Chapter 44: The Question

The copper casing of the bullet caught the dying orange light of the hearth, a tiny, gleaming weight in the palm of Marcus’s hand that felt heavier than the rifle itself. He didn’t look up when the floorboards groaned under a light, hesitant step. He didn’t need to. He knew the rhythm of Leo’s gait, the way the boy’s left heel dragged just a fraction more than the right when he was tired or afraid.

“Grandpa?”

Marcus closed his fingers over the shell, the knurled edge digging into his skin. He shoved it into his pocket and turned, forcing a stiffness out of his shoulders that had lived there since the patrol returned from the perimeter. Leo stood in the doorway of the cabin, his oversized flannel shirt hanging off one shoulder, his eyes wide and dark in the flickering amber light.

“You’re supposed to be asleep, Leo. Sarah’s going to have my head if she finds you out of bed.”

Leo didn’t move. He didn’t mention the cold or the darkness of the hallway behind him. He just kept his gaze fixed on Marcus’s face, searching for something Marcus wasn’t sure he had left to give. 

“I heard the men talking,” Leo whispered. He walked into the room, his bare feet silent on the woven rug. He stopped by the edge of the heavy oak table, his hand reaching out to trace the deep, jagged scar in the wood where a knife had slipped three winters ago. “They were talking about the fence. About the things that tried to climb it.”

Marcus stood and walked to the hearth, taking the iron poker to the embers. He needed a task for his hands, something to justify the way his pulse was drumming against his collarbone. He swung the heavy grate aside and stabbed at a log until it shattered into a spray of sparks.

“The fence is there for a reason, Leo. It’s held for twenty years. It’ll hold for twenty more.”

“They said the world used to be bigger,” Leo said. He stepped closer to the fire, the light catching the fine, pale down on his cheeks. He looked so much like his father in that moment—the same stubborn set to his jaw, the same way he leaned into a question like he was bracing for a blow. “They said there were lights that never went out, even at night. Cities that touched the clouds.”

Marcus stopped his work with the poker. The silence of Cypress Bend was absolute, save for the crackle of the fire and the distant, rhythmic thud of the windmill on the hill. It was a silence they had cultivated, a silence that meant safety. But to a seven-year-old who had never seen anything but the valley walls and the sharpened stakes of the wall, that silence was a vacuum.

“People tell stories, Leo. The further we get from the old days, the taller the stories grow.”

Leo looked up, his expression suddenly, devastatingly sharp. “Is that why the map in the schoolhouse has all the grey parts? The parts where Mr. Henderson says we don’t go?”

“We don’t go there because there’s nothing there for us,” Marcus said, his voice dropping an octave, sounding more like the leader of the Council than a grandfather. He regretted the tone the moment it left his lips. He saw Leo flinch, just a small tightening of the shoulders.

Marcus sighed, setting the iron tool aside. He sat back down in his heavy chair, the leather creaking under his weight. He patted his knee. Leo hesitated for a heartbeat, then crossed the floor and climbed up. He was getting too big for this, all elbows and knees, but Marcus held him tight, the boy’s head tucking naturally into the hollow of his shoulder.

For a long time, they just sat there. Marcus watched the fire, seeing not the flames, but the flickering ghosts of a skyline he hadn’t thought about in a decade. Glass and steel. The hum of a refrigerator. The screech of a subway bending around a curve. It felt like a fever dream, a life lived by a different man in a different universe.

Leo shifted, his fingers twisting a loose thread on Marcus’s sleeve. He cleared his throat, a small, wet sound.

“Grandpa?”

“Yeah, Leo?”

“Did the world end?”

The question hit Marcus with the physical force of a gunshot. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard it—the younger generation asked it in whispers, usually once they grew old enough to realize the valley was a cage as much as a sanctuary. But hearing it from Leo, who still believed Marcus could fix a broken toy or find a lost boot with a snap of his fingers, made the lie feel like a stone in his throat.

Marcus didn’t answer immediately. He couldn’t. If he said *yes*, he was telling the boy there was no hope beyond the ridge. If he said *no*, he was a liar, because Marcus had seen the soot settle over the screaming cities. He had seen the oceans turn to ash.

