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When I woke up again, I was alone. I was still in my bedroll and I could smell the lingering scent of the dry shampoo that Natalie favored, so I wasn’t worried, but I felt a distinct lack of a presence at my side as I let my brain slowly spin itself up into being fully awake as my body reported back every single injury and cramped muscle. I was only halfway through cataloging all my various pains when my stomach gurgled and I felt a more pressing and urgent lack in my abdomen.

Careful not to put too much pressure on my leg or move so quickly that I risked exacerbating any of my aching muscles, I pushed myself into a sitting position. As I did, I glanced around the room and saw that it was empty aside from one Wayfinder curled up in the corner and Natalie sitting at her travel desk as she marked up a map. I was going to push myself to my feet in order to walk up behind her, but my abdominal muscles started cramping and I wound up falling back onto my bedroll to stretch them out.

When I could finally stop grimacing in pain and open my eyes, I found Natalie kneeling next to me, a water bottle in hand. “Sleeping beauty awakens at long last. Here, you need water and food before anything else.”

I didn’t move. “I don’t know about that.” I closed my eyes and faked a yawn. “I haven’t been woken by true love’s kiss, so I think I might just go back to sleep to wait for that.” I opened an eye to glance at Natalie and then closed it again. “Whenever that happens.” I started making gentle, fake snoring noises.

“Then I shall be your gallant prince, my sweetest, most innocent princess.” I heard a rustle of fabric and puckered up for the kiss, but instead I felt a wet finger poke my ear.

I lurched upward, recoiling away as I blindly swatted at Natalie’s hands. “Ugh, why?” I scooted back to the wall, holding my hands up defensively as I tried to wipe my ear off on the shoulder of my shirt. “You’re the worst.”

Natalie had stopped her pursuit before I’d even scooted away and had doubled over, holding her stomach as quiet laughs roiled through her. When it became clear she wasn’t going to stop laughing or resume her attack any time soon, I leaned over for the bottle of water and mug of soup she’d set down while my eyes were closed.

“You could have made me spill my food!” I took a sip of water and then a sip of lukewarm soup. “You should really be more careful.”

Natalie took a deep breath and finally managed to regain control of herself. “Sorry, Marshall.” She giggled again and needed another steadying breath. “I couldn’t resist!”

“I bet you couldn’t.” I glared at her as I took another slurp of soup, trying to pace myself as the ravenous hunger inside me demanded I chug both the water and the vegetable soup before going in search of more of each. “You could have made me open my stitches or given me an aneurism or, worse, discovered that we’re both really into that.”

That set her off again and the next few minutes was me slowly eating my soup and drinking my water while Natalie slowly started to regain control of herself before busting out laughing again when she tried to address what I’d said. Eventually, she just gave up and mimed sticking a finger in my ear suggestively until she collapsed on her bedroll.

While I waited for her to recover after I’d finished my food, I gently poked at the bandages wrapped around my injured leg. There was no sign of blood seeping through them, so Cam had clearly done a good job of cleaning me up. I gave the wounded area a tentative poke and was rewarded with a few silver threads of pain in response, letting me know that the inflammation was down and that things were healing well.

When Natalie was finished recovering, she sat up and scooched over to sit next me. “You’ve been asleep for about ten hours and Cam forbade anyone from waking you up for any reason until you woke up on your own. You woke up a little bit about five hours ago, but just enough to drink some water and take some less intense painkillers. Cam is currently out with the mobile people looking for supplies and I’m working on possible routes. We still need to pick a destination and travel plan since our last conversation hardly counts. Everyone else needs to weigh in, too.”

I nodded as Natalie spoke, not looking at her and idly poking at the bandages on my leg again. Eventually, I must have found the wound I’d pulled the large piece of metal from because there was a sharp lance of pain that almost laid me out again. “How-” I gritted my teeth and pushed through the lingering pain. “How much longer until Cam and everyone gets back?”

Natalie grabbed my hand, seeming to sense that I was going to keep poking at my wrapped leg if she didn’t. “They’ve only been gone for two hours, so they probably won’t be back for another six to eight.”

I nodded and didn’t fight Natalie as she scooped up my other hand as well. “Alright. What are our options?”

“There’s the one we talked about, that highway almost directly back to the Chicago Enclave, that has a few Wayfinder caches along it. No depots, though, so we’d need to raid every single one of them. I know there’s a depot if we head south for a bit first and then head east, but I don’t remember exactly where it is. I know we’d spot it from another road and I’ve got notes on the landmarks, but they’re weird trees and car wreck piles, so nothing that would show up on a map.”

“So we either strip every cache on the way to Chicago or take some extra time and a bit of risk to find a depot.”

“Or head west, to Des Moines, which won’t be able to fully resupply us, but will be able to make sure we’ve got enough food to make it back. We’d have to cross less patrolled territory to get there, but it would be the fastest since we know exactly how to get there.”

