonderful meal. You sear up three steaks and feed one to Bec. You make potatoes with actual butter and boil up green beans and you pour two glasses of fruit punch. You let him eat as much as he wants this one night, and he makes you smile when he says that he wants a house made out of steaks.

It’s not too freezing that night so you make a fire outside. Dave sits next to you on a bench, Bec sitting by your feet. You can hear the river in the distance and the wind throwing dead leaves. There’s no moon that night. Dave falls asleep with his head in your lap and you carry him back inside, whistling for Bec to follow. The dog climbs up onto the bed that’s been left folded out since the first night you came here, and he waits patiently as you lay Dave down and take away his jacket and shoes before draping the blanket over him.

You look down at Bec who closes his jaw and then rests his chin over Dave’s shins. You reach out, stroking his head a few times before you look back at your brother and stroke your knuckles down his cheek instead. It seems like he has more freckles now.

You kiss his forehead before you go put the fire out in the backyard. You find a decent sized wagon in the garage and begin stocking it with what cans are left in the basement. You fit a large bag of dog food, a basket of supplies like an extra knife, rope, tarp, lighters, gasoline, oil, empty containers for water, can opener, medication, a water filter, a few bowls and cups and spoons and forks, extra clothes, three blankets, zip ties, a first aid kit, a few tools, bungie cords, ammunition for two different handguns and Bec’s rope toy. Last minute, you pick out at least six books for Dave. You choose his favorites. Half are story books and the others are informational textbooks.

You use the bungie cords to hold everything down. You search the garage for more supplies and then find a harness for Bec. You bring it along, just in case you need the extra help in pulling the wagon, but you’re running out of room on that wagon now. Anything else you add at this point needs to be completely necessary.

Back in the cabin, Dave is still fast asleep, and even the dog is snoring against him. When you get close, Bec’s head pops up with a growl, but when he sees it’s you he plops his head down again and blinks his eyes slowly until they stay closed. That dumb dog will be good for Dave.

The morning that you have to leave you wash all of your clothes and then have Dave shower. You shower after and then you both give Bec a good bath, his fur coming out whiter than ever. Then you both get dressed up as warmly as you can and you pack extra things in new backpacks. Dave uses one of Jade’s old backpacks. It has roses on it, and Dave is fascinated by the flowers since he’s never actually seen one.

The cabin’s supplies are extremely empty now. The generators couldn’t last for much longer and you both have taken all the food except for things that had gone bad.

Out in the front yard you unfold the paper that shows all of the booby traps that the old man set up so that you both can safely make it back towards the road.

“We can’t stay?” Dave asks sadly.

You look down at him, bundled up with cheeks that are round and full of color. In another few months you’ll see his ribs from skinniness again.

What are you doing?

“There’s not enough stuff for us here anymore,” you say. “But we have a lot of stuff, so we’ll be okay for a long time. Now hold onto Bec, I don’t want him stepping in any traps. The old guy said the harmful ones were closer to the house.”

Dave nods a little sadly and grabs a fistful of Bec’s fur on his neck. Bec stays close against his thighs and you make sure Dave stays directly behind you as you follow the map on the paper and memorize the path and start stepping through the big yard carefully. You don’t doubt that some of the traps, whatever they are, have been set off by other survivors that were looking for food, but you can’t risk Dave’s safety right now, so you stick strictly to the map.

It takes a long ten minutes. Bec whines the whole time because he knows the yard isn’t safe, but at least it makes him stay closer to Dave while you both walk in careful lines.

You reach the road eventually and set down the handle of the wagon, folding the little map up. “Okay, keep the dog by you for a bit. So he doesn’t run back.”

“Should we use a leash? What if he wants to go back to the old man’s grave?”

“I don’t know, Dave. We can’t make him stay with us.”

“But he’ll die. He can’t open cans by himself. There’s nothing for him to hunt.”

“I think he’ll stay.”

Nevertheless, Dave still holds onto Bec’s fur a while longer as you both make your way down the road. You refuse to go back towards the highway where those cannibals hunted you down. You’ll use the road and go around that strip of highway for now.

When you can’t see the cabin anymore, Dave lets go of Bec. The dog shakes his body, sneezes, and then runs ahead twenty feet to go sniff at a tree and pee. Then he comes right back to Dave. It makes your brother smile happily, and that makes you happy.

“Where are we going?” Dave asks.

