New to the series or certain you’ve missed a chapter? You can find the introduction Here and the table of contents Here.

An entire week passed while I was still trying to figure out what I should say to address everyone’s feelings about my decision to take Ben away without telling anyone what I had planned. In that silence, things mostly returned to normal a couple days out from the warehouse. Natalie had tried to talk to me about how I felt a few times, since she knew I didn’t like playing executioner and could clearly see that I was preoccupied. Unfortunately, because I hadn’t finished working through how I felt and what I wanted to say, we never managed to have anything resembling a productive discussion about it. The camp wasn’t talking about it anymore either, focusing their attention on our trip as we neared the edge of what used to be called the Chicagoland area.

While it was the best known and mapped area in the midwest, it was also one of the most dangerous given how easy it was for bandits and Cultist raiding parties to hide just out of sight along major thoroughfares. Cam and Lucas had slowed our pace a bit as we’d gotten closer, as the number of houses around us started to rise, and called for us to make camp early as we approached the last place we could turn away from the suburbs before getting stuck following the route we were on. It’s not that there weren’t other routes we could follow through the abandoned homes, it’s just there was only one route that was regularly patrolled by Wayfinders or Enclave guards.

As we made camp, I did my usual work of cajoling people into cooperation, checking on the injured, and making sure everyone settled in comfortably before I returned to find our tent already assembled and Natalie, Lucas, and Cam inside. It was barely an hour into the afternoon, but all three of them looked like they’d settled in for the evening as I moved through the vestibule shedding loose bits of snow and heavy garments as I went.

When I was finished removing my insulated clothing, Cam beckoned for me to join them. As I sat down, I saw a fresh map of the Chicagoland area that Natalie was drawing some things on in place of our usual camp stove. As I watched, she made a few final marks on the north side of the map and then drew a couple lines from the northeastern part of the map down south to our current location.

“Alright.” Natalie looked up from her map and glanced at the three of us in turn. “With a group this big, with as many noncombatants as we’ve got, I figured we’d probably want the Wayfinders to clear a path ahead of time and then just hustle everyone down it. To that end, I’ve been talking to Elder Brianna about where she and her people used to live. I figured we would want somewhere familiar to use as our base for moving towards the Enclave if we could find something suitable.”

Lucas nodded and then coughed, clearing his throat. “We could probably just head in from here with some basic scouting, but with how fucked this whole trip has been, I’m not sure I want to risk it. Better to be safe. Especially since Wayfinder traffic along this route has probably been lower than normal, what with the depot sealed and that Cultist group killing people. I’d want to be cautious, no matter how we approach. Scouting out of a base somewhere is probably our best bet for that.”

“Or we could just keep going, get there in two days, and be done.” Cam folded their arms. “If we head north to where the Naturalists used to live, that turns into a minimum of five days. Sure, we’ve got the supplies for it, but this has been one of the worst trips I’ve ever been on and we’re better off ending it quickly. I don’t want to find out that the monsters are somehow following us still or spend any more time than we must before we get people better medical treatment than Marshall can give them while they bump along on sleds.”

“The only reason I’m suggesting this route is because we don’t know what’s going on in the area.” Natalie gestured down at her map. “We don’t know how much has changed since we left the area three Blizzards ago. The Naturalists were driven out of their home by one of the gangs of bandits, so who knows what else has happened since the last time any of us passed through here. We haven’t gotten any intel about the area in any of the places we’ve stopped, so we’re basically operating in the dark.

“Sure, most of the smaller gangs are probably still staying away from the main roads since they know the Enclave or the Wayfinders will come clear them out if they start showing up too often. That said, a major group moving up north is bound to cause ripples in the rest of the area and we have no idea why that group moved in the first place.” Natalie gestured to a couple arrows pointing to and from an apartment complex of some kind. “They were a big enough group to chase out the Naturalists. If they’re suddenly shifting territory this much, we have to assume that something else pushed them out of their home.”

“Any idea what could have done it?” Lucas briefly glanced at the map but it was upside down for him and he didn’t bother trying to make out any of Natalie’s notes on it. “Do you think a bunch of the other groups could have banded together? All I remember about the northern side of the old city is that it’s mostly split up between a few big gangs.”

