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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 6 months ago

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Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 9: Some Days He Feels Like Dying]

A/N: Below are your guesses...let's see how you did!!! 🥰😘

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.

Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “Extraordinary Girl” by Green Day.

Word count: 8.3k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰

Let’s go back to the beginning of the end of the world.

On the big-screen tv in the Liberty Center at Saratoga Springs, Wolf Blitzer is saying: “We are receiving confirmation of additional outbreaks of the so-called Florida Fever, the first cases of which here in the U.S. were reported in Miami a little over one week ago. Concern is now growing nationally, especially as the modes of transmission, symptoms, and treatment options remain unclear. Let’s go across the country to Natasha Chen for the latest information. Natasha?”

“Hi, Wolf. I’m here outside the UC San Diego Medical Center where early this morning, two individuals suspected to be suffering from the illness were admitted. I’ve been informed by hospital staff that both patients are currently in stable condition, but there is still so much confusion and conflicting information regarding this ‘Florida Fever,’ and of course that uncertainty is leading to fear, rumors, and honestly a bit of hysteria. Even how to refer to the sickness is controversial, with no official name having been decided upon by scientists. Cases in Australia are known as Ragepox, the U.K. has dubbed it the 21st Century Sweat after a mysterious disease from the 1500s, and Russia is calling it the Ukrainian Flu while Ukraine has opted for the Russian Red Rot, inspired by the skin lesions that some patients experience.”

“Can you tell us what we do know, Natasha? Are doctors classifying this illness as a virus, or as a bacterial infection more akin to tuberculosis or meningitis?”

“At this time, what I’m hearing is that doctors are fairly certain it’s a virus, as patients do not seem to respond to antibiotics when they’ve been explored as a potential treatment. But there’s truly very little information at this early stage, and I think we’re all being reminded of those first days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when no one really knew how to best to avoid contracting the virus or what the long-term effects would be both nationally and globally.”

“There are absolutely some similarities, Natasha, which I’m sure is contributing to the unease surrounding the situation. What precautions are doctors currently recommending?”

“Wolf, doctors are urging the public not to panic, and to exercise common sense measures like avoiding crowded spaces, sanitizing surfaces, and staying home if they’re feeling unwell. Suspected cases of the illness should be reported to primary physicians or local hospitals. Typical symptoms appear to include headaches, fever, gastrointestinal upset, skin discoloration and blistering, and unusual bleeding, as well as behavioral changes, particularly disorientation, aggression, and even violence in some patients…”

“That ain’t what it is,” Rio says. He jabs his index finger at the tv from where he sits on the couch beside you. “Snowflake wasn’t sick, he was dead. He was motherfucking dead, flatline, code blue, crossed the rainbow bridge, he was gone. He was dead and then he woke back up, and he wasn’t a person anymore. He was…something else.”

“Dumbass, people don’t come back from the dead,” Mike says from the ping pong table. People are milling around pretending to play pool, darts, chess, poker, Monopoly, Uno, Parcheesi, but really you’re all here for the same reason. You want to know what’s happening.

Rio turns to you. “Wasn’t Snowflake dead?”

“He definitely seemed dead,” you reply, knees tucked to your chest and still watching the tv. Wolf Blitzer’s voice is calm, but his pale blue eyes have a manic sort of light to them, too large and too rattled.

“Man, fuck Florida,” says Desmond, a utilitiesman born and raised Trenton, New Jersey. “Nothing but psychos and alligators. Saw them off of Georgia and just let them float away.”

“What was that?” Tyler replies combatively. He’s from a trailer park in Tallahassee.

“Ty, why do you care? You’d be fine. You’re already up here. You can stay.”

“They’re lying,” Rio mutters, meaning Wolf and Natasha on CNN. “When the corpsmen called the hospital, they said to be prepared to restrain Snowflake and that he might try to bite us. Why aren’t they warning people about that?!”

Kayleigh, a steelworker from Oklahoma City, looses a frenetic sort of laugh. “Because there’s no non-panic-inducing way to say: Hey, go buy some duct tape and bungee cords to tie up your loved ones, because they might try to fucking eat you.”

Rio doesn’t frown often, but he is now; he slips his phone out of the pocket of his camo pants and types out a WhatsApp message to Sophie. You only know her from photos and quick hellos via video chat, a sweet diminutive woman with white-blonde hair and blue eyes that seem to fill up half her face, as fragile as Rio is overwhelming. She likes baking and romance novels and elephants; whenever Rio finds elephant-themed souveners, he ships them home to Oregon for her, refrigerator magnets and wallets and scarves and snow globes. Sophie wears a lot of long flowing skirts and hand-knit sweaters, and offers strange suggestions when she and Rio discuss baby names: Sage, Fox, Laurel, Coral, Juniper, Karma, Rune, Otter. Otter?! Rio had exclaimed. Babe, if you name our kid Otter, even I’M gonna have to bully them.

“I’m telling Sophie to stay with my parents,” Rio says to you. “They’ve gotten super weird with all the off-the-grid stuff, but they have years’ worth of supplies and grow most of their own food now, and they’re thirty miles from the nearest town. And no one knows how to defend themselves like doomsday preppers.”

“Good idea,” you reply, watching the tv. Now Wolf Blitzer is talking about tornadoes in the Midwest, and you could almost believe the world is normal again.

