A cold wind blew in through the window, and he shivered in the darkness. As always, his thoughts ran to his place in the world. Who was he? How did the others think of him now? Was Tejada impressed by him? Did he consider himself equal to the other soldiers?
He broke off his line of thought and chided himself for being childish. It didn't matter. That type of thinking had always gotten in the way of his own happiness, and none of it mattered. It didn't matter what people thought of him, just as it hadn't when he was a kid, and his mother would treat him like shit. He should have known it then, but the world was a different place, bound by things like social-standing and respect. The only standing that really mattered was whether you could stand on your own two feet every morning, whether you could get up and fight. He could do that. He was doing well.
The rattling and crunching from the fence-line began to get to him after a while, and he almost wanted the wind to pick back up, so it would drown out the noise. Though it was frigid and made him shiver every time, the sound the wind produced as it rushed through the broken window was soothing, even if it was a little eerie.
It reminded him of a song. He couldn't name the song; he had never been good at remembering such things. It was an old song he thought, from before he had been born… maybe the 80s. It had a lot of strange sounds, a haunting sound, like the wind. He smiled as the notes from the song played in his head. His chapped lips split in the process, but he smiled anyway.
He was almost on the verge of remembering the words, when he heard a crunch outside the window—a footstep in the snow.
Quietly and slowly, he brought his rifle to bear on the window. He didn't want to think about how one of the Annies had gotten through the fence. If the fence had fallen, they were all sorts of fucked. He wasn't going to fire unless he needed to. If the fence was down, one shot would bring them boiling over to the window, and he didn't fancy running in the dark with potential crawlers underneath the snow.
He held his breath, and he heard the sound again. He reached over his back, his arm moving a centimeter a second to avoid making noise. He felt the handle of his hatchet and grasped it firmly. The small office was too small for American Express, his preferred Annie dispatch method. The hatchet would have to do.
With another snowy crunch, a torso appeared in the empty window frame. He swung his axe, and the creature dodged him. What the fuck? He turned to see the barrel of a shotgun leveled at his face, and he opened and closed his mouth, shocked to find one of the living staring him down.
It was the woman from before, her cheeks rosy pink, her lips chapped and bloody.
"Don't make a fucking peep," she hissed.
He stood still, his brain warring in his head, self-preservation and tribalism duking it out in his brain. Warn the others and possibly die, or shut the hell up and stay alive… maybe. What would Tejada do? He had no doubt about what Tejada would do. Tejada would scream and make a move on the woman, but he wasn't Tejada. Never had been. He was just Walt, a guy that wished he was Tejada.
As if she could read the internal struggle in his mind, the woman said, "Back up, hero." Her voice was softer than he expected.
He did as he was told, a shotgun in one hand and a hatchet in the other. When his back was up against the wall, he stood, waiting.
"Drop 'em. Quietly."
He squatted down slowly, setting the hatchet and his rifle on the gray carpet of the office floor.
"Kick 'em over."
He kicked them over.
"Turn around."
Oh, man, this was getting worse by the second. He turned around, figuring he had come this far, he might as well go all the way with his cowardly actions. With his face facing a generic landscape painting, barely illuminated by the reflection of moonlight off snow, he was able to make out a flowery landscape. He was trying to determine what color the flowers were when he felt the ice-cold kiss of a shotgun barrel against the base of his neck.
"Who are you guys?" the woman asked.
Who are we? he wondered. The question was loaded in so many ways. Who are we? Hell, I don't even know who I am. Are we friends? Are we soldiers? Am I included in that? "We're survivors," he said.
The lady jabbed the barrel of the shotgun hard into the base of his neck. "No shit," she said. "What are you doing out here?"
"We're just moving through."
"For where?"
"That's none of your…" He cut off his words as she jammed the barrel of the shotgun deep into his neckmeat. He gasped in pain.
"Where?"
"The beach," he said.
She let out a smirking laugh, quiet, but just audible enough for him to hear.
"You dummies are never gonna make it."
Alarms went off in his head. "What do you mean?"
"Walking around helping people. You know what you get when you help people, soldier?"
"I'm not a…"
"You get hurt," she said. He thought he heard a tremble in her voice, some sort of damage coming through. There was a pause, and under the howl of the wind, he heard her swallow. "You lost a man today. Was it worth it?"
"You're still alive, aren't you?" he said.
"Stupid boy," she said.
"My name's Walt. We're not going to hurt you."
"No names. We don't
