Chapter 4 - Triage

Better shelter is a myth people tell themselves so they don't notice they are still sleeping near a door that wants to become a mouth.

The warehouse is better, though.

Maya hates that.

It sits at the edge of a residential neighbourhood, squat and ugly, with corrugated metal walls, one loading bay, two side exits, and the defeated smell of old cardboard. In its previous life it probably stored office chairs or printer toner or other items civilisation once considered worth transporting across cities.

Now it stores Maya, Dex, twelve bottles of water, seven tins of food, one crowbar, and a level of tension that should technically require its own shelf.

"Homey," Dex says, looking around.

Maya shines her flashlight over the cracked concrete floor. "Yes. Very industrial chic. All it needs is a rug and fewer ways to die."

They found the place after leaving the community centre at dawn, when the dead gathered too thick near the front entrance and the back alley started making noises an alley should never make unless it has swallowed a marching band. Maya picked it for sightlines, storage racks, and a flat roof with internal access. Dex picked it because there were no corpses in the first room. Both are valid selection criteria. Hers just came with fewer surprise endings.

She spends the day working. Not heroically. Not beautifully. Survival is not beautiful. Survival is stacking pallets against a loading bay until your shoulders scream, then checking whether the bathroom tap still works, then filling plastic storage bins with water because apparently bucket has become a luxury category.

Dex helps. Mostly when she is looking.

When she hands him boards, he carries boards. When she points at a gap under 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 shelving unit until it apologises.

He can make her laugh. That's 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.

By late afternoon, Maya has a system. Water near the rear wall, shaded and covered. Food in a plastic crate under the metal office desk, portioned by day. Tools by the roof access. Sleeping area on the mezzanine, because height matters, and also because if she is eaten on the ground floor after all this effort, she will be furious in whatever afterlife accepts women with poor sleep and excellent knife discipline.

Dex watches her tape a hand-drawn map beside the office door.

"You really think of everything," he says.

It sounds admiring. It is admiring. It also sounds like an invitation to keep thinking of everything so he doesn't have to.

"Somebody has to," Maya says.

He doesn't answer. For a second she wants him to argue, to say I'm here too, to be offended enough to become useful. Instead he sits on an overturned crate and rubs his face. "I'm exhausted."

Maya looks at the barricade she built, the water she hauled, the food she counted, the exits she checked, the roof she cleared, the mental list still breeding in her skull like anxious rabbits.

"Same," she says. It comes out almost kind.

***

Near dusk, she sees the woman.

Maya is on the roof with binoculars from the security drawer—the universe occasionally throws her a bone, then labels it probably cursed—scanning the street below.

The woman moves between two houses across the road. 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.

Dex comes up behind her, breathing loud enough to alert three counties. "What is it?"

"Survivor."

"Should we call out?"

"No."

The woman turns then, 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.

"Guess she didn't want company," Dex says.

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.

"Guess not," she says.

***

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

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

Seven tins should be seven tins.

Six look back at her with the blank, smug faces of canned goods who know damn well they've been involved in something. One protein bar missing too.

She closes the crate. Returns it exactly as it was. Climbs the ladder. Lies down beside the man she loves. Stares into the dark until morning begins thinking about arriving.

She says nothing.

The counting does not stop.