A few days later all major social media platforms begin censoring content related to the so-called Florida Fever, and then the internet goes down completely, and then the power turns off and on and off again, and finally quits like a car driven to its last mile. The combat units are moved out of Saratoga Springs—never to be heard from again—and the construction projects paused indefinitely, and one of the master-at-arms that Rio is friends with (Rio has a lot of friends, surely you aren’t so remarkable) relays information that he shouldn’t: tales of planned missions, impossible plagues, overrun cities, innumerable deserters in every branch of the U.S. military.

“Hey,” Rio whispers, shaking you awake one night, moonlight streaming through the windows and the pops of distant gunfire you aren’t supposed to ask about. “If I leave, will you come with me?”

It’s a big commitment; it could be a lifetime. You fear he might just be trying not to hurt your feelings. “I don’t want to slow you down.”

“No, you don’t get it,” Rio says. “I’m not leaving without you. Are you going to Oregon by choice, or should I tie you up and throw you in the back of the Humvee?”

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s a young one, maybe a teenager, little buds for horns and only weighing a few hundred pounds. This is good; if it was any heavier, Cregan and Rio wouldn’t be able to drag it back to the ranch. You’re still in Red Desert, Wyoming, and the bison are grazing just off I-80, an asphalt artery that cuts through an endless steppe of sand-colored rocks and tall grass. They gaze lazily in your direction with bulbous dark eyes, perpetually chewing, not terribly intelligent. The Colt pistols of the men who found you at the RV had been loaded with 9mm bullets, the same caliber your Berettas take; there weren’t many, but enough to fill both of your clips, something that feels like winning the lottery. You are lying on the rocky, dusty soil and lining up the shot. If you miss, the herd will scatter, and you’ll watch dinner vanish beneath a blue sky—pale like Aemond’s eye, a weak shallow blue—and rough white scars of cirrostratus clouds.

“Feels kind of wrong to kill a baby,” you murmur. Daeron, Luke, Baela, Helaena, and Ice are back at the house. Aemond, Rio, Cregan, Rhaena, and Aegon are here on the ground with you; Aegon insisted upon being brought along, and Rio agreed to carry him. Aegon had never seen American bison outside of the Oregon Trail computer game, those pixelated brown blobs migrating across the screen no more material than unicorns or faeries or basilisks.

“If the baby didn’t want to get killed, it shouldn’t be made of steak,” Aegon points out. He’s on a lot of Vicodin, the only narcotic Aemond could find back in Ogallala, Nebraska.

“No pressure, Chips,” Rio says, chewing on a long blade of little bluestem grass. “If you miss we’re just going to have to eat each other like the Donner Party.”

Aegon wrinkles his nose in confusion. “The what?”

“She won’t miss,” Aemond says, and Rio snickers to himself and gives you a quick wink that no one else notices.

“I don’t think one 9mm bullet will do it,” Cregan mutters. “Cows got thick skulls, I figure bison are the same way. You’ll have to hit it a few times, and before it can take off and disappear on us.”

Aemond casts him a patronizing glance. “And you’ve killed a lot of cows?”

“Oh yeah. Worked in a slaughterhouse for a while before I got hired by the power company. Hated it, went home and could still smell the blood and brains on myself no matter how many times I showered. Couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”

Aemond looks like he regrets asking. Rhaena frowns worriedly at the bison. “Will they charge if someone shoots at them?”

Cregan shrugs. “Probably not.”

“Probably?!”

You squeeze the trigger five times in quick succession, hit the calf thrice, tiny puffs of scarlet mist that spring from its woolly head. It flops over as the rest of the herd jolts into a gallop, kicking up dust and fleeing across the steppe.

“Yes!” Rio booms as everyone applauds. “We’re in business! We’re having ribeyes tonight! Cregan, my good sir, I take mine medium rare.”

“You’re getting well done,” Aemond tells him. “Everyone is. Just in case the bison has parasites.”

Rio groans. “You’re ruining my life, man.” Then he and Cregan trot over to grab the baby bison, each of them taking one of its back hooves.

“So,” Aegon says dreamily. “Now that Rio is preoccupied, who would like to assist me in returning my disgusting, debilitated body to the ranch? Anyone? Anyone?”

Rhaena turns to you. “When we have more bullets, could you give me shooting lessons?”

“Sure,” you reply, a bit startled. “Really? You’re interested?”

“Well…” Rhaena hesitates. “Baela’s always been the brave one. At home, at school, when we were shopping, even when restaurants would mess up my order, Baela would do the talking and make sure I was alright…and I would literally hide behind her waiting for her to solve all my problems. And now…with the baby, with Jace…it’s been really different being the one to help her for a change, and I don’t think I’m very good at it yet. But Baela deserves to have people to lean on, just like I’ve always had her. And…when I stabbed that guy in the RV…I kind of liked it.” She titters nervously when she sees the shock on your face. “No, not like that! Not the killing part, or the gushing blood, that was all super gross. But the fact that I helped protect Baela and Luke? The fact that I wasn’t useless in that situation? That was a good feeling. Baela is clever, and she’s courageous and caring and funny, and she’s always been better than me at everything, and I never minded because she…she was like my own personal superhero, you know? But now I feel like I need to start learning how to do things myself so I can help her. Even if Baela is still better at everything, and probably always will be.”

Aegon grins toothily and pushes his neon green plastic sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. “I know how you feel. It’s pretty impossible to look heroic next to Aemond.”

