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“It’s really not interesting,” Lazlo agreed. “We basically just ghosted each other.”

“Ghosted?” I scoffed, and I hadn’t even meant to, but he was grossly mischaracterizing the situation. “You made it sound like I just stopped talking to you out of the blue. I was locked up for six months in the medical ward, and you were evacuated.”

“Wait.” Something seemed to have occurred to Boden, and he rested his arms on the table and leaned forward as he stared at Laz. “You were there when Remy was locked up for all that time, and you never tried to get her out of there?”

Lazlo bristled. “Of course I did. I plotted and planned with another soldier, but it just couldn’t be done. They put me in the stockades for helping her little brother escape, and they were going to exile me if I was caught again. I had to be careful because I had Harlow to think about, too.”

“And that’s why your relationship ended?” Boden pressed, and I could hear the anger simmering just below the surface. “She was locked up, and you just left her behind?”

Lazlo shook his head. “She volunteered. She voluntarily went up to the medical ward so she’d play human shield for her brother. She made her choice to protect him, and I had to make mine to protect me andHarlow.”

“Voluntarily?” Boden sneered. “They were vivisecting her without pain relief. Any consent that she gave –”

“Boden!” I snapped, and I felt strangely cold and out of my body. “My pain isn’t yours to share.”

Boden sagged, immediately looking ashamed. “I’m sorry.”

“And you both really ought to stop talking about Remy as if she’s not here,” Nova interjected, and she looked over at me. “You are right here. What do you want to say about all of this?”

I squirmed as everyone’s attention turned on me. “I don’t know. It was a long time ago, and neither of us made the wrong choices. We’re all just doing the best we can.”

“And I think we all ended up where we were supposed to,” Lazlo said, and he looked lovingly at Nova and their daughter. At his beautiful little family.

“Here, here!” Serg raised his glass for a toast. “To the here and now!”

I gulped down my drink, and Boden leaned back in his chair and put his arm around me. Normally, I didn’t like public displays of affection, but tonight, I leaned into it, tilting my body toward his.

When there was a lull in the conversation, I heard the sound of zombies howling. I had noticed them being loud on our walk here, and we didn’t usually hear them at our house, even when the baby wasn’t crying, so I commented as much.

“Oh, yeah, that’s because they feed the zombies at this end,” Nova explained. “That’s also how we’re able to have so much more land out here, compared to you southies.”

“Th-they what?” I stammered in surprise. “You guys are feeding the zombies?”

“Yeah, it keeps them away from the entrance ofEmberwood,” she elaborated. “The zombies all congregate at the feeding area where the fence is reinforced. We give them the junky parts of our red meat. Zombies won’t hunt deer, but they do seem to enjoy their intestines.”

“When you get the zombies all together when you feed them, why don’t you just kill them?” I asked in dismay. “With arrows or bullets or blades or fire. Just kill them all.”

“No bullets, waste of arrows, blades are too risky for a bite, and it’s wildfire season, so no fire,” Nova replied. “The zombies aren’t hurting us, and it’s easier and kinder to learn how to live with them to eradicate them, especially when I don’t believe full extinction is even possible.”

The evening eventually came to an end, with all of us in a better mood and tipsy. But I was still nervous about the walk home, afraid of what Boden would want to talk about. Would he be angry or confused or hurt?

He didn’t bring up anything, not even after we got home and Jovie left, or after we said goodnight to the rest of the family. We went up to our loft together, and in the darkness, he helped me out of my dress and we began to kiss.

Without saying a word, we made love in our bed. When we finished, he wrapped his arms around me, and he held me tighter than normal.

35

Remy

Earlier in the dinner conversation, we had been talking about the different ways people contributed to the communal living. Boden had gotten accepted and started his Guardian training, Serg worked in the cafeteria, Lazlo and Nova provided the wares from their farm (crops, eggs, milk, wool), but they also had other jobs. Lazlo played music when he could, and Nova did hunting and foraging.

Nova was the better hunter between her and Lazlo – they both attested to this – and he was also weakened by his old knee injury. The only reason I had run into him at the farmhouse a couple years ago and not Nova was because she had been nursing their daughter at the time.

Back at the lakehouse, I provided for the family primarily by hunting, foraging, and chopping wood. Ripley had always gone with me, but I was a good shot with the crossbow.

Since this was the only thing I had any proficiency in, Nova suggested that I go hunting with her on her next expedition outside of the town. And because I couldn’t think of any good reason to say no, I had said yes.

That was how I ended up meeting Nova outside the entrance at dusk two days later. It was going to be her and Eden, the assistant who worked at Jovie’s clinic. The hunting trips were infrequent enough that mosthunters had another job.