Page 32 of Charging Dodge

“I don't know the specifics, Carter.”

“You're lying,” Carter accuses.

“I'm not telling you everything. That's different.”

Carter stares at me, working his jaw the way he does when he's deciding whether to push harder, and Amelia stirs, murmurs something into her rabbit's ear, and that seems to take some of the fight out of him. He doesn't want to wake her into this either. “Is he coming back tonight?” Carter's voice has dropped, quieter now.

“I don't know,” I murmur.

“You don't know, or you don't want to say,” Carter presses.

“Both,” I admit. “I don't have a way to reach him. He doesn't have a way to reach us. We wait.”

Carter lies back down but keeps his eyes open, staring at the ceiling, jaw tight. I know that look. It's the one he wore in the car outside Colorado, back when he decided he was the one responsible for keeping the rest of us alive. “He gave me a gun,” Carter says after a while. “Told me if anyone comes through that door who isn't supposed to be there, I use it.”

“Nobody's coming through that door,” I say.

“You don't know that,” Carter mutters.

“Hulk's patrolling,” I remind him.

That gets a small, grudging nod from Carter. Hulk carries weight in this house that even Carter respects, the kind that doesn't need explaining twice. “Just him?” Carter asks.

“Just him. Everybody else went with Dodge,” I say.

“That's not a lot of people,” Carter grumbles.

Sighing in frustration, I state, “It's enough.” I don't know if I believe that, but I say it anyway, because some nights the only thing you can offer a fourteen-year-old is conviction you don't actually have.

“I hate this,” Carter mutters, not looking at me. “I hate not knowing anything. I hate having to pretend I'm fine so Amelia and Noah don't fall apart.”

“I know,” I whisper.

“Do you?” Carter challenges.

“Carter, I've been doing the same thing since Colorado.”

That quiets him. Noah's hand finds mine under the blanket, small fingers wrapping around two of mine, and I squeeze back without looking at him. “Is Dodge gonna die?” Noah whispers, and so much for pretending he was asleep.

“No,” I say, too fast, too certain, hating how easily the lie comes out when I don't actually know.

“You don't sound sure,” Noah says.

“I'm sure. He's careful. He's got people watching his back,” I insist.

“Like Hulk?” Noah asks.

“Men like Hulk,” I confirm. “A bunch of big scary men who know what they're doing.”

Noah considers that, thumb rubbing the edge of his rabbit's ear, a habit he picked up somewhere around week two of us running. “Okay,” Noah finally says, and some of the tension goes out of his small body. Amelia never stirs through any of it, snoring lightly against the wall, mouth open. None of us sleep much after that. I lie there listening to the house, the settle and creak of old wood, the wind picking at the shutters. Miranda's down the hall, has been all night, and I don't wake her. She's earned a few more hours before the house asks anything else of her. Sometime later, I get up and pad downstairs in socks. Carter follows without asking, gun tucked in the waistband of his sweatpants like Dodge taught him. He must’ve found where I hid it after taking it away from him and stashed it where he’d be able to get to it in a flash. Neither of us says anything about it. Hulk's in the front room, planted in the armchair by the window with a shotgun across his knees, watching the yard through a gap in the curtain.

“Can't sleep?” Hulk asks without turning his head.

“None of us can,” I respond. Carter drops onto the floor near the window, back against the wall, knees pulled to his chest. Hulk glances at Carter once, but doesn't tell him to go back to bed. “Noah asked me if Dodge is going to die,” I say.

Hulk's jaw tightens, just slightly. “He ain't gonna die.”

“You don't know that,” I press.