Nick brought her a beer. Canned. Room temperature.
She'd gotten comfortable in the lobby, shamelessly taking up most of the couch with her legs with no intention to move should anyone come in wanting to sit. Overt aggression had gotten her nowhere; she and Lilly were still coexisting in the same building despite her best effort. Dirty looks and passive aggressive body language were all she had to fall back on.
Nick waited, arm extended with the can in one hand, another beer already opened in his other. Seconds ticked by while she realized that if she was going to have company she could've done a lot worse than his.
She reached for it. "Got anything stronger?"
"No, but four of these might get you somewhere." He scooped an arm under her legs, sliding it just behind her knees, and lifting them together. He sat down in the empty space they left and gently lowered them back down, now over his lap.
She drummed her fingernails on the side of the can. Tick-tick-tick-tick. "Do we have that many?"
"Nope." He stared into the fire and went in for a long drink.
Amelia nodded. She pried a finger under the tab, cracked it open loudly, and joined him. It was cheap. Semi-warm. Tasted like someone ran light beer through a filter to make it even more like water than it already was. But it was booze in her system. More than she'd had a minute ago. She remembered not to underestimate how alcohol, even in small amounts could make any situation at least a little more tolerable.
Almost any.
"Thanks."
"Yep."
The fire had started to die in the time Amelia had been sitting here alone. Stacked logs sat crumbling in the fireplace, embers making them glow bright red, but the flames crackling off of them had long since gone small and quiet. She wasn't about to get up to stoke it. She didn't want Nick to, either.
"Sorry." She said. She mentally took a breath, bracing herself. Then she did it physically. "For kicking you out."
"I get it," Nick said into his beer. But he shook his head as he did it. "You, uh. Had to talk."
"It was…kind of-" she closed her eyes, already tired of her own awkward pauses. "Private."
"I figured." Figured, but didn't agree and didn't like it, from the way he said it. He drank again. After another pause he said, "Did you get what you needed? Talk about…what you needed to talk about?"
No to the first, yes to the second. They'd talked. But no one – not Amelia, not Kenny, not Nick – could do anything about how unhappy she was at the conclusion they'd come to. It occurred to Amelia that there was really only one thing she could do.
She drank again. She stopped and cleared her throat when she was down to half the can.
They sat in the kind of silence neither of them minded. It was quiet but not uneasy. Warm despite the dying fire in front of them. It broke only when voices carried from the dining room. People filtered in gradually, some talking louder than others, but they seemed to linger just outside the lobby. Amelia listened for Clementine, and could hear her and Sarah talking about something Amelia couldn't place. One of them giggled.
She wondered if anyone was about to join them by the fire, and listened for footsteps. Instead she heard Luke, his words fading in and out as his voice overlapped with others.
Amelia tried to sound less bitter and sardonic than she felt. "Let's play a drinking game. Drink every time Luke says woah."
Nick, about to take another drink, froze where he was and snorted. "You wouldn't be able to keep up."
"Please."
"Wine coolers." He didn't look at her, but Amelia could see the smile creeping over his face even as he stared straight ahead. Amelia was glad he wasn't looking; she couldn't stop herself from smiling with him.
They went back to listening to the voices in the other room. Words were unclear, but she could tell who was talking by the sound, the cadence of their sentences. Luke's was particularly easy to pick out. It was gentle and meandering, full of filler-words like-
Amelia found herself mimicking him quietly, muttering into her beer can as she went in for a sip. "Now hold on, everybody, woah, wait a minute, woah, let's all just…" She trailed off when she made herself snicker.
She looked over to find Nick was giving her a look she couldn't place. Cold flashed through her insides when it occurred to her that maybe he wasn't amused by her impression. She'd gotten too comfortable because he seemed to like her company and because they'd kissed a handful of times. None of it would be more meaningful to him than a friendship of twenty years, she could have guessed that. She'd been trying to entertain herself, not mock his closest friend, someone who had been in Nick's life long before she was-
"It's more like…" Nick paused for a second to finish his beer. He squeezed the empty can, crimping it in the middle before letting it drop to the floor. He put on a Southern lilt far more exaggerated than his own. "Hey now, come on, don't even worry about it, we'll fix this-"
Amelia laughed. Out loud. Full volume. She was sure people in the other room could hear and didn't care. Her laughter became tangled with his impression as he went on until Amelia was out of breath and trying unsuccessfully to catch air.
"-Nick, put that down, I told you you can't go throwin' shit 'cause you're hammered- HEY-"
She was only able to calm down once he stopped. Her stomach hurt and she wiped a tear from her eye, still giggling in the way she laughed at things just for the sake of having something to laugh at. There were so few of them now.
"You okay?" Nick grinned. Amelia knew she wasn't the most perceptive person when it came to reading others, but even she couldn't miss the pride on his face.
"Yep. Fine." She felt another laugh bubble up inside her. "That was-" She cleared her throat, calming herself. "-that was good."
"Yeah?" He paused, looking again into the dying fire. He lowered his voice just a touch, and suddenly he was wearing a completely different accent that was just as accurate and just as familiar. "These frequent stops are a danger to the group. No more bathroom breaks!"
She thought she'd be able to hold it together. Then again, she didn't think she'd hear another impression that was as spot-on as the first one, but she'd been wrong about that, too. He laughed with her this time.
She took a gasping breath and held up a finger, waiting for the both of them to calm down. Once they were quiet:
"Alvin, please."
Instantly, Nick's eyes lit up and he threw his head back in a laugh that echoed throughout the lobby. Amelia knew it would only be a matter of time before people wandered in, drawn by the noise, but she didn't care.
Nick seemed to have come up with another. Amelia held her breath and waited.
"Whatever. I don't care. Leave me alone." He snapped. Amelia was puzzled, an expectant smile still on her face, unsure if he was impersonating himself or-
Oh.
Nick tossed his head, adding to the impression in a way that was entirely unnecessary if it was a hint. She knew who he was. Her jaw had already dropped and she'd lapsed into another giggling fit before he even finished. "Leave me alone, I'm fine. I'm gonna go climb a tree somewhere. Fight me…" He trailed off, stopping when even he couldn't keep a straight face anymore.
Amelia inhaled, both because she needed to breathe and because a new idea had hit her square in the face. She balled her hands into fists and scrunched her shoulders angrily. If she'd been standing she would have stomped.
