Sam had not been fully conscious for a day or two before someone put her in the back of a truck. The restraints seemed silly - she could barely move, let alone run. Her thoughts weren’t even coherent enough to worry.

The rest of the day was a confusing set of moments - having her hands untied, being wrapped in a jacket, being carried, the quiet movement of horse cart. Then more and more strange voices, a house, a woman who kept leaning over her, touching her forehead, putting something weird and beeping in her ear. Hours, days even, went by in a blur. At least the nightmares had stopped. 

Her first truly conscious moment was on a grey, sunny day, a sickly sort of light washing over her on the couch. She took in a very ordinary living room - beside her couch bed, two matching armchairs, a little side table, and an old-fashioned iron stove, embers still burning. Across the room, a half wall sectioned off the kitchen, painted blue and grey. The fridge had been replaced with an icebox, and the oven seemed unused, replaced by a plate of iron that could be warmed on the stove. Down the hall was two, maybe three doors.

Standing in the kitchen was a white woman with blonde hair, done up in a ponytail. She wore a plaid shirt and patched jeans and seemed to be heating a soup pot. Sam suddenly noticed the smell of soup broth making its way to the living room. 

The woman turned, and Sam closed her eyes again. She could just make out voices down the hall, then the footsteps came back into the room.

“I don’t want to wake her.”

Another voice: “She needs to eat, Em. Her fever broke last night, she —“ They stopped talking as the voice came towards the couch. “Well, look at that.”

“What?”

Something clinked near Sam’s head, then the person moved away. “Let’s eat in my office,” they said. 

Sam waited a while after she couldn’t hear them anymore. Then she chanced a look around. No one there. The soup was warm and comforting in her empty stomach. 

Sam slept through the next few days. In her moments of waking, she learned the woman was Em, or Emily. The house’s other inhabitant was a skinny brown person who usually wore jean overalls and was named Quinn. Sometimes Emily and Quinn were visited by a younger black woman Sam though she’d seen on the way to wherever this was, who they called Rachel. The older woman who often came with her was her mother, Camilla.

All of them were horribly confusing. As her health improved and she felt less and less like a paper doll, she expected them to move her somewhere a bit more secure. Somewhere like the barn she’d lived in in the last town. Or maybe not exactly like that - she was pretty sure the cold and wet of the barn was what made her sick. But somewhere she couldn’t just walk out the door. But no one moved her. She stayed on the couch. 

They gave her clothes, a soft blue dress with pockets and a pair of knit socks. They asked her permission before they touched her. They spoke softly, and rarely asked questions. They told her what they were going to do before they did it.

One particularly painful night - Sam’s legs hurt bad when she tried to sleep - she overheard Em and Quinn discussing her in the kitchen.

“We’ve been talking about moving my office to the shed anyways. We can make that room her bedroom.”

“Mmm. Makes sense.”

“You can say no, Em. Other people will take her.”

“No, I want her, I just —“

They went quiet. Sam could hear her heartbeat, her breath, the crackle of flames in the stove. 

“You really think we can help her?” Em asked. “I mean, us?” She laughed. “What business do I have raising a child?”

“You’re not your parents, Em.”

“I know.” A long pause. “I want to see that girl smile so bad it hurts.”

Quinn laughed. “I’ll ask Paul if they’ve got some spare furniture around.”

The next day Sam spent much of the morning studying Emily. She’d learned long ago to doubt the people who were kind to her — most were only kind because they wanted something, and that kindness disappeared when she refused them. But these people stayed kind when they thought she wasn’t listening. Their hands were gentle even when they believed she was asleep. Trust wasn’t exactly in her vocabulary, but maybe she could give in just a little. 

Emily seemed startled to find her staring. “Everything alright?” she asked, coming over to sit on the edge of the couch bed.

Sam wrapped her arms around her bent legs and shrugged. She didn’t do much talking anymore. The words were hard to find.

“How are you feeling?” Emily asked.

Sam shrugged. “Okay,” she mumbled into her knees. 

“That’s good.” Emily reached for the hairbrush on the side table. Sam tried very hard not to flinch. “May I?” Emily asked.

Sam nodded and turned around so Emily could brush her hair. It was an uncomfortably intimate thing, feeling this stranger’s hands in her hair, gently combing out the knots. Her hair was cut short long ago to make it easier to deal with, but for the first time she wondered what it might be like to grow it out again. 

Emily tugged a little as she did something extra, reaching into her pockets for little blue ribbons. She came around to check her work.

