The Flicker (Master 3)

Rose still hasn’t said anything back, so when Sammy gives another vicious holler, Millie sighs.

As if summoned by the sound of her name, the skinny brindle hound appears from around a jagged corner of the mountainside, trotting over to Millie’s side.

They don’t help much, casting more of a shadowy effect than anything else, but it’s all they have.

She remembers being scared all the time, though maybe that had more to do with the apocalypse than the bunker.

Their portable radio is on at her side, playing nothing but static.

It’s supposed to be a rhetorical question, ’cause it don’t matter if she does.

Supposedly, it’s some kind of survivors’ camp, a safe haven for people looking for community.

Supposedly, it’s some kind of survivors’ camp, a safe haven for people looking for community.

Cannibalism is a thing now.

“Obviously, since I ain’t clinging to the idea of some fantasy utopia. Honestly, Rose, I think you read too many of those kids’