That night, on the bunks in the dim barracks, Tara sat close beside Alisha and spoke to her in a low voice.
Lilly remained silent, sitting in the corner with her knees drawn up, her eyes vacant.
"Did they give you a hard time?" Tara asked anxiously.
Alisha shook her head. "No. They just kept going over the details, asking whether we were hiding any other accomplices or bases. It feels like... they're very cautious, but they're not the kind of people who kill indiscriminately."
Tara told her about her impressions of Calista and everything she had observed in the industrial park.
"Alisha, I think... maybe this is an opportunity.
Look at this place. It's ten thousand times better than our camp. They seem organized, and there are a lot of them.
Do you think... we could try to stay? Not as prisoners, but as members of their group?"
Alisha listened carefully. As a former soldier, she had an even greater appreciation for the defensive system and discipline here.
"That female commander definitely isn't ordinary. She handles things decisively, and she has everything under control. And this place...
If we could stay here, it would be a lot better than constantly hiding and never knowing whether we'd survive another day. But..."
She glanced worriedly toward Lilly in the corner. "We did attack their outpost. Will they really accept us? And then there's Lilly's condition..."
"We can work for it!" Tara grabbed Alisha's hand, her expression determined. "We can behave ourselves, follow the rules, and show them that we're useful.
You're a soldier, and I was a police academy student. We've both had training. Even if all they let us do is manual labor, that's fine!
And Lilly... she'll get better. As long as she has somewhere safe and stable..."
Her voice lacked confidence at the end, but she had to keep believing it.
Alisha squeezed her hand in return and nodded. "Yeah. We can try. It's better than staying prisoners forever."
Tara nodded firmly, then turned toward Lilly, who was curled up nearby. Even though she knew her sister might not really take in what she was saying, Tara leaned close to her ear.
"Lilly, did you hear that? I'm going to do my best, and you have to... get a little better too, okay?"
Lilly slowly raised her head and looked at Tara. Her eyes were still empty, but something seemed to flicker faintly within them.
She didn't speak. After a moment, she simply lowered her head again.
Late that night, the barracks filled with the uneven snores and murmured sleep-talk of the prisoners.
Tara and Alisha shared one bed, curled up against each other.
Lilly lay alone on the bunk beside them, her eyes open in the darkness.
In the silence, the memories she had tried so hard to suppress crept back into her mind.
A dark bedroom.
Her daughter Meghan spoke in a soft, pleading voice. "Mommy, I can't sleep. Stay up and talk to me for a little while~"
Tara had gone out searching for supplies that day, while Lilly had spent the entire day caring for their father at home. She was already exhausted and waved weakly. "Sweetheart, Mommy's too tired..."
Meghan pouted. "Then I'll go find Grandpa..."
Lilly barely registered what her daughter was saying. Half asleep, she murmured, "Mm... go ahead. Grandpa's in the living room..."
Then came a brief silence.
A moment later, a short scream rang out from the living room, followed by the horrifying sounds of chewing and tearing.
Lilly shot upright in bed, her heart hammering.
By the time she and Tara rushed out, they saw their father. No, he was already a walker, hunched over Meghan's tiny body, his head jerking as he fed.
Blood covered the floor.
Tara froze in horror.
Lilly screamed and threw herself forward, grabbing whatever she could find and smashing it over and over into the head of the walker that had once been her father.
Once. Twice... until it stopped moving.
Warm, sticky blood and gore splattered across Lilly's face and body.
She gathered her daughter's cold, mutilated little body into her arms, and the whole world dissolved into a hopeless ringing in her ears.
That image froze in her mind and played over and over.
She remained there in a daze, clutching her daughter's corpse. Two hours later, Meghan "woke up" too...
Lilly could barely remember what happened after that.
All she knew was that when she finally came back to herself, Tara had a bag in one hand and was pulling Lilly toward the car with the other. The two sisters fled their home in complete emotional collapse.
From then on, Lilly's world contained only gray-white and blood-red.
Sounds became distant. Colors faded. Time seemed thick and sluggish.
She moved like an empty shell, following Tara wherever she went, no longer reacting to the world around her.
Only in the deepest hours of the night did those nightmare memories return with such terrible clarity, tormenting what remained of her shattered mind.
Lilly trembled and curled tighter beneath the thin blanket, pressing it hard over her mouth to smother the sob threatening to escape.
From the bed beside her came the faint murmur of Tara and Alisha talking quietly about the future.
Those words seemed to belong to another world, distant and unreal.
Lilly closed her eyes and curled in on herself even more tightly.
The future?
Did she still have one?
Her future had been torn apart on that bloody night, along with her daughter's tiny body.
Perhaps the only reason she was still alive was that small, fragile bond. She couldn't let Tara lose the last family member she had left.
...
Tara was happy that she and Alisha had reached an understanding, but she also knew that the two of them alone, even with the barely responsive Lilly, didn't carry enough weight.
Among the anxious prisoners, the attitudes of Pete and Mitch, the former leaders of the camp, would have a major influence on what the others decided to do.
So when Tara spotted Pete and Mitch crouching by the wall during exercise time the next day, she practically dragged Alisha over to them.
"Pete! Mitch!"
Pete raised an eyebrow but said nothing, waiting for her to continue.
Mitch instinctively straightened a little, his eyes moving between Tara and Alisha.
"Can we talk?" Tara tried to keep her voice steady. "About what happens next."
Pete narrowed his eyes and studied her for several seconds.
His impression of Tara had been that she spent most of her time close to her devastated sister and her girlfriend. She was physically capable enough, but otherwise fairly quiet.
And now she had approached them on her own...
"Talk about what? How to be model prisoners?" Pete asked with a bitter laugh.
"How to avoid being prisoners for the rest of our lives."
Tara met his gaze without backing down.
That got both Pete and Mitch's attention.
Alisha had been in the Army Reserve and had escaped Fort Benning with Pete and Mitch, so she knew them better. She chose that moment to speak.
"We've been watching this place for several days. Their defenses, personnel deployment, and supply management are all extremely organized. I suspect the people who built this place came from the military or the government."
Mitch couldn't resist cutting in. "No kidding. Of course they're organized. They took our tank according to their 'rules,' didn't they?"
There wasn't much resentment in his voice. It was mostly a clear-eyed recognition of the difference in strength between the two sides, mixed with regret over his earlier recklessness.
"That's exactly the point!" Tara said, stepping half a pace closer and lowering her voice. "They're strong. Yesterday... I met the leader of this place. That female commander."