“Still south. We won’t survive winters here very well.”

“We did last year.”

“Not very well. It was pretty cold, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember. And it’s warmer by the equator and stuff, right? ‘Cause it’s closer to the sun. From the curve of the earth.”

“That’s right, kiddo.”

The dog stays with you two and listens obediently to all of your commands, and that makes Dave happy. At night you sleep in a tarp tent or in abandoned houses that have fireplaces. The world is cold no matter how far south you two go, and you wonder if it’s going to be any different at the equator, of if it’s going to be just as freezing.

Thankfully you both have each other to use as body heat, but you’re not sure how well you two would do without a fire or a body for warmth.

Bec eats from his bowl every night. Dave and you sit next to fires and eat from heated cans, being careful with your food so that it lasts the both of you long enough before you find more supplies. Sleeping arrangements are nicer since you have more supplies, and it keeps you warm through the night. Dave, Bec and you all sleep under blankets, a tarp tent set up over your heads and a fire burning strong.

Dave’s taller and he’s smarter now. You still reach out a few times every night, feeling his chest. Make sure he’s breathing.

You stay in a school a week later. You hold hands with Dave down the hallways, pointing at posters on the walls and explaining what they’re for. Basketball games, auditions for a play, meetings for chess club. You show him the rooms where math was taught and you show him the auditorium.

Dave likes the auditorium. He climbs onto the stage while you and Bec stand below, watching. He cups a hand over his mouth and beat boxes so wonderfully. He’s full of talent. Music flows through his veins, and you hope it’s a talent that will save this world.

You show him the science labs. Dave finds a marker that hasn’t dried out and draws across the white board making beautiful scenes that he’s only ever seen in textbooks. A shining sun and big flowers. He draws a dog, and you wonder where he got both his musical and artistic talent, and if it wasn’t all you that showed him that then it means it’s natural. It means it’s necessary. He’ll do good with it.

“That’s pretty,” you say when he’s done drawing.

“Thanks. Where should we sleep?”

“Gym?”

“Okay.”

There’s a place where the old floorboards are cracked in the gym, showing cement. You go outside and get wood after emptying the wagon so that you can drag back as many branches and logs as you can and then start a fire on the cement. Dave already has the blankets and a pot set up for making dinner. While you cook green beans and bacon, Dave plays with Bec across the gym floor.

Now that your food is being rationed and you’re both walking all day again, Dave gets tired sooner than he used to back at the cabin. He comes back to you panting with Bec and takes off his jacket and sweater. When he sits next to you, you put a hand on his back and start to feel his bones again. You know his bones are probably tough, just like he is, but sometimes just the presence of those bones make you feel like Dave is so fragile. Like a newborn bird with hollow bones, hovering a branch.

But the trees are dead and so are the birds and Dave’s just a child.

“Mm, Davey. Look here.”

He turns towards you, having just fed half of a bacon strip to Bec. He puts the rest in his mouth and you wipe your thumb on his cheek, wiping away from grease from the bacon. Then you push his hair back, slowly.

“What’s wrong?” Dave asks.

“I don’t know. Nothing, I think.”

“Okay. It’s okay, Bro.”

“It is.”

You sleep with Bec between you two, and you wrap your arm around both that big dog and your little brother, wishing you could give them all of your heat rather than just share it equally.

A few days later it rains very heavily. Dave puts a rope around Bec’s neck so that he stays close to his hip while the three of you hold up the tarp over your heads and walk side by side. You looped the handle of the wagon through your belt so that you could hold the tarp up with one hand, the other wrapping around Dave to hold him tightly to you.

“You’re getting big,” you say over the rain.

It thunders overhead and Dave flinches. You pet his hair, pull his hood up, and then wrap his shoulders in your arm again.

“It’s all right,” you tell him.

That night you both find a small barn. The bones of dead farm animals are there. You find a very large and ruined piece of meat from a cow most likely that’s still preserved and you slice off all of the bad parts until you reach some good meat in the middle. You fry up what you can for Dave and you and then toss the rest to Bec.

Dave sits very close to you that night. He’s tired that night. He’s quiet.

“What did petals feel like?” he asks.

“Like velvet. Eat up.”

“Okay.”

The wind makes a low howl, but Bec isn’t bothered by it. A tree falls far in the distance. Dave and you walk through an old city. Your food supplies from the cabin are over half gone now, but you’ve been finding things here and there to keep you going.

