FOUR MONTHS LATER

I wake up before the sun does, and, with any luck, before everyone else, too. I like my early morning hour to be nice and private. Peaceful, in its own way. My way.

I untangle myself from the blankets – they're damp with sweat, but whatever nightmares I had last night I've forgotten – and lower myself onto the towel on my floor. Twenty-five pushups, twenty-five crunches. Then I take today's overshirt from my top bunk. It's the blue-black plaid one, my favorite, with a light fabric that doesn't make me bake inside of it. I still get hot, though, and it's only going to get worse once summer goes into full swing. But I can't complain. It's my own choice to keep wearing the long sleeves.

On with the shirt, over the tank top I'm already in, then I slip into socks, two pairs, because my boots are a size or two too big. They're pretty new, these boots, my dad found them in a store about three months ago. I've only gotten up to wearing them in the past month, though, because they're black leather with studs and my uncle had some just like them. Before.

I take my Buck knife from the top of Animal Farm, which rests on the upside-down plastic bin serving as my bedside table. My belt is looped around my bedpost. I put it on and then tuck my revolver into it. The folding chair by the doorway holds my vest. I swing it around onto me and reach into the inside pocket, where I feel my all-too familiar pocket knife. Left on the chair are my sunglasses, mirrored aviators. I hook them onto the neck of my shirt.

Then there's my bow. It's propped on the wall next to my bed, loaded with an arrow, accompanied by a quiver full of nine more. My release trigger is strapped to my wrist already – I sleep with it there, always. I put the quiver over my back, shoulder the bow, and grab my little portable stereo from the floor as I leave.

The cell block is sleeping. Someone's snoring. It's dark, but I more than know my way, and then it's through the dining room and outside, where some kind of pressure lets up and I can breathe easier. I rarely feel like I can't breathe inside, not lately, but there's still always something less thick about the world when I step outside on my mornings. Some things never change. I'm still an outdoors kind of person, and there's something comforting in knowing that.

Like I said, it's pretty dark – old-world time, I'd say it's not six a.m. yet – but there's the barest glow from the eastern horizon, a golden hair set down on the trees. But the stars are still up, and as my boots touch asphalt, I look at them. I like the morning stars. They seem brighter than the evening ones. I spy the Big Dipper and give it a nod.

I move past the eating pavilion, with the picnic tables I cleared last night, and under the laundry line full of clothes I helped wash. I move across the courtyard, to the gate leading out of it, and onto the gravel that crunches faithfully beneath my feet. I don't move to the crops, I don't move to the stable. My place is in the far right corner, behind the last patch of a crop field, so there is where I move to.

Walkers growl at me from all the edges. I wonder what they do at night, when we're all asleep. If a walker snarls at a prison, and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound?

There's always someone around to hear it, though. We keep guards on duty. We run a tight ship around here. At least in some ways. We can thank the Council for that. And my dad, one of the members. One of the head members, I'd say.

Hm.

I near the corner, near the walkers. More importantly, I near the big black bulky thing waiting for me, always patiently waiting, as constant as anything in my life. I reach it, grip the plastic tarp, and yank. Morning dew pools together and wets my hand as the covering pulls off the fraying hay bale, one of those giant round ones, and it's seen better days, my hay bale, but the side's still held together pretty well. There are three red circles of spray paint decorating that side – one big one, one smaller than that and inside the first, and one that's the smallest of all, that's filled in with color, the bullseye.

I turn and walk forty paces back. There aren't as many walkers over here as there are on the other side of the yard, where the build-ups usually happen, but there are some. The fence rattles and rattles away, as loud as the growls and moans, so I stamp some grass down and settle my stereo on the ground. I stand up straight and eye the walkers as I pull my hair back and into a ponytail. I always look at them at this point, at least for a minute, and I don't know why. They all look the same, really. Hungry. Stupid. Dead.

Mostly dead.

It's private out here. No one's going to see. So I go ahead and take off my vest and then my overshirt, and my pale forearms seem to have a light of their own, don't they? A light ripped and dimmed here and there. And there and there and there. And so on.

Between the moon, the stars, the sky's brightening glow, and my eyes' long-practiced ability to adjust to dim lighting, I can see well enough for this. But hell. My bow is melding so well into my hand now, into my whole body and my whole me, that I feel like I could do this in the pitch black. Yeah, I bet I could.

I switch on the radio with the toe of my boot. The beat starts, hard and perfect. I want it louder but I know better. I tilt up my chin as a warm breeze comes and I let my feet carry me a bit over. They position themselves. My arms come up with my bow, my release traps the string and pulls it back, and the arrow nears my face and then runs from it, flies from it, until it thwumps into the hay bale. Into the bullseye.

"Back in black," sings Brian Johnson. "I hit the sack . . . It's been too long, I'm glad to be back."

And I guess I am.

. . . . .

