RUNNING ON FAITH

Lilly stands watch.

0900 to 1800, after handing out the daily orders and a couple handfuls of food, she climbs on Kenny's piece-of-shit RV and she watches. This isn't her favorite job, and Lilly Caul doesn't volunteer every single day because she likes watching, or because thinks there is something better to be found beyond these rusting autumn aspens (she doesn't; there isn't). She does it because it needs to get done. She does it because manning this sad, creaking, wind-rotting post is the most important thing they have to do. Mostly: Lilly does it because she is the only one who really knows how.

This middle-Georgia morning is damp and grayish-white. It is an October of a day, wet weather crisp with the slight edges of unkindness. Both her hands are stiff, cold, and painful from sleeping cramped up into fists. They do that on their own volition. Tangling, clenching, tough in the dead of night, twisting up her covers, moving like they've got a mind of their own. The first thing Lilly does every morning is to peel those fists undone. And man, do they bawl. There's only so much to be done for that kind of hurt, she knows – for that kind of injury, one that repeats itself, a kernel stuck deep in the belly of your head. They've got no bandages. There's no ice. Keeping them warm seems to help the ache, make them a little suppler, so that's what happens; she's commandeered a ratty pair of knit gloves from a squeaky end table, but they don't do much good fingerless, and the first thing Lilly did was shear those fingers off. Aim is more important than toasty nails. Aim is more important than anything she has.

The rest of her, though, could complain about the cold, too. As a compromise, she dug up an oil-stained mechanic's jacket that smelled like Marlboros and moth feet. The lapels had lost most of their snaps, but thinning leather is more substantial than sweated-through tank-tops. Raggedy blue and baggy jeans don't hide bloodstains as well as the nondescript brown color of her retired clothes, but they made due. Maybe someday she'd find a scarf. Didn't really matter, though – or, at least, it mattered less than the other things. Convenience doesn't exist in this life anymore, and comfort is a commodity they can't afford.

Some others would disagree, but that's why Lilly stands watch.

Some others think standing watch means sitting and seeing. Katjaa does – she plops on the rusted husk of that shit RV, spongy body sagging in a dilapidated lawnchair fished out from Motor Inn's storage shed, sipping vending machine soda and hoping she'll spot danger before it's gouging out her kidneys. Carley looks, but she's too nervous and too optimistic to really watch. Kenny plots himself useless. Mark – because he's an asshole – falls asleep half the fucking time. Lee manages to stay awake, but he puts the rifle down to cross his arms when it gets late, trying to hold in warmth that isn't there, and you don't ever put down your gun.

But Lilly watches. Lilly waits – back bargepole straight, hands on her weapon, the bronze-gold glint of her eyes a snap of flint through this dusky dark of Macon. Lilly stands when the locust leaves rustle, the cars choke, or yj metals groan. And when Lilly needs to, Lilly shoots. She does not hesitate like some others do.

Lilly watches; Lilly stands.

Everything crumbles in fall. The air out here smells like rot, both vegetation and bone – and, as you would imagine, no one is exactly a flower by this point. Fuel and burnt garbage dominate the parking lot. Indoors reeks of weeping, perspiration, and antiseptic stolen from Macon's neighborhood pharmacy, a thin peppery whiff that never quite sears out the punch pang of blood. Mingled with these human scents is a frustrating odor of tree sap. Breathing in begins to hurt your soul. It has an aftertaste, this air, of crystallized sugar, of maple pancakes, a sweetness sucking into empty bellies that drives everyone mad. Mark fantasized loudly about English muffins yesterday until Lilly screamed at him to shut the fuck up. Sorry sorry sorry, he fumbled, I'm so sorry, not balming her anger, or erasing the way those kids' faces had tightened with misery they can't understand. Stupid fucking Mark: greaseball, tattered shoelaces, urbane glasses in front of heaven blue, officer's boy who thinks he's slick as shit. She almost climbed down from this worthless RV to beat his ass, but didn't. Lilly can feel it, you know. She can. She can listen to the thrum of her blood down her arms, through her knuckles, into her fingers, perpetually making fists in her sleep, and recognize what the desperation was doing to her. It made a little hostility burn like warfare. It made her remember, more than ever, that watchmen should not leave their posts.