Dave asks about the buildings and you tell him what they were if you can tell. Sometimes you don’t know what a building was for.

Dave finds a building that’s full of reflective glass and you watch him make faces in it and then jog down along the wall, dragging his fingers along so that he draws zig-zag lines through the dust. You smile and then jog after him even if your feet and back are sore, scooping Dave up over your shoulder and making him laugh. Bec jumps and barks, excited simply because you two are excited.

Two days later, Dave gets sick. He stops walking, bends over, and vomits. Bec whines, circling him. You rush to him and hold his face, lifting it and wiping your thumbs at the corner of his lips.

“Hey, hey. You’re okay. What’s wrong?”

“My tummy,” he says. He holds his stomach, his pale hands shaking.

“Okay. Okay. It feels okay now though, right? Now that you’ve thrown up.”

He makes a shaky nod.

“Okay. Let’s find a spot to stay and then you can rest, all right?”

He nods again and holds your hand, leaning into you while you both walk together. Fifteen minutes later he’s vomiting again. Nothing can come out except for what looks like more spit and stomach acid. When you pressure him to walk a little longer he starts crying and lowers himself onto his knees while Bec starts licking at his cheeks.

You put Bec’s harness on him and strap Dave’s backpack onto the harness along with bigger items like the blankets and tarp. You shove the food out of the way in the wagon and then lay Dave down on a blanket, wrapping him up in it after and tugging his hood up over his head. You feel his forehead. His cheeks are thin and burning red, and his skin his hot on your palm. You kiss his temple and tell him to just rest.

You click your tongue at Bec and the dog obediently walks alongside you, carrying everything on his harness without a complaint while you carry your own backpack and continue dragging along the wagon where your little brother lays with a burning temperature that makes you more scared than you’ve been in a while.

You find a small house to stay in. You make a fire in the fireplace and then take the harness off of Bec, letting him bite and scratch at the areas the harness had been covering up. You drag the couch close to the fireplace and pick Dave up in your arms, lying him down and then kneeling by his head to feel his forehead. He’s still burning.

He throws up again, but there’s nothing in his stomach. He lets out a whimper and begins to cry against the cushion, but you stay close and pet his hair, whispering that he’s going to be okay and that you’re going to make him feel better.

You make him swallow medicine that you still have from the cabin. You cook up ramen in boiling water over the fire since you know he’ll need the salt.

You make sure he eats it all. As soon as he licks up the last drops from the pot you lay him down again, putting his head in your lap. You fall asleep sitting up, your fingers in his hair.

You stay in that house for three more days. Dave spends two of those days just vomiting and sleeping and crying from the pain in his stomach.

When you have Bec guarding Dave you search other houses for more supplies now that your wagon is running low. You find things here and there, along with some granola bars in someone’s old purse, and then you always go back to that house and watch Dave sleep while you hug yourself and try to convince yourself that you’re doing the best you can. That he’d be safer with no one except you. That he’ll be okay.

On the third day he wakes up like he was never sick. He sits straight up, rubs his eyes, puts wood on the fire for you, and then wrestles with Bec on the floor.

Then he sees you crying on the couch and he says, “What’s wrong?”

“I was just really worried about you. That’s all,” you mutter.

“I’m okay, Bro. Stomach flu, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, stomach flu.”

He smiles and nods at you. Then you two pack everything up and start your travels again.

You start spending nights in new types of places due to Dave’s request. You adventure a hotel and a library and a museum. Dave loves the museum. You walk past displays of wax models. Queens and kings and generals. Royal clothing that’s over hundreds of years out. All of the ancient weapons are stolen.

Dave stares at the mummy in the glass for a long time. He takes time to read every info card.

In the room full of taxidermy animals, Dave loses his mind. You make Dave step back and you use the end of a wrench to break apart the glass that keeps you separate from the nature scenes set up and then grab Dave under his armpits and lift him into the display so that he can kneel down and pet at the fox that’s dead. It’s the first time he’s seen over half of these animals, even if they are dead. They’re just fur. An empty husk with animal-shaped wood underneath. To Dave, they’re everything.

Bec sniffs around and growls and barks at a lot of the animals until he realizes they’re not real. Then he lays down and yawns.

Dave stokes the fox’s ears. He hugs the bear around the waist. He climbs on top of the deer, riding on its back and feeling the antlers.