“The world didn't end,” Marcus said finally, his voice raspy. He reached out and tilted Leo’s chin up so they were eye to eye. “It just got very, very small.”

“But the people,” Leo pressed, his voice trembling. “All the people in the tall cities. Where did they go? Did they turn into the things outside the fence?”

Marcus felt the boy’s heart racing against his ribs, a frantic, bird-like thrumming. He chose his words with the precision of a man walking through a minefield. 

“Some of them did,” Marcus admitted. “And some found places like this. Small places. Quiet places.”

“Why didn’t they stay?” Leo’s eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “If it was so big and so bright, why did they let it break? Were they not careful?”

Marcus looked at his hands—the calluses, the grease under the nails, the faint white line of a scar from a scavenge run that had gone wrong in the second year of the Fall. He thought of the arrogance of the Before. The way they had treated the earth like an infinite pantry. The way they had ignored the cracks in the foundation until the whole house came down on their heads.

“They were tired, Leo,” Marcus said softly. “They forgot that everything has a price. They thought they could keep taking without giving anything back. They thought they were the masters of everything they saw.”

“Are we the masters of the valley?”

“No,” Marcus said firmly. “We are the guests of the valley. That’s why we work the dirt. That’s why we only take what we need. We’re trying to do it right this time.”

Leo leaned back, looking toward the window. The shutters were closed and barred, but they both knew what was out there. The vast, encroaching forest of the Pacific Northwest, a green tide that was slowly erasing the roads, the malls, and the skeletons of the old world.

“Do you miss it?” Leo asked. “The big world?”

Marcus closed his eyes. He missed the taste of a cold soda on a hot day. He missed the sound of his daughter’s voice over a telephone line. He missed the feeling of security—the absolute, unquestioned belief that tomorrow would look exactly like today. But then he thought of the noise. The greed. The way people would walk past a dying man on the street and never look down.

“I miss the people,” Marcus said. “But the world... the world had become a very lonely place, Leo. Even when there were billions of us. Here, I know every face. I know whose stove is smoking and whose roof is leaking. I know you.”

Leo considered this, his small brow furrowed in concentration. He reached out and touched the pocket where Marcus had hidden the bullet. 

“Is that why you carry the metal?” Leo asked. “To keep the big world away?”

“To keep us safe,” Marcus corrected. “There are things out there that don’t understand the way we live now. They only remember the hunger from when it all broke. My job is to make sure that hunger never reaches this house.”

“I want to help,” Leo said, his voice suddenly firm. “When I’m bigger. I’ll stand on the wall. I’ll watch the grey parts of the map.”

A wave of grief washed over Marcus so cold it made his teeth ache. This was the tragedy of their survival. To keep the boy alive, they had to turn him into a soldier before he could even read. They were raising a generation of watchers, children whose dreams were bounded by the range of a long-rifle and the height of a timber wall.

“You’ll help by learning the seeds, Leo,” Marcus said, pulling him back into a tight embrace. “You’ll help by learning how to fix the well and how to weave the wool. The wall is for the old men. The valley is for you.”

Leo didn’t argue, but Marcus felt the boy’s fingers clench into his shirt. The fear hadn't left him; it had just settled, finding a permanent home in the marrow of his bones. 

The fire popped, a pocket of sap exploding in the oak log. Leo jumped, his breath hitching. Marcus smoothed the boy’s hair down, his hand trembling just enough to notice. 

“Grandpa?”

“Yeah, Leo?”

“If the world starts getting big again... will you tell me?”

Marcus looked at the darkened window, imagining the miles of ruins and wasteland that lay beyond the safety of Cypress Bend. He thought of the reports from the scouts—the sightings of nomadic raider bands moving north, the strange lights seen in the ruins of Seattle, the sense that the long, quiet stasis of the last two decades was coming to an end. Something was shifting out there. The "grey parts" were moving.

“I’ll tell you,” Marcus lied. He kissed the top of the boy’s head. “But for tonight, the world is just this room. Just you and me and the fire. That’s big enough, isn’t it?”

