Chapter 3 - Day three. The math is getting harder.

By day three, Maya has developed a close personal relationship with the inventory spreadsheet in her head.

It has columns. It has projections. It has the grim emotional energy of a wedding seating plan prepared during a hostage situation.

“Breakfast,” she says, placing two protein bars on the folding table like she’s serving tiny beige steaks.

Dex looks at his. “Half?”

“Half.”

“It’s breakfast.”

“It’s apocalypse breakfast. Very exclusive. Terrible reviews.”

He picks it up, frowning. “I’m hungry.”

Maya almost laughs. Not because it’s funny. Because if she doesn’t laugh, something else might come out, and it has teeth.

They’re both hungry. Hunger has become the third person in the room, sitting between them with its elbows on the table, breathing hot and sour into every conversation. Maya feels it behind her ribs. In her hands. In the new sharpness of her thoughts.

Dex eats his half in two bites. Then reaches for the wrapper, licks a smear of chocolate from the inside, and looks away like she hasn’t seen him do it before.

She says nothing. That is becoming a skill.

Outside, the city has changed voices. The first day was sirens and screaming. The second was breaking glass, car alarms, distant gunshots. Now there is a quieter sound underneath everything.

Shuffling.

Waiting.

The dead aren’t fast. That’s the one mercy. They gather where noise happens and stay there, patient as unpaid debt.

The community center still holds. Mostly. The barricades are ugly but solid, a sculpture called Panic With Chairs. Maya has spent the morning improving them with whatever she can find: folding tables, chairs, a bookcase, three dented filing cabinets and one motivational poster about teamwork that feels personally offensive.

Dex helps. Mostly when she is looking.

When she hands him a chair, he stacks a chair. When she points at a gap beneath the side door, he wedges cardboard into it and says, “Like this?”

“Wood would be better.”

He goes to find wood and comes back with a mop handle.

Maya looks at it.

Dex lifts one shoulder. “It was wood-adjacent.”

She laughs, because the alternative is screaming into a storage cupboard until it apologizes.

He can make her laugh. That is real. He remembers stupid details too, like how she hates canned peas but will eat them if mixed with enough hot sauce to qualify as a workplace hazard. He once drove forty minutes to bring her a phone charger because she texted I may die at 3% and he replied Not on my watch, like a man entering battle with Apple compatibility issues.

She loves him.

She sees him.

Those two things are beginning to feel less like twins and more like opposing legal teams.

At noon, Dex announces, “I’m going scouting.”

Maya looks up from the last of the canned goods. Three tins of beans. Two soups. One fruit cocktail. A jar of peanut butter with a tragic amount left in the corners. Enough for two people for maybe four days if they are disciplined.

She knows what scouting means.

Not information gathering. Not reconnaissance. She knows it with the same part of her that understood the side door hinges would come loose; the quiet, practical part that has been awake since the world ended and is irritatingly competent about ruin.

Dex is going outside because the walls are pressing on him. Because hunger makes him restless. Because there are vending machines two blocks over and he thinks she didn’t notice him looking at them yesterday.

She should say no. She should say, You are not good at quiet. She should say, Don’t make me be the only adult here.

What comes out is, “Take the bat.”

He smiles, relieved too quickly. “Yeah. Of course.”

“Don’t go farther than two blocks.”

“Right.”

“And if you hear anything, you come back.”

“I know, Maya.”

There it is. Her name as a complaint.

She nods like it doesn’t land.

After he leaves, she works for the first hour. Reinforces the back hallway with a broken table. Checks the bathroom windows. Fills every bottle, jug, and mop bucket with water from the taps because the pressure has started coughing, and water systems are staffed by exactly nobody now.

She finds a first-aid kit in a supply cupboard and nearly kisses it. Bandages. Antiseptic. Painkillers. A small miracle in a plastic box. She labels it mentally: DO NOT LET DEX “JUST CHECK” THIS.

Then she hates herself a little.

By the second hour, she is listening. Every sound outside becomes him dying. A scrape. A shout. A crash far off, followed by birds exploding from a rooftop like the sky has sneezed. She stands by the side door with the knife in her hand and tells herself she is only being prepared.

Prepared is a good word. It wears sensible shoes.

It sounds better than terrified.

Near dusk, she climbs to the roof with binoculars from the security drawer — the universe occasionally throws her a bone, then labels it probably cursed — and scans the street below.

That is when she sees the woman.

Across the road, moving between two houses. Alone. Backpack. Hammer. Hair tied up. No wasted motion. She pauses near a parked car, checks underneath it first, then inside, then the reflection in the window behind her.

Competent, Maya thinks.

The word hits harder than it should.

The woman turns, as if she feels the weight of Maya’s attention. For one strange second, they look at each other across the ruined street. Maya lifts one hand. Small.

The woman hesitates, then lifts hers back.

No smile. No invitation. No rescue fantasy.

Just acknowledgement.

Then she moves on.

Maya watches her disappear behind a row of burned-out cars. There is a feeling in her chest. Not loneliness. Not exactly. Envy is an ugly word, so she doesn’t use it.

The side door rattles just before full dark.

She lets Dex in. He stumbles through, flushed and sweating, empty-handed. No bag. No supplies. No miracle.

She bolts the door behind him.

“You’re late,” she says.

“I got cut off. Had to circle around.” He bends over, hands on his knees. “Bad people.”

His jacket is zipped. His mouth smells faintly sweet. Artificial strawberry, hiding beneath fear and sweat.

Vending machine.

Of course.

She thinks: You left me here to guard our shelter while you ate candy in a dead city.

She says, “Okay.”

Dex’s shoulders drop with relief. He steps toward her, wanting comfort, forgiveness, maybe both gift-wrapped with a note saying don’t worry, you’re still good.

Maya gives him a smile. Small. Tired. Usable.

Later, after Dex falls asleep too quickly, Maya checks the supplies.

She tells herself it is routine. Routine is a lovely word for mistrust wearing a clipboard.

Three tins of beans.

Two soups.

One fruit cocktail.

Peanut butter.

Five protein bars.

And one empty wrapper tucked badly beneath a stack of paper plates.

Maya picks it up. Smooths it flat between her fingers.

She imagines showing it to him. His face going hurt, then defensive, then sorry. Dex is very good at sorry. It arrives soft-eyed and sincere and completely unaccompanied by change.

She folds the wrapper once. Twice.

Puts it in her pocket.

Evidence, says the mean part.

No, she tells herself.

Memory.

She lies down beside the man she loves and stares into the dark until morning begins thinking about arriving.

She says nothing.

The counting does not stop.