Most days, Rick's the first person I see. I'll turn around from getting back my arrows and there he'll be, coming down from the courtyard. Most days, like today, he's there right after the sun rises. I raise my hand and he raises his back. We're the morning people, Rick and me. We even have my dad beat. And we'll always spend the dawn together, in a way, with rock bands and dead people singing along to our lives.

When I start to sweat, I know it's time to stop. The group has a better level of hygiene management than it's ever had before, but water is still limited, and I don't want to be disgusting right as the day starts. This rule of mine is more irritating now than it was in the late winter months, when I started this morning ritual, because I get damper sooner nowadays. I don't want to stop shooting today. I'm not ready to stop, it's too nice being out here, too nice seeing my arrows wearing out the inner circles on the hay bale. Too nice feeling focused and right and in place. So I take a break, shoot some more, take a break. But the sun's up and awake now, fully, and its heat bears down on me, and I know I can't let myself start up again. So I finish off nice – a standing bullseye first, then what my dad calls a combat roll forward and something so close it might as well be a bullseye, and finally, on impulse, I move up, sliding my buck knife out, and when I'm close but not too close I throw just like my dad taught me to, so long ago in Atlanta, but I've only recently finally taken the time to actually practice it the way I should and so the knife hits, it hits right above the bullseye. Near enough. The walker'd be down and that's all that matters.

I gather my arrows, let them rest in my quiver. They've earned it. My knife goes back to my waist and I arrange the tarp over the hay bale again. I turn off my stereo next, and it's the saddest part, because batteries don't grow on trees and therefore I'm only allowed to listen to my music in the mornings, out here. Sometimes I cheat, tucked away in one of my hiding places, but only sometimes. I'm trying to get better about it. I'm trying to get better about a lot of things.

I pull on my overshirt. Make myself roll the sleeves all the way down. Then the vest with the pocket knife.

"Shoot alright?" Rick asks when I pass him and one of his crop fields.

"Good enough. How's the farmer's life?"

"Good enough," he says without looking up from his soil and the hoe he's digging into it. He gets focused on his work, too, Rick. Or, maybe, it just lets him focus on other things. Sometimes I think that's what shooting does for me, really, when I let it.

But then again, Rick doesn't have much to focus on these days, other than farming. The Council does most of the focusing.

When I reach the gate, I begin to feel the energy from inside the courtyard. The life. Something changes when I leave the walkers and go back to the land of the living, when it's gotten to the point in the day when it's waking up and bustling and fixing things and moving forward. And some days I'm not sure I like the change so much. But I'm getting better at that, too. And today, today things are off to a good start, because at the gate, at the gate I meet Carl.

He's much taller than me now, compared to how we used to be. He's always had the height advantage, but over the past few months, I'm pretty sure he's grown two inches for every one I have. He looks older in the face, too – the baby weight's on its way out, same as mine, which is good. It's a part of a whole different place.

He smiles at me, that little half-smile that always tugs at my own lips. "Hey."

"Hey." I rest on the fence, back-first. I used to rest on it so my arm would be against the chain-link and that chain-link would dig into my skin, but that's one of the things I don't do anymore. "Sleep okay?" I ask, but I cut him off as soon as he opens his mouth. "Oh, wait. You don't sleep anymore. You read comic books now. 'Cause, you know. That's what all the cool kids do."

"No, all the cool kids read poetry by Edgar Allen Poe."

I grin. Then I jerk my head behind me. "They up?" I say, even though I can hear their voices and, maybe, smell something cooking already.

"Yeah, some of them."

"LC?"

"Didn't see her."

"Did you look?"

"No."

I sigh. My hand goes to my wrist, but there's nothing there. Shit. Forgot my rubber band. Every other damn thing I put on like I was a freaking robot, but I forgot the rubber band?

"Syd, you can't avoid her forever."

"She faked her own death to get rid of her kid, so I think I can." I take my sunglasses from my shirt and slip them on. I want my ball cap, but Dad banned me from having the glasses and the hat on at the same time. He thinks I'm hiding, and he's right. He thinks it's not healthy, and he's probably right about that, too, but I don't care as much as he does about –

But I'm supposed to. I'm supposed to now.

Carl's holding something out to me. "Here."

A rubber band is dangling from his fingers. I don't ask why he has it, because I'm pretty sure there's only one reason he would, and it makes me warm inside in a way that feels nice, but too nice to be normal, and things that aren't normal are generally a little too much for me. But I do give him a smile. "Good man." And I slide the rubber band onto my wrist, snap it once, then nod at the field, at Rick. "Go be a good son."

He backs away but nods into the courtyard. "Go be a good daughter." Then he realizes what he's said and hesitates, watching over my shoulder. "To your dad, I mean."

I know what he meant. "He's the only parent I have."

The pavilion isn't very crowded. I walk towards it fast, head down, hands in my vest pockets. I scan the heads. None of them have thick brown hair, so it's safe. Safe enough. And Carol's here already, of course. I've never asked her, but she must get up around the same time as Rick does, to have breakfast on so early every morning. Even with helpers – sometime Beth, lately Patrick – it's a lot of work.

As soon as I walk up to the table she's behind and get out a hello, she slides me a bowl of meat in some sauce. Carol's become an expert in simple sauces, probably because dousing things in different sauces is kind of the only way we have to keep from going crazy from the same basic meals day in and day out, and there's enough craziness in this place to begin with.

I tuck my stereo underneath the table and rub my eyebrow with one hand while forcing my other to dip into the bowl. I'm back to eating three square meals a day now, but breakfast is still hard for me. Carol's eyeing me, though, so I chew like a good girl and swallow. "Coffee on somewhere?"

"Your dad says you're not supposed to drink coffee."

"My dad says so many things."

That makes her smile. "If you sneak some from Patrick behind my back, there's not much I can do about it."

So I go over to the next table, where Patrick – a boy a little older than Carl with glasses that make him look just as geeky as I'm pretty sure he is – seems to be rearranging the plastic plates and trays. I down the second bite of my meat and say, "Hey, man. Wanna be my new best friend?"

He drops one of the trays and it hits a stack and the whole thing comes crashing down. I get the feeling things like that happen to Patrick a lot. I point at the mess. "Not what I meant."

"Yeah, um, sorry . . ." His face goes red and he spends a few seconds bending down and standing upright again, evidently deciding whether or not to pick up the trays, before he finally wipes his palms on his jeans and looks at me. "What were you saying?"

I crouch down, ignoring the attention of the others, and pick up a few of the trays closest to me. "I was saying . . ." I hand him my collection and he shifts them from hand to hand. "Will you get me coffee?"

"Coffee? But Mr. Dixon said –"

I press my fingers into my eyes. "Please stop calling him that."

"Sorry. I – yeah. Okay. I'll get you, I'll get you some coffee."

"Thank you." I take the third bite of meat. Four more bites to go, and no nausea yet. I watch Patrick ladle what must be coffee from a big pot near the back of his table. He comes back, holding the mug out to me, carefully, because we wouldn't want me getting burned. I tell him thank you again and gesture at the trays still on the ground. "You can blame that on me if you want."

He laughs and stutters something, but his voice is drowned out by a cry of some garbled version of my name, and I barely have time to put my food and drink on the table before hands are grasping at me from below.

"Syddy!" repeats three-year-old Lacey, bouncing up and down and reaching for me like she didn't just see me twelve hours ago. I do my part, picking her up and letting her play with my hair and promising to come see the picture she drew later, but as soon as I set her down, Callie – she's . . . five? – runs over, halfway to tears, and tells me in a whisper that her twin brother Max stole a bite of her food, but she can't tell Carol because apparently Carol likes Max more than her, and I actually end up benefiting from this, because I let Callie sneak a bite from my own bowl. Then she's going back to her table, perfectly happy, and I rise to see Carol watching, raising her eyebrows. I make a face at her.

"Oh," she says, "It so hurts to be adored, doesn't it?"

"Didn't ask for it." What she doesn't understand is that I never planned to be the adorable type. I started helping out with the kids because I was supposed to keep busy. And I like them, I do, but I never anticipated them liking me as much as some of them do. That's something I'm trying to adjust to.

Luckily, most of the older kids – other than Carl and Patrick – aren't too fond of me. So, really, it kind of evens out.

"Well, you're gonna have to be strong today. I'll need your help while your dad takes some of the others on that run."

I freeze. "What run?"

"He didn't tell you?"

"No."

She shrugs. "Well, you'll have to talk –" Her eyes catch on something behind me, and her voice has lowered a lot when she speaks next. "LC's coming."

I don't turn around. I just pick up my bowl and my mug, even though we're not really supposed to take them out of the pavilion. Carol doesn't get on to me. "I'll see you later," I mutter, and then I get the hell out of there.

Because Carl's wrong. I can avoid that woman as long as I want.

I go to my catwalk. It sees more traffic than it used to, but it still doesn't see a lot, especially not this early. I eat one more bite of the meat and put the bowl aside, but then I remember that I'm supposed to be doing better and so I take up the stupid thing again and gobble the rest down, fast, so I don't have time to change my mind. I gag after, but everything stays down. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I cup my coffee mug in my hands and watch below me, watch the walkers at the fence, watch Carl and Rick in the field, watch for my dad to show up. Because he's supposed to tell me these things, these things like when he's going on runs. I have to know that.

I know why he does it, though, why he keeps stuff like this from me. He knows I'll want to go. He knows that I know that I'm worth more, capable of more, than playing house and shooting arrows at hay bales – that's not who I am.

Me? I'm the girl who can't stay in the safe zone all the time. I'm the girl who has to get ready.

I'm the girl who's got a Governor to kill.

I raise the mug to my lips and chug down every last bit of the coffee Dad says I shouldn't have. He doesn't know everything. Not by a long shot.