"Take this bastard with you," Lilly had snapped at Lee when he stepped outside his room with their salvaged Remington and a denim jacket barely better than hers. Her thumb jerked dismissively. Mark was dumb as dogshit when it came to tact – but he was also a trustworthy friend, and the best shot of them all. "Maybe he'll keep his mouth shut in the woods instead of running it here."

The man with the gun hesitated. Hunger paled him. It darkened the faint stress lines into his brow; it made sad, storybook eyes fill with white moonshine more than pupil or auburn. There was always something about Lee Everett that looked mournful. It was more than the unshavenness, the disheveled black hair, the soft glimpse of teeth when despair loosened his jaw. You expected him to limp even when he was unhurt. You expected him to die next.

"We haven't eaten," she was told, concern for Clem transparent.

"Breakfast when you get back," she promised, but it went down bitter and hard, knowing Lee wasn't getting any food today. "Hit something we can cook, all right?"

Lilly gestured for Lee to pass the gun to Mark and then leant back to watch them leave. It was a grim procession; everyone knew, with the same slow dread of starvation, exactly what roamed out there beyond those delicate orange trees. The fire axe glinted red-and-silver on Lee's back until they were engulfed by Georgia brush. It looked vaguely heroic – two of the fiefdom's hapless knights sent hunting for their king. Lilly stood behind and watched.

Lilly stands watch because she has to. And because nobody's teeth are sharper than hers.

Some others would suggest there's a soothing quality to this task – the same "some others" that sat their fat asses down and twilight-snoozed through it all. Doing this job right is mentally exhausting. You never unwind. You never slacken your readiness to kill. You never ignore a sudden noise, even if it's one you hear every day, and have already double-checked a thousand times.

Today's sound are the gentle tangle of dry leaves, of cardinal feet in brittle limbs; the echoing thwump of Clementine's soccer ball bouncing off a trash bin; crow caws; and, if you listen closely, a rhythmic tink-tink-tink that makes everyone glad.

Their water pans are sloshing after last night's shower. It's a goddamn relief, that spatter of raindrops against tin. Kat and Kenny will haul them over and start bottling soon (not permitting Duck, despite his aggressive volunteering, to help) – but, for now, potable water is secure. The first thing Lilly did once they'd bunkered down in this place was scout until she found a good, clear, moving stream. It allowed them to adopt a drink-what-you-need policy: take sips, not chugs; reuse what you're able; bathe once-a-week with cloth scrubs only; no pouring. Those were the rules she set. Dragging jugs back and forth through dense forest isn't safe, but they'll do what they have to, and the faucets in here aren't likely to start spouting anytime soon. There were no other options. There was nothing to do but to make the best choice they had and stick to it, watching, maintaining, making sure.

A few months ago, she had watched monsters eat a man – one of hers – to sock shreds and flesh. She had watched all the indigos and blistering scarlet and green fabric tear together a hundred times in her dreams. It was an echo that lingered: the contours of a doughy smile and daring mind hiding beneath that sandy mop. Doug had been Lilly's first failure. Some others would have disagreed – some others, who had been faster in that moment, would've taken the blame for themselves – but she understood the truth of leadership exists in how long your people survive.

There would be more failures. She accepted that bloody swirl and the inevitability that her pack would dwindle before this bad dream came to its end (or everyone else did). But they would not die because she looked away, because she missed it, because Lilly Caul was too occupied with being a daughter and being an alpha that she – for that sinning second – stopped watching.

Whatever comes down upon this craftwork fort, it's not going to happen again.

Three days have passed since Lilly Caul has eaten anything but the crumbs off wrappers and undersides of juice caps. Ribs stretch torso skin tight. Her stomach stopped hurting yesterday, but the tissue beneath both eyes is sallow and sunken, roughening tall cheekbones until they seem to jut. Her unattended hair is a heavy, glistening, walnut shell pelt between unforgiving haunches – looks like buzzard feathers by this point – but they ran out of shampoo weeks ago. Bar soap rinsed away with Styrofoam cups does a bad job. She looks like a famished jackal that's been in a fight. She doesn't have the vanity or energy to care.

