She saw me and waved.
“Brenna,” she called, wedging her way through the wall of muscle to hurry in my direction.
I begrudgingly slowed to wait for her. It was no mystery how she knew my name, but I didn’t know hers. As the girl with the bow who liked to guard the wall, I kind of stuck out in this very fey dominated community that liked to shelter women. Besides, the fey talked. A lot. Especially about their favorite things. Women and women’s parts.
All but one of her admirers scattered to find other prey. Thankfully, that prey was never me. As a minor, I was off limits to them. It didn’t matter that my eighteenth birthday was only a few weeks away.
“Hey,” she said, nearing me. “I’m Cheri. Would you know where I can find Hannah?”
“Sure.” I gave her the house number.
Cheri waved, ducked her head, and started walking. If she thought keeping her head down would keep the fey away, she was in for some disappointment. I’d no sooner had the thought when a fey stepped out from between two houses to intercept her.
I shook my head and continued home. It still felt weird thinking of my family’s assigned house as home. There were pictures of another family in the basement, carefully packed away by one of the fey who had helped clear the houses out when they first decided to make this place a safe zone. I never let myself think of what had happened to the people who lived there before us. It was probably the same thing that happened to most of the people on the planet. Hellhounds and infection.
The house was quiet when I let myself in. That likely meant that Zach, my brother, was out following one of the fey around, and Mom was reading one of the books Julie had brought her. Standing in the mud room, I stripped from my winter gear and hung everything up so it’d be ready for when I went out again.
The kitchen was already cleaned up from breakfast, so I went to check on Mom. She was in her room, but not reading. She had her chair pulled up to the window and was peeking through the curtains with a pair of binoculars in her hands.
“Dear God, he’s hung like a horse,” she said softly.
My mouth dropped open.
“What in the hell are you doing?”
She jumped and fumbled with the binoculars as she swiveled to look at me. When she gripped them securely once more, she scowled at me.
“Watch your mouth. I don’t care if the world’s going to shit. I’m your mother, and you will respect me.”
I crossed my arms, not buying her act.
“I will respect you until the day I die, and you know it. But I won’t ever stop calling you out when I see you doing something wrong. Just like you wouldn’t ever hold back on me.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“Fair enough. Are you hungry?” She set the binoculars on her lap and moved her wheelchair forward.
“Are you going to tell me what you were doing?”
“Nope.”
“Then I guess I’ll just need to walk across the street and tell whoever is in that house that my pervy mom was eyeing up his meat stick. I wonder how that will go over?”
She sighed and stopped wheeling forward.
“Probably with him asking if he could see places only your father saw.”
That robbed me of my irritation with her. Uncrossing my arms, I went to sit on her bed.
“I miss him, too,” I said softly.
“It’s not just missing him, Bren. It’s being practical. Molev was right. I need to start thinking of you and Zach.”
Her use of Zach instead of Zachy didn’t escape my notice. She’d been treating us both differently since we’d arrived here weeks ago. Molev, the fey’s leader, had taken her aside to talk to her not long after. I wasn’t sure what he’d said, but that was when she’d changed.
I didn’t let myself think for a moment that she’d changed because of what had happened to me.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “All you ever do is think about us.”
She shook her head and looked down at the binoculars.
“No, sweetie. I haven’t been. Not really. We live in a different world now. The rules of parenting are changing. Keeping you clothed and fed isn’t enough. I need to do everything I can to keep you safe.”
“You have. You are.”
She started shaking her head again. It wasn’t like her to hold back.
“Whatever is eating at you, just say it. I hate when you dance around the subject.”
A grin pulled at her lips.
“I think you and I should start dating.”
“What? Why? Who? Are you insane? Zombies are outside the wall, doing God only knows what, and you’re worried about our love lives?”
Her tired brown eyes met mine as she tucked a short strand of hair behind her ear.
“Three days ago, I was lucky. So were you. We could have been bitten and changed.”
I stared at her, my mind pulling me back to the horrifying moment when the infected used their makeshift ladders to climb the wall. I’d watched them run through the streets, unable to nock arrows fast enough to put a dent in their numbers. While I’d fought for my life and everyone else’s in this place, I’d thought of my mom alone in this house. Bound to her wheelchair.
And suddenly, I understood what she was trying to tell me. It was a topic I couldn’t get out of my head since it became known.
“You don’t want to date,” I said. “You want immunity from infection.”
Thanks to Eden and her run in with infected, the fey and most the humans here now knew what it would take for humans to become immune to infection. The human men were screwed. Actually, that wasn’t right. The human women would be screwed. By fey, the only creatures immune to infection.
“Sleeping with one of the fey is no guarantee for survival. Sure, you won’t turn, but you saw what the infected did to some of the people they got to. There’s no living through that, either.”
Her gaze searched mine for a moment, and she gave me a small shrug.
“It’s not just for immunity, Brenna.” She took a deep breath. “I want a partner. I want to know that someone will be there for you two when I’m not.”
My chest squeezed painfully at the thought of losing her, too. Dad had been there for us through the quakes and the chaos that followed. He’d been the one to get us out of the house to look for supplies. We’d survived the worst of it, or so I thought, because of his steadfast presence. Then, in an act of unwarranted violence, he’d been taken from us by humans looking to expand their numbers with healthy, young people like me and Zach. That group had revealed the truth of the world to me. A truth from which my dad had tried so hard to protect me.
My expression must have given my thoughts away because Mom pushed toward me.
“I will love your father until the day I die, Brenna. And if I had a choice, I’d give myself more time to mourn him. But time is a finite thing, and we never know how much we have. You and Zach are more important than my grief or my pride.” She took my hand, holding it firm. “It’s time I find someone. Someone who will look at me with respect. Who will see my intelligence and not my wheelchair. Someone who will cherish what I am and what I have to offer. Someone your father would approve of.”
“That’s what you were doing, then? Visually interviewing the candidates?”