"Amelia Jennifer!"
He laughed so hard he doubled over. She swore she heard him wheeze. "No, no, wait-" he sat upright, another idea on the tip of his tongue, and stopped short. Amelia followed his eyes to Clementine, approaching the couch on her way from the dining room.
Clem looked between the two of them, wearing either her annoyed or her worried face. Sometimes they blended together and Amelia couldn't tell which was which.
"Was that supposed to be me?"
"…" Amelia looked to Nick, who purposely avoided eye contact. She was on her own with this one. She looked back to Clem, trying to remember the promises they made never to lie to each other. More than that, she knew Clem had heard enough to see through it even if she did lie.
"Uh- yeah, Clem, but-" She wasn't sure how to explain to her sister that it wasn't meant to be mean. Not without trying to explain why laughing at her wasn't mean.
Clem's eyes darted between the two of them again. Before Amelia could start to explain, she crossed her arms and cocked a hip in a cartoonish-exaggeration of a person trying to look stand-offish.
"Listen to me, Luke. I don't need your permission to do anything. Stop acting like my dad!"
Nick laughed louder than he had at any of Amelia's impressions and at any of his own. Amelia's shock and relief made a full frontal collision with each other, until she laughed hard enough to force herself to double over.
Amelia sat up to see her sister with a smile on her face. She gave Clem a tiny round of applause, tapping her fingers quietly against her palm. Clem giggled.
A new voice. One that would have been entirely welcome, if it had come alone.
"What's goin' on in here?" Kenny asked, meandering in with another beer in his hand. He chuckled. "You kids are makin' a hell of a racket,"
Amelia's smile dropped from her face. She sat upright like she'd been electrically shocked and pulled her legs out of Nick's lap. The room suddenly felt cold again. It reminded to her to check the fire. It was dead.
She didn't answer. She watched and waited, unable to help being cautious. She knew Kenny wasn't here to make conversation for the sake of conversation. She knew what was coming.
She followed him in, not long after Kenny sat down on the other couch. He was still filling space with idle comments about Walter and what they'd eaten for dinner when she walked past Amelia. She avoided eye contact as she passed. Then she purposefully made eye contact once she sat down. And held it.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Kenny was the first to speak. Amelia knew he would be. It sure as hell wasn't going to be her. And she could say a lot about Lilly but she knew the woman was smart enough not to volunteer.
"Well." He shifted in his seat, looking from one person to the next. No one had to ask what he was talking about when he said, "That went better than I expected."
Tick. Tock. Tick.
Jokes wouldn't work here. Not on her. No matter how well-intended they were.
Lilly cleared her throat. Amelia's gaze locked onto her immediately, and stayed there. The corner of her mouth pulled itself up in contempt as she looked over Lilly's face. Her hair braided over one shoulder. Her weary eyes. Her stitches. They didn't look unlike her own. If her sister hadn't been in the room Amelia might have said something nasty about having been the one to give them to her. The urge was there. An itch somewhere inside her skull pushing her to come up with something ugly and throw it at her doused in venom.
Amelia had been trying to warn her not to talk. Lilly either didn't get the message or chose to ignore it. Amelia was positive it was the second.
"I don't remember teaching you to fight that dirty."
Amelia moved her eyes down to her hand in her lap and noticed her fingers twitching, about to curl into a fist. Another hand, one bigger than hers, spread over her leg unexpectedly and squeezed. She looked over at Nick like she'd forgotten he was there.
Kenny cleared his throat. "Yeah. That was some fight. Glad you girls are on our side."
Lilly corrected him. "Women, Kenny."
"Right, right."
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Kenny singled out Amelia, for reasons anyone could have guessed. She wished he'd picked someone else. "You look like you're havin' a good time,"
"Was."
When Kenny realized Amelia had made her point – that she wasn't about to engage in friendly small-talk with one too many people in the room – he turned to someone else. His choice didn't make sense, but Amelia didn't care enough to try to understand. "Nick. Tell me about where y'all came from."
"Uh…" Nick looked at Amelia like she could make sense out of what Kenny was doing. She could. She knew exactly what he was doing but wasn't about to say it in front of him. "We, uh…came from a camp. Upstate. We were there for…a while. Then we left."
This made Kenny narrow his eyes, if only a little. "What was wrong with it?"
"Nothing." Nick answered too quickly. "I mean…nothing really. They…ran out of medical supplies. Wasn't gonna work. What with…the baby coming…"
Lilly shut the door behind her and intentionally stood in front of it. Amelia stood quickly, putting an arm out and pushing Clementine back. Telling herself it was to be prepared in case Lilly tried to hurt her but knowing she was the one ready to inflict pain.
Lilly took one, two steps into the room. Stopped there with her arms crossed.
"If you're going to hit me again, get it over with so we can talk like adults."
Fuck you. Amelia almost spat the words out as quickly as she'd thought them. She knew as well as everyone else did that her reaction in the dining room had been unnecessary. But there was one other person in this ski lodge who had no ground to stand on and call her irrational, and Amelia was losing patience with her by the second.
"I think I made it clear I don't have anything to say to you with words."
Nick covered her hand with his. No one could see it down in the space between her legs and his. The warmth and human contact pulled her out of her thoughts. She sat rigid in her seat, waiting with needling impatience for nothing in particular.
She looked across the living room at Kenny, and tried to avoid looking at Lilly. It was easy to be honest with herself when no one around her could hear her thoughts, and so she silently admitted that she cared for him very much. She weighed it against grief and rage and hatred, still unsure of which counted for more. The more she thought about it the harder it became to decide.
Lilly pinched the bridge of her nose. She looked up and watched Amelia with the exhausted eyes and thinly masked irritation of someone forcing themselves to be patient. Amelia thought bitterly that if she was being too difficult for Lilly she was more than welcome to leave. She wasn't wanted here.
"What do you want from me, Amelia? I can't take back what I did-"
"I want you to die. That's what I want." The words tumbled out before Amelia remembered her sister was here, watching and listening. This wasn't an example she wanted to set, even though she knew the good-role-model ship had sailed a long time ago without her on it. Violence and vengeance had become an intimate part of who she was, whether she liked it or not. That didn't mean her sister had to witness it like this.
But she didn't have the restraint to stop herself. Not here. Not with her. "I wish Carley had shot you."
Lilly stared at her for a long time. A ten-count that stretched out into twenty.