An hour ago, Lilly watched Kenny lose his temper at the choking camper again – kick a bucket, chuck his wrench, cuss himself red before Kat could calm him or save the toolbox from a muddy sneaker toe. He'd stomped off into the woods carting a shotgun to catch up with Mark and Lee.

"My kingdom for a horse," she murmured, and gave her rifle a soft, commiserating pat, not sure if they'd ride that animal wish or eat its meat to bone. 'My fucked-up little kingdom for a dead deer on Mark's back.'

The black smoke of cooked venison might attract hordes, true; Lilly recognized that; but she also knew they didn't seem to mind their meals squealing raw.

The sharp, shrill squeal of a little girl – startled by engine backfire, stray gunshots, or Duck making goblin faces – stops her heart every time.

Lilly watched the beargrass looming over Clementine's tiny ball court, because someone conscious had to, and at least it kept her from thinking about food.

Rations are first thing in the morning – sun up, satchel open, withering people with expectations and vile looks. Mornings are Lilly's least favorite time. Everyone was starting to hate her for what wasn't waiting in that lumpy Jansport. Cruel glances, backhanded comments, menacing tension radiating towards her in the few hours when practical distractions waned away to dissatisfaction. A few of these signs were imagined, some others said, but most were real. She knew that. Lilly knew it, because she was the one hauling out of bed with her intestines already in tatters – acid wincing through the guilt – knowing who wasn't going to eat today, whose meals were shrinking, and knowing what has to be done.

More than anything else, Lilly Caul knows what has to be done.

Sometimes she wishes there was someone to help her do these uncomfortable things that need doing. There isn't, but the wish is. It persists because nobody else will persist on her side. Kenny (handlebar fucker) is rabid enough to mutiny whenever Kat doesn't get breakfast or lunch; his wife's calmness keeps him from it, but no one approves, and that becomes more frightening as the peach cans on their shelves deplete. Baby corns, Vienna sausages, Pork-n-Beans. Even Katjaa shows unease with both hands pressing down on her pink-faced husband's concaved chest. Lilly says shut up. Shut up, she says, not because she can't bear to hear this anymore, which she almost can't, but because who knows what this fucking madhouse is attracting? The kids hide when the adults fight, too much shouting, too little notice. Grudges are tallied and worshipped. And that is true for everyone. Even Mark, who trusts Lilly, but honors their rank-and-file chillingly less as his hands shake worse. Carley's never liked her. And no one really knows what Lee thinks, or even if he does – if he does anything but worry over Clem at her drawings with his hands full of fire axe and his tragic eyes.

'You have to be hard,' she reminds herself. Death does not care. It's not about morality, camaraderie, sensitivity, or dramatic sacrifices. Disaster makes no leeway for tender touches. Survivors are led by hard – not kind – shepherds, even if those shepherds serve their duty alone.

"Shit, Lilly – you OK?" Kenny asked the other day when she'd dropped a fucking ammo crate – no reason; just motherfucking dropped it like a cripple – smashed her toes through damp construction boots.

"I'm fine," Lilly spat. Her fingers looked fearfully bony as they clutched at the stricken spot. There were shells rolling everywhere; those awkward hands groped for leverage, cussing; she couldn't wrangle them all at once…

"Sure? If we're movin' shit, I can help out. Just want to find where Duck's at—"

"I'm FINE," Lilly shouted, lips pared away from her cutting teeth. The fine hairs of her neck stood straight. They bristled. "I'm fine. Fuck off."

He'd stared at her back where it kneeled on the heat-cracked Inn concrete, snorted, and left with nothing else but a mumbled "Don't have to be such a big old bitch." Through the slits of squeezed shut eyes, she watched him go.

And sometimes, she thought: maybe it would be easier to be alone.