“Stop,” Aemond says, but he’s smiling, and a bloom of bashful pink blood appears in his cheeks.

“You already took over the driving,” you tell Rhaena encouragingly. “That was a big help.”

“Yeah,” Rhaena replies, a bit pensive. “Let’s hope I can keep that going.” Between the gas Aemond found in Ogallala and what was siphoned from the would-be attackers’ GMC Yukon, you got enough fuel in the Tahoe to take it halfway across Wyoming; but now the gauge is not just at but venturing below the E, and it can’t have more than five or ten miles left. That might not even get you to the next ranch, let alone a proper town. You need a working vehicle. There are nearly a thousand miles between here and Odessa, Oregon.

Aegon is pawing at Aemond like a cat. “Come on, hero. Help me up.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“This is why we’re friends,” Rio tells you as he shovels forkfuls of bison steak into his mouth, juice dribbling down his chin. Cregan gutted the bison and butchered it, then you helped him cook the steaks—not very uniform in size and shape, yet no one is complaining—on a pan heated in the woodstove. You fed the fire with books you found in the house, mostly religious in nature. “You convince me not to commit suicide when we’re stranded on a transmission tower, you share your Cheddar Whales, you’re good at shooting things…”

“How did you two become friends?” Baela asks. You are all arranged around the dining room table; there are just enough chairs for everyone. Ice lies beneath it mauling on bison bones that Cregan set aside for her. The room is illuminated by flashlights. Baela looks great: in good spirits, glowing, alert, wearing a loose cotton dress that Helaena found in an upstairs closet for her. Baela napped most of the day, something she rarely allows herself to indulge in, and the benefits are evident.

Rio says nonchalantly: “I talked to everybody and she barely talked at all. So of course I had to investigate and figure out what that was about. Turns out she’s kind of cool. You know the Wheel of Fortune game at arcades where there’s like a hundred little lights in a circle you have to press the button when the one that says Spin Zone lights up? She’s a freak, she can hit it almost every time. Can’t sink a basketball or sing karaoke to save her life, but you know, we all have flaws.”

Aegon looks up from his map, which he is scrutinizing as he eats his bison steak. “Do you realize that if we could just stop at gas stations like back when everything was normal, we’d be in Odessa or the Bay Area in fifteen hours? Literally less than one day. Fucking unreal. And yet here we are trapped in yee-haw country, freaky giant animals, no civilization but Jesus billboards everywhere, hell on earth.” He holds up a palm. “No offense, Cregan. You’re okay.”

Cregan smiles mildly. “None taken, Fried Foot. You know you’re a little well done yourself these days.”

“That’s ableist,” Aegon replies.

“We’ll find gas tomorrow,” Aemond says. He sounds confident because he has to; he’s not allowed to panic, to give up. He’s seated at the head of the table like a patriarch. His steak is the smallest and the most ragged. He wouldn’t accept any of the others.

You ask Baela: “Have you decided what to name the baby?”

“Kind of.” She rests both hands on her belly, a globe like a full moon. Helaena glances over at Baela, frowning and preoccupied. “If it’s a boy, I’m going to name it after Jace. We had already picked out Theodore…and Teddy for short, isn’t that cute? But now…I’d want him to have that connection to his father. The baby won’t have any pictures of him, or videos, or memories, or papers he wrote in school, or ties or rings or cufflinks, or…anything. But he could have Jace’s name.”

The rest of you nod, eyes downcast and feeling terribly sorry for her. “I really like that idea,” Luke says quietly.

Now Baela is thinking, her gaze traveling around the room as she chews on a cube of streak. “I’m not sure what I’d call a girl. Maybe something naturey like Violet, Rosemary, Ivy, Indigo, Fern…”

“You should name it Otter,” you say, and you and Rio erupt into raucous laughter. Aemond smiles as he watches you.

Baela is grinning uncertainly, trying not to be insensitive. Perhaps people named their kids stuff like Otter where you came from. “Um, sorry, what?!”

“That was one of the baby names on Sophie��s list,” Rio clarifies. “I vetoed it. Or at least…I think she agreed to cross it off…? Oh my God, imagine I finally get to Odessa only to find out my firstborn child has been named Otter.”

“You’d have to turn right back around,” you say. “Total abandonment would be the only honorable choice. We’d have to start over someplace else. I’ve heard Texas is nice.”

Aegon snorts. “You can’t live in Texas. They don’t even have legal weed there.”

Rhaena squints at him. “I don’t really think that’s a concern anymore, Aegon.”

Aegon smacks his forehead theatrically. “Oh no, I forgot about the apocalypse again!”

“So Cregan,” Baela says. “You were planning to vote for Trump.”

Everyone at the table groans. “No politics,” Aemond says.

“They’re all dead now, so it doesn’t matter,” Rhaena adds. “Biden, Kamala, that insane Kennedy brain worm dude, Trump…”

Aegon says: “If I was a zombie, I wouldn’t eat Trump.”

“I just found that interesting,” Baela continues, looking at Cregan like she’s expecting him to explain himself. Rhaena and Luke exchange a nervous glance. Daeron reaches under the table to pet Ice; you can hear her tail thumping cheerfully against the hardwood floor.

