Chapter Text
CHARLIE
Charlie can make out the highway through the thinning tree line. The grass slowly giving way to concrete, the air growing warm around her as the sun reaches toward the noon sky. She picks up her pace, excitement bubbling up within her – unbidden and strong.
“Check it out, Danny,” she says, glancing over her shoulder at her less than enthused younger brother.
Danny’s lagging behind. Still pissed at having to lie to Maggie and their father about their morning excursion.
It’s not lying, Charlie thinks. Not exactly.
The weight of the crossbow strung across her back and the worn hunting boots on her feet are testament to that. She has every intention of going hunting. After they check out the old, abandoned interstate.
“Here’s a crazy thought,” her brother says, the sarcasm thick in his warm voice. “How ’bout, for once, we actually go hunting when we say we will?”
Charlie rolls her eyes. “No one asked you to come.”
“No. Of course not. You just woke me up at dawn. Told me you were going out. To cover for you with dad and Maggie - because dad’s not pissed off enough after the shit you pulled last month - and you just expected me to stay behind.”
“No. Of course not,” Charlie yells over her shoulder. “Can’t have you missing out on all the fun.”
Danny huffs out a small laugh. “Charlie seriously,” he says and he stops walking. “We’re we going? It’ll be sun down by the time we make it back and we haven’t caught anything.”
“You’ll see,” she singsongs as she hops over a fallen tree log and moves toward the multilane expressway.
She doesn’t have to turn around to know her brother is following behind her.
That’s what Danny does. They mirror each other in that way. Both attached at the hip; always looking out for the other. Charlie staying up on nights when Danny’s asthma is at its worse, listening to each labored breath, tense and alert should he need her, Danny covering for her with their dad and step-mom, Charlie running off into something and Danny following behind, never far from her reach – her shadow, their mom used to say before she fucked off to God knows where.
Danny was cautious and thoughtful, Charlie reckless and headstrong- fire and ice the two of them. But it worked. They spent most of their childhood, especially in the first couple of months after their mom left when their dad drew inward from grief, finding the balance they needed to look out for each other.
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The highway is a desolate monument of twisted metal, glass and steel. The crash site is gruesome. There’s a pileup; cars - blue, black, silver, red- trucks, smaller compacts and even a large motorhome are all twisted, collided and crushed into one another. Left where they stopped, nearly thirteen years ago, to oxidized and rust.
Charlie wonders how many more highways and roads there are like this one, spread out all across a world that no longer has a place for electricity and modern inventions. There’s a certain melancholy to it. A beauty found in the remnants of the old days. It’s a small glimpse into a different time, a different place. So different to the boring, bucolic life that she’s confined to in Sullivan Estates.
Danny shuffles closer behind her, taking in the view. He’s not fascinated like she is. He looks sad, almost weary.
“People died here,” he says. His voice barely more than a whisper. Quiet to match the metallic graveyard that’s before them.
Charlie glances back at her brother through the halo of sunlight the bathes his blonde head. He’s all long, solid limbs and the wiry muscle of his soon to be fifteen. She doesn’t know when it happened but at some point they reached the same height. Now he is taller than her by a few inches and still shooting up like a wildflower. It’s like she can see the man he would be, straining at the edges, lingering on the peripheral, hinting at the whole.
It’s in every decision he makes. Every levelheaded, rational argument he launches at Charlie to try to temper her more reckless impulses. In every fight between her and their father that he plays peacekeeper for. Hell, it was even in the way he carried himself: quiet, always thoughtful, always cautious, but capable and solid in a way the Charlie never seems to project. He’s all these things, but at heart he was gentle. Much too gentle.
“You can go hunting without me, you know?” Charlie says. If only to spare him from what they might find once she goes looking through the cars. “I’ll meet up with you in bit. By our spot.”
They aren’t supposed to go hunting alone. Technically, they aren’t even supposed to be this far from the estates without an adult. But Charlie’s been eighteen for nearly two months. She’s more than capable of taking care of herself.
Danny runs a hand through his already disheveled hair, but doesn’t object as Charlie makes her way toward the RV. Bent and overturned on its side. Charlie hoists herself up over the side of the motorhome to its rusted door. Straining against it as she tries to pop it open.
“Go ahead already!”
She catches sight of her brother’s dubious look and swashes down a kernel of unease.