“Want to see?” she asked, holding out her hand. 

Sam allowed herself to be led to the bathroom, where Emily stood her in front of the mirror.

Staring back was a girl with clean, shiny brown hair, with two sections pulled aside and tied with bows. Her dress was clean, and her size, and her face clear of bruises. She was a stranger. Sam shrugged her shoulder in the mirror just to check. The girl in the mirror shrugged back.

“I don’t know if this is your style, Quinn did say you might be older than you look.”

“I’m fourteen,” Sam said without really thinking about it. 

She saw the flash of surprise and pain cross Emily’s face before it was replaced with her usual smile. “I see.”

They were both silent, watching each other in the mirror. After a while, Emily said, “Can I know your name?”

“Sam Bryant.” Sam was tired of being called “kid”. She’d just wanted to be asked instead of telling them on her own. 

“Sam.” In Emily’s voice her name was soft and small, a delicate thing. Sam didn’t feel like a delicate thing. She stepped away and returned to the living room, shaking off the fragile and dangerous feelings building in the back of her throat. No point getting her hopes up.

It was another few days before Sam’s body felt normal again. She did a few jumps and jogs in the quiet of the morning just to check. Nothing protested.

She didn’t feel particularly guilty rummaging through their cupboards. It seemed only fair, considering they had bought her. Despite all their gentleness, Sam had not forgotten that.

Whatever seemed like it would keep a while went into the backpack she’d stolen from Quinn’s office while the two of them were outside on the porch. She’d stashed that with some mittens and a hat in the space under the fold out couch bed. Someone had given her a coat and boots, and she’d accumulated some more practical clothes as well as the comfortable dress. It seemed smart to be on her way before it snowed. She pulled the straps tight on the backpack and carefully opened the door.

The street looked normal in the morning light. The houses and lawns were dusted with white frost. If you ignored the fence, the sawed off bases of the streetlights, and the big metal containers in someone’s yard, you might be able to forget there was an apocalypse at all.

There was also, unfortunately, a guard at the gates, half asleep with a shotgun over his lap. It was the same man who Sam recalled had bought her, who she’d learned was Camilla’s husband and was named Paul. He’d seemed mild mannered when she’d seen him since, but anybody will look threatening with a gun in their hand. 

Sam walked around the house between her and the fence, and found a spot where a tree grew very near the fence. The barrier was topped with coils of barbed wire, and Sam’s mittens wouldn’t be enough to protect her from that. She stuffed them in her pocket to climb the tree, crawled along the branch, then swung down and dropped into the hayfield on the other side. She rolled across the hay to break the fall, the blades scratching at her face. 

She got a good ways through the hay before she heard someone shout. Too far to hear properly, she broke into a run, scrambling through the hay and stumbling against the accumulated stalks on the ground. She could think of few places worse for running through. 

The sound of a person crashing through hay behind her put extra speed into her, heart pounding from the exertion and the fear. If she was caught, that would be the end of the couch bed and the soup and the nice clothes. They would stop treating her like she was one of them. In a way, she preferred that - at least it was honest. But she would really like to get away, just this once. She’d never been this close before. 

She felt the person catch up right before they threw their weight on top of her, sending them both crashing to the ground. They held her by her arms as they turned her around. 

It was Quinn, kneeling in front of her in the cold, wet hay, gasping for breath. Their grip was tight on Sam’s forearms, but not enough to hurt too badly. Sam took the chance to try to get her own breath back.

“Kid,” Quinn gasped finally. “Sam. Look at me.”

Reluctantly, Sam looked. Quinn was always hard to read, but they were extra confusing now. Too much going on in their eyes to sort it all out. 

“You understand winter’s coming, right? In a couple weeks sleeping outside would kill you. You understand?”

Sam nodded, because that seemed like that’s what they wanted her to do.

“I’ll make a deal with you, okay? Just stay with us until spring. After that, if you still want to leave, we won’t stop you. But stay until the snow thaws, okay? Can you agree to that?”

It took a moment for Sam to process their words. They weren’t half as angry as she’d expected. “You’ll let me go?”

“Yes. After winter. Okay?”

They seemed sincere. And at any rate, she was caught, so what was there to lose? “Okay.”

They sighed. “Okay.” 

They let go and stood, offering Sam their hand. Sam let them help her up.

“Nobody here’s going to hurt you, alright?” Quinn said. “I know you don’t believe that. But it needed to be said.”

Sam watched them walk back towards the little street. It took a while before they looked back. They didn’t say anything.

Sam ran to catch up.