"If she had, you'd hate her as much as you hate me."
That wasn't true. It wasn't. She was a liar and a murderer and a manipulator and a sociopath. Carley had been none of those things.
It wasn't true.
It wasn't.
Lilly spoke again, as badly as Amelia wanted her to be finished. "I don't expect us to be on good terms. But can we at least ignore each other in peace?"
Her answer came fast and resentful. She could admit it if it would mean she would leave her alone. "I'm not going to try to kill you again, if that's what you're asking."
"That's sweet of you." Lilly paused, maybe expecting something else but Amelia had meant what she said. She didn't have anything to say to her, and was waiting for the silence to drive her out of the room. "As badly as this went…and will continue to go…it's good to see you're both still alive."
"Leave."
She did.
"Amelia."
She looked up like she was only just remembering where she was. She looked around because she didn't recognize the voice right away; her head was still ringing with the echo of a voice she never wanted to hear again.
"Amelia," Luke lingered near the lobby without coming in. She had to twist around in her seat to see him standing far behind the couch. He was hesitant, and looked awkwardly from her and Nick over to Lilly and Kenny. Clementine waited, arms crossed. "Could you- come help me out with somethin'?"
She was up before he finished. She fled the room without looking back.
"Listen, I gotta tell you somethin'," He lowered his voice, despite being well out of earshot of the lobby. She'd followed him away from the dining room, halfway down an adjacent hallway.
She waited but he didn't finish. He only glanced around with a strange look on his face she'd never seen before. Or rather, a mix of several looks she had seen. Worry was easy to pick out. Guilt stood out even easier.
"What is it?" she asked slowly, worried he had something to say to her about her…incident in the dining room. A lecture, maybe. Questions she couldn't answer. An awkward discussion about her choices and his choices that she could have lived without.
Instead, Luke showed her a photo he'd been keeping in his pocket. Amelia took it and looked down at Walter and the man from the bridge. Same red coat. Same face. Same smile.
Amelia shook her head. She didn't have words, only disbelief and regret and guilt. She held the picture out to Luke. Shoved it at him when he didn't take it back quickly enough. She couldn't hold it anymore. Couldn't even look at it.
What did we do...?
"See, I knew something was off, so I asked Sarita about their friend. Now they're all worried he's not back yet."
Amelia didn't have anything to say. She'd stood in the wake of wrongful death enough times to know that words were useless here. Anything that wouldn't bring back Walter's partner was useless. She stayed quiet, replaying the scene in her head once, twice, watching it happen again. Hoping the man in her memories would turn out not to be the same man in the photo if she looked hard enough.
His blood still stained her shoelaces.
Luke threw a look over his shoulder, made sure no one was around to hear him. "Damn it…damn it, Nick,"
Amelia knew this was Nick's fault. His and no one else's. But her thoughts were somewhere else.
The loss would come without warning, knock him sideways into the dirt so hard he may never get up again. The rage and grief would be intense enough to make him forget how to breathe as he realized someone he loved was gone and never coming back. Amelia wondered what the last words they said to each other were; she knew Walter would do the same one day and hoped he'd be able to remember.
She knew all of it was coming. Walter didn't. It made her feel sick. Rotten inside.
He's going to feel like he's been cut in half.
Luke's voice pulled her back just as the ringing was starting to creep back into her eardrums. "Look I don't think Walter knows yet. So we have to keep this quiet." He seemed to realize he was talking louder than he'd meant to, and lowered his voice mid-sentence. "I mean, who knows what the hell he'd do if he found out…"
"This is…" Tightness in her throat forced her to stop. She took a shallow breath, swallowed, and decided it went better unsaid. This is going to destroy him. She shook her head, finally looking directly at Luke. "We can't tell him."
Luke avoided her eyes. Passive aggressiveness and judgment was hard to miss, even on him. "Yeah, figured you'd say that."
Amelia's eyes narrowed, pointed as her next words. "What does that mean?"
Luke hesitated just long enough to tell her the answer wasn't nothing. He gave it anyway. "Never mind. Forget it."
She couldn't do that. She'd heard it. Whatever it was had Luke staring over her shoulder so he wouldn't have to look at her eyes, wearing an expression she didn't understand. But she knew they didn't have time for it now. She'd ask later. If she remembered. If their group made it out of this lodge with everyone intact.
"We…we need to leave. We can't stay here." Can't stay with them was what she meant. Luke seemed to understand regardless. After the disaster she'd made out of Lilly being here, all because she'd killed one of their own…the irony wasn't lost on her.
She'd wanted this to go differently. Her actions in the dining room might have said otherwise, but she hadn't wanted to leave. She'd damaged the chances that both groups would find a way to coexist, sure, but she hadn't given up on it completely. Yet.
She shook her head, hoping that if she told herself not to feel disappointed, she wouldn't. They'd only just found Kenny. Slipping away while he slept, when he had hopes and expectations of her and Clementine staying, wasn't how she'd wanted to leave things. Her friendship with Kenny was imperfect and strange, dysfunctional at times, but that didn't make it unimportant. It was genuine, one of loyalty and self-sacrifice and protectiveness without asking questions, and it deserved a better end than that.
She remembered that could've had it much worse. She could have been Walter.
"Does Clementine still have that knife? Because if it was Mathew's, and Walter sees it, he'll put two and two together."
"It's probably in our backpack. You took it with the weapons."
Relief ran across his face, if only for a moment. "Alright. Good. They're upstairs-" he nodded toward the stairs by the Christmas tree, leading up to the second story loft overlooking the lobby. "-by the fireplace." Amelia tried not to snort. They hadn't moved the weapons farther than a short walk up a single flight of stairs. Then again, they hadn't needed to move them far to hide them from her. Only to put them someplace she wouldn't think to look. "Go get rid of it. And I'll find Walter and run interference. Oh, and keep an eye out for Nick."
"I'm right here," The abruptness of his voice, how close he'd gotten to their conversation without Amelia hearing a single footstep almost made her jump. Clementine followed him. They rounded the corner she and Luke had hidden behind so close to the wall she wondered if they'd been standing on the other side, listening. It was nothing she hadn't seen Clem do before. "What's up-" Nick cut himself off. "Amelia, what's wrong?"