It might be – solitude in apocalypse. That's the hero story, isn't it? Lone survivor, romantic soldier, accountable for no one at the end of the world with no one accountable for you. She doesn't want to ponder what-ifs, though. The plain state is that no – despite the odds, and oh, my god, they are dismal, heartbreaking odds – Lilly Caul isn't alone. She has people. She even has some of them in her court. Dad stands behind her. Dad always has, always will. Even when she was wrong – even when they both were – even when Lilly, fourteen and eyelined and jumping out of a senior's truck, was wrong on purpose, just to see if he'd push back, see if he'd let her sleep in the bed that she made. If she got backed up far enough, Dad would be there to run into, run up against. He was like a hurricane buffer, a Great Wall. But sometimes an object that solid, a house that tall, casts a shadow that tries to swallow everything up.

When a storm thunders and opinions diverge, sometimes the biggest fight Lilly has is keeping him him and her her.

This battleship is small and rocks tenuously, spouts constantly, but until they tie their captain up or she throws all dissenters off, Lilly still stands watch.

Dad can't see well enough to stand watch. Before all this, she'd nagged him for years to get his vision checked – he said glasses make grown men look like fags. All there'd been to do was sigh. This is how Cauls cope with the things that are wrong with them: belligerence met with a sigh. Now he's stuck this way – squinting at nails, peering through treelines – without much chance of help. Maybe someday they'll rescue a pair that will fit over the broken crook in Dad's nose. But even now, even today, Lilly isn't sure her father would accept.

She gave Dad a bag of Sun Chips earlier and it's gone like air. Lilly just now watched him tear and fold the packaging left behind – those massive, uncouth, blockade hands careful not to leave even a flake, a granule of salt, the lightest dusting of seasoning – then tuck it into a jeans pocket. She felt so ill. She couldn't bear to eat the cracker pouch she rationed for herself.

Because some things demand a leader and some demand a daughter, Lilly climbs down from her perch atop the RV – right now; for a moment; nothing more – and tries to be kind.

"Dad," she says, unable to think of anything else, never sure of what to do around him. The hulking, familiar, mammoth form – still so intimidating, even in the slow bow of age – struggles to repair a fence with nothing but his ten digits, wood scraps, and heavy rocks. Lilly is always disturbed by how small and nasal that word sounds rolling through her front teeth. Christ, you would think she was twelve years old. You would think she hadn't roared Kenny down three times this week; hadn't been shoved by him; hadn't balled her hands into preemptive fists when his loose, long-limbed form turned warpath and resentment looked to sear that cartoon moustache right off its lip. The physical effort of scrapping with him nearly made her faint – forty-six hours without food, an unspoken disadvantage; the dizziness; the alarming, hollow boom of her back banging against the RV siding, though he had not pushed her all that hard. 'Don't fall, don't fall, don't fall.'

She'd stood up straight through the creeping static, gulped back the nausea, didn't know what to do. And then her father had been there, bellowing their scrape into nothingness, making Lilly forget Kenny was a shithead when all she could think of was how the blood must've been hurtling inside Dad's chest.

"Dad," she needles a second time when he doesn't react. "Here; take this."

There's no pause or about-face; Larry Caul is a man who works. He does not take breaks or slow down for chatting, so it's no surprise her Dad goes unmet. When there is a task delegated to him, he finishes it. She learned this about her father long before Lilly learned what either 'delegate' or an Air Force badge might mean.

"I'm fine," he grouses, though through the coarseness of his denial, she saw the mad dilation of her father's green glare when it caught its own reflection in cheddar cheese cellophane. The voice that swears this meaningless fine is gruff, impatient, and futilely fed-up with everyone. He twists away from the meager gift and makes himself labor. He is so hungry. He is so proud of her for doing the hardest things she does. "I don't want that kiddy shit. Tastes like crap. You eat it."

"I had something earlier," Lilly replies automatically, tone even, a mutual lie tossed back to him. This is a useless and disheartening exchange. But it is the only way they have to love. "You're working on the gate. You've burned more calories. Take it."

"God damn it," Dad cusses. He drops his improvised hammer. She has picked the stone up before he can force his body, brick muscle on breakable foundations, to stoop; he glowers at her for this small kindness, snatches it back, works harder. The motions of stone against plank make his square face redden worse than the rage of powerlessness inside. The blushing ears stick out; so do hers, though they're hidden by a limp wreath of chestnut, mother's color. He remembers that brown and those ears every time she tries to take care of his flagging heart "I said I'm fine! I'm FINE. Do you hear me? I don't need handouts. I don't need your charity. So you just – just piss off. Leave me alone while I'm working, Lilly, and you eat these fucking crackers." He spits, stutters. He orders his large, freckled knuckles to hold tight. "Or give them to that little girl."

