DAY ZERO

four streets away

The road was long and the jeep was quiet in that comfortable way that happens when people have been through enough together that silence doesn't need to be filled.

Tobey filled it anyway.

"Okay so genuinely," he said, from the back seat where he'd relocated to let Kai navigate. "How long until we get to your mum's place?"

David kept his eyes on the road. "Three and a half weeks. Give or take."

A pause.

"Three and a—" Tobey leaned forward between the seats. "How did you even get here in the first place?"

"Plane."

"You flew."

"Military transport. From the academy." David glanced at the horizon. "Great Avalon expanded so far east they basically call it its own continent now. Technically it's still one country but the other side—" He shook his head slightly. "It's a long way."

Tobey sat back. Processed this.

"That's really far," he said.

"Yeah."

"Like genuinely really far."

"I know Tobey."

Kai was looking at the map on his watch, saying nothing, which was his way of participating.

Lia was watching the passing landscape through her window — the empty roads, the occasional overturned vehicle, the buildings that told stories in their broken windows and open doors that nobody had asked them to tell.

"We can't drive three and a half weeks straight," Kai said, without looking up from the map.

"No," David agreed. "We rest. We figure out what we're dealing with. We move when we can." He watched the road come toward them. "There's still a lot we don't know about what's happening out here."

"So we find out," Lia said, from the window.

"Yeah." David nodded. "We find out."

It took several hours.

They passed houses that were partly collapsed — structural damage, fire damage, the specific kind of damage that happens when things go wrong fast and there's nobody to stop them. They passed houses with doors hanging open and curtains moving in broken windows. Houses that still had lights on inside, which was somehow worse than the dark ones.

Tobey spotted it first.

"That one," he said.

It sat back from the road slightly. Intact — genuinely intact, all its windows, its door closed, its small front yard clear of anything that shouldn't be there. No signs of forced entry. No signs of the other thing.

They pulled up slowly.

David and Kai got out first. Checked the perimeter the way they'd both been trained to check perimeters — methodically, quietly, looking for things that shouldn't be there and not being satisfied until they weren't there.

Clean.

David knocked on the front door.

Silence.

He looked at Kai. Kai looked back. Tobey was already out of the car, hands in his pockets, looking at the house with mild curiosity.

David knocked again.

Movement from inside. Slow, cautious — the movement of people who had learned to be careful about what they opened their door to.

The door opened six inches. A man. Mid forties, broad shoulders, tired eyes that were doing rapid threat assessment across all four of them simultaneously.

"We're not infected," David said immediately. "We're just looking for somewhere to rest. We can move on if—"

The door opened the rest of the way.

"Come in," the man said. His voice was deep and unhurried. "Both of you. All of you."

His name was Derek. His wife was Tanisha — she came from the kitchen when she heard voices, and she had the kind of face that had been through something recent and was rebuilding itself around it. They'd moved here three years ago, from somewhere east, for a better life, for a fresh start, for all the reasons people pick up and move toward something new.

"Luck wasn't exactly on our side," Derek said, with the particular dry tone of someone who had made peace with understatement.

But they were warm. Genuinely, immediately warm — the kind of warmth that comes from people who have been alone long enough that company feels like rain after a long dry stretch. Tanisha was in the kitchen before they'd sat down, and the smell that came from it shortly afterward was something that hit Tobey somewhere deep and unexpected.

He went very still.

Tanisha set the food down and they ate — all six of them around a table that wasn't designed for six but managed anyway — and Tobey was quiet in a way he almost never was, eating with a focused attention that had nothing performative about it.

Tanisha noticed.

"You like it?" she said.

"It's—" He stopped. Started again. "I haven't had a home cooked meal since I was thirteen."

She looked at him. "Thirteen?"

He looked at his plate. "That was when I lost my parents." He said it simply, the way he said most things — not asking for anything from it, just putting it where it belonged. "Both of them."

The table went quiet.

Derek looked at his wife. Something moved between them — a weight, a recognition, the particular communication of two people who have been through loss together and know its shape.

"We lost our daughter," Tanisha said. "A month ago."

The words landed softly. Too softly for what they were.

"She went to school," Derek said. "In the morning. Like every morning. And then—" He looked at his hands on the table. "She didn't come back."

"We don't know," Tanisha said quickly. Like she needed to say it before someone else said the alternative. "We don't know what happened to her. There's no—" She stopped. Pressed her lips together. "We haven't given up. She's not— she wouldn't just—" She stopped again.

The table was very quiet.

David looked at his food. Thought about a woman in a house on Meridian Hill who had watched her son walk out a door three years ago and had been waiting since. Thought about what that waiting felt like from the inside. Thought about how a person keeps getting up in the morning when they don't know.

"Where's the school?" he said.

Derek looked at him. "Four streets north. But—" He shook his head. "We don't want you putting yourselves in danger. It's been a month. She might be—" He stopped. Didn't finish.

Tanisha's eyes were bright. She was holding herself very still, the way people do when they're trying not to let something spill.

Tobey set down his fork.

"We'll go," he said.

Just like that. No discussion. No calculation. Just the flat certainty of someone who had made up his mind completely.

David looked at him.

"We'll go and we'll check," Tobey continued. He looked at Tanisha directly. "And if she's in there — alive — we're bringing her back here. To you. Tonight." He paused. "You have my word on that."

"Tobey—" she started.

"I know what it's like," he said. Quiet now. None of the performance. Just the thing underneath it that he kept tucked away most of the time. "Not exactly. But close enough." He looked at his plate. "Any mother going through this—" He shook his head. "Just wait here. Alright? Just wait."

Derek looked at his wife. He reached across and put his hand over hers.

He looked at Tobey. Then at David. Then at all of them.

"Thank you," he said. Like the word was too small for what he meant by it but it was the only one available.

They charged the jeep from Derek's home generator while Tanisha packed them a bag of food for the road — more than they asked for, more than they needed, the kind of generosity that comes from people who don't have much and give it anyway.

Derek walked them to the car.

He gave David the directions — four streets north, the school on the left, brick building, green gate. He described it the way parents describe their children's school, with that specific unconscious familiarity of a place visited many times for many small ordinary reasons that weren't ordinary at all, in hindsight.

They got in.

Derek and Tanisha stood in the front yard as the jeep pulled away. Side by side. Tanisha had her hand raised. Derek had his arm around her shoulders.

They watched until the jeep turned the corner.

"So," Kai said, from the back. "What's the plan."

Tobey opened his mouth.

"We go with the flow," he said. "Alright?"

David smiled. Looked at the road.

"Yeah," he said. "What he said."

The grandchildren smiled.

Amara hugged her knees. "Grandpa Tobey was a carefree person back then."

Old David looked at the middle distance for a moment. Something warm and something else moved through his face simultaneously.

"Yes," he said.

Simple. Just that.

Yes he was.