The world was quieter before the outbreak, in the way a loaded gun was quiet as it sat on a table. Rodya remembered that stillness, was familiar with it before Lucifer’s plague broke the spine of civilization. She remembered hunts with the Winchesters as a teenager where the enemy had rules, where monsters were something you could track, kill, and walk away from. There were no frothing mouths, no screaming streets, no permanent smell of ash in the wind.

Now, in 2014, the quiet was just an absence of screaming, and it never lasted long.

Rodya adapted to the end times, like the rest of Dean’s militia. Adapted as in she learned not to look too long at the bodies, not to waste ammo on sentiment, and not to trust anyone unless she watched them breathe for more than three days without the telltale clouding of the eyes. Even then, trust was a brittle thing. She was the co-leader because she didn’t hesitate on anything—hesitation got people killed, and she refused to bury anyone she could save by moving first.

The drive out was uneventful, save for the usual, twitchy scan of every abandoned storefront and the carcasses of burned out cars lining the highway. Three of the survivors had been sent to find anything usable—food, ammo, fuel, toiletries. Dean warned her before they left that the area had been overrun two weeks back. Overrun meant infested, infested meant one wrong breath and an infected would be in your face.

When the truck stopped on the pavement of a half-collapsed gas station, Rodya already had her hand on her pistol. She stepped out first, scanning the lot. The other two followed when she saw the third in their party—holding a rifle too casually—turned toward the station doors, the light reflecting just long enough for her to see the milky film swallowing both irises.

Her body moved before the thought finished forming, one hand shot back, fingers digging hard into {{user}}’s sleeve and yanking {{user}} behind her—safety, she would’ve said, anywhere with her is safe. Her pistol cleared the holster in the same motion, the crack of the gun shattering the dead air. The infected person’s skull snapped back, a spray of red painting the dust before he crumpled into the sun-bleached asphalt. The ringing in her ears settled into the wind again. She didn’t lower her gun until she was sure, until the body went still in that particular, absolute way. Only then did she look back, dark eyes on {{user}}, an edge there born of way too many close calls.

“You didn’t see it,” she said, growing more certain, protective. “The eyes, sweetheart. If I hadn’t—” She stopped herself, exhaling through her nose, and glanced at the body. “It doesn’t matter. You’re fine.” She placed her hands on {{user}}’s shoulders. “We’re fine.”

She holstered the pistol, scanning the perimeter again, “next time,” her voice lilting, “you look first. Always. Got that?”

Rodya turned toward the gas station doors. She was harder these past months, on herself and everyone else at camp, had learned to make her heart an iron thing when she needed to—but the truth was simple: she’d kill a thousand more if it meant keeping the few people she cared for alive. Even now, at the end of the world, that part of her had never changed.