Dad doesn't look at Clementine, and he does not look at Lilly. So he cannot see how her grim face sours, turns meaner and ugly. And he cannot see how the steel in her eyes is holding back the tears.

That is when their hunting team bursts through the gate with some dipshit kid and a poor butchered son-of-a-bitch, and Kenny blows another fucking gasket, and she throws the ration pack at Lee.

Lilly takes back nothing in that pulse-blur chain of events. She won't withdraw because Cauls do not flake, and because she's right – and even if she wasn't right, hindsight does no good. Past actions are unchangeable. But she regrets the last.

Lilly watches him fret over it for almost an hour – counting, recounting, then counting again the insufficient snack packs and linty fruit. She watches Mark trying to rest between every board he holds up for Dad to fix. She watches that maimed teacher bleed out on the bed of their immobile truck, his student lapse into muteness on the hand-drawn hopscotch court. She watches Duck and Clementine try to play with a teenage boy caught in the ghost fingers of shock. She watches people try to cope with the hazards he brought home, but mostly, Lilly watches the shadows for danger, drinking down her own mix of anger and disgrace.

This is what happens when Lilly stands watch.

It's a while before Lee can bring himself to start divvying the food. He keeps pacing to and fro between the children's circle and where Katjaa works behind Kenny's stagnant pickup – keeps asking her if she's all right – when it's clearly him that's shaken. There are new stains drying on his clothes and their parking lot. Someone will clean them up later; for now, everyone is terribly hungry, and they are waiting in toothed, morbid silence to eat.

No one says a word about it; no one asks him for food. That deferential silence was how the group treated Lilly for a while, too – as though they didn't want to be burdens, didn't want to heap angst, didn't want to hobble someone else. Everyone pretended to be unaware of what was being privately decided. That lasted right until the rice ran out. Since then, for Lilly Caul, it's nasty looks, harsh words, condemnations they muffled but secretly wanted to hurt and be heard. This is how leaders are treated in rough times. Lilly shoulders the blame because she is strong enough to take it. And because no one else will.

Almost no one wanted to hate Lee Everett – who diffused tension before it could really kick off, who got awfully quiet, who was much smarter and more eloquent than he let people know. But given time and enough desperation, they would turn on him, friends with uncontrollable, shark instincts beneath their worries and kindnesses. And maybe, even if Lee couldn't imagine it, he felt an outline of that in how sharply every humble eye followed his back across the echoes of this open asphalt.

The children get the first food. That's predictable; it's how Lilly started out, back when keeping adults vertical did not immediately factor into her defense concerns. She's glad for it, all criticisms aside. She's also right – infantry must eat – but shit, it's hard to see kids hungry and watch grown men chew. They'd be dead if Walkers get in here, Lilly reminds herself – they'd still scatter, shrivel, and fade if there was no one healthy enough to protect their well-fed bodies. But that is a flimsy salve as Duck's dimples start to disappear. She really does understand why some others might hate her for this; it is the hardest good choice of every single one so far.

So Lilly feels a little better when Clementine and Duck are each handed a cracker box, knowing it was the wrong decision, relieved she didn't have to make the right one. They eat them instantaneously. She watches the girl peel back plastic with both her tiny hands chalked pastel yellow. It's the same yellow smeared into suns and daisies all over Motor Inn's hallways – the same yellow that Dad spotted, began to scream about, and started laughing when Katjaa asked him "why?" It's the same yellow used in messy artwork, sketches that have eclipsed every wall in Lee's room. It's the same yellow folded tightly inside one of Lilly's pants pockets, on the picture Clem passed her one night after she'd slogged home withered from another failed hunt.

"I made this for you," the girl announced and thrust up her scrap paper, torn from a phonebook, a lush head of black curls that crunched beneath that tattered baseball cap. Lilly took it before she'd even had a chance to put down her rifle o runbelt her machete. "Because you make us safe."