“These were all over the world?” he asks.

“Yeah. Got a favorite?”

“I like Bec the most.”

You chuckle and feel the buck’s antlers with him. “Yeah, me too.”

“The duck feels different.”

“It has feathers, not fur.”

“Yeah! Yeah, and they don’t really get wet. Did you know they have, like—they have these, uh, this oil on them? It makes water come off of them really easily.”

You did know that. But you say, “Oh, really?”

“Yeah, it was in one of Jade’s books. A lot of water birds and stuff are like that. What’s that one there?”

“That’s a raccoon.”

“There?”

“That’s a squirrel, you know that.”

“Oh, yeah. In my old book, dogs chased them a lot!”

“They sure did.”

You pick him up and slide him off of the back of the deer and move to a different display. This one is already broken. You let him crawl in and pet the wolf and the owl and the eagle and the bobcat. Dave takes out the white stuffed bunny from his backpack and puts it down next to a brown taxidermy rabbit.

“There. He’s home now,” Dave says, petting both fake animals before he joins you.

He holds your hand through the rest of the museum. You show him the section on space and Dave asks if he can keep one of the little pieces that came straight from mars, but you tell him no. It belongs here.

Dave yells a lot when you go through the hall of dinosaurs. He climbs over the railings and stands underneath a huge T-Rex and starts roaring, Bec barking with him. You smile and roar back at him and he giggles out a sound that’s made of angels’ bells.

Eventually you find an area that will be good for building a fire. You find old chairs in the museum and break them and use logs you collected on the wagon on the way to the museum and then make a good fire. Dave looks at a display that shows human evolution while you pour food out for Bec and then cook up beans for dinner.

“Humans used to look funny,” Dave says.

“Sure did.”

“In a million years do you think humans will look super different?”

“They might. I don’t doubt it.”

“That’s cool.”

He sits down and eats with you. Later, he starts to sing that old song from the cabin that you used to listen to on the CD player. You sing with him softly, lying on your back on the blanket with him. There are stars and planets painted on the ceiling. Bec lays across your legs and Dave falls asleep with his arm over your chest. You lay there for several hours, wide awake. You try not to move much, reaching for a good log of wood and add it to the fire. Cold wind thrashes outside.

You hear footsteps downstairs, passing the front entrance. They stop. Then they carry on. Sometimes you forget that you and Dave aren’t alone in this world. Sometimes you have to remind yourself that there are people out there that are suffering worse than you are. You really can’t be blamed. Your brain power is one hundred percent focused on Dave’s well-being, the same way that families out there are focused on each other.

Turning your head, you kiss Dave’s head. He hums tiredly and then curls up on his side. You sleep with your chin on his head.

When your day is done, what will you see? Your parents? Your dead friends? Will you see Dave, or will you have to wait for him?

What will happen to him? Have you prepared him? Are you ready?

The road is cracked like the dry skin of your palms. Bec sniffs under porches and old cars. You’ve been making Dave walk a long time so you have him sit in the wagon and drag him along, even if he protests and says he wants to walk like you because it’s not fair if he doesn’t. You tell him you’re bigger and stronger, so you’ll be fine.

You ask him where he wants to sleep that night. He says the mall. You spot it far off to your right and say okay, following the cracked roads down a hill.

The mall is huge. Different names of stores are faded away and broken. SEARS is now –EARS and OLD NAVY is now just O-D N--Y. You find a secondhand store inside and make a fire, burning wood that you collected over the day. Dave uses what’s left of some summer dresses to make a pillow while he lays across a blanket and pets Bec.

“Are we south yet?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“It’s still so cold, though.”

“I know. Maybe it has to be cold before the world can get better.”

“Kinda like when I was sick? I got a lot worse and then I got better really fast.”

“That’s right.”

“You think the world is like that?”

“It might be. What do you think?”

“I think it is. That means we have to keep surviving like this until it gets better again. Right?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“All right.”

You sleep with him, hidden behind a circular counter where retail workers used to sell clothing back in the day. The register is intact, never having been broken open.

When you wake up, it’s not because it’s morning, or because the fire is low. Bec is barking loudly and the whole world is shaking. An earthquake.

“Dave. Dave, get up!”

“Hm?”

