I clutched my arms around my body to keep from trembling so much. I had Jacob keep the doors propped open so I wouldn’t get stuck in here while he went into the small town of Liberty to see if anyone was left. I turned the heater off so it wouldn’t overwork itself, but I was really regretting it. I started to walk around and pace in a circle outlining the couches. There was an hour timer set on the watch sitting on the table. After thirty minutes, I started to worry that he wasn’t coming back, and I couldn’t wait any longer. I walked up the stairs and into the heavy snow. It hadn’t lightened at all. The breeze almost knocked me over as I stood there, staring into the whiteness. I would never be able to navigate through this. I wouldn't be able to find him. I went back inside and clenched my chattering teeth together. I sat in front of the watch and stared at it. Finally, at ten minutes left to spare, he came walking inside. He had layers of snow plastered to the side of his clothes. I ran up the stairs and closed the doors behind him as he slowly stepped, kind of like a machine, and fell to his knees in front of the heater. He reached his hands forward to turn it on, but he could barely bend his fingers. Instead, he started to take off the layers. I turned it on and could immediately see his body start to tremble as a sad attempt to heat himself. Once he got the layers off, he warmed up a lot faster.

  “I take it you didn’t see anyone out there?” I watched as he clasped his hands together in front of the heater. There was nobody with him, so I had just assumed, but I should have known better.

  “No. No, I did,” He wouldn’t look at me. He scooted closer to the heat source, his skin turning red. Each word he was forcing out between his tensed muscles. “I saw a lot of people, actually. I knew a couple of people from here and their kids,” I could hear his staggering breaths. “They were all dead. Every single one of them, and they left them there. The little kids, the parents, and the elderly. All of them." He started to cough. "My buddy’s parents were in the trailer, but he wasn't.” I slowly sat down on the ground with my back against the couch. I had heard someone talk like this before. There were too many questions to ask, and too many answers that we couldn’t find, but the pattern was similar to what I've already seen. The pattern of a traumatized victim. Jacob turned around to warm up his back. Now he was facing me, and he could see the gears in my head start to turn.

  “The sickness that wiped out the rest of the world targeted everyone but the fourteen-fifteen-year-olds, right? Up into the early adults? It’s the same pattern. Isn’t that weird?” I could see something behind his eyes when I looked into them. Whatever he had seen really, really messed with him. I kept reminding myself that his paradise here was ripped away from him less than a day ago. He didn't know the world outside was just as brutal.

  “People are dead, Amelia. Now isn’t the time for conspiracies?” He released a sigh.

  “It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just- how are the people in this age group immune to all of the shit that keeps coming to wipe out the human race? Why are they the only ones to be missing out of the bodies and the only ones to be immune to illness? The only thing they aren’t immune to is killing each other. Wouldn’t that make sense? Collect all of the immune people, keep close eyes on them so they can’t murder each other, and do whatever the hell you want with them?”

  “It reminds me of some sort of drafting situation when they chose the young and healthy to fight. What if it’s an army?”

  “I mean, it makes sense. It doesn’t make sense, but it does, you know? How would the soldiers survive? Those men who raided the house, what makes them so special? How did a mass group of people not in that age range manage that? It’s natural selection; you can’t control sickness, unless they can?“ He sat there in silence for a little bit. Everything is natural selection. The extreme natural disasters are destroying the world. The animals are going haywire. People are killing each other. The sickness is killing everyone else. It all happened at once. Everyone just kind of assumed that the world was going downhill from the start, so it wasn’t a big surprise when it all blew up in our face. Natural selection. But now, I really don’t think it is. Anything could be made by man, so why not their own destruction? I stood up from the ground and went over to one of the stools instead. “If they’re really behind all of this, I don’t think we’re going to be able to get in as easily as we think. Gosh, I feel like a flat earther.”

  “There’s no guarantee that they’re actually in there, either. Is it really worth it?” My head was starting to ache. I had so many questions, but this one overruled them all. We hadn’t discussed who was going to act as the bait and get taken. We were sure that the darts were for all of the people in our age range, and the adults and young children were eliminated with the real bullets. That’s what we assumed, but what if it was all wrong? Whoever was going to go out there was going to risk everything. I couldn’t let him do that.

  “I’m doing it. No questions. You know the roads around here a lot better than me anyway, right? I can handle it,” Jacob looked over at me and shook his head. He stood up as he spoke.

  “No. If we’re wrong about this, you can’t-”

  “Jacob, I've seen enough of this world to know that doing this is worth it. I’ve helped enough people, and my family,” I felt a ping in my heart. I couldn’t imagine them without me here. I knew they would be eaten alive, and that this was selfish of me, but I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to Jacob either. I didn't even know what family was left anymore. “They’ll be okay. Let me do it.”

  “You think I’m going to let you walk into a suicide mission? No. No, you’re not doing this.”