The drawing was rudimentary in that picket fence kindergarten way: a fable-blue sky, brilliant grass bed, enormous dish eyes. In the backdrop huddled a cluster of childish, homey red squares – a sign that, lo and behold, read "MOTER INN." The lettering was painstakingly neat despite the small misspelling. The sides were diligently shaded and bordered. And there, in the foreground, unmistakably themselves: Lee, finger-locked with Clementine, and herself, standing in the opposite corner, stupid grin on her face, stick-gun on her back. And – and there was Dad. Dad in the full splendor of crayon, frowning comically, but nonetheless clasping Lilly's balloon hand. They were neatly labeled: LEE, ME, LILLY, LARRY. They looked happier in that sloppy picture than she could ever remember them being.

Lilly wanted badly to drop to her knees and hug Clementine – for the present or for the pity she felt for her, searing hot-blue, suddenly, without warning, little girl apart from her father in the middle of the end of the world. She wanted to hug her harder and longer than she had ever hugged anyone in her life. But all she got out was a bleary: "Clem, thank you. This is – this is great." And maybe that's all a little girl is looking for. She scurried off, pleased with the easy compliment, and never brought it up again.

Guarding this courtyard is a better thank you than a hug can be. It's incredible that they still have children with them. Before all this, Lilly never liked kids; now, hearing Duck and Clem's clumsy cries of "goal!" over the cool wind is one last reminder of normalcy as everything else readies itself for delicate months. It makes her smile – a twitch, a curl not unlike her sneer, a little hope, a soft flash of tooth that no one sees.

Lilly watches.

Mark gets a piece of beef jerky. That is the first call Lilly agrees with – not because Mark has done something special to deserve it today, but because he is looking perilous, dissolving biceps and evaporating thighs. Gunners have to stay upright. This is an important provision in her rule book, but when Lee passes him an axe and a meal, there's more than a rule; the friendship is stamped across that clean-cut cityboy face. Mark looks less wan for a second and tries not to wolf the dried-out meat whole. It's just a fucking Slim Jim. Just an oily tastes-like-shit Slim Jim, but he breaks off and unenthusiastically extends one half to her father, who is suddenly very silent. All work ceases for a second of indecision.

'Please say thank you,' she hears herself will. 'Come on, Dad. Two words.'

Predictably, Larry Caul chases them both off before he can get anything else to eat. "What is this – the fucking homo-parade comes back?" he scoffs, blusters, and snarls, "Get back to work, girls." The jerky pieces disappear. They pick up another two-by-four. Then it's just the lurch of Dad's shoulders and the wings stitched into the back of Mark's clean bomber coat.

Mark's a good guy, really; it shouldn't be so hard to admit that.

There's just an apple remaining. Lee holds the halved fruit for a long time where he lingers beside reinforced chain-link. It's a Granny Smith, speckled with backpack fabric and browning. And it's the opposite of appetizing, but any one of them could've-would've devoured the core in a heartbeat; his hands, with the heavy realization of this, cup it like something precious. He doesn't look at anyone. Lilly knows there's a miserable debate going on inside his head. She's had with herself many times, but never reached an adequate answer. How many calories are in forty percent of an apple? Maybe he could cut it again…

She doesn't want to watch this part. Some others accuse Lilly Caul of being unfeeling, The Big Bitch, a tyrant – but tyrants don't starve so those same some-others can eat, and there's never a morning that Lilly Caul doesn't feel the repercussions of her choices. The pains in her stomach aren't settled with measly grains or tin water or decomposing fruit. The food she makes herself swallow has no taste.

Ashamed of today, Lilly looks in another direction. She does not watch the last daily ration go. She doesn't care who he picks. There is no good choice for something like this.

There's only room for one most-hated, she thinks – for one Big Bitch – in a group that wants something to hope for, and needs someone to lead.

A sudden crumple nearby tears her eyes away from the eerie sway of peach magnolias. It's a small disturbance, barely significant, but every unexpected noise curls her trigger-finger these days. Lilly's practically ready to cock and shoot before her brain processes the nothingness of that sound. Plastic, only plastic; a handful of something that crinkles alarmingly in Lee's hand. He looks as surprised as she is with hackles flared up the ridge of her spine.