You shake him and get him up. He’s alarmed and clutching at you, but he’s not too panicked. The world started ending because of earthquakes. They were normal, but sometimes they were violent, and it wasn’t safe to be inside of buildings when they happened, but you were so deep inside of the mall that there was no use trying to stumble your way outside again.

You reach out and grab at the rope collar Dave put on Bec, dragging him over to you while the poor dog barks and whimpers, his eyes wild. Dave crawls into your lap and hides to your chest. He knows the drill. No matter what happens, he has to let you cover him.

Metal clothes racks rattle and fall around you. The building rumbles and glass breaks from the skylights in the main hallway of the mall, shattering down against the floor. You hold Dave close, almost falling over from a big jerk, and there’s a loud cracking noise underneath you, loud enough to make your ears ring and make Dave yell.

Just as the shaking dies down, part of the ceiling collapses. You hear it before you see it, and you instinctively roll your body on top of Dave’s. Bec pulls from your grip and jumps away fast enough with a terrified yelp. Parts of the ceiling crash on your back, something pierces your skin, and chunks of wood break against your spine.

Then the earthquake is over and you’re left gasping in shock, because you know you’re injured.

“Bro?” Dave whimpers under you.

“Yeah,” you breathe out. “Yeah…”

You pull off of him, dust and crumbled pieces of the ceiling coming off of your back. You hold Dave’s cheeks under you and then feels his arms and hands, asking him if he’s okay. He nods, not flinching in pain.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “Where’s Bec?”

“He got scared. I’m sure he didn’t run far.”

“Can I go look?”

“He’ll come back, Dave. You know there might be an aftershock.”

He nods, but his eyes well up with tears. He stands shakily and yells for Bec, whistling. Thankfully, the dog comes running with his tail between his legs and Dave falls to his knees, hugging him and muttering to him and petting him until the poor beast calms down.

Meanwhile, you’re pulling a piece of wood out of your back. You’re staying calm. You’re calm. Shockingly, the fire is still burning. You make sure that you’re not going to set the whole building on fire before putting a new log on so that Dave and you stay warm. You know you should get out of the mall, just in case of the aftershock, but your back really hurts, so you strip off your jacket and then your sweater, hiding small gasps. You reach back, touch the spot, hiss in a breath, and then look at your fingers full of blood.

“Bro?”

Dave is no longer comforting Bec. He’s looking at you and he looks scared.

“I’m okay,” you say. “A piece of wood stabbed me a little. It’s not bad. Will you help me clean it?”

He nods carefully and comes and joins you. You tell him what to do and hide any noises of pain as Dave washes the bloody gouge in your back, just under your right shoulder blade. He digs through your supplies in the wagon and comes back with disinfectant spray, and it stings like fuck when he uses it, and then you both work together to put a patch of gauze on it and then wrap your chest in cloth gauze to hold it down. When it’s done with, Dave’s cold fingers just lay on your back carefully.

“I’m okay,” you say softly to him.

“It’s already bleeding through,” he mutters back to you.

“I know. It’s fresh. It’ll stop soon. I’ll be okay. You did a good job taking care of it. Good job, I’m proud.”

Dave moves to sit down in front of you, wrapping a blanket around your shoulders since you were shirtless for fixing the wound.

Neither of you can sleep now. You just sit, watching the fire. Dave reads for a little bit and pets Bec who’s calm. The aftershock comes later, but it’s very light. Dave clutches hard at Bec’s collar when it happens, but nothing falls over, and it’s over within a minute. Then Dave finally sleeps, using Bec’s stomach as a pillow.

You stay awake, hiding your panting breaths. It hurts. You think it stops bleeding though. You’re too exhausted right now, but in the morning you’re going to have to make Dave sew it closed, or at least find a stapler or something to keep it closed, and you know it’s going to freak him out, but he’s going to have to learn to do things like that sooner or later if you both want to survive.

You hardly sleep. The pain is too much in the back of your shoulder. When morning comes around you start packing up all of your things. You wake Dave up when you let out a harsh “fuck!”

A few glasses fell and broke. Glasses that held fuel. Fuel to refill your lighter. You rub your face, your back throbbing.

“You okay?” Dave mutters.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m sorry kiddo. I need your help today, okay?”

“What is it?”

“I need you to sew up that wound on my back.”

His face pales and he squeezes his hands together nervously. You can tell he wants to say no, but he also knows that he has no choice. He wants to take care of you as much as you take care of him now that he’s growing up.

