The way he said 'shed' sounded exactly like it had a capital 'S' to it, and I groan. "I can look after myself."

"With all due respect, young lady," the man turns his stern gaze to me, "you require stitches, and Danielle is a capable medic. Please, as a gesture of good faith, allow her to look after you. Unless," his eyes flick to Danielle, eyebrows raised in question, "there's a reason she cannot?" 

Danielle looks like she wants to argue with him, but relents, shaking her head. "No, sir, I can look after her." 

The man nods. "Then it's settled. Josh, go let Butch know to go ahead and prepare the deer; I'm sure our friends here are hungry." He looks over to my siblings and me. "They'll be able to retrieve their belongings by the end of the day if they had any with them."

Josh nods and exits the room as Danielle gives Leon a salute, following closely behind, and when I glance back at Leon, I notice him watching me all the up until Danielle closes the door.

As we follow Danielle out of the house behind Josh, I can see him weave through the several people gathered on the porch as everyone throws their questions at Danielle.

"What's going on?"

"Has Leon decided what to do?" 

"Are they with the Widow's?" 

"Are they spies?" 

"What's with the blood?"

Danielle shouts above their voices to be heard. "Alright, alright, that's enough! Get back to work, everyone; your questions will be answered once Leon decides what to do!" The group mutters amongst themselves as Danielle starts to shoulder her way through them, my siblings and I close behind. "Go on, I'm sure there's plenty that still needs to be done!" 

The people gathered slowly disburse as Danielle leads us across the yard to a large utility shed, the windows busted out and replaced with iron bars. 

"Your bags," she orders, gesturing to the side of the small shed as we get closer. 

My siblings remove their backpacks and toss them on the ground where Danielle has gestured, but I hesitate. What am I going to do if they dig through our things? What will happen if they find it? I warily look over at Danielle, who is giving me a stern look of suspicion, her eyes glancing between my face and my backpack. There's no way she'll let me dig through it to get what I need, and if I even suggest doing so, she'll likely take it to that Leon guy. 

The longer I hesitate, the more agitated Danielle appears. 

I don't have a choice, do I? 

With a sigh, I remove my bag and place it gently next to my brother and sister's bags as Danielle watches, an eyebrow raised. Standing straight, I give her a look, but Danielle just rolls her eyes.

She opens the doors and gestures for us to enter, and inside, it's musty. There's a cot tucked into a corner with a dusty pillow and a blanket folded at the foot, a couple of plastic lawn chairs, a dirty bucket that I really hope isn't used for what I think it is, and a larger bucket full of stagnant water. 

I wrinkle my nose at the prison-like accommodations as Felix, Octavia, and I enter, and Danielle closes the doors behind us. 

"Sit," she orders, gesturing to a stool she pulls up into the middle of the shed. Reluctantly, I do as she says as she takes off her bag and sets it down beside her. She pulls up a chair of her own and takes out a bottle of water, wets a rag, and starts vigorously cleaning the blood from my face. 

"Why are you patching me up first?" I manage to ask. 

"You're more busted up than I am," she replies simply. She's not exactly gentle as she wipes the blood from my face, but her hands are steady as she does so, holding my head still with her free hand. I'm almost tempted to mention my leg injury, but I don't want to owe them any more than I already will with this. 

Having them dangle my debt to them over my head is the last thing I need on my plate.

Felix and Octavia sit on the cot, anxiously watching Danielle work. 

"What are you gonna do with us?" Octavia asks slowly. 

Danielle is quiet for a moment as she concentrates. "That depends on you," she eventually says. 

"Well, that's not very comforting..." Octavia mutters. 

Danielle sighs. "Just answer Leon's questions honestly, and you'll be fine." She pulls out a needle and thread once she's finished cleaning the blood from my face and works on the cut above my eye. I wince at the pain but manage to stay still as she stitches the wound, and I'm surprised at how relatively gentle she's being this time, compared to earlier. 

As she works, her eyes narrowed in concentration, I take a peek at our surroundings. While the shed is small, the doors leading out are unlocked to allow Danielle to get back out. With her concentrating as hard as she is, I could very easily knock her out just long enough to grab my siblings and make a run for it. There's a chance that the walls around the camp don't close off the river running through it, so we could use it to escape, though we'd be without all of our belongings in a forest likely crawling with Widows and infected. I could always make a new bow and some arrows out there to replace my weapon, but Felix and Octavia would be left defenseless. 

