Page 11 of What Remains

Dying didn't scare him, had stopped scaring him a long time ago—and that, if he let himself look at it directly, might be the most frightening part.

Failing again—that scared him.

Proving that whatever had gone wrong inside him in that freezer was still wrong, and always would be. Watching the others slowly realize he'd become someone they couldn't rely on, dead weight.

And beneath all of it, in the bruised places he never let anyone near⁠—

He couldn't say for certain whether he wanted to live as much as theyneeded him to.

Seth let out a shaky breath and dragged a hand down his face, the stubble scraping his hand.

He would go. He'd already given his word, and his word still meant something, even now. Maybe more now.

But some part of him wondered whether he'd be walking out there in spring to survive...

...or to find out whether he still could.

Watch shifted in his sleep, nudging closer until his warm weight pressed solidly against Seth's arm, as if the old dog had heard every word Seth hadn't spoken.

Seth swallowed.

"Yeah," he whispered into the dark, resting a hand on the dog's side. "I know, buddy."

Chapter 3

Basement Life & Another Life

Josie sat cross-legged on the basement floor, a blanket draped around her shoulders, watching Layla carefully shade the wings of a crooked butterfly. The little girl’s brow was scrunched in concentration, her tongue peeking out — exactly the way Mark used to look when wrestling with IKEA furniture instructions he refused to read.

Josie smiled faintly at the resemblance, a familiar ache in her chest.

Thank God I hoarded candles, she thought, glancing at the flickering flames on the concrete room. Between her candle obsession and Mark’s compulsive need to buy batteries in bulk—habits they’d once teased each other about mercilessly—they hadn’t gone dark a single night since moving downstairs.

Everything that mattered lived down here now: food, water, blankets, and medical supplies alongside things once considered junk—printer paper and notebooks from Mark’s office, now priceless. Layla worked through those pages almost daily, and Josie couldn’t deny the strange, stubborn comfort of watching her daughter color while the world above them fell apart.

“Mommy, look!” Layla said, holding up her butterfly with both hands. “She’s flying to a garden!”

Josie reached out and traced the line of her daughter’s dark curls. “It’s beautiful, sweetheart.”

Layla’s butterfly, with its crooked purple wings, was the most beautiful thing Josie had seen in months. She traced one of the wings, the crayon wax sliding under her fingertip. Purple. The color of the scrubs Tessa her surgical nurse always wore on Wednesdays. The thought arrived sharp and unwelcome, dragging with it the memory of that last, frantic phone call.

She’d pulled out of the hospital parking lot, exhaustion clawing at her brain after a double shift, when she noticed the message waiting on her phone:

Mark didn’t pick up Layla.

Strange. He never missed dance pickups. Not once in three years.

She arrived to find the dance studio glowing with an eerie yellow light. Inside, only Layla and one other little girl remained, both pressed against the wall with their backpacks hugged to their chests like shields. The instructor—normally exhausingly chipper—stood pale by the door, her hands working the lanyard around her neck over and over without seeming to know she was doing it.

“I’m so sorry, Josie,” she said. “Only two kids came tonight. Everyone else called out sick.”

Sick. That word was everywhere over the past few days—across news banners, through whispered hallway conversations at work, into every phone call. A “rough early flu season,” the reporters kept parroting, as if repetition could make it true.

But the tone inside the ER had turned different. Darker.

Josie apologized, thanked the instructor, and hustled Layla out the door. The moment they stepped into the parking lot, she noticed the silence between the sirens. The city’s usual bustle was gone, replaced by a empty quiet that felt strange.

Sirens wailed from every direction, bouncing off buildings until Josie couldn’t count them.People staggered along the sidewalks, their faces ashen, eyes glassy and fixed on nothing. A man doubled over a storm drain, coughing so violently his whole body convulsed, as though trying to eject something living from his lungs.