“I was a Trump voter, yeah,” Cregan replies between bites of steak. Aemond is studying him uneasily, but Cregan’s baritone voice is calm. “That doesn’t mean I approved of a lot of the things he did and said. I’m not a monster, I don’t believe in mocking people or all that January 6th stuff. But he was good for the economy. Back when Trump was president, groceries were more affordable, and houses were cheaper, and more companies were hiring. If I had tried to move out of my parents’ place in 2023 instead of 2019, there’s no way I could have done it. And I really needed to get out of there. A lot of people feel that they don’t have the luxury of voting for the nicest candidate, or the candidate they agree with on social issues. Something abstract like climate change isn’t even on the radar. They have to vote for their basic necessities.”

You and Rio understand what he means, you’ve both met plenty of people with the same perspective; everybody else seems shellshocked.

“But I don’t want y’all to think that I’m…” Cregan looks around the table, his eyes catching—interestingly—on Helaena, who observes him with a fully present attentiveness that you’ve learned is rare for her. “You know, like a sexist or a racist or that I hate foreigners or anything. Because I’ve never felt that way, and now I’m very happy to have found you guys, and I respect the hell out of you. And I want to be allowed to stay.”

“You can stay, Cregan,” Helaena reassures him.

“Yeah,” Rio says. “Especially since we’d probably starve without you.”

Cregan beams, clearly grateful, and there are chuckles and the tension breaks; and Baela is placidly skating her palm over the arc of her belly, and now that you’ve eaten all you can, Rio is spearing the remaining chunks of your steak with his fork and gobbling them down. He doesn’t ask before he does this; he knows you don’t mind. You’ve never understood why he’s given you so much over the past nearly five years. You are eternally offering him atonement.

Suddenly, Baela asks you: “What would you name a baby girl?”

You have to think about this before you answer. “Well, if you’re looking for something related to plants…I had a friend when I was growing up named Briar, and I always thought that was pretty.”

“Briar,” Baela echoes, intrigued.

“It means bramble, like a thorny shrub where blackberries grow. I remember her telling me that her mama wanted it to be a reminder that people go through rough patches and that life gets hard sometimes, but you have to keep going, and eventually you’ll find your way out.”

“Briar,” Baela repeats. “Yeah, that’s kind of neat. I’ll add it to the list!”

“And you’d have the same first initial,” Rhaena says. “Baela and Briar. Isn’t that adorable?”

Baela smiles. “And a few Rs thrown in there too. For Rhaena.”

Rio turns to Aegon. “Hey Honey Bun, if you had to name your kid after a plant, what would you name it?”

Aegon says without hesitation: “Marijuana.”

Now it’s an hour later, and Aemond is examining Aegon’s burned leg on the living room floor, Helaena holding a flashlight and you and Rio standing by for moral support. Underneath the bandages is a wasteland of red, weeping flesh…and yet there are spots where the skin seems to be hardening into white islands of scar tissue. Rhaena and Luke are keeping watch by the windows, Baela is passed out in one of the bedrooms, Cregan is showing Daeron how to put his wavy blonde hair up in a man bun.

Aemond points to a blackish patch on the top of Aegon’s foot, only a few inches from his ankle. “I have to debride this part here,” he says like an apology.

Aegon is afraid to ask. “What does debride mean?”

“It means I have to cut it out.”

“Cut it?!”

“It’s getting infected. I have to remove it or it will spread to the rest of the foot and you could get sepsis. I might even have to amputate the whole leg.”

“Okay, cut the dead stuff off,” Aegon swiftly agrees.

Aemond doesn’t have any more injectable morphine. He gives Aegon as much Vicodin as he dares and then begins working, carving away layers of dark disease with his scalpel and scrubbing the area with disinfectant. Aegon clutches your hand, squeezing so hard it feels like your bones might crunch, shrapnel-like splinters of marrow-stained organic glass beneath your skin. Rio has Aegon’s pink Sony Walkman—once owned by Ava—and takes one earbud while giving Aegon the other. They sing along to Sean Paul songs together, laughing as tears stream down Aegon’s sunburned cheeks:

“Well, woman, the way the time cold, I wanna be keepin’ you warm

I got the right temperature fi shelter you from the storm

Oh Lord, gal, I got the right tactics to turn you on

And girl, I wanna be the papa, you can be the mom…”

Now you’re curled up in bed, your arms crossed over your belly as you struggle to fall asleep. Aemond comes to bed late now; each night he waits until Baela is sleeping and then teaches Rhaena about childbirth and recovery: what to expect, what could go wrong. She is a good student, borrowing Helaena’s spider notebook to take notes and asking detailed questions. She wants to know everything she can so she can help when Baela goes into labor.

At last, the bedroom door opens. Out in the living room you can hear Rio asking: “Do you have Wagon Wheel? I love that song.”

Aegon scoffs. “No, of course I don’t have Wagon Wheel. Shut up and listen to your Enrique Iglesias.”

“You are so racist, man…”

Aemond sees that you’re in agony, rummages around in his medical kit, and gives you an oval-shaped white pill to wash down with the can of orange Sunkist on the nightstand; Helaena found a case of it in the pantry. “Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?”

“I didn’t want to take any Vicodin from Aegon or Baela. They’ll need it more than me.”

“Your pain is as real as anyone else’s.” Aemond’s weight shifts the mattress as he crawls into bed beside you, his arm settling protectively around your waist, his hand covering yours where it rests on your lower belly. “If the Tahoe runs out of gas, will you be okay to walk tomorrow?”

“Don’t worry about me. I had three periods during basic training, I honestly thought I might die. After that I can power through just about anything.”