Carley.

Carley is a mess walking quickly away – fists crammed in her cotton-candy puffer vest, looking like she's lost something – bob-cut bouncing scrappily around both wind-bitten ears. Her arms, gone from soft to scrawny, are pinned down fast. The apple bulges tellingly inside one pocket. She retreats behind the garbage bins to eat it, hating herself, but unable not to. There's a granola bar sitting right in the middle of Lee's fist. He stares uncomprehendingly at it. Lilly does, too.

Carley isn't dumb; no one with that much education has a right to be; she must've known it was an uneven trade, and in a moment of weakness, a wanting for the taste of something better, she'd made out worse. 'Bitch,' Lilly can't help but think when she begins to comprehend what that granola bar means. Channel-Two Cheerleader is hiding looted food. Wrath flares hot and instantaneous. It's enough to make her clavicle sweat beneath this shabby coat collar, sink her nails into her palms. It's enough to make her want to get down and start a fistfight – until she recalls, humblingly, handing out that very wrapper five weeks ago. They'd pulled a Quaker Oats box from an abandoned single-family shelf. Each person got two; five weeks ago, when there'd been leftover biscuits and commissary salami, two didn't feel like much. Kenny gave four chocolate ones to his son on the spot. God damn it, Lilly wished she'd seized and rationed those fucking energy bars, but back then the sight of Duck's face smeared in marshmallow seemed worth another neighborhood raid. Even Clementine, who rarely complained, danced for the prize of this almost-candy. It felt like Christmas. Honest-to-god, it really did.

Then, of course, they'd turned up nothing else substantial in a three-block radius. Then Kenny started talking about leaving, and Lilly said no, and everything started to break loose of the seams she'd sewn.

And Carley apparently started stockpiling weekly food in sock drawers. Carley's not as stupid as the battery gaffe made her look. Carley wants to see what Lee's sad, storybook eyes look like with his dick nailing her to a wall, but whatever; that isn't Lilly's business or problem. She can do with her share whatever she pleases – shove it in her underwear drawer for a rainy day or trade honey oats for affection. The junior Caul has her father's temper and dark suspicions, but on this and all things, her rules are firm: personal property is sacred. Personal borderlines are not to be crossed.

So she says nothing to Carley about the granola bar trade, or the burden of being loved at end of the world.

Lilly leaves Carley alone.

Lilly watches.

"Hey."

Lilly stands.

"What?" she asks Lee, a thorn that tries to hide its startled pitch, glancing down to meet that sorrowful, disapproving look only as long as her threadbare etiquette demands. He is suddenly right there at the side of Kenny's RV. Collapsing RV, her little ship, USS Motor, Captain Little Caul. There isn't much friendliness inside that terse, disgruntled "hey" he gives her – and why would there be? She put him here. His hands are fists. Both of hers strangle the rifle neck when she gazes back beyond their haven's crude sheet-metal battlement. Lilly did not waste time with eye contact. His brows were dented and his mouth was aggressive from where he stood on the pavement, and that's enough, she thought. It's enough to determine that your people think you are to blame.

"Rations are dealt," he said. There is a ruffle as Lee crosses and uncrosses his arms. His shoulders are jutting high in discomfort and the chilly weather. His even, scholar's voice is uncharacteristically rough with the gruesomeness of doing the hardest math that has to be done.

Lilly doesn't hesitate. She sits back down in the lawnchair, the crow's nest. Kneecaps pop in her long legs. She glowers out. "Fine. Good work."

'Let that be the end of this.'

"I need to tell you something."

'Damn it.'

"What?" she makes herself wonder a second time, but it's obvious what he'll do.

"Don't ever ask me to do that again," Lee tells. His hand cuts the air angrily. She sees the flash of a watch from the peripherals; it's a fast shine; it could've been a starling or a knife. "Ever. You need lookouts or hunters, fine – but if this is what you're drafting for, you get somebody else. Not me. Are we clear?"

"Not so easy, is it." The statement is cold fraternity. She locks on the horizon with a rock wall of stare. This perch is no throne for compassionate men. This is the seat Lilly Caul has to fill. "I'll take over tomorrow. Don't worry about it. You're done." She tells him what he wants to hear.