I don't like the odds, but I don't want to risk these people hurting my family or delaying us any longer than we have been, and something about Leon simply rubs me the wrong way.

Danielle breathes a laugh, pulling me from my silent planning. "You won't make it very far," she notes as though she just read my mind. I glance up at her, keeping quiet. "You're probably thinking about knocking me out and running, but you won't make it past the river without the guards or patrols seeing you. If you really aren't with the Widow's, running now will only convince us that you are." 

"What do you care about what happens to us?" I retort. 

She leans back, examining her work before pulling out some gauze to put over the stitches. "Personally, I don't," she says, then starts to work on the cut on my neck. "You can run and get shot, risking your 'siblings' here, or stay and answer Leon's questions and possibly have time to rest before moving on."

"They're my family," I correct. 

Danielle glances up at me, her expression unreadable. "All the more reason to wait this out, then. If they were my family, the choice would be easy." 

"But, they're not." 

She groans, roughly slapping a bandage on the cut on my neck. "Listen, if you want to fight the system, be my guest and give it a go. Leon is being pretty lenient with you three for now, but if you go and fuck that up, it's on you." She stands up, packing away her supplies. "Your lip is going to have to heal on its own," she pulls out a bottle of pain killers, tipping out two red pills, and sets them on the stool, along with a canteen of water. "Take some of this, and I'll be back with Leon shortly." 

With that, she leaves, locking the doors behind her and leaving my siblings and me alone. The three of us collectively sigh, slumping where we sit. We don't really have much of a choice but to wait and see what they want to do with us. I hate to admit it, but she was right when she said we wouldn't get far. From what I saw, everyone in this camp is armed and likely knows how to use their weapons; they'd shoot us on sight if we made a break for it. 

Octavia sighs. "At least she's hot."

"What the Hell, Octavia?" I demand. 

"What? You were thinking it, too; I saw that look on your face!" She gets an annoyingly dreamy look on her face, and Felix rolls his eyes. "Kinda wish I had an injury; she could patch me up any day." 

"I can give you one if you want it that badly," I retort. 

"God, Cass, I was just kidding!" Octavia grumbles. "Mostly, anyway. Lighten up, would you?" She glares at me. 

"Oh sure, let's 'lighten up' real quick!" I snap, and she flinches. "Look at this; this is a nice change of scenery! The bars on the windows and the locked doors should keep us real safe from the infected and bandits in our new home! Oh, let's not forget that we'll be fed by the assholes who put us in here in the first place and stole my deer! And get this, we get stagnant parasite-infested water to drink, too! Would you like a cup?!"

"I said, 'lighten up,' not act like a bitch..." She mutters, glaring away from me, and I immediately feel horrible for my outburst.

I sigh, my anger dissipating as quickly as it appeared, and I walk over to sit next to my sister. "I know, I'm sorry," I put my arm around her shoulders and give them a squeeze. "I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. My hunger got the better of me, and I'm the one who put us in this situation, so I'll do my best to get us out of it."

Octavia sighs, leaning into me but refusing to look at me. "It's not entirely your fault. If I hadn't misplaced the map and helped out more with getting food, we wouldn't be in this mess." 

"No offense, O, but your hunting skills are so bad, you couldn't hit the broad side of the barn from the inside," I tease, and she elbows me in the ribs. "Besides, it wasn't your fault for losing the map. We had to leave that lumber yard in a hurry when the infected showed up."

Felix sighs, "Yeah, there were a lot of them. Do you think it was a herd?" 

I shrug. "There's no telling. It seems like every time we think we know how they work, they always surprise us with new information and behaviors." 

"They could be adapting," Felix offers. 

"Well, that's a terrifying idea..." I mutter. "Almost four years of this, and still nothing makes sense."

"We could always just find someplace to hunker down," Octavia offers for the millionth time. "We don't really have to understand them so long as we stay safe."

"You know why we can't, O," I sigh. "I want to just as bad as you do, but we have an important task to finish first."

Octavia groans, shrugging my arm off of her as she stands to pace. "Not this shit again..." 

"Listen, Uncle Tommy trusted us to finish what he started, and Mom's counting on us. We can't let them down," I explain as Octavia paces.

