"Do you think we'll ever find a safe place, a haven?"

"No. Those are just stories that people used to tell to make themselves feel better."

"There has to be somewhere that's not like this, where there are still regular people living. Maybe they have gardens and grow their own food, live in houses where the windows aren't busted, take care of each other."

"If a place like that existed, the crazies probably already found it, burnt it to the ground and ate the bodies left over when the fire died."

"You don't know that, Santana."

"Yes, I do."

And she did.

She was fourteen when she lost everything. She was safe, hidden behind the tall walls erected around the part of her hometown that was left inhabited. The walls were mostly wood with some leftover scrap metal filling in the gaps and men walked along them at all hours carrying guns and knives, her father among them.

There was no electricity — the power grid had been down for a couple of years — and no running water but there was a lake nearby and there was still enough gasoline that they were comfortable boiling water almost daily and lighting cooking fires in the front yards of the homes where dozens upon dozens of people had moved in, seeking shelter and food. They mourned the dead every day, those taken from them by the sickness and those who left their encampment and never came back.

And then they came, men and women with wild eyes and angry smiles. They hadn't been as lucky as Santana's family; they had lost everything but their weapons and their hunger. They wanted food so the town gave them some. And then they wanted more weapons and they wanted sex and when the town didn't give them what they wanted, they set it ablaze, one house at a time. When people tried to flee their burning homes, they were met outside by men with guns and thick metal pipes. There were still plenty of guns and bullets to go around.

Santana's mother had stolen her down to the basement, kissing her on the forehead and pushing her through the small cellar window. The air had been black with smoke that fill her lungs and burned her eyes until her vision was blurry with tears. She heard her father shouting somewhere nearby and then the sound of gunshots. When she crouched down to the basement window to help pull her mother out, she found no one.

She ran and when she went back in the morning, there was nothing left of what had once been save the charred and still burning embers of a few homes and the smoldering bodies of the dead.

When she ran this time, Santana didn't look back.

"It's been nine years," Rachel said one day. "I used to have a calendar and I used it over and over again until the pages fell apart and my pencils ran out of lead."

Santana shrugged, casting a look about the field they were walking through. It was open and flat, a vast expanse of land cut in half by the highway. "Damn," was all she said.

"I know," Rachel murmured gently, her voice soft and calm. She bent her arms at the elbow and ran her hands over the tips of the grass, catching the thin green blades between her fingers. "It's been a long time."

Santana wasn't quite so gentle, wading through the field in annoyance. She kicked at sections of grass, grinding them under her feet. "I was with this girl," she told Rachel, catching her eyes. "We were traveling together. And she always used to say that she wished it could have been zombies or something, because she could have taken that. We could just, you know, kill them all on sight." She frowned. "Shit's way more complicated now."

Rachel nodded. "But then we'd be running away from zombies."

Santana shrugged. "There was this other guy and he —" She stopped, looking into the woods ahead of them, still a ways away. There was light in the trees, a small light close to the ground.

Santana held her arm out in front of Rachel, preventing her from moving forward. She saw it now, movement in the trees. A lot of movement. Without thinking, she grabbed Rachel's hand and crouched down, pulling the other girl down beneath the top of the grass. She gestured towards the road. "We'll cross over really quick," she said. "They haven't seen us yet."

"How do you know they're bad?" Rachel asked. "They could be like us."

The sound of laughter reached them, loud and raucous. The sky was just beginning to darken, the sun dipping towards the horizon, and Santana could see the outline of fire more clearly now.

"The fire and the laughing are pretty big signs," Santana said, rolling her eyes. "Would you just listen to me on this one, okay? The last big group I met in the woods killed my friend, so I'm not really feeling social right now."

"Oh," Rachel replied. "I'm sorry for your loss."

"Whatever. Let's go."

Rachel nodded and followed her through the grass, keeping low to the ground, her hand still clutched in Santana's. They made it to the edge of the grass and then crossed the highway quickly, half-crouched as they crossed four lanes of debris. The other side was all grass and they skirted along the edge, keeping an eye on the far side but seeing no one. They could hear the sounds of people more clearly now, though, foreign and uncomfortable to their ears, which were so used to the quiet.