“I’ve noticed.” You feel the soft smile on Aemond’s lips as he kisses your temple. “Do you want quiet, or do you want to talk?”

“Talking would be a nice distraction.”

Aemond wastes no time. “Do you like kids?”

“Well, since birth control doesn’t exist anymore, I’d hope everybody does.”

Again, he is smiling; you can hear it in his voice. “Okay, but do you intend to have your own?”

“Yeah, I always envisioned myself having kids. I wanted a normal family and figured I’d have to make one myself, DIY it, you know? I don’t think the plan has changed. Gotta repopulate the earth somehow.”

“I wouldn’t try to sway your decision one way or the other. It’s a burden you should only have to endure if you actively choose it. But if you want to have children one day, I’d help you.”

You giggle in the dim orange glow of a single flashlight. “How self-sacrificial.”

“No,” Aemond says, laughing. “Not like, the making them. I mean, I’d help with that too, that aspect would be fun. But I was talking about the delivery, and recovery, and taking care of a newborn. I don’t know everything, but I know a lot. I could help you get through it. So that’s an option I want you to be aware of, if…you know.” Now he pauses. “If you trust me.”

“I trust you.”

“Sometimes I don’t know if you should,” Aemond murmurs; or at least that’s what you think he says as you lose consciousness, plummeting into sleep as if falling from a great height.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Tahoe runs out of gas just east of Tipton—not a city, not a town, just a collection of service roads linking sprawling ranches to I-80, the only continuous route across southern Wyoming—and Rhaena guides the SUV as it coasts to a halt on the shoulder of the highway. You hike about a mile to the nearest ranch house: Luke carrying the siphoning hose and empty gas can in case you can find fuel, Rio carrying Aegon on his back, Baela walking slowly and with great effort, Ice panting as she lopes across the dusty earth. You can’t spot any cattle or horses behind the endless strings of barbed wire fencing. Perhaps they are in a different pasture, or escaped or were stolen, or died of thirst without being tended to, or were consumed by a wandering hoard of zombies, never sleeping and always hungry. The house at the end of the dirt driveway is modest, old, and painted white. The front door is open; the screen door bangs in the wind.

“Rock Springs is the next real town,” Aegon says when Rio drops him to the ground, reading his map.

“And how far is that?” Rio asks.

Aegon deflates. “About fifty miles.”

“Great,” Rhaena says. “What’s the plan, to fly there?”

“Yeah, start flapping your wings, little bird. You’re light enough, you can make it.”

“No car in the driveway,” you tell Aemond. “Nobody home, maybe?”

He’s scrutinizing the house, his blue eye narrow. “Maybe.”

A thought occurs to Aegon. “Do you think ranchers have golf clubs?” he asks hopefully.

“No,” Aemond snaps. Rio is now on the front porch and pounding the butt of his unloaded Remington shotgun against the doorframe to see if anyone appears. Daeron is nocking one of his makeshift arrows as he trots around the perimeter with his compound bow.

Luke, peering through his binoculars, points to a large cylindrical aluminum structure about a hundred yards from the house, by a small red barn. “What’s that thing?”

“It’s a grain bin,” Cregan says. “Full of feed for cattle.” Ice whimpers at his feet, and he twirls his axe in his large, calloused hands. “Are we clearing the house or not? Something’s in there.”

“We are,” Aemond answers tonelessly. “Luke, Rhaena, stay out here with Aegon and watch for trouble. Daeron, you too.”

“Got it.”

“Baela—”

“Can I go inside?” she asks. “Please, Aemond. I’m so sick of sitting around feeling useless and exhausted. I want to help. I want to do something, I’m going insane.”

“Fine,” Aemond agrees. “It should be an easy one.”

It is easy, but it’s not pleasant. The house smells like dark, sickening decay. In the living room are the skeletal remains of two bodies, both children judging by the size; the maroon-stained bones are notched with indents from gnashing teeth. Cregan shadows Helaena as she searches through closets and drawers. She takes no clothing—it would have absorbed the stench of death—but fills her burlap messenger bag with matches, lighters, batteries, pills. She gives you a bottle of Advil before you can ask her for it.

“Thanks,” you say, a bit startled, as you tuck it away in your backpack.

It is not until Ice leads you to the final room, the bedroom at the rear of the house, that you hear the familiar, blood-chilling hissing and moaning of a zombie. It is in the closet, and emerges one limb at a time: one arm and then another, one leg long like a spider’s, streaked with a thick soup of rotting organs that spills from a gaping hole in her belly like the mouth of a mineshaft. Something has happened to its other leg; it is missing, and the corpse that was once a thirties-something woman—a soccer mom, perhaps, with a minivan and propensity to make meatloaf and fish sticks—drags itself across the fawn-colored carpet towards you, slow and pathetic. Ice growls and barks. Rio raises his Remington.

“Wait,” Baela says. Her hammer is in her right hand. “Can I do it?”

“Of course, be my guest,” Rio says; though you can tell he’s slightly disappointed. He loves clubbing things.

Baela approaches the yowling zombie—jaws snapping, claws swiping—and grimaces down at it, this one of millions of monsters that ended the world, that killed Jace and stole all the rest of her life from her too, all those normal things she was supposed to have, all those strings of fate that the plague cut through like a razor and sent floating aimlessly out into the void of the universe. Then with a scream, Baela swings her hammer and a catastrophic impact crater appears in the side of the zombie’s skull, and it crumples to the floor, its mindless brains spilling out onto the carpet.