There’s a pebble of resentment there as well. She loves Danny more that she loves anyone else on this entire burnt out planet. More than their absentee mother, more than their worrywart of a father, more than their Uncle Miles – more myth than man in Charlie’s adoring eyes. But so much of her life has revolved around looking out for her younger brother.
Even now looking at him, a stone throw away from manhood, all she can see is the quiet little boy who followed her everywhere when they were younger.
All she remembers is the clench of fear she felt the one time she popped out of the green underbrush behind their house while he was gathering firewood.
She was twelve and stupid and angry at their mother and the world; it was meant to be a joke, a distraction, good for a quick scream and laugh.
The result wasn’t funny.
It was the first and only time their father ever hit her. He really shouldn’t have bothered.
That image of Danny, lying there in the dirt, clutching his chest and wheezing, his face purpling with the lack of air – it’s something she’ll never forget.
It’s the image she sees when she wakes up in the middle of the night to lay by Danny’s bed and listen to his breathing.
It’s that feeling – the terror, the overwhelming helplessness and guilt, the willingness to bargain away her soul in that moment if he’ll just breathe – that settles low and heavy in her stomach like a tidal wave washing over her.
Danny is her little brother and her best friend, but he’s also her biggest burden. Looking out for him is her oldest and most important job.
Listen to me Charlie. It’s important. Okay?
Hold onto you brother. Hold onto him and don’t let go. You understand me? No matter what happens. You hold his hand and you keep going. You make sure you have him. You promise?
I promise, Mommy.
“I’ll be right there,” Charlie tells Danny, still perched on the side of the RV. “I promise.”
And that’s it.
Those are the magic words in their house. Mathesons don’t make promises they can’t keep.
You say it, you follow through. Full stop.
“I’ll be fine, Danny. I just wanna look around a bit. Go hunt. This way we won’t go back empty handed. Besides you’re the better shot anyway,” she says with a wink as she drops down into the motorhome.
It’s a lie. They both know it. But Danny heads off into the forest anyway.
“No more than twenty minutes Charlie! Then we meet at our tree,” he calls out to her. His voice aiming for stern and falling just short.
“Yeah, got it,” Charlie mumbles, dusting herself off and taking a look around the old trailer.
It’s dusty and mildewed, the air stale.
She looks around at the microwave and fridge, at the small iPod port dangling from a socket, and feels a stilted sense of familiarity, a sharp pang of longing for a world lost and unattainable.
She remembers these things. She barely had five years in the light, but the memories are there, vague and fuzzy around the edges, but there.
The hum of the fridge, the ding of a microwave, the spinning wheels of a pink, child-sized car, the bright lights of TV, the color of cartoons, the clanking drop of an icemaker. Ice-cream. The memory hangs before her as she lingers in front of the fridge. A large tub, the silver spoon, her small hand and her parents watching rapt with attention as she brought it to her mouth in the dim candle light – the looks on their faces sad.
She remembers the IPod too.
It was a holiday she thinks. Her parents were home and it was summer, her Uncle Miles and his friend showed up. They cooked in the backyard, under circular hanging lights. Music played, fast and upbeat. Her uncle- his face open, his smile wide - tossed her up in the air and twirled around fast to the rhythm. Charlie’s mother stood in a white dress and her uncle’s friend looked on, their laughs mingling with her bright, high childlike one.
The feeling of soaring, flying in the air and strong arms, wrapping around her to keep her safe from the fall.
Charlie pulls out of the memory with a jolt.
The blast of a gunshot rings in the distance as she scrambles up through the door of the RV. She whips her head around to the direction of the sound. The direction that Danny just walked off into not too long ago. She hops down and starts running toward the woods with fast jerky strides.
Don’t let it be Danny. Please, don’t let it be Danny. She says the words like a prayer as a fear, fiery and viscous, clutches around her heart and squeezes.
“CHARLIE!!”
Her brother’s voice, high with panic and pain, rings out in the distance. It stabs into Charlie like a sharp punch to the gut before she’s off like a bullet, pulling her crossbow from her back as she goes.
Tree branches lash at her as she crashes through the forest. Hopping over logs and large rocks, her heavy breathing and heartbeat are loud in her ears. The terror strong in her gut.
“DANNY?!” she calls.
“DANNY!”