  “I can’t live with myself if you did this and it backfired. I’m the only one who has a fighting chance to break out of a place like that. You’re a big red target, too. I’m doing it, Jacob. If you try to stop me, I'll take you down myself.” I’m sure if he tried hard enough, he could beat me in a fight. I had been in fight or flight for two years now, training every day, but I was never as good as I could be. I could never beat a full-grown man in a fight, at least not any time soon.

  “We're not done with this.” He walked past me and grabbed a can from the fridge. He cracked it open and took a long drink. He sighed afterwards and leaned forward on the counter. “It fucking sucks. How do people live like this?”

  “It goes away after a long time. That deep, dark feeling in your stomach that literally eats you alive. It really does consume you whole after living with it this long,” I leaned my head against my hand. “How are we going to lure them here anyway?” Jacob took another drink and pointed his thumb behind him.

  “There’s a tripwire in one of the houses in town. I figured they set them up for people they missed, but we’re the only ones left. Nobody’s here,” I looked back at the pile on the ground behind us. We had our winter clothes, weapons, and random items we had picked up along the way. It wasn’t going to work, though, not for the person following. Those clothes weren't exactly stealthy. We needed white to blend in a whole lot better. I would take the mission this time. He needed time to thaw, and I had a good enough understanding of how to get into town.

  “Alright. I’ll go out there and find better clothes. You just stay here, take a nap in front of the heater,” I got up and started to put on my layers of gloves and some extra coats. “I’ll be back.” He nodded and threw a couple of fingers up to wave to me. I made my way up the stairs and used all the strength I had to open the doors. A few inches of snow had already gathered upon it. As I emerged, I felt the breeze immediately cutting into my face, but I was wearing enough layers to shield most of my body. I felt it ever so slightly on my wrists, too, but that was it. I had no other cracks where the wind slipped through. I pulled my mask up a little farther and pushed through the snow. The snow lightened up a little more, so I could actually see as I walked.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  I followed the faint path that was left behind by Jacob’s footprints. A lot of it had blown over, but I could see them well enough to get to the road. I could see the houses not too far from here, too. Their silhouettes were slightly visible. There was snow plastered on the sides of most of them, but it was still obvious where they were. I kept walking along the asphalt where the road would dip off into a ditch. At least then I would know if the road started curving. I stopped at the first house I found, but when I opened the door, the trip wire was right in front of me. I slowly stepped over it and closed the door behind me. Snow fell off my clothes and all over the ground. It didn’t melt when it hit the ground, though. These houses were freezing. I looked up, and I saw what Jacob was talking about. There was a family here. They were sitting at the dinner table. I quickly looked away and walked up the stairs to go into the bedrooms. I ran it through the closets to see what I could find. There was little white clothing, but in the woman’s room, I found a white scarf. I thought it was a scarf, but it kinda looked like a shawl. Either way, it could wrap tightly around my head. I went back downstairs and opened the coat cabinet next to their shoe rack. There’s no white in there. I left as quickly as I had come. I didn’t want to be in a house like that any longer, but it didn’t get any easier. I hit the house next door instead, but there was a family in there too. I walked through the kitchen and into the main bedroom. They had a walk-in closet, but there was nothing in there that I could use. I walked back out and looked around. There was a deer head mounted on the wall, next to it was some sort of bison. I looked around the rest of the house to see what else I could find. There is a stuffed bobcat, a fox, and an owl. There’s also a white rabbit sitting next to the TV. This is a big hunting family, I could tell. Where they kept their hunting clothes was the bigger question. I stepped past a small wall and stared at the pictures hanging from it. It was a man and his son in every picture. They would pose with small and large game. On the opposite walls were more pictures, but they were from the army. I picked up a frame and looked into it. It was a collage. One corner was a desert troop, one was in a jungle, and another was in the Arctic. It looked like Alaska. I hung it back on the wall. I opened the door to the basement and walked downstairs. The lights still worked. Downstairs were even more taxidermied animals. The handiwork was so realistic, I could barely tell the difference between a live rabbit and the fake one.

  I saw a safe that was cracked open. Beside it was a man lying there. He had been going for the weapons when the soldiers had gotten to him. That was one of their own. I bent down and closed his eyes, and stood up to see inside the safe. There were hunting rifles, but that wasn't all. It looked like there were military-grade weapons in here. I reached in and picked one of them up. It was a very heavy assault rifle. I could use this. I sat down and looked around at the nearby boxes. There were attachments of gun straps in quite a few of them. I grabbed a few of the straps and hooked them onto a sniper rifle, and threw them over my back. I wasn’t done, though. Behind the man was another door, and it led to an area with a bunch of antique weapons and World War II bullet casings. They were all in a glass case, and beside it were too wide closet doors that I could open. Everything in there was camouflage, some of it for hunting, and some seemed to be military-grade clothing. Further to the right, I found white pants hanging with a white long-sleeve shirt and a coat next to it. The coat looked to belong to a woman. It was out of place compared to everything else, but I could use it. Next to it was a thin black wind blocker. I grabbed it and put it all over my clothes, then put on the white camouflage coat and pants. I already wrapped the shawl around my head. This had to be good enough. I walked up the stairs, carefully walking over the trip wires and following the road back to the bunker. I was halfway there when I heard something a little louder than the wind.