“Nothing good?” Aegon asks when you reappear in the driveway, popping a Vicodin into his mouth.

“No,” Aemond replies grimly. “No gas, no bullets, no food, nothing to drink.”

“I knew it would be lean pickings once we got out here,” Cregan says, and Aemond looks like he could kill him.

“Well, fortunately, Luke might have some good news for us,” Aegon says with a grin.

Aemond perks up. “Really? What?”

“I saw a truck out there,” Luke says, using his binoculars to gesture to the grain bin. “It’s parked between the barn and the grain thing, I can just see the very front of it sticking out. And if there’s a truck, there might be gas.”

Aemond ruffles Luke’s fluffy dark hair. “Good job, kid.” And Luke lights up like how cities used to look at night, back when the power was on: Washington D.C., Key West, Corpus Christi, Chinhae. Rio stoops down so Aegon can hop on his back, and all of you trek together across the field.

“Nothing,” Cregan announces as he squeezes the little pump on the siphoning hose after opening the gas cap of the ancient Chevy Silverado and threading the hose inside. “Not a drop.”

“Fucking fantastic,” Aegon sighs from where he’s slumped on the ground. His eyes are glazed; he’s pretty stoned. He gazes pitifully up at you; you pat his shoulder sympathetically. You and Rio have already checked the barn, dilapidated but perfectly devoid of zombies. The roof has caved in; one of the two front doors are missing. “What now?!”

“We can go back to the interstate and walk until we find the next ranch,” you say, looking absentmindedly at the grain bin. It’s much larger up close, and rusty in spots. A ladder runs up one side to allow access to the roof. Ice isn’t whining or nudging anyone’s hands, but she’s sniffing the air as if she’s detected something interesting, unfamiliar.

“Yeah,” Luke replies miserably. “We can walk another five or ten miles and then maybe find a safe place to spend the night.”

Rhaena shades her eyes as she peers up at the sky. “It’s past noon already. Maybe we should just stay here.”

Rio barks out a sardonic laugh. “In a house with no supplies and that reeks of dead people?”

“Cregan, go kill us something to eat,” Aegon commands.

He chuckles in his deep, gruff voice. “It’s Miss Chips who is good at the killing, I’m just the authority on butchering at the moment.”

Aemond is watching Ice, his forehead furrowed. “What’s she doing?”

Cregan whistles. “Hey, princess, you okay?” Ice ignores him, still sniffing, her grey ears straight up in the air. Then it appears from behind the barn: a tiny brown creature, a baby bear.

“Aww, it’s so fuzzy!” Aegon squeals, stretching his arm out to pet it. Rio yanks him away; everyone else is backing up towards the grain bin. A second bear cub has now arrived, padding clumsily along, large cartoonish eyes and a little pink tongue poking out from its muzzle.

“Don’t touch them!” Aemond shouts to everyone. “Get away from them! If there are cubs, there’s probably—”

And around the barn comes the mother, a grizzly bear of 400 pounds. She bares her teeth and snarls, saliva dripping in long gluey strings. Ice is barking viciously; Aegon is shrieking and scrambling onto Rio’s back.

“Baela!” Aemond says because she’s closest to him, urging her towards the ladder of the grain bin. She gets the idea and begins climbing. Then Aemond reaches for you. “Come on, you next!”

“Rhaena, go,” you say instead, and she clambers up the ladder after Baela. Cregan is brandishing his axe; Rio has his Remington in his hands, Aegon still clinging to his back like a baby opossum to its mother. Now Helaena is climbing up the ladder, and Daeron nocks an arrow. You whip one of your M9s out of its holster, aim for the bear’s head, and pull the trigger.

Your bullet hits its skull, Daeron’s arrow pierces its chest; and the mother bear does not die but roars and rises up onto her back feet—taller than Rio, taller than Cregan—and then drops back down and charges towards you and the grain bin. Cregan blocks the way, swinging his axe. The bear reluctantly pauses, testing him with swipes of her claws that he evades. Rio is just a few steps behind Cregan, waving his Remington around hostilely. Aegon is screaming and holding on for dear life.

“Don’t shoot!” Cregan yells. “9mm isn’t big enough, you’ll just make her more angry!”

Aemond finally gets a grip on your wrist and drags you to the ladder. You obey and climb until your feet are several rungs off the ground, then you turn to see what’s going on below. Aemond, Luke, and Daeron are at the bottom of the ladder, their backs to you. Cregan is still wielding his axe.

“Fuck off, Mama Bear!” he bellows, standing as tall as possible and swinging his axe above his head. Rio follows Cregan’s lead and holds his Remington aloft. Ice is barking; the baby bears are fleeing in terror. Aegon is sobbing hysterically and saying he’s going to die. “You don’t want us and we don’t want you! Go on! Go get your babies! I’ll put this blade right between your eyes if you don’t change your stupid mind right quick!”

The bear pounds the earth with her front feet and growls, a beastly subterranean rumble, but she seems to be losing her nerve. The rungs of the ladder creak and groan; you see rust like blood-hued moss around the bolts.

“Get out of here!” Cregan shouts. “Go, you hairy old bitch! Go back to your babies!”