“I have a few.” Natale stared down at her moment for a moment, tapping her pen against her lips as she scanned her notes. “It would take at least two of the big northern gangs to push the Naturalists out without a fight. Elder Brianna said that her scouts reported so many people that the Elders decided it would be better to just leave rather than fight back, so we can pretty much confirm that side of things. After all, given their above-average skills and the fact that they lived there for almost two decades, they should have been able to hold their home against anything other than a massive invasion.”

“That or they just didn’t want to fight. Sometimes it’s easier to walk away than risk your people.” Cam shrugged. “If they all walked away fast enough, then no one would have died. If they stayed and fought, some or all of them could have died. If you know a fight’s about to happen and you can leave, leaving is usually the safest bet.”

“Yex, exactly.” Natalie nodded. “Which is why I’m very worried about what made those bandits make the same choice.”

I leaned over a bit and looked down at Natalie’s map, taking in the clustered symbols, arrows, and scattered letters that made up Natalie’s shorthand. When her notes held no answers for me, as Natalie and Cam talked about what other forces in the area other than The Enclave and us could have seemed like a big enough threat, I let my eyes wander over the map.

“Whatever it was would have had to get active after we left. We went right through there on the way to the Milwaukee Enclave and we didn’t see shit out of the ordinary.” Cam sighed, their words hanging in the silence for a moment before Lucas cut in.

“Sure, but we also stuck to our routes and none of those groups ever bother us. We’re too big to be worth it.” Lucas shrugged. “Plus, they know we’d wipe them out if they started attacking our routes. Something else could have been going on just out of sight.”

“Sure, and I could sprout wings and fly people between Enclaves.” I could hear Cam rolling their eyes at their brother. “There’s no way we could have missed something this big. It had to start after we left.”

“Natalie.” I cut in as Lucas started to say something. “Do you know where the landing zones are? None of them are marked on this map.”

“The landing zones..?” Natalie glanced over at me and started drawing in circles, putting a total of eight across the map. As she drew in the last two, one smack dab in the middle of bandit territory, her movements slowed to a halt. “Marshall…”

“Yeah, I thought so.”

“Marshall,” Natalie drew a little swirl of lines in the center of the circle in the middle of the northern bandit territory. “This is the one that didn’t go off.”

“Yeah.” I nodded and noticed Cam fall silent, eyes wide, as they stared at Natalie’s map. Lucas had let himself lean back until he was sprawled out on the floor of the tent. “What if the thing that pushed the bandits out was the last Chicago landing zone finally waking up?”

“Fuck.” Cam rubbed their face. “Do you think the Des Plaines cluster finally woke up?”

I shrugged. “As reasonable an explanation as any.”

“I thought all the landing zones had already been cleared.” Lucas looked over at me, frowning, as he shifted from his sprawled position to a hunched pose, next to his sister with his arms wrapped around his knees.

“Technically, this one got cleared. It never opened up. The Chicago Enclave kept an eye on it, but no one ever went close to it just in case it was waiting for something. They only check it after every Blizzard now, I think.”

“You mean there’s been a pod of enough monsters to wreck a city just waiting to spill its guts all over the area and everyone’s just left it there?” Lucas shook his head and just lay down on the ground, hands laced behind his head. “That’s nuts. Why didn’t anyone deal with it way back when we were still using militaries and stuff?”

“Because that pod staying shut is the only reason Chicago survived as well as it did.” Natalie pointed to three of the other spots on the map. “Since they only had three to deal with initially, they were in better shape to build defenses and were able to repel the second wave,” she pointed to the remaining four spots, “much more effectively. It wasn’t even discovered that a pod had come down and not opened until years afterwards, once people started exploring and traveling again.”

“And now you think it’s open?” Lucas sighed. “Really?”

“It would explain why there’s no news anywhere.” Natalie’s eyes darted around the map for a moment before she moved it aside and pulled out her main map of the region. “That would also explain why we never got word about any missing Wayfinders from the route we took. No one noticed them going missing because so many others are going missing too. There’s no way any group could handle a cluster of monsters like this. It would take the full Enclave and every Wayfinder stabled out of Chicago to take them down away from the walls.”