When they made it to the woods, Santana sighed. And then immediately cursed when they came across a man standing at a tree, his pants halfway down his legs as he urinated. He saw the two of them just as Santana pulled her knife free of her belt and dropped Rachel's hand. He groped for his jeans and got them up with one hand while picking up a large wooden stick with the other. The end was sculpted, like the stick had once been a table leg. It was caked with blood.

Santana watched his eyes dart across the four-lane highway and she knew what was coming. The muscles of his jaw twitched. He was going to call out to the others.

She was on him in an instant, long before any sound could escape his mouth, her knife going straight through his throat. Santana heard the sickening sound of the blade cutting through muscle, the warmth of blood gushing onto her hand and splattering on her clothes.

The man fell, whimpering, one hand swinging his stick pitifully against her hip and the other going to his throat. He hit the ground, writhing and gurgling. It was too loud so Santana did the only thing she could think to do: she stabbed him again as hard as she could several times, this time where his heart was. Her knife ripped through his ribcage, the bones fracturing and breaking under the force of her blow.

His body convulsed and arched up when her blade penetrated his chest. And then he was still.

Santana stood up slowly. His blood carved a wide arc through the air when she yanked her knife out of his body. She bent over and wiped the blade on his ragged shirt. Killing was a messy business.

When she turned back to find Rachel, the other girl was standing absolutely still, her eyes trained on the dead man's body.

"Come on," Santana hissed, holding out her hand. "They're gonna come looking for him."

"You killed him."

"Damn right. Now come on," Santana repeated impatiently. Rachel finally looked at her then, looked at her and straight through her all at once, as if she had never seen Santana properly before that moment, the one where she was standing over a dead body with warm blood on her hands. As if Rachel, the girl with the gun, didn't realize that this was what the world was.

Santana rolled her eyes and dropped her hand, taking off through the trees slowly until Rachel caught up with her and they could set a faster pace.

"It's been nine years," Santana muttered. Rachel should know by now, she thought.

They jogged continually, slowing down when they grew tired and resting for a few minutes before they took off again. They only slowed down to a walk when the sounds of people had faded so far behind them that there was only silence and the world was quiet again.

Santana pulled her spare bits of towel out at wiped at her bloody hands and arms, still walking. The water in the gallon jug was tucked into her backpack and she could hear it sloshing with each step. It was tempting to pull it out and rise her hands but they needed the water more than she needed to be clean.

"I don't think I've ever seen someone killed like that," Rachel said after a time. "I've seen plenty of dead people, of course, but never someone killed right in front of me." Rachel spoke quietly, watching the ground in front of her.

Santana shrugged. "It was him or us," she said truthfully. "I know you didn't get out much before you teamed up with me, which is really weird and kind of stupid, but this is how it is," she added in defense of a charge that Rachel hadn't leveraged against her.

Rachel looked up at her, stopping and to take the towel from Santana and setting out to clean Santana's hands herself. She scrubbed long and hard until the blood was gone from Santana's hands and they were red and raw. And Santana let her.

"It's just that I've never seen it," Rachel told her, now running the cloth over Santana's skin lightly. "That's all."

She handed Santana the towel and started off again, following the ditch next to the highway.

Santana stuffed the material in her pack and caught up with Rachel quickly, casting a glance over her shoulder at the world behind them, looking for people on the horizon. "We do what we have to do," she said.

"I know."

When they finally stopped for the night, Santana expected Rachel to keep her distance, but she didn't. Rachel put her blanket right next to Santana's, as she always did, and lay beside her quietly in the darkness. They were tucked into a little section of trees away from the road but still close enough that they could hear if anyone might be walking on the pavement.

Eventually, Santana felt Rachel grasp her hands and caress them, perhaps feeling for more blood or perhaps just feeling. Rachel moved against her and after a few moments, she rolled over and put her head against Santana's shoulder, her hands still caressing Santana's fingers and palms softly. Santana's hands were raw and Rachel's touch, though light, still stung. She hissed but Rachel trailed her fingers over Santana's skin anyway. And Santana let her.

"It's okay."

"I know."