The bear glances back to see her cubs vanish behind the barn. Her mouth is open and panting, spittle gleaming on her pointed teeth; her black eyes are uncertain. As you hold onto the ladder with one hand, you have your M9 aimed at the bear’s left eye, just in case. Aemond is watching Cregan; on his scarred face a sharp severity, fascination and resentment and fear.

“Go on,” Cregan says firmly. “Leave us alone. You belong in the mountains, not down here. Go eat something that’s already dead, a nice easy dinner. You don’t want us. We’ll fight you.”

The grizzly bear shakes her head—flopping ears, shaggy fur filthy with dust and pieces of grass—and whirls, lumbering off to find her cubs. When she rounds the barn, Cregan waits a few long, tense, silent minutes and then turns to the grain bin.

“Alright y’all, we oughta hurry up and leave. I don’t think she’ll come back, but she might.”

From the top of the ladder, approximately forty feet off the ground, Baela begins to laugh. “Did that really just happen?! That was insane! Cregan, buddy, you can vote for whoever you want to. You and I are cool forever.”

He smiles up at her, wincing in the bright afternoon light. “I’m very glad to hear it, ma’am.”

Rio sets Aegon down on the ground and stretches his back; it must be hurting him. Aemond is taking your hand and helping you off the ladder, and you are reminded of the transmission tower where he found you in Catawissa, Pennsylvania, one of those middle-of-nowhere places like Tipton, Wyoming. As Helaena climbs down, you go to Rio and—with as much force as you can manage—knead the small of his back with the heel of your hand like you know helps him.

“You okay?”

He sighs loudly, relieved. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Oh, wow, that’s good. Harder…oh yeah…”

There is a snapping sound, metal squealing as it breaks, and by the time you turn to look she’s already falling: her cotton dress billowing around her, her arms wheeling helplessly. It happens too quickly for her to scream—for her to understand what is going on and what it means—but there is a stunned gasp and then she hits the ground, and you hear a muffled crunch of bone—skull?? spine??—and she is completely, unnaturally still as she lies on her back, no pain, no words, nothing.

“Baela!” Rhaena shrieks, and she rushes down the ladder and runs to her sister. You are all gathering around Baela, petrified to move her—to make it worse—but pleading for her to wake up, examining her with terrified eyes. Baela’s own eyes, dark and glassy and serene, are open only a sliver like obsidian crescent moons. Aemond is asking Helaena for a flashlight and then prying them wide, checking Baela’s pupils.

“There’s no reflex,” he says numbly.

“What does that mean?!” Rhaena cries. “Aemond? Aemond?!”

“She’s…she’s…” He’s in denial; he’s in shock. He’s feeling for a pulse on her carotid, he’s digging his fingernails into her forearm to try to get her to respond to pain.

“Aemond?” you say softly.

“She’s gone,” he tells you, like he doesn’t believe it, like he’s waiting to wake up.

“The baby,” Rhaena says. “Try to save the baby.” And then, when Aemond doesn’t immediately understand, she grabs his backpack and begins ripping it off so he can get the medical kit inside. “The baby, Aemond!”

Now he knows what he has to do. He pulls the scalpel out of his kit as Rhaena moves Baela’s sundress to expose her belly. She was wearing biker shorts beneath, lavender, cute, something you might have picked out in a store. In less than a minute they will be soaked with blood. Cregan leads Daeron away, and he’s telling him that they need to keep watch in case the grizzly bear returns, but you think it is an act of mercy more than anything else. Ice goes with them. Helaena, her face pale and grave, is shining the flashlight on Baela’s belly, just beneath her navel.

“Aegon?” Aemond says.

“What? What do you need?”

“I need people to help hold open the incision once I make it. I have to be able to see the amniotic sac so I can cut the membrane without harming the baby.”

“I get it, I’m here, I’ll help.”

Aemond presses the blade of the scalpel to Baela’s skin and draws a semicircle from the top of one hip to the other. There is blood, but it is slow-moving and thick and dark; it is the blood of a dead woman, not a living one. Immediately, Aegon hooks his fingers under layers of fat, skin, and muscle, and opens the wound as much as he can. You and Rio reach in too, and you do this without thinking, without allowing yourself to feel the horror of it until the work is done.

“I can’t see,” Aemond is murmuring. Rhaena gets another flashlight and helps Helaena illuminate the area. Luke is on his knees with both hands clamped over his mouth, his eyes glistening with dread and disbelief. Aemond is slicing, pausing to probe around with his fingers, cutting again. Then his arm plunges into Baela’s abdomen up to his elbow and, with some difficulty, pulls out the gore-covered baby by its feet, a girl, large and limp and silent.

Rhaena sobs, equal parts grief and joy, a smile appearing on her face. “Is she okay? Aemond? Is she…why isn’t she crying? Aemond?!”

Rio yanks off his shirt and uses it to wipe blood and gelatinous clumps away from the baby’s eyes, mouth, and nostrils. Then Aemond takes the shirt and wraps the baby in it, warming her, rubbing her lifeless little limbs. When she does not stir, Aemond lays her on the earth and begins CPR: compressions with two fingers on her tiny heart, two breaths down the airway she’s never used. There are no sounds except his efforts. There is no crying when the baby wakes, because she never does.

Enough, you are thinking, as if from very far away: an island in the Indian Ocean, the Appalachian mountains in eastern Kentucky. Enough, enough, enough.