You get out the needle and thread and tell him everything he needs to do. Once and then again when he starts doing it. You grab a branch from your pile of wood and use that to bite on since you might break anything else. Dave’s fingers are shaky at first, so you wait until he’s ready. He cleans the wound with water and then very carefully starts sewing the skin, and you think he might be crying a little, but he doesn’t stop, even when he hears you grunt in pain or muffle a whine in your throat when he hits some nerve in the worst way. He says that it’s bleeding again, but you tell him to keep going. It hurts as he continues and it hurts as he ties it off and it hurts when he cleans it again. It hurts when he re-wraps it.

“Are you crying?” he whispers as he helps you get your shirt back on.

“Yeah, but I’m okay,” you say back just as softly. “It’s not too bad. Let’s start walking, okay?”

He nods hesitantly and you face him, holding his hands and helping him clean your blood from his fingers with one of the gallons of water. This is what a brother does. You thank him and then hug him to your chest for a few moments to calm him. Then you both pack everything up make your way through the earthquake’s rubble, and continue your journey.

Your backpack is strapped to Bec’s harness. You couldn’t stand the pressure on your wound. Dave and you walk all day through the city and then to the highway. You’re near the ocean. Dave thinks he can hear it in the distance, washing up onto the earth, but everything already sounds like it’s under water to you.

You stop staring at the ground when Dave suddenly touches your lower back. You look over at him, and he looks so scared. You’re panting heavily and your entire back hurts, all the way down your spine.

“Let’s make camp,” he says.

“Okay,” you pant.

Dave leads the way into the trees. He forces you to sit and you watch him move on his own, setting up the tarp into a tent. He lays out the blankets and he collects wood and takes your lighter and starts the fire after a long minute, blowing softly on the dead grass until it catches onto the logs and grows into something bigger and brighter and warmer. He takes the harness off of Bec, picks out a can to have for dinner, uses your knife to get the top off, and sets it by the coals.

When he’s busy, you shiver and practically cry. You have a fever. You can feel it. You have a fever and your little brother, your world, he’s taking care of you without even shaking or crying. He helps you undress so that he can try and clean your wound.

“There’s a bunch of white stuff,” he says.

“If I ask you to push it all out, will you vomit at all? Can you do it?”

“It’ll help you feel better?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so…”

“Then I can do it.”

“You don’t have to, Davey. I can do it myself if you don’t want to. It’s okay.”

“I can do it, Bro. I can. Just hug Bec.”

“Dave, I can—”

“I’m going to do it, Bro.”

And he does it. It takes a while and you do what Dave tells you to do and hug around Bec’s chest, the dog panting and letting himself be your comfort while Dave squeezes at your sewn up wound. When it’s over, you’re trying hard to just breathe and relax. Dave cleans it again and then wraps you up and he asks you softly if you want to hold him. You say yes and hold him in your lap instead of the dog, holding him close and rubbing his back.

“You did such a good job,” you mutter to him. “You’re such a big boy now.”

He says nothing. He holds your jacket and leans into you, and you think you finally feel him shaking.

You eat from the can with him, passing it back and forth. Dave pours out some dog food in a bowl for Bec. He makes you drink water and tells you to sleep early, and you obey. You lay down on the blankets, let Dave cover you in one, and you listen to him read from a book by firelight, one of his free hands petting at your hair.

You’re a dying plant and you can’t get your own water anymore. Your greenhouse is broken apart, your soil is dry and your pot is crumbling.

When you wake up, Dave is shaking you. You grunt and force your eyes open, feeling crust peel apart. The world is a little fuzzy before you see your little brother’s face and you groan, rubbing a wrist against your eyes.

“What. What is it?”

“You wouldn’t wake up.”

“I’m okay. I’m okay, kiddo. Don’t worry.” You sit up with a tired groan, and you feel the wound on your back crack, or something. But you don’t show any reaction to it. You just hold Dave, put his head on your shoulder, and kiss his head. “I’m all right,” you whisper.

When you dream, you see a woman. She’s full of nature. She has blooming roses around her breasts and her eyes are full of the stars. She cradles you to her chest until you’re the small child, and you can hardly move. Like a newborn baby. She rocks you and you hear a lullaby.

Dave walks by your side, holding your hand. He pulls the wagon for you. He asks if you’re okay and you nod, smile for him, and keep walking. Bec stays near. Dave asks where you want to stay for the night.