"They're both dead, Cass. I know it's not what you want to hear, but they want to send us on a suicide mission. I just want us to be safe." 

I sigh. No matter how many times we have this conversation, Octavia always has to argue it. "We don't know for sure that they're dead. Hiding away from responsibility, especially this one, would be suicide," I tell her, and she looks away from me. "So long as I'm here, I'll make sure you two stay safe. I'm the big sister, so it's my responsibility." 

She doesn't respond, and Felix hugs me. "You don't have to carry that responsibility all on your own, Cass," he says. "We're in this together. We're a family, after all." 

I chuckle and hug my brother. Leave it to Felix to pull a cheesy line like that. We sit there in silence, listening to the activity of the camp outside. I know that trying to escape will likely get us killed, but I don't like being kept here as a prisoner, waiting for someone else to decide what to do with us. We sit there for perhaps an hour before we hear the doors unlock again, and Danielle, Josh, and the older man step inside. 

"How's your head?" The man asks. I stare at them as they enter and stiffen up as they close the doors behind them. The man sighs when I don't answer. "I'm not your enemy here. Why don't we start off with some names? I'm Leon, the leader of Camp Cottonwood. These two are Danielle and Josh, my lieutenants."

"What is this, a military camp or something?" I demand. 

"A refugee camp, actually," Leon states. "If you haven't noticed, we've been flying under the radar of some very dangerous people."

"The Widow's," I say. "Yeah, we know about them."

"Then you understand our caution," Leon says. 

"Just because I understand it doesn't mean I have to like it." 

Leon sighs. "I know this is a difficult situation for you to be in, but we couldn't just let you go in case if you were dangerous." 

I glare at him. "We're not with the Widow's, in case you haven't noticed. We're not marked like they are."

"This is true, though we know that they tend to use other survivors to do their bidding."

"So you're here to, what? Interrogate us?"

Leon shrugs. "If that's the word you wish to use, then yes. What do you know about the Widows?" 

I glance over at Felix and Octavia, then sigh. "We know that they use settlements to gather supplies, kill scavengers for supplies, and seek to expand their territory. We've had a few run-ins with them here and there," I explain. "They're a 'shoot first, ask questions later' sort of group."

"Do you know who their leader is?" Leon asks. 

"Why would I know that?" I question. "I only know about they're second in command, Triston-what's-his-nuts. We had a scare with him near the beginning."

Leon, Danielle, and Josh exchange glances, but I can't tell what they're thinking. 

"Triston has been dead for two years now," Josh says uneasily. "Their new second is a psychopath named Jessica. She's been running the ropes in the state for almost a year now." 

"How do you know this?" I demand, surprised at the news. 

"We've had dealings with her in the past," Leon says slowly, and Danielle looks tense, as stiff as a statue, her eyes hard as she glares at the floor. I'm sensing a much more complicated history than they're letting on. 

"But, that's beside the point," Leon says. "The fact that you didn't know this tells us that you have no current dealings with the Widows."

"Told you," I growl. 

"I still have some questions for you, however," he continues, and I roll my eyes. "What are you doing all the way out here, Cassandra?" 

My blood freezes at my name, and I glare at him as Felix and Octavia exchange nervous looks. Danielle and Josh seem just as surprised at this revelation, staring questioningly at Leon, though he remains calm. 

"How do you know my name?" I demand. 

"Your uncle, Thomas, was a good friend of mine. He spoke highly of the three of you before the infection," he replies, and takes out an old, folded-up photo from his pocket, and hands it to me. I snatch it from his hands and unfold it, gaping at the picture before me as Felix and Octavia lean to take a look.

It was taken about seven years ago at Christmas. Felix, Octavia, and I are dressed in our festive pajamas, sitting on the couch with wrapped-up gifts on our laps. Behind us, Uncle Tommy and Mom are leaned over the couch, huge grins on their faces. It was one of the few times Mom was able to come home for the holidays, but she could only stay for a couple of days. 

Her long, beautiful dark hair is done up in a bun, and behind her big, round glasses, her dark eyes shine brightly with a rare happiness we only ever saw when she was able to visit us in person. During our brief video chats with her at work, her face was always tense with stress and worry, though she would try to power through with a smile. 

It was early the following year that she stopped calling us.