“Which would be the only way to avoid something worse.” Cam stopped rubbing their face and took a deep breath. “We need to move carefully. If they woke up, there’s no way of telling where they’ve spread to at this point. Maybe some of the bandits already fought them and killed a bunch off. Maybe they’ve already spread out, looking for signals.”

Lucas, from his position on the floor, muttered “maybe I’ll grow wings and fly people from Enclave to Enclave.”

“Sounds like we’re heading north to where the bandits are.” Natalie was making little marks on her map with a dry erase marker, updating bits of text and shifting symbols around. “Then we’ll have shelter and intel. If they don’t know we’re coming, we should be able to take them out quickly.”

Cam nodded. “Especially if the Naturalists have bolt holes that never got discovered.”

“I’ll get the scouts ready for this bullshit.” Lucas heaved himself back into a sitting position, wincing slightly as he worked the muscles that were only barely healed. “Let’s plan on a full week, though, rather than five days. Just in case.”

Natalie shot a look at Cam, who nodded, and then me. I nodded, adding “and let’s make sure everyone’s up for this. We might be able to find some people to the south, here, that know what’s going on. Do we want to at least look before we commit to taking another enemy base?”

“Good point.” Cam stood up and started putting their gear on. “No time like the present.”

I sighed and started getting back into my insulated gear, Lucas coming to join the two of us a bit more slowly. Natalie waved the three of us away when we were finished getting dressed, still pouring over her maps, so we left without her. Once outside, Cam and Lucas started gathering everyone up. Aside from a couple people who were away from camp scouting, we managed to get everyone together in a few minutes. As we outlined our plan, everyone sat silently, their attentions shifting between the three of us but mostly focused on me as I relayed the details and possible options before us.

“As far as we see it, those are our two options. Head north where we’ll have the benefit of known territory and a source of information, or try to find someone willing to help us down here. Fastest we get into the Enclave is maybe three days from now, if we take a direct route and don’t have to stop much. Longest should be a week, barring any kind of issues up north. The northern route is more certain but will take us longer, and  the southern route is relatively unknown but will probably take less time. It’s entirely possible that everything would be fine and we could just march into the Enclave in two brisk days of walking, but we just can’t know what we might run into at this rate.”

I looked around for a couple moments, letting the information I’d just relayed sink in. After people started to shift around a bit more, I added “I think we should go north. It is the safest route and, based on what we think is happening in the area, our best bet of not running into more monsters.”

There were a few moments of silence and then one hand raised. It was a young Naturalist, one of the older teens, whose name I couldn’t quite remember. When I nodded at them, they took a deep breath as they visibly steeled themselves and said “can we trust your idea? It seems like a pretty big jump from us getting chased away from home to there being an army of monsters wandering around. You killed that guy based on an assumption and, sure, you were right, but are you jumping to conclusions again? If you’re wrong, we could all die, not just one innocent guy.”

When this kid was finished with their question, they ducked their head a little bit and glanced at the people around them, like they expected some kind of immediate reprimand from their elders. Instead of saying anything right away, I thought through what the kid said. After the silence stretched on for a minute, Lucas opened his mouth to say something but I held up a hand to shush him. He glared at me, but I let his ire roll off me.

Finally, a few uncomfortable minutes after the kid’s question, I’d worked out what I wanted to say. Nothing like a time-sensitive demand to make you finish working through a problem you’ve been chewing on for days. I felt some of the tension drain out of my shoulders and, as I opened my mouth to speak, the gentle murmur of voices that had built up in my silence died out.

“Yes, you can trust my idea. I’ve been doing this for thirty years and while a lot of the stuff I do might seem strange or odd on the outside, I do it because I’ve learned from not just my own thirty years, but the years of every other person I’ve worked with. I’ve seen more people die in idiotic accidents than we’ve lost on this trip. I’ve seen what happens when people assume that they know better than those with experience and practice. I’ve seen more than I could ever record or teach people.

