Page 71 of What Remains

As they drove deeper into the countryside, the destruction became harder to ignore. Farmhouses stood silent behind shattered windows, tractors sat abandoned in fields half-buried beneath snowdrifts, and a combine rested at an odd angle where someone had apparently climbed out in the middle of the harvest and never climbed back into it.

Movement caught Seth's eye. "Twelve o'clock."

Jay's voice crackled over the radio almost simultaneously. "Visual on infected."

Three of them drifted through a snow-covered pasture while a fourth stumbled along a fence line, one arm hanging uselessly at its side. None of them ever looked toward the vehicles. They simply drifted, lost in whatever instinct still drove them forward.

Josie's stomach twisted as she watched them. "I knew them," she said, pointing toward the nearest farmhouse. "The Wilsons. They owned that place." She swallowed hard, forcing the words out. "They had two little boys."

Silence settled over the cab.

Another infected shuffled through the skeletal remains of what had once been a horse pasture. "the Henderson place," she whispered. "They used to host Fourth of July picnics."

These weren't strangers shambling through the snow. They were the Wilsons, the Hendersons. They were birthday parties and Fourth of July picnics, neighbors who had once borrowed sugar. Every passing mile was haunted by a face she knew.

Finally, she leaned forward, her eyes scanning the roadside with sudden urgency. "Slow down. It should be... right here."

Seth eased off the accelerator as a narrow gravel road, nearly hidden by fresh snow between weathered fence posts, emerged. A laugh trembled on her lips. "My dad refused to pave it."

Jay's SUV turned first, leading the convoy slowly up the lane. Tires crunched softly over the packed snow as the ranch revealed itself: first the red barn, then the machine shed, and finally the farmhouse.

Josie's breath caught. "It survived."

The old white farmhouse still stood proudly beneath towering cottonwoods. Her eyes immediately scanned the porch, finding no movement—only the swing still hanging, the flower beds buried beneath snow, and the windmill turning with a soft creak in the afternoon breeze.

The they spotted the smoke coming from the chimney.

"Mom..." she whispered, unaware she'd spoken aloud.

Seth glanced at Josie, whose entire body had gone rigid. Jay stopped the lead SUV, the second rolled in behind, and no one moved to get out. A heavy stillness pressed against them all. Too quiet.

Then the front door burst open.

A woman sprinted onto the porch, a rifle already rising to her shoulder in one practiced motion. "Don't move!" Her voice cracked across the frozen yard. "You have ten seconds to put your vehicles in reverse before I start shooting!"

Jay slowly raised both hands, visible through the windshield. "We're leaving!"

"You've got five seconds!" The rifle never wavered. "One!"

Seth reached for his door, but Josie grabbed his arm. "No. Wait."

The woman stepped off the porch. "Two!"

She looked exhausted and painfully thin, older than Josie remembered. Her dark hair had been hacked off unevenly, and her coat hung several sizes too big on her frame.

"Three!"

Then her eyes landed on the passenger seat, and she froze. The rifle lowered by an inch.

"...Josie?"

Josie fumbled with the handle, shoving the door open. Seth made a reflexive motion to hold her back, but she was already scrambling out. "Liz!"

The rifle slipped from numb fingers, hitting the porch with a dull thud. Liz stumbled forward, her expression a mask of disbelief, as though her own eyes had betrayed her. "Oh my God... Josie?"

"Liz!"

The sisters collided halfway across the yard, crashing into each other so hard they nearly went down together in the snow. Liz clung to her, as if letting go might make her disappear again, her sobs breaking apart against Josie's shoulder.