“And we’d need to stick to major routes?”

“Yeah.” Natalie sighed and kissed the back of one of my hands. “A lot of our transport gear is in rough shape. What survived is going to be full of people and there are even fewer of us to pull it. Any rough terrain would cost us more time than we can afford.”

I felt the weight of the food in my stomach start to turn sour as I digested this information as well. “Cam’s supply run?”

Natalie shook her head. “At best, it just buys us fewer days of rationing since we will need the food more than ever, with all the recovering people and the extra work everyone else will be doing.”

I nodded and resisted the urge to swear until I ran out of breath. After a few breaths, I pulled my hands back from Natalie and rubbed at my face, ignoring the flashes of pain I felt as I brushed over bruises and small cuts. “Right. Three weeks of recovery and then a week of travel. Or less recovery and a bit more travel time if we want to be safe.”

“The Naturalists have already agreed to go wherever we go. Between their losses and fear of what else might be around here, they’re willing to even return to Chicago if that’s where we go. Brianna even said that, with the group that chased them dead, they might try to reclaim their settlement.”

“Sounds like we’re going to need the supplies, then.” I sighed and tried to remember the numbers Cam had gone through the night before, idly scratching at the days-old stubble coating my chin and jaw. “How many people will that be?”

“We have twelve Wayfinders in decent health, four on the injured list, and another three in the incapacitated list. There are almost twenty uninjured Naturalist adults, mostly noncombatants plus the ones you sent away, another five injured Naturalists, no incapacitated, and twenty-four children and teenagers. We have about thirty combat-capable adults, a dozen people who either can’t walk, can’t walk temporarily, or can’t walk for very long, and then all the children who will need to take turns riding a sled if we’re going to make our pace.”

“Well, at least we know now that stealth is still off the table.” I sighed and rubbed my face with my hands again, triggering another wave of painful flashes across my face. The next question that came to mind was to ask which of the Wayfinders probably weren’t going to make it, but I pushed the question aside. Asking it wouldn’t do anything but give me fuel for a spiral of failure and self-recrimination. “Tell me about the other routes and whatever options we’ve got for getting back to Chicago beyond what supplies we’re raiding.”

I listened as Natalie outlined all our options, looking at the maps she’d gone to grab as she spoke, and did my best to keep all of the numbers, routes, and logistics in mind. My head was feeling a lot more clear than it had felt since the Cultists had first attacked, but I still felt woefully behind. All these periods of unconsciousness, half of them involuntary, had absolutely ruined my internal clock which left me struggling to get a proper sense of what was going on.

Eventually, Natalie wrapped up by summarizing the details around a trip to Chicago, with some emphasis on the route that would take us past the Wayfinder depot near the Mississippi River. I gave her a nod in thanks, since I knew she was doing that so I’d be able to talk through this option with the Wayfinders when we met later to discuss our options. It was a pretty foregone conclusion at that point that we’d be heading to Chicago, based on everything Cam had said while fixing me up and what Natalie had just outlined, but we had a process to observe. Everyone got a chance to weigh in before a decision that changed our destination like this.

Natalie finished by saying “this is our best long-term option. Everyone’s already on board for the most part, since we’ve got so much time before The Blizzard comes back and no one is particularly interested in trying to rest at the Des Moines Enclave. I’ll have final notes about rationing when Cam and their crew get back with supplies, but it should be fairly light for now.”

“Good.” I sighed and shifted around so I could lay back down on my bedroll, suddenly exhausted. “I’m going to sleep some more. Wake me up when Cam gets back so I can talk with everyone.”

“Of course, love.” Natalie bent over to kiss me on the forehead. “We’ll be having the funerals after that, if we’ve got enough daylight left.”

I yawned and wearily nodded, closing my eyes as sleep began to drag me down. “Love you.”

“I love you too.” I heard a rustle of fabric as Natalie got up from beside me and started moving back towards her desk. “And don’t worry. I’ll do a proper prince charming impression this time, my sleeping beauty.”

True to her word, Natalie woke me with a kiss a few hours later. This time, I managed to make it all the way to my feet using only the wall as support. I could still feel most of my muscles crying out in protest as I moved, but it was manageable. My leg was a bit more of a challenge, but it was only pain, not weakness, so I was able to work through it. With Natalie’s supervision, I did a few turns around the now-empty room to stretch out my muscles and make sure I’d be able to walk on my injured leg without collapsing.

When Cam showed up a few minutes later, their face flushed from the cold still, I was ready and followed them into the mostly-clean dining hall where the rest of the conscious and able Wayfinders and Naturalists had gathered for dinner. They all looked up when the three of us came in, so I waved and greeted them all as cheerfully as I could muster. My energy levels matched the somewhat morose, quiet tone of the room, so I got a bunch of nods and small waves in return as people went about the business of eating.