  I turned around and saw a shadow-like object moving through the snow. Only moving down the road, though, and heading right for me. I dove off into the ditches and lay flat on the ground. I rapidly moved my arm and leg back and forth to dig myself deep in the snow. I looked crazy, like I had been run over. Within a matter of seconds, I was barely visible to the naked eye. I turned my head so I could see what was driving by, and I realized I had seen them before. It was the soldiers. They turned into the driveway of Jacob's friend. The driveway of the trailer. The cellar. I quickly got up, grabbed the rifle I had just picked up from the house, and started to run. I could only run so fast given the nearly a foot and a half of snow beneath my feet. I mostly waded through the driveway. I cut across the field the best I could, running through the trees and finding myself behind the trailer. On the opposite side was the cellar and the trucks. I got down and crawled underneath as the soldiers climbed out of their vehicles with their weapons drawn. They were looking around to try to spot something. I could hear someone's footsteps above me in the trailer, but not normal footsteps. The soldiers couldn't have gotten in there already. It was like someone creeping along. The floor creaked beneath whoever it was. It was squeaking above me. I poked my head out from beneath it and stared at the soldiers. They were opening the cellar doors and went down inside, but I never heard any shots. I had been listening with my breath held the whole time. If Jacob were down there, they would kill him.

  They came back out moments later. Nobody was down there. I sighed with relief and turned around to make sure nobody had spotted me yet. I saw the back door of the trailer open wide, and a familiar figure started running. I went to climb out from underneath the trailer, but a soldier was running towards them. The soldier would make it before I could, and I couldn’t give my position away. I stared ahead and watched us. Jacob turned around and looked right at me. He drew his weapon and aimed it toward the soldier, but he was looking at me. He wasn’t looking at the soldier. He knew I was here. He knew I was never going to change my mind about being the bair. I saw the soldier draw back their weapon, and I tried not to listen to every instinct in my body, but I couldn’t help it. I fired my weapon, but I was too late. Jacob had already been hit, I could see it in the way he was running. I called out from underneath the trailer and took off into the woods after him. I was faster than the soldiers. All of the soldiers were on the other side of the trailer, and the man I had shot would be their priority. I had aimed to kill.

  I kept my eyes on Jacob the best I could, but the snow was engulfing him. Finally, I caught up, but that’s only because he stopped running. He was lying in the snow. The walls around him were taller than his body. I kneeled, and he looked up at me. I could see the dart sticking out of his arm. I pulled down my mask so he could hear me better and see my face. I knew what it had been like to be paralyzed by this thing, and he didn't understand it. “ Gosh, you’re stupid,” I said, with tears gathering in my eyes. “ I’m gonna find you. I’m gonna follow you, and I’m gonna find you,“ he looked up at me and weakly blinked. His eyes were rolling back in his head. That was the only muscle strength he had left. “Don’t worry. I have the radio, and once I get close enough, I’m gonna break in and find you. You have my word,“ I looked up from behind me. I could see a bunch of shadows moving through the woods. They were trying to find him. I looked back at him, a knot in my throat as I was trying to gather whatever words I could. This could be the last time I ever saw him. If I failed, he might die too. This could be the last time I see him, or he sees me. This could be the last human contact I have for a long time. I wasn’t ready to be alone. I’ve been alone, but I was with him. Now I really was going to be alone. “I’m gonna save you.“ Quickly, I squeezed his shoulder as I watched the last muscles in his neck give out, and his head turned to the side. I lifted his arm slightly above the barrier of snow so he’d be easier to find, and I ran. I ran as fast as I could until I ducked behind a tree and peeked out from behind it. I heard them yelling, saying they found him. Stage one was complete.

  I took the long way around the trailer. I came up behind the cellar's doors and slowly crawled up to one of the trucks. They were almost to the trailer by the time I was inspecting their vehicles for the symbol that Jacob and I had found. There was a big open truck; it looked like it was carrying cargo. The driver was still in it; I could see the light from a cigar. Lucky for me, the opening was in a huge blindspot. Nobody could be watching me. I climbed inside and went supine behind the tailgate. I looked up at the ceiling, catching my breath when I heard a click. I heard a voice, and cold metal pressed against my face. A voice began to speak, but not the raspy voice I'd expect a soldier to have. Nonetheless, it wasn't a friendly tone.

  “Don’t move, or I’m gonna shoot you.“