There are three men in the clearing up ahead - rough, massive and armed - holding Danny as he thrashes in their grip. They’re trying to secure his wrists and ankles with coarse rope. A deep cherry blood flows down his left leg, but he still fights.
Charlie’s never killed before.
She’s never really fought much besides the schoolboy bullies in their small commune. But she’s hunted plenty. The principle is the same.
At least that’s what she tells herself as she moves forward on automatic and lets her arrow fly. It catches the man struggling with Danny’s feet clean through his shin with a solid swoosh of air and a heavy thunk. He let’s loose a shout of pain, the sound more animal than human, as he drops Danny’s feet and clutches his own leg. Charlie’s fingers tremble, but she barely hesitates as she reloads. She’s got their attention now.
“That was a warning,” she says. Her knees shake but her voice is steady and low. A sharp contrast to the panic that clawing for control. “Let him go.”
Her eyes dart to her brother’s quickly and then away as she feels a man’s gaze turn to her. She takes in the mottled scar across the side of his face and his yellowing teeth as his pale eyes slide up her form slowly and settle on her face with a jungle cat’s predatory regard. His heavily scarred hand rests casually on the dagger at his side as he saunters closer, blocking her path to Danny.
“Don’t move,” she chokes out.
“Aww, boys, looks like we only grab part of a set,” Scarface says in a thick, cloying voice, “and Goldilocks here looks like she wants to play.”
There’s a chuckle from the man shoving her brother’s face into the dirt ground, his knee pinning Danny’s writhing body down as a dirt-coated hand pressing into the side of his head.
“You are a pretty one,” says the man, “my favorite kind to play with.”
Charlie clutches her crossbow tighter. Her finger hovering over the trigger as she keeps her eyes locked on the man in front of her. There is a flash of movement and sliver and Charlie fires off two bolts in quick succession. The first one slices through the forearm of the man holding Danny, who releases her brother and curls into himself with the impact of the pain. The next arrow hits closer to home. Lodging itself into the side of Scarface’s throat. There’s a sickening crunch, gurgle, and an outpouring of red on dirt-coated skin. A sudden splatter on the forest ground. The man reaches up quickly, shock passing his features before he instinctively tries to pull the arrow out of his neck. Blood dribbles from his mouth. His body hits the floor with a thud, his eyes still open as blood pours from his neck. He jerks once before he dies.
He’s dead.
Oh God!
He’s dead and she killed him.
Charlie chokes down bile.
She can’t fall apart. Not right now.
Adrenaline still high, she moves toward Danny, who stares in shock for a moment, a big red gash at the side of his mouth before he rushes to undo his binds.
“Da- Danny, you okay?” Charlie falls to her knees to try to help him with the ropes.
“I- I’m fine. Shit, Charlie. You-- ”
There’s a sudden movement in her peripheral.
She’s tackled, full force by a solid weight. Charlie’s back slams into the hard packed dirt. All the air is knocked from her lungs as the heavy weight on top of her sinks its fist into her side and then her face in quick succession.
Pinned to the ground, Charlie thrashes against the mass of the man on top of her- smell of sweat, dirt and alcohol strong - his steel colored eyes enraged.
“You killed him! You stupid bitch! You killed him!” The deep voice rumbles, furious and beyond reason.
She can her hear Danny screaming “Let her go”, the sound of a scuffle, the thump of fist meeting flesh. She bites the closest part of the man she can find, hard and deep down through the surface; hard enough to draw blood and feels a sick satisfaction at the bastard’s scream of pain.
The feeling doesn’t last.
The man clenches, hard and fast, at Charlie’s throat. Savage enough to crush her windpipe. She thrashes against him violently, nails drawing down awkwardly to claw his hands off her. It’s no use. He’s not letting up. Charlie’s lungs scream for air, her vision blurring before her.
“Trevor, that’s enough! Trevor, ease up man! We need ‘em alive!”
Another man tugs Trevor’s fingers from around her throat and she takes in deep choking gulps of air. As though she’s just come up from holding her breath beneath the surface of a deep pool of water.
Something hard and solid knocks her across the side of her skull before she can resume her struggle.
Bright lights dance behind eyelids. The pain is sharp and sudden and brings tears to her eyes. She let’s out a ragged sob.
Danny
It’s her last sound.
Her last thought before the darkness takes her.