I sat down to join them and steadily worked my way through a bowl of hearty vegetable soup and some beans with small chunks of pork. It wasn’t very flavorful, since everything had been dried and we’d only brought enough spices and flavorings for the number of people we’d originally planned, but it was still pretty filling. As those on cleanup duty gathered bowls and took them toward the door that presumably led to the kitchen, I carefully pushed myself to my feet.

As a hush fell over the room, I sat myself on the end of the unoccupied table next to the one I’d eaten at so I could see everyone at once. When those who’d collected the dishes returned, I launched into the options before us. I did my best to outline the options Natalie had listed, gesturing for Natalie to add anything I forgot, and looked for a reaction in the group of people listening to me. The Wayfinders did not react much, but the Naturalists kept glancing over at Elder Brianna where she sat at the opposite end of the room, almost like they were looking to see if it was okay for them to be listening to this.

“From what Natalie has told me, it seems like heading to the Chicago Enclave is our best bet, and I’d prefer to hit the depot rather than clearing every single cache we come across. Those aren’t set up for our group, after all, even if we have a right to the supplies there. I’d rather leave those for the smaller groups and just take what we need from the depot instead. It will likely mean a bit less time recovering before we move out, but I’d prefer to spend as little time here as we can. Any questions?”

A few hands popped up in the air, so I started calling on people. Most of them just had questions about travel routes and everything, asking for a bit more detail than I’d provided, all of which I redirected to Natalie. A few Naturalists had questions about the depot and what the difference was between that and a cache, so I explained that the depot was basically what we’d built back before being captured, with enough supplies for our group to almost fully restock that included facilities for weathering one of The Blizzards while a cache was just a hidden stock of supplies that we did our best to maintain so that any group that was low could get enough food and gear to get them to the nearest Enclave.

After that, Cam called for a vote and it was nearly unanimously in favor of returning to Chicago. A couple Naturalists voted in favor of going to the Des Moines Enclave, but none of them looked put-out when I declared we were heading to Chicago in two weeks, with an extra half-week of rest if we needed it. The announcement that we’d be doing some rationing, a formal plan to be put out in the morning, was less popular, but no one objected. Given the number of bandages I saw scattered in the Wayfinder crowd and how half the Naturalist group was now children or the elders who were all in rough shape from the stress of the past few days, it seemed like they all understood the need to recover.

After that, we stuck around, chatting or just sitting in silence, while the clean up crew finished cleaning up dinner, and then bundled up to go outside. There was still a bit of pale grey light filtering through the crowds, but a few of the Wayfinders and Naturalists still lit lanterns as we gathered around the graves. All of the healthy Wayfinders and the more able Naturalists began carrying out bodies, one by one, and we laid them all to rest. It took a surprisingly short amount of time, despite the number of graves, Elder Brianna speaking as each Naturalist was laid to rest and Natalie, Cam, and I taking turns as the Wayfinders were lowered into the group.

What took longer was giving everyone time to say farewell since everyone paused to listen as we all said goodbye to friends, lovers, and family members. I did not have it in me to hurry anyone along, so I added a silent prayer to whatever forces might be listening that the night around us would stay empty and none of us was leaking enough heat to draw anything’s attention.

It was a very tired group that eventually headed back into the base hours after dark, silent with weariness and grief, when the final graves were covered and the snow spread over them to hide all signs of our labor and loss. I paused at the door, looking back at more Wayfinder graves than I’d ever seen in one place and felt a wave of grief and failure overwhelm me. It physically staggered me as it struck and I would have fallen back into the snow if Cam hadn’t caught me.

When they’d finished setting me back on my feet and had slipped my arm over their shoulders so I wouldn’t be putting much weight on my injured leg, I swallowed past the sorrow in my throat and managed to say “thanks, Cam.”

“I’ve always got your back, Marshall.” Cam gave me a light rap in the chest with their free hand and gently tugged me toward the door. “Let’s get you back inside for some rest and maybe a little more food. I think we’ve got some leftovers still and you skipped a couple meals this morning.”

“That sounds good to me.” My stomach growled in agreement as I hobbled forward with Cam’s help. “And maybe a crutch or something. I can’t keep leaning on you like this.”

Cam was silent for a moment and then said “I don’t mind. You can always lean on me, any time you need it.” 

I sensed the extra intent behind Cam’s words and just nodded my thanks in silence as the tears in my eyes finally escaped and started running down my cheeks. I wiped them away before they could start soaking into my scarf or the hood I was wearing, but didn’t try to stop their flow as I finally let the roiling waves of grief, loss, and my own sense of failure start to overwhelm me. Thankfully, though, no matter how rough they got over the next few hours, Cam kept my head above water.