Leo nodded slowly, his eyes finally beginning to droop as the warmth of the hearth did its work. “Yeah. It’s big enough.”

Marcus held him until the boy’s breathing became deep and rhythmic, a steady anchor in the deepening night. But as Marcus stared into the dying flames, he didn't feel the peace he had promised Leo. He felt the weight of the bullet in his pocket. He felt the phantom ache of a world that had once belonged to him, and the terrifying responsibility of the one he had built in its ruins.

He stood up carefully, cradling Leo in his arms, and carried him across the cold floor toward the back bedroom. Each floorboard that creaked felt like an alarm. Each shadow in the hallway looked like a man with a gun or a beast with a hunger that couldn't be satisfied.

He laid Leo down on the small cot, tucking the heavy wool blankets around his chin. For a moment, he watched the boy sleep, envious of the simplicity of his fears. Leo feared the end of the world. Marcus feared what would happen if it began again.

He walked back to the living room and didn't go to bed. Instead, he returned to his chair. He pulled the bullet from his pocket and set it on the table. Then, he reached under the seat and pulled out an oil-slicked rag and his cleaning kit. 

The rifle was leaning against the wall by the door. Marcus picked it up, the cold steel familiar and unforgiving in his grip. He sat back down and began to break it down, the metallic clicks and slides the only sound in the house. 

He didn't miss the big world. He just knew that a world that had ended once could end again, and this time, there might not be a valley deep enough to hide in.

The wind picked up outside, whistling through the gaps in the eaves, bringing with it the scent of pine, rain, and something more metallic—the smell of the wastes. Marcus paused, his thumb tracing the firing pin. He looked at the door, his ears straining for the sound of the perimeter bell. 

The silence held, but it was brittle now. 

He worked through the night, cleaning every part of the weapon until it shone in the grey light of dawn. As the first hint of morning touched the edges of the shutters, Marcus loaded the magazine, the clicks sounding like a countdown. 

He stood up, his joints popping, and walked to the window. He pushed the shutter open just an inch. Below, the valley was shrouded in a thick, white mist. The garden beds were neat rows of dark earth, and the smoke was just beginning to rise from the communal kitchen. It looked like a postcard from a time that never was.

But then, he looked higher. 

To the north, where the ridge dipped toward the pass, a flock of crows erupted from the trees, their harsh caws echoing across the stillness. They were circling something—something moving through the brush, something that didn't belong to the valley.

Marcus tightened his grip on the rifle and felt the cold air on his face. 

The question wasn't whether the world had ended. The question was what was coming to finish the job.

He turned back toward the hallway where Leo slept, his face hardening into the mask he wore for the Council. He reached for his heavy coat, the wool rough against his neck. He had a perimeter to check. He had a wall to guard. And most of all, he had a lie to protect.

As he stepped out onto the porch, the dawn air bit at his lungs. He looked at the heavy timber gates of Cypress Bend, the wood scarred by years of weather and desperate hands. 

“Not today,” Marcus whispered to the empty morning. “Not while he’s still dreaming.”

He stepped off the porch, his boots crunching on the frost-covered gravel, heading toward the sound of the crows. Behind him, the cabin remained silent, a tiny island of warmth in a cooling universe, but Marcus didn't look back. He couldn't afford to.

The mist swallowed him before he reached the first watchtower, leaving only the sound of his footsteps and the distant, rhythmic thud of the windmill, counting down the seconds until the world got big again.

At the base of Tower One, Elias was already waiting, his face pale in the morning light, his breath hitching in a way that signaled more than just the cold. He didn’t wait for Marcus to speak. He simply pointed toward the treeline.

“Marcus,” Elias said, his voice a ghost of a sound. “The traps at the northern bend. They didn’t just trigger. They’re gone.”

Marcus felt the weight of the world he’d promised Leo was safe suddenly fracture under his feet. He looked at the ridge, where the birds were still screaming, and knew that the question the boy had asked was no longer a matter of history. It was a prophecy.

He shouldered his rifle, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the grey. 

“Get the others,” Marcus commanded, his voice as cold as the frost. “The world isn't as small as we thought.”