Luke answered for her. "It's nothing, Nick, just…"
"Look at her face. This isn't nothing." He paused, sure that he wanted to talk but not sure of what he wanted to say. "I know it's rough having Lilly here. Is that…what this is about?"
Luke stared her down in a way that was clearly meant to tell her to say yes. He even nodded to her, silently mouthing words when Nick wasn't watching. It would've made resolving this lit fuse of a situation much simpler. Fewer loose ends to tie up. She looked between Nick and Clementine and knew Luke was right; the smart thing to do would have been to send them both on their way.
"Hey," he said gently, pulling her eyes up from the floor. "Talk to me."
She looked back down and noticed blood under his nails. He must have missed it when he washed his hands after cleaning her up.
She moved slowly when she wandered toward Luke, and quickly when she snatched the photo from his hand.
"Hey-!" he quieted himself, looking around to make sure no one had heard. He didn't do anything to stop her from holding the picture out to Nick.
He didn't say anything at first. He reached for it slowly, barely gripping it hard enough to stop it from slipping through his fingers. His hand shook.
"Oh…" he breathed. His next words were louder. He didn't seem to notice or care. "Oh, god…"
Luke hurried to keep him quiet. "Nick, do not-" For a second he forgot not to raise his own voice. "Don't blow this, man," he whispered.
"Blow it? It's over." His next words came out easily. No stuttering, no hesitation, one word fluidly after another like there was no other way to answer. "I have to tell him, Luke."
Amelia and Luke answered over each other.
"Don't."
"What? No!" Luke caught himself just in time to refrain from raising his voice. "Nick, you cannot do that. I mean, fuck, do you know what he's gonna do?"
Nick didn't sound like he believed himself. "You don't know he'll do anything."
"Are you kidding me? Nick you shot his friend."
"You should listen to him, Nick," Clementine ventured carefully. She seemed cautious, eyes flitting between the three people around her as if their argument might turn into a fistfight at any second. She wrung her hands together. "Don't tell him."
Amelia was surprised. Her sister had been on the honesty train for the last week. Reminding her that she's carrying a secret, quietly letting her know here and there when Luke was alone and suggesting that it was a good time to talk to him. Then she remembered who she was agreeing with, and wasn't surprised anymore.
There was always a reason to lie. If there were no downside to honesty, there wouldn't have been any liars in the world. Lying for a reason she thought was compelling hadn't done her any favors in the past. Pretending it was for the benefit of anyone other than herself had only done more harm than good. She thought of it like prying out a bullet in the arm. Painful and necessary. It would hurt until it was over.
For everyone except Walter. He would hurt long after.
Amelia answered without giving herself the chance to reconsider. They were wasting time they didn't have. "Okay."
Luke raised an eyebrow, watching her carefully. "'Okay' what?"
She looked up to meet Nick's eyes. "If you want to tell him…okay."
Luke didn't speak for a second, stunned. Then, "Amelia, tell me you're not…" He didn't finish, and Clementine spoke up in the silence he left.
"I think that's a bad idea," she looked between the two of them, worry making her eyes wide. "It's a really bad idea."
Nick answered her like neither of them had said anything. "I have to. I can't live with that on me."
"Then you should do it."
Nick let out a hybrid between a sigh and a weak laugh, and seemed to breathe easier. "Thank you. It…" He looked quickly to Luke and Clementine, and decided to say what he had to say regardless. "It means a lot to have one person behind me on this."
Amelia only nodded. She wanted him to enjoy the relief while he could. The hard part wasn't over yet.
Luke wasn't ready to let it drop as easily. "Nick, I am warning you, this is fucking suicide."
"I'll live with it."
Would he? The question hung by a noose in the air above them, despite none of the four having asked it.
"I just…" Nick's face changed, and Amelia ventured a guess that he was already playing the conversation in his head. How he wanted it to go, how it would go. Two very different things, both in his mind and in reality. "I need a minute." He left them, quickly enough that Amelia worried the panic was creeping back in. Maybe he was on his way to do the counting thing. She considered following him to remind him.
"I wish you hadn't done that," Luke said from behind her. She turned around, wondering if the act he'd picked was the angry parent or the disappointed one. It turned out to be the worried one, which Amelia didn't blame him for.
"He deserves the chance to…" Amelia trailed off, wondering if the words sounded like a joke coming from her. She finished anyway. "…at least try to do the right thing." A chance Luke hadn't even considered giving him. Nick's words floated back to her, reminding her of something he'd said while cleaning her up after her fight. Making her think of the way Luke had pulled her off of Lilly, done everything he could to end that fight with nothing but good intentions and concern for her safety.
It meant Luke was a lot of things. Good things. A friend, a caretaker, a peace keeper. But the things he could do – things he seemingly couldn't help but do – pointed to what he couldn't do. Like let others make their own choices, even if those choices were mistakes.
"He deserves to live past 26." She understood that he saw it that way, and didn't have an argument or a desire to make him think any differently. It was something Nick needed to do. That was reason enough for her not to get in the way.
Luke's expression softened. She already knew that he didn't get angry often, and when he did he never stayed that way for long. "Look, Amelia, just…go do that thing, alright? We don't want him findin' that before Nick gets to talk to him..." His face made it clear that he didn't want Nick to talk to him at all. She was sure he had plans to talk him out of it. He knew Nick well enough that he might actually succeed. But that would have to be a conversation that didn't involve her. "Amelia." Luke pulled her attention out of her thoughts and back to him. "Please?"
She nodded. If they agreed on nothing else, neither of them wanted Walter to find the knife. Get rid of it. She could do that. She considered places to hide it as she watched him leave in the same direction Nick had.
"Clem-" she looked around to see her sister had disappeared, then up at the second story to find Clem was already halfway up the stairs. "Clem, what…?" She trailed off, unsure of how to ask what she meant to ask. She knew what she was doing. She had no idea why she was so anxious doing it.
She followed Clementine to the staircase; she only made it up two steps before Clem came running back down, hugging a backpack to her chest that, from the look on her face, Amelia would have assumed was hiding a dead body. Clem shouldered past her and didn't even stop to take her jacket on her way out the front door.
"Clementi-"
The door shut behind her.
Amelia followed her sister out to the porch, grateful she'd never taken her jacket off. The temperature had dropped since she'd last been outside. She'd been half-hoping to see Pete still out here and half-hoping she wouldn't. He'd long gone inside, leaving only disturbed snow on the wooden deck where they'd talked earlier.