“I will not always be right. I’ve been wrong in the past. I will be wrong in the future. I will never gamble anyone’s life on something that isn’t either a completely safe bet or the safest option we’ve got. This will be difficult, but sneaking into a base and killing a bunch of bandits who don’t know we’re there is a lot less risky than walking into what could be monster patrol territory with our eyes closed. And that’s what we’d probably be doing. The south side of the city is sparsely populated at the best of times and I suspect we’re far from that. Our only real hope is finding a bandit we could capture or getting incredibly lucky and finding a patrol of Wayfinders or scouts from the Enclave, but those are both incredibly unlikely. I don’t want to risk anyone on something so uncertain.

“We just don’t know enough right now, so I’m going to suggest the safest possible choice for us and probably act on it, regardless of what everyone else says. I’d love if you all believed in me and followed my lead, but I’m not going to make you do it.” I sighed and shifted my shoulders back and forth to crack my back.

“Ultimately, I’m responsible for everyone following me and I will do whatever it takes to get them safely to their destination. I will make whatever hard decisions I must. I will do whatever dirty work must be done. I will take on whatever burdens might stop us. I don’t like that I had to kill Ben, but I like even less that he decided his arm was more important than everyone else’s safety. It might have been a decision he first made moments after being shot, but it’s one that he kept making every second between then and when I killed him. There’s no room for that kind of selfishness out here. We either all work together or we all die.

“And yes, I know this is harsh. I know I probably seem cold. But I’ve seen what happens when the monsters finally wear down the people they Traced. I’ve seen what happens when a Trace leads them to an Enclave. Eventually, there will be nothing left but bones and rubble and I will do whatever I must to spare us all that.” I looked through the crowd, meeting the eyes of anyone who was looking. “I have nightmares about the look on his face. I still have nightmares about the faces of everyone I’ve had to kill like that. What helps me sleep at night is knowing that I was right every single time and there is an unknown number of people still alive because of that.”

I paused, trying to figure out if there was more to say, and just let the silence grow when I drew up blank. I kept scanning the crowd, looking for any signs of a challenge showing on someone’s face but found nothing. There were quite a few people who looked sad or upset about what I’d said, but the weariness that joined their sadness told me that they were thinking more about the world we lived in than the part I played in the cruel calculus of that world. 

After a couple minutes of silence, I sighed and directed my attention to the teen who’d asked the question. “Is that answer enough?”

The teen shrugged uncomfortably. “Yeah, plenty. At least we’ll all die sure you believed in your decision.”

I resisted the urge to chuckle at the suggestion that I was certain of anything and just nodded gratefully as they hunkered down again. “Any other questions?”

After a couple breaths, there was a flurry of logistical questions, most of which I directed toward Lucas and Natalie, who had come out to join us during the silence before my answer, since they were in charge of scouting and our route. About ten minutes later, I sent everyone on their way. There was plenty to do, as always, but we still had most of the afternoon to do it, so I let everyone know that they could always ask me more questions if they thought of them while we were working. Once that was done, I set about my chores for the day and eventually found myself with nothing left to do other than wait to fall asleep.

After dinner, since I wasn’t on a guard or clean up shift, I hung out in the tent with Natalie as she continued to mark up her map and started drawing out scouting routes for Lucas to use once we’d settled into our temporary base. The sun set as I watched her work and eventually, when she was finished reviewing her work by the light of the single overhead lamp we kept in the tent, she set everything aside, turned out the light, and burrowed down next to me. It would be a few hours before either Lucas, who was reviewing shifts with his scouts, or Cam, who was on the first guard shift, turned up and neither of us had anything to do that required light. It would be a waste to leave the lamp on when both Cam and Lucas would have their own lights to navigate by when they returned.

After a few minutes of silently embracing, Natalie started talking about some of the routes she’d planned for Lucas and I told her about the questions I’d gotten from people while I was keeping myself visible during the afternoon. She referenced a lot of places we’d talked about in college but never gone to since things started falling apart before we had the chance to do much more than graduate and get our first jobs. I talked about the mix of emotions on peoples’ faces and in their voices as they pushed themselves to speak without giving voice to the lurking fear that the fate I had enforced on Ben was a foreshadowing of what awaited all of Humanity.