Your heart is racing. It’s beating fast and the world is spinning. You swallow, your tongue feeling dried out, and you say, “That library.”

Dave says okay and leads the way. He walks at your pace, making sure you don’t feel like you’re too slow. You stop at one point, bend over, and vomit. Your dinner from last night splashes out and you heave and cough until it’s all over. Dave’s hands are shaking when he hands you the water jug, and you wash out your mouth before touching his cheek gently saying, “I’m okay. Just tired.”

It’s becoming very, very cold that night. Dave holds your hand again as you both find the library. You take the steps one at a time. Dave sets up a camp in the children’s section and uses a large, broken pane of glass to set up the wood for the fire. He uses ripped pages of a book to start it all up and uses your lighter. He flicks it over and over again, but there’s no flame. You groan and lean over him and do it yourself, but there’s still no flame. There’s no fluid left in the wagon, and the lighter is empty.

“What do we do?” Dave asks. “It’s freezing up outside.”

“We do our best,” you whisper out. Anything louder hurts.

Your heart is still beating fast, like a drum. You haven’t seen a drum in a long time. Dave shivers from the oncoming cold, setting up the blankets and makes you eat an entire can of peaches because he read that fruit was good from the immune system. He eats his own can, feeds Bec, and then sits in front of you instead of reading. He stares at you while you lay limp in the blankets, shaking.

He takes a glove off and touches your forehead. You smile and say, “What’s the prognosis, doc?”

He doesn’t smile though. He holds a hand in your hair before he puts his glove back on and starts to lay down with you. He mutters something about body heat and he makes you unzip your jacket and sweater before he crawls into the blankets, wearing his own jacket backwards, so that he can press his back up against your chest. Then he gets Bec under the blanket, holding his collar so that he won’t rush away from the warmth. The wind outside is harsh and there’s gray snow coming in from broken windows. You clutch Dave to your chest, kiss his hair, and then pull the blanket up over your heads.

He’s very warm, and you wrap him so close to you. You shiver and your heart is racing and the dressing on your wound feels wet. The world is getting very cold, and you swear you feel someone hugging you from behind. The woman made out of roses with galaxy eyes. You whisper to her and tell her to go away. You’re not ready.

Dave mumbles a “what?” He must have heard you.

“You up?” you breathe.

“Yeah. You okay?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Bro.”

“Gotta go south. Keep moving. Always look for food. Only thrust three people.”

“Three?”

“Yeah. Me. Bec. And yourself. Trust yourself the most.”

“Don’t talk like that,” he whispers, curling up for warmth. He drags sleepy Bec closer.

“You’ve gotta trust yourself, Davey.”

“Bro, go to sleep.”

“You’re amazing. You’re different than me, and that’s good. You’re a better me. You’re going to be okay. Gonna be okay. I love you.”

“Stop it.”

“Don’t give up. Don’t hang yourself. You don’t give up until you see the sun every day.”

“Go to sleep.”

You shut up for a bit. That woman is still near you, trying to touch you. You bury your face against Dave and think back to when he was a toddler. The way you would wrap your entire body around him, blocking out the threat of earthquakes. You would sing him to sleep every night. Some parents killed their babies, not wanting them to suffer through this world, but you couldn’t do it. Even if you knew he might go through bad things. You knew you could make him happy with being alive, that you could raise him, that you could survive through this hell.

Or at least make sure he does.

You hum the lullaby that you used to sing to him when he still couldn’t walk. You kiss his head and then breathe on his neck, arms trapping him to your chest. It’s hard to feel his warmth. He’s shivering. He’s freezing and you can’t feel your fingers anymore.

You don’t speak again. You feel tears on your cheeks as he falls asleep. You gasp and you start crying as your take your jacket off. You wrap it around Dave, and you take the blanket off of you too and you wrap that around your little brother and the dog that’s whining softly. The freezing air pierces you and you try to look at your hand, but it’s so dark. It’s pale, though. So pale and shaking and your heart is racing, racing, and the world is fuzzy.

The last thing you wrap around Dave is yourself. His breathing is calmer as he’s warmed up, pressed against Bec. Your limbs are going numb. You put your hand on his chest. You feel him breathing. You feel his heart beat. Knowing he’s alive every morning is what gives you the strength to keep going, and right now, on that cold, cold night, feeling that he’s alive is what gives you the strength to let go without being afraid.