She thinks, pitiably, fervently: 'Walk away, Lee. Walk.'

He says nothing until the woman begins to think their group conscience has left.

Then: "Hey."

Lilly looks down to a stern brown face and the shiny case of a granola bar.

In that moment, there is nothing but the simple temptation of silver in an open hand.

"I don't need it," she barks without thinking, a nope that has a thousand dressings, the "no" that is ingrained onto her bones. A part of her is thrown into disbelief. It shrieks and pounds punitive fists against the two-way mirror of her insides. How could you, how could you say that, how could you do this to us?! "I don't want it."

"Bullshit," Lee says quietly.

Lilly looks down at the extended arm reaching up at her.

"What do you want from me?"

"I'll tell you what I don't want from you is a fight. You're the one who put me in charge of this. And I'm doing exactly what I was told. You don't have to agree with my decisions, but you damn well better respect them, because I'm respecting you. Take it."

It shouldn't be so cold in Georgia. It shouldn't be so hard to say yes, thank you, please understand me.

Her laugh is coughed, whipped, and bitter. She does not move. The gun rests across Lilly's lap as her stomach gnarls into itself and some ruthless, weak-skin presumptions come unglued. "I guess you think you're being a big man, huh? Look at you! Big Man Lee Everett, feeding the bitch everyone hates. What the fuck do you want from me? A medal? A hug? You want a fucking field promotion?" There is nothing controlling what falls here. She does not choose these words. They flame and lash from her mouth – autonomous fears, stress given form, fresh blood that drip-drip-drops. She doesn't know if she really means it or not; it just comes. Her hands are freezing. Her lump of heart swells painfully at place where Lilly's fury grows feeble and thin. "I guess you don't figure I know how you all think about me. Well, I'm not a fucking idiot, Lee. I'm not blind and I'm not that easy to bend over. Is this supposed to make me apologize for doing what I have to do? Is this supposed to make me feel bad?"

"It's supposed to keep you alive," Lee tells her, scowls, and offers harder.

Everything is numb. She doesn't have the power to yell. She cradles the rifle against her ribcage and her thighs.

"I don't want it. Give it to my Dad."

"You do what you want with it. But I'm giving it to you."

He holds the bar out until Lilly takes it weakly from his hand. Then she watches Lee turn around, cross into the room they gave him, and close the door to wash another man's blood off his sleeves.

The teacher dies twice. The morality collapses. The sun is eclipsed by the early autumn mist and gradually, certainly, everything starts yawning dark.

Lilly looks down to the handful of granola with an ache in her elbows and a sick feeling blooming in her gut. She pulls off an edge of the plastic, sniffs the stuck-together cereal that appears. Its sugar stings. It tastes like bad chocolate and cranberry. It's hard and unsatisfying on teeth, tongue, then the tight choke of her sore throat.

Lilly gets two bites down before she feels like puking, feels the beginnings of tears – but you don't cry like a bitch when you lead lost men, and you don't waste food.

Lilly watches. Lilly stands.

AFTERTHOUGHTS: Lilly Caul is supremely flawed, and I love her as Lee's friend. She tried so hard to be a strong leader, though the fear of failing in that role destroyed everything for her in the end. In that way, she's not just Lee's friend – she's his literary foil. When I see her shoot Carley/at Ben, throwing herself into "justice" against the supposed perpetrator, I also see Lee killing that senator. They overloaded in response to a perceived threat, reason shut down, and they just reacted – reacted wrong. They are otherwise responsible people who committed incredibly violent acts. I don't forgive her for that, but I feel like the intense hatred of Lilly stems from love of Carley more than the actual circumstances of what Lilly did. And I feel she is the most believable, psychologically complex character of the cast.

It's as Lee says here: you think you have a conscious choice, but in the insanity of that moment, you aren't really yourself choosing as the full, truest version of you. You can't always unpack it, dissect it, and consciously, responsibly choose. That line was the most brilliant writing of the game; it seems so mundane and forgettable, but to me, it's not really about the conscious and semi-conscious decisions Lee makes in the apocalypse – it's about the horrible choke mistake he made before.