Eventually, those topics ran out and we returned to silence. Our breathing evened out and synchronized and I was certain Natalie had fallen asleep until I heard her speak my name into my chest.

“Marshall.”

“Hmm?” I was far from being capable of falling asleep, but the inertia of our stillness made me loathe to move more than I absolutely had to.

“What if I want to stay in Chicago, too?”

I felt my breath catch in my chest and felt Natalie tense in response. I forced myself to exhale and resume my steady breathing as I turned the idea over in my head. I could feel myself breathing out of rhythm with Natalie but couldn’t seem to get my breath back into sync with hers, despite my attempts to time it out.

When I didn’t say anything for a couple minutes, Natalie spoke again. “What if I decided to retire?”

I sighed and forced myself to give voice to all the thoughts preventing me from controlling my breathing. “I don’t know.”

“Would you stay?”

“I… Stay?”

“Would you stay with me?” I felt Natalie’s head shift as she pulled back from me. I felt her breath on my face and knew she was staring up at me while I continued to stare straight ahead, both of us seeing the same pitch darkness. “Would you stay or would you keep Wayfinding until something kills you?”

Natalie reached a warm hard up to cup my cheek and gently tipped my head down until I was facing her. “I know you’re still looking for your family, even if you don’t talk about it anymore. I know you keep thinking what if they’re just one more trip away, lost somewhere on one of the coasts and stuck wondering just like you are.”

Natalie reached up and brushed a tear away from where it was pooling on my nose. “I know you want to find anyone else from back then, before everything, but are you going to keep looking forever? It’s been more than thirty years, love. Will you keep up this search until one mistake or one moment of bad luck gets you killed?”

I swallowed past the lump in my throat and, after a few deep breaths to get the quavering in my throat under control, I forced myself to give voice to the answer I’d arrived at over the past few days. “No.”

“Marshall…” Natalie brought her other hand up and wrapped them both around my neck, pulling me close to her again. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed.”

“No.” I took a deep breath and cleared my throat and then said it again, more firmly. “No. I’ve…” I sighed. “I already decided. Sort of. I’ve been thinking about it ever since we left the Cultist base. Probably longer, actually. I’ve just been consciously thinking about it since then. I…” I reached for more words, but came up empty. Instead of trying again, though, I tucked my head down and buried my face in Natalie’s hair.

After a few minutes of this, I leaned back and shifted myself into a position that put less tension on my neck and shoulders. As Natalie adjusted herself to my new position, leaving us both just an entwined but more spread out, I found the words I’d been looking for.

“I’ve just been trying to avoid thinking about it. I used to deal with everything that went wrong in my life by being too busy to think about it. The past thirty years have mostly been that, just channeled productively.” I felt Natalie stir and spoke before she opened her mouth. “Okay, arguably productively. It was arguably healthy once, but I don’t think it is, anymore. I’m good, but I don’t need to be doing this anymore.

“I think I need to accept that you three are all I’m ever going to have from before The Collapse. Really accept it. Deep down.” I sighed again and shifted my shoulders until my back cracked. “Hearing the exhaustion in Lucas… Losing so many people… This whole debacle of a trip has made me realize that, if I keep pushing, I might lose you three.”

“Marshall, you know-”

“I know. None of you would abandon me. But there’s a lot of ways to lose people and most of them don’t care how careful you are. And I don’t want any of you to lose me, either. Which is what would basically happen if I kept pushing Lucas or left him behind while taking you two with me. We’d be leaving him behind. I don’t want that. I don’t want to risk any of you ever again, if I can help it.”

I looked down at Natalie, gently rubbing her shoulder with the arm I’d looped underneath her. “You are all I need. You three. Thats enough for me.”

“And the rest of the Wayfinders, of course.” I could hear the smile on Natalie’s face. “You might retire, but you’re never giving them up.”

I chuckled. “Am I that transparent?”

“No.” Natalie tipped her head up to kiss me. “I just know you.”

I swallowed past another, entirely different lump in my throat. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“I promise I’m never going to leave you again.”

“I’m going to make sure you never regret deciding to rest.”

After that, we lay there in silence and, for the first time in weeks, I fell asleep before I realized it was coming for me.