"Clementine," she called after her sister, who didn't even turn around. She hurried down the porch, toward the ski lift Luke had let her climb to scout the forest when they'd first arrived. Amelia caught up to her to find her at the sharp drop in the hillside, huddled against the ladder she'd climbed only a few hours ago.
Clem was closer to the edge than Amelia would have liked – her toes touched unstable ground – staring down into the darkness hard enough to tell Amelia she was contemplating where to throw the knife.
"Clementine," Amelia said carefully when she slowed to a stop.
She finally turned to face her, her cheeks and nose bitten red by the cold. Her breath clouded up in front of her face like a smoker's plume as she talked. She nodded toward the incline. "We have to get rid of it."
"Here? Clem, let's just hide it in the lodge-"
"He can't find it, Amelia," Clem hugged the backpack up against herself as if it might keep her warm. "It has to be gone,"
Amelia opened her mouth to argue, before reminding herself that this wasn't about the knife. Not really. Her sister's strange habits – and her own, for that matter – were rarely caused by the closest problem.
She unzipped her jacket, feeling the winter cold wrap around her ribcage, and then her arms as she shrugged the coat off. "Here."
Clem didn't move. She almost shook her head. Amelia held her other hand out, palm-up.
"Trade me." She said with patience she didn't even have to fake.
Clem stared at the jacket in the way she'd seen people stare at food after going too long without it. She knew she'd only have to wait another few seconds before-
Clem stepped forward just enough to make the switch. She hurried to shove her arms through the sleeves and fumbled with the zipper, likely because her fingers were already numb. While she did, Amelia unzipped the backpack to find the knife was the only thing in it. WM. It made sense now, in a way she wished she hadn't realized.
"What are you doing, kid?" she asked, taking the knife out and turning it over in her hand. It was heavy, and even the leather handle felt ice cold.
"I just…I was afraid Walter would find it and…if he knows…" Clem squeezed her hands into fists, balling them up sleeves that were too long for her arms. "What if he…does what you did and…" She stopped herself again, frustrated that she had to try so many times to say one thing. Amelia already understood, but thought it better to let her talk. Clem gave up anyway. Arms folded in a huddle, she stepped aside – inching another step toward the edge – and nodded toward the hillside. "Don't just hide it. You have to throw it away. You have to."
Amelia looked from her sister to the knife again. "You're worried about what could happen to Nick."
Clem released a full breath, a long cloud of fog that trailed into the air and blew away in the wind. "I'm worried about…what'll happen to you if something happens to Nick."
She'd been expecting something. She hadn't been expecting that. But she understood exactly what she meant.
If it would make her feel better, it was a small price to pay. She understood why Clem needed a sure thing, just one in a life that had so few. "Okay." She tried to reassure her. "We'll throw it down. If that's what you want to do."
That didn't seem to make her feel any better.
"Clem?" Amelia asked. "What's wrong. I promise Walter won't find it. Look-" She drew her arm into a backswing, ready to toss it underhand over the edge and down the rocky hillside. Down into the dark where no one would find it for a long time. Certainly not tonight. She froze mid-toss when her sister spoke again.
"I did something."
"…'Something?'" Amelia prompted when she remained silent. "Clem, what are you talking about?"
"You're going to hate me."
Amelia almost laughed. "I'd bet you a candy bar I won't." It didn't make her sister laugh, which only made her more uneasy. "Clementine," she said, deciding that seriousness would better get her point across. "Whatever it is, it couldn't have been that bad." Couldn't have been as bad as the many misdeeds with her name on them that littered the American South.
"I just…" Clementine took another backwards step, staring straight at Amelia and imploring her to listen.
"Clem-" Amelia stepped forward.
"-don't want you not to trust me anymore-"
"-Clem you're too close-" She shot herself in the foot, she realized, when she watched her sister jump, startled by the sudden rise in her voice. Amelia broke into a lunge, a second too late. On the first step she saw Clementine's heel come an inch too far onto the unstable ground of the hillside. On the second she heard Clem gasp as her balance was ripped out from under her, arms thrown out in front of her as she tipped backwards like she'd been pushed. Amelia reached for her hands and missed them by a moment that seemed to pass at half-speed.
Clementine landed on a shoulder, crying out while sliding down in a haze of snow and mud so quickly she was already out of sight. Amelia gave herself a single second to shoulder the backpack while she took her running start, before she planted a hand in the snow and pitched both her legs over the edge.
She stared down into the darkness swallowing up the hill. She couldn't see Clementine even as she followed her, snow wetting her jeans and injecting her body with a chill that spread through her in seconds. She found herself pitched onto her back by the momentum and uneven ground. She twisted onto her side but that was all she could to do sit up, skidding down completely out of control with all of her weight split between her outer thigh and one shoulder.
She stared into nothing and tried to stay on a straight path, easier said than done with the way she was skidding over rocks and past tree trucks with no way to slow down. She spread her arms out to either side, as far as she dared to with the trees rushing past, trying to sink her numb fingers into the ground and stop herself. Her fingertips only dragged against slick ice doing nothing to slow her down but making her hands go numb to the bone. Something freezing and sharp dragged across her face without warning, sudden and painful enough to make her cry out in a hybrid of shock and anger. She hid her face in the fold of her arms, convinced that if she looked up the next tree branch would go straight into her eye, deep.
She shouted her sister's name, digging her heels into the ground and carving deep tracks into the hillside as she went, finally slowing down – if only a little – grateful that the snow had made the dirt soft without freezing it solid.
Finally, she heard her own name called back, close. Her eyes hadn't adjusted to the dark yet, and she looked around – would have done a full turn if she could have – with too-wide eyes as she slowed further, finally slowing enough to sit up, try to get her bearings and plant her feet on something solid to come to a stop. Looking past the trees just in front of her, she could see that the ground had leveled out in front of her. They'd reached the bottom, wherever that would leave them.
"Clementine," she called as loudly as she dared to without any idea how many walkers could be within earshot of them.
"I'm over here," her sister's tiny voice seemed to come from nowhere. She looked around for her own jacket, looking desperately for light blue vinyl that should've stood out easily in their surroundings. She spotted her, a little more than an arm's reach away, and almost didn't recognize it as a ball, realizing Clem had curled up – having turned onto her side, like Amelia had – huddled and shivering after she'd slid up against a tree trunk thick enough to stop her.