Aemond stops trying to revive the baby. He picks her up and holds her against him, and no one says anything. There is only the barrenness of the Wyoming steppe, an anemic blue sky, tall dry grass that bows in the breeze, black vultures that are landing atop the barn and the grain bin.

Aegon jolts out of his paralysis and reaches for his brother with bloodied hands. “Aemond, hey, Aemond, listen to me, it wasn’t your fault. Okay? Are you listening? Aemond, man, you did everything you could. You gave them a chance. You didn’t give up.”

But Aemond doesn’t respond; he only kneels there beside Baela’s butchered body, her dead baby girl in his arms.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Alys?” he calls, seeing that she never came back to bed. He is lying on his stomach, tangled in red sheets damp with sweat. It’s hot, too hot, and there is no humming of the air conditioning. When Aemond picks up his iPhone from the nightstand, it’s still plugged in but only at 87% battery. The power must have gone out.

He gets up, rubs the damp skin by his temple—headache, dehydration—and lifts open the nearest window. It’s odd: there is shouting, distant and indistinct, like the sound of a carnival or a concert. There are car alarms too, and sirens, and horns blaring, all too far away for him to see. It must be because of the power outage, traffic signals thrown into chaos, neighbors relaying the latest information back and forth. That’s the only logical explanation.

“Alys?” Aemond says again, groggy but with increasing curiosity, concern, guilt.

She started to feel sick last night, a pulsing in her skull and chills and powerful nausea. The possibility of it being the so-called Florida Fever barely registered in his mind. Alys gets migraines, and tofu is a migraine trigger, and he took her to a Thai restaurant (maybe he should have known better) and the curry Alys ordered ended up having tofu in it, and by the time she paid the check (as Alys always did) she was swallowing an Imitrex from the box in her snakeskin purse. She said she was going to lie down in the guest bedroom for a while so she wouldn’t wake him if she spent the next few hours dashing to and from the bathroom, a likely outcome, and if he was honest with himself about it, Aemond would admit he was relieved.

He shuffles to the bedroom door—black boxers, bare feet, century-old hardwood floors—and opens it. Now he can hear thudding, like someone tenderizing meat with a mallet. “Alys? Baby, you feeling okay?” There is no answer, only that rhythmic hammering. He realizes that it is coming from the guest bedroom, a door at the end of a long hallway still fuzzy through his half-awake eyes.

It had never felt right, but it had felt good: good in the body when she touched him, good in the soul when she told him he did something right. But lately—especially here, in the vast creaking historic house she shares with her husband and her children, who are presently sailing in Cape Cod—Aemond cannot shake the feeling that this entanglement is a surrender rather than an aspiration, something he fell into and now rests at the bottom of like a swimming pool or the sea, the cold weight of it threatening to pour into his lungs and drown him.

“Alys?” Aemond says, now with profound and inexplicable dread. Outside an ambulance or police car zooms by, sirens blaring. The pounding on the door of the guest bedroom grows faster.

I want to go home, Aemond thinks suddenly. At home, in the Federal-style townhouse his parents rented for him (Criston picked it out, a safe and quiet neighborhood in Beacon Hill, and Viserys paid), Daeron is visiting from California and watching golf tournaments with Aegon on the living room couch, pretending to be interested when Aegon describes the different types of clubs. Helaena, pursuing an Entomology PhD, is researching the Mediterranean mantis, clicking around on her MacBook Pro from the garden in the backyard. Jace and Luke live there too, and so Baela and Rhaena have all but officially moved in, keeping their apartment in Seaport only to have somewhere to retreat to when the Targaryen chaos becomes too much…and so the baby can have its own room. Baela bought a crib, a changing table, a rocking chair, a dresser, and about a million unisex onesies, mostly space-themed. Baela is studying Aeronautics and Astronautics, after all. Maybe one day she’ll work for NASA and fly rockets to the moon.

The door is rattling on its hinges. Aemond’s hand closes around the knob. On the other side is something terrible, and he knows this. But he cannot just leave her. Aemond is not someone who abandons people; he is not someone who turns away from responsibilities.

He opens the door of the guest bedroom, and immediately she is staggering towards him, limp dripping hair and naked like she was interrupted mid-shower: blood bubbling from her gaping mouth and the whites of teeth peeking through the crimson, necrotic skin hanging in strips from her fingers, eyes misty like steam on a mirror.

“Alys, stop! Alys! What’s wrong with you?!”

She’s alive but she’s dead. She’s yowling and clawing at him, but her flesh is the rotting swampland of a corpse. He’s pushing her away; his palms sink into her, places he once noticed and then fantasized about and then at last—euphorically, ashamedly—touched, held, borrowed but never kept. She’s trying to bite him. She’s trying to kill him. None of this is possible, and yet it’s true.

Aemond flings her away, and the woman who was once Alys stumbles backwards and down the staircase, sick wet thumps all the way to the ground floor, bones splitting through dissolving grey skin, organs sloshing around until they spill out. He can hear her still hissing, flailing, trying to get up again.

Without thinking—slipping seamlessly into what he learned during his psych rotation is called automatic action—Aemond races down the steps and grabs her by the skull, cracks it against the antique hardwood floor she once extoled the value of as he fucked her on it: shipped east from Oregon and laid in 1912, the year the Titanic sank. When she lurches up to try to bite him, he slams her head against the floor again and again until she is still.

Then Aemond kneels there alone for a long time, sirens shrieking outside, far-off strangers screaming for help, putrid black blood clotting on his hands.

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