Amelia scrambled to her, crawling clumsily across slick and uneven ground and touching the shaking lump of her body with numb, uncoordinated hands. "Clem," she said, gripping her arms, squeezing the padded fluff of her jacket, relief already making her voice go soft. Her sister turned over in the dirt and cautiously lifted her head. Now that Amelia's eyes were used to the darkness she could see Clem had caught some debris to the face. More than she had herself. She'd expected the wide eyes of a doe caught in headlights but found the bruised and agitated face of a girl who was more confused than upset.
"What the hell?" Clementine breathed as a branch snapped somewhere in the distance.
Amelia quieted her with a quick sht- and went motionless, telling her sister to do the same. She'd heard enough noise to know it wasn't the wind. She was looking at her sister and knew it hadn't been either of them. They weren't alone. She hoped for wild animals, walkers, or people, in that order.
She listened for growling. Dragging. Choking. Something, anything that implied it was one of the first two. Then she heard voices.
It occurred to her then and only then that not a single person in the lodge at the top of the hill knew the two of them were down here.
She gripped Clementine tighter and pulled her in close, as if squeezing her until she couldn't breathe would do anything to keep her safe. Clem knew to stay quiet without Amelia's say-so. They shivered in silence while they listened to the voices draw closer. They started as unidentifiable babble. Conversation at a distance they couldn't understand. She tried to place the voices, wondered if she'd ever heard them before. She decided they weren't familiar. They intermingled with footsteps crunching ice as they walked. There was definitely more than one pair, but they overlapped so clumsily and irregularly it was impossible to tell how many. Three, maybe. Fewer than five. She hoped. Eventually they got close enough to understand. Close enough, she realized, to spot their shoes when she peered through the brush at the level ground. Two pairs of feet came to a stop just close enough to make her sweat, both clad in combat boots.
"Fuck if I know. I told you I heard screamin'."
A woman spoke this time, her accent just as thick. "And you're sure it was over here?"
The response was dry. "Why the hell would I be sure?"
Someone sneezed, loudly. The voice that followed the tail end of it didn't sound female. The first man, the one who'd heard her coming down the hill, snapped at him. "Hey. Johnny, want to shut to fuck up before you draw lurkers with that shit?"
His answer was defensive. Sarcastic and not at all remorseful. "Sorry, man,"
She held Clementine more for her own reassurance than her sister's, counting voices and getting more anxious as the number got higher. The first man and the woman made two. The guy who sneezed made three. She was looking at two pairs of feet and listening to at least one other. Four maybe? Five?
She didn't believe in coincidences. She may not have known who these people were, but she knew why they were here.
"You're tellin' me you didn't hear the bushes movin' like crazy?"
"It was probably just an animal, Troy." The woman sounded tired. Annoyed with this conversation moments after it started. "Or a lurker."
The man sent his boot prodding into the bushes only an arm's reach from Amelia and Clementine, jogging the brush, trying to startle something out of it. "Animals don't scream like that."
"For God's sake, no one else heard screamin'."
Amelia took a quick stock of what she had to use. An empty backpack. A single knife. No jacket. A cut on her cheek that was starting to sting like a bitch.
A kid she couldn't let these people see at any cost.
"I know what I heard." He kicked at the bushes again, swaying branches around Amelia, who couldn't remember holding this still in her life. Clementine was breathing quietly enough that even Amelia had to strain to hear her breath shaking. She waited for the woman to convince him to give up, hoped he'd get bored and move on. She felt the anxiety twisting into impatience. She had to force herself not to make any jittery movements.
She whispered directly into Clementine's ear, so quietly even her sister could barely make the words out. She kept it short. They didn't have the time. "Back to the lodge. Warn them."
Clem only mouthed words back at her. How? Without Amelia having to answer, her eyes widened and she shook her head, the waterproof covering of her jacket making light zipping noises. Amelia's heartbeat kicked up and the squeezed her shoulders even tighter to get her to stop.
The woman spoke up again, giving Amelia a spark of hope something inside her knew was false. She took it anyway. "Bill isn't gonna be happy with the holdup."
Amelia's jaw tightened in a way it hadn't in a long time. She knew who they were talking about, and knew it would've been too much of a happy coincidence for her to be wrong. He was here. Thinking that it would be too soon if she never saw him again in her life was wishful thinking. She knew it even as she'd said it.
It hadn't made her ready for it to happen. She could hear her own heartbeat. It occurred to her that they could hear it too, and she couldn't purge the thought from her head.
"Wait, wait…" the man said, his boots frozen where he stood. They were quiet for a five-count during which Amelia didn't breathe at all. "There. Right there." She couldn't see where he was pointing – couldn't see them higher up than their shins – but something inside her sank, dropping like a weight into the pit of her stomach. It sat, there, toxic and cold, making her think she was going to throw up on both pairs of boots.
She heard the metal-on-metal action of a gun chambering a round. "We saw the bushes movin'. Come out or I'll shoot!"
Amelia slipped a hand over Clementine's mouth, stifling a whimper quiet enough to disappear in a gentle breeze. Clem whispered Amelia's name against her palm, staring at her with terrified eyes she'd seen plenty of times, eyes that asked her what to do, looking to her for answers when there weren't any.
"I said come out! Don't pretend you're not in there, I fuckin' see you."
Amelia leaned into the side of Clementine's head and whispered the only answer she had.
"I love you."
She sat upright and, hand still clamped over her sister's mouth, called out at full-volume, "Okay."
Clem gasped before Amelia stifled her into silence. "Shh…" She nodded toward the top of the hill. The lights from the lodge could barely be made out, the porch lights reduced to vaguely dim orbs up at the top.
"Come on." The man prompted. He made no movement to lower his gun but took a step back, giving her room to step out of the bushes. The woman did the same; Amelia watched their boots step away from the incline. "Be quick about it. I said now!"
Amelia nudged herself down the last few feet of the incline, planting one foot on solid ground followed by the other. She ducked as she stepped out, trying to keep her face shielded from the branches and pine needles. She stood upright and looked straight ahead only to find herself blinded by three flashlight beams aimed directly in her face.
She brought an arm up to shield her eyes, but doing it blocked her from looking at the people in front of her. A man named Troy, another named Johnny, and a woman.
"Put your hands on your head. Fuckin' do it." Troy barked. She complied, knowing every one of her movements were going to be painfully obvious under the direct light of their flashlights. She laced her fingers together behind her head and waited. Maybe to be shot. "You alone?" he demanded, and didn't seem to buy it when Amelia nodded once. "Are you fucking with us?" She gave a single head shake.
Clementine stayed still and quiet, and it made Amelia breathe a little easier. She was a smart kid. She knew when to move and when to wait. It didn't stop her from worrying.
"Wait 'til Bill sees this," Troy's voice was low, but jittery. "What did I fuckin' tell you, Bonnie?"
Amelia tried to see past the light, but could only make out the vague shapes of three people. The only thing she could say with certainty was that they were armed. Whatever guns they had, they were big and fully automatic. She made a mental note not to make any sudden moves.
"Just-" The woman called Bonnie sounded frustrated. Shocked and in disbelief. "Just go get him. Hurry up." Troy broke off from the group, taking his light with him. Once it was gone, Amelia blinked, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to adjust to the random alternations between bright and low light. It took her a moment to realize Bonnie was talking to her.
"Huh?"
"Who are you?" Bonnie asked for the second time, clearly impatient. There was something manufactured about her tone. Like she was forcing herself to sound harsher than she was used to being. "What are you doin' out here?"
Amelia didn't answer. If the woman would shoot her for that, then she never had a chance of getting out of this alive in the first place.
Footsteps grew closer and louder in the dark. More than one pair. More than two, Amelia realized as she listened. Shit.
"…found her lurkin' in the bushes…" Troy's voice became clear mid-sentence. "She thought she could hide but I-"
Another voice interrupted him. A man's voice. One that was both new and old. "Hold up…"
Two words sent ice crawling through her veins, almost doubled her over in disbelief and nausea and utter shock because she'd witnessed a lot of unfortunate, unlucky shit in her life, but this-
He pushed his way forward, forcing Bonnie and Johnny to part for him when he could have just gone around them. He stepped forward slowly, stopping just in front of Amelia when he blocked the light beams from hitting her in the face. Finally able to see, she looked over his face in the darkness, searching it for familiarity to match the voice, and found it she knew it very well despite the short amount of time she'd been acquainted with it.
"No fucking way…" she breathed.
It made him laugh. A low chuckle that made her feel like there were living creatures writhing around inside her spine. "How've you been, Amy?" he brought a hand up to her face and dragged a thumb across the bleeding gash in her cheek, not gently. She didn't stop him, not willing to bring her hands down and risk provoking someone into shooting. He mocked the way she flinched at the sting by making an exaggerated wince; the way he grinned after told her it hadn't been an accident. His eyes flashed wide. "Karma's a bitch, ain't she?"
Another familiar voice spoke. One one made of gravel and gunmetal, one that struck her cold despite the fact that she knew it was coming.
"You know this girl?"
She was able to make out his shape, somewhere in the dark behind Bonnie. Tall, broad. Sinister. She looked at him only out of the corner of her eye, instead staring straight ahead. Partly because she couldn't bring herself to look at him. Partly because she didn't want to look away from Nate, knowing he was prone to unpredictable violence when he wasn't being watched. And when he was.
He addressed Carver without turning around. He glanced down to his hand, a bright red smear of blood staining the pad of his thumb. He could have made a clean fingerprint in her blood. He wiped it off on the arm of his coat in long, lazy swipes. He shot her a knowing look as he did it. "That I do."
There was a mean edge in Carver's voice that suggested he was grinning. Something spiteful and sharp that sat just beneath the surface. "A friend of yours?"
Nate chuckled again. Something lit up in his face, something he didn't even bother to hide. He shamelessly relished his next words, each one dripping in gleeful spite.
Almost as if he'd waited about two years to say them.
"Don't walk in front of her. She'll knife you right in the back if she thinks she'll get something out of it."
"Well." Carver said, mild amusement adding a cruel tinge to his voice. Amelia finally looked at him, past Nate and past Bonnie and into a face that managed to terrify her even when she couldn't see any of the features that belonged to it. "Aren't you good at making friends?"
She forced herself to breathe again, relieved that Clementine still hadn't made a sound. It wouldn't have taken much; she was surrounded on all sides by dead leaves, crumbling ice, brittle twigs and tree branches. She must not have moved a muscle since Amelia came out. The group seemed preoccupied enough. All Amelia had to do was keep her mouth shut and wait for them to decide to move on.
Carver stepped into the beam of Troy and Bonnie's flashlights, blocking them from hitting Amelia without blinding her with his own. He was only an arm's reach from her. Or rather, she was only an arm's reach from him.
"It's nice to see you again, Amelia," he said, making her wonder if the friendly-neighbor act he'd given her at the cabin was one he did just for fun. He had to be perceptive enough to know there was no use for it here. Not with her. He rested a hand over the revolver in his belt – the warning wasn't lost on her – and spoke like they were having a casual conversation. "You're not out here alone, are you?" The concern was as false and hollow as his smile.
Amelia's answer was quiet. As dry as she could make it to avoid giving anything away. "Afraid so."
"How's your sister?"
The words tumbled out, muttered with undisguised contempt. "Dead. Thanks for asking."
"Aw, that's not true." Carver shook his head. "Now why would you want me to think that?"
Amelia swore at herself silently, kicking herself for speaking without thinking. The nerves turned anger turned energy had made her jittery, twitchy and ready to do something, anything, as long as it was violent and without warning. Of all the times in her life she'd found herself in this mood, inching closer and closer to impulsivity and lack of control, she'd never been happy about it until now. At least now it would be helpful. Useful destruction. Controlled chaos.
Her eyes wandered back to Nate, down to his open jacket where she could see the handle of a flare gun tucked into an inner pocket. The words crawled softly into her head like they weren't her own thoughts take it from him.
But not yet. She didn't move, tightening her laced fingers behind her head. She decided to tread forward. Test the waters. She hoped getting him him to talk would give her something she could use. "Because I don't want you anywhere near her. I hope you're not delusional enough to be offended."
He chucked, low and dangerous. She remembered him doing it at the cabin, and didn't know whether to consider it a good or a bad thing that her behavior made him laugh so often. "Actually, I don't blame you a bit, sweetheart."
She'd gotten what she wanted. She understood in a way she wished she didn't. She thought back to the bodies at the river, the ones facedown in the water and the ones laid out on the shore with open foreheads. A river, a ski lodge. Location didn't matter. Some people didn't stop unless they were stopped.
He needs to be stopped.
Another thought, quick and intrusive, barely above a whisper in a voice she both did and didn't recognize. Its familiarity faded in and out, letting her think she knew it before making her second guess it.
Something touched her eyelashes. She looked to Nate, the closest person to her, fixing him with a glare meant to melt steel for whatever he'd done before she realized the blood dripping into her eye wasn't his doing. Nate's smile dropped for the first time she'd seen, his twisting into an uneasy combination of confusion and mild disgust.
"You're, uh…your head's bleeding."
Amelia unlaced her hands, hoping they wouldn't notice that she didn't put them back after wiping the blood from her forehead. Her stitches screamed when she touched them, making her grit her teeth so hard the ringing came back and didn't go away. She could hear her heartbeat again, no longer pounding out of control from adrenaline and fear, but slow and measured. Almost too slow. Unless she was only imagining it.
Her thoughts wandered absently back to the forest, back to the two men she'd left with holes in their skulls and back to Lilly, who'd she'd tried with everything she had to kill with her hands. She remembered regretting her actions, remembered being told that she was right and also wrong, remembered having to explain herself but she knew if nothing else that none of that applied here because-
-some people just need to be dealt with.
"Hey." Troy was raising his voice at her, for a reason she didn't understand or care about. "He asked you a question, girl."
Did he?
There was a brief silence in which no one answered her. Bonnie spoke up when she remembered something Amelia could have guessed: that Carver wasn't one to repeat himself.
"Show us the way to the lodge."
She spoke slowly. She had to concentrate on each word to hear her own voice through the ringing. "Do you need me for that?"
A single nod from Carver had three rifles aimed at her head. She knew it was three, despite seeing six, fluid and vague and crossing over each other. "No, I don't think we do." Carver mused. "But if you take a minute to think about it, you might find you'd rather come along anyway."
Amelia closed her eyes, covered them with the palms of her hands and tried to will her head back to normal. Or as close to it as she'd ever been. When she opened them again, looked across the three automatic rifles pointed at her, eyes jumping from one barrel to the next. She looked back to Nate, whose face looked like was anticipating something. He was trying – badly – to keep himself from smiling like he was waiting for the punchline of a joke.
She held an arm out in a silent, sweeping gesture in the direction of the path. After you. She didn't trust herself not to speak without provoking someone.
Somewhere above them, not far up the incline of the hill, branches snapped. Pebbles tumbled down in the snow.
Troy turned around, swinging his light across the trees. "What the fuck was that?" His attention was back on Amelia in a second. "You said you were alone,"
And then he turned his back, walking away from her and toward the hillside where her sister could be reached with only a short climb.
Stop him stop stop him stop him
The words went off like an alarm in her head, perpetual and urgent, making Amelia finally remember who they belonged to. That Amelia, the one who couldn't – or didn't – discern between enemies and friends and answered every problem with violence, the one who was provoked into brutality by the slightest bit of fear. She was a lot of things. An executioner, someone who inflicted pain for the sake of pain, someone not remotely close to the sister Clementine needed or the one Amelia wanted to be.
Amelia could lie to herself about many things but couldn't pretend it didn't pay to listen to her. It's why, when she heard drop him whispered quietly in her ear she did it, stepping hard on the back of Troy's knee the second his back was turned and bringing him to the ground like a walker she planned to stab in the head.
"Bitch!" he spat once he'd recovered from the fall. When he put his hands in the dirt to stand up she planted a foot between his shoulder blades and kicked him forward, hoping to watch him face plant.
Someone approached her from behind, someone she knew was Nate before he said, "Alright, Amy, you had your fun-" She turned swung on him without a second of warning, a ruthless hook she meant to drive straight into his face.
It took her a second to realize that the sharp, resounding smack that followed wasn't her making contact but the sound of Nate's hand closing around her wrist in an iron grip, leaving her fist caught in the air just in front of his face.
Of all things, Nate laughed. Probably at her, for the way she stared at him, blinking in shock with an astounded swear on the tip of her tongue.
"Nope."
He planted his other hand over her collarbone and pulled her forward in a brief windup to pitch her backward, shoving her to the ground with enough force to knock the wind out of her on impact and make her skid for several feet in the dirt. Amelia caught her breath staring up at the night sky, cold air slicing back into her airway. She rolled over onto a shoulder and glared up at Nate from the ground.
He grinned at her again. "No points for trying."
She'd forgotten about Troy. He had too much time to get up, she realized, and he was on her before she could get her feet underneath her, one hand pinning her at the shoulder – a terrible place to gain leverage, but she wasn't about to tell him – and the other cocked above his head with a fist.
"You little shit-" he threw one punch into her face, then another. The first blow caught her in the mouth – she tasted blood and had an overwhelming urge to spit it into his eye – but she protected her face from the second with her arms, which he'd left completely unsecured. He hadn't even hit her that hard. He was swinging with his arm, not his torso. She wondered who'd taught him what he knew.
Not Lilly, unfortunately for him.
"Troy."
He went still immediately. In the silence that followed, Amelia realized Carver had raised his voice. Something she'd never heard before and would've killed to never hear again. Troy hovered over her for a second, his curled fist and twisted face clearly itching to hit her again. But he did as he was told.
"Oh come on," Nate argued. "It was just getting fun,"
She found herself under Carver's flashlight again, a dangerous place to be. She pushed herself up to her knees, then her feet, running her tongue over the new split in her bottom lip and spitting blood into the snow. She didn't want to be on the ground in front of him, but knew it wouldn't make any difference. If he intended to kill her he could just as easily do it with her on her feet.
He walked toward her, slowly. Maybe it was deliberate. Maybe he knew he was making her more nauseous with each step, with each foot the distance between them shrunk. He finally stopped, shining his flashlight over the bushes again. Further up the hillside, the brush moved.
"You gave her a nice head start, didn't you?"
She did. She could have given her more if Troy had gotten to give her the beating he'd wanted to. That, and she'd have gotten the chance to hit him back.
Troy started barking orders again, telling Johnny to follow him up the hill when Carver cut them off.
"Don't bother." He turned away and started making his way up the path. He didn't need to tell the others to follow. He spoke without looking back. "Let the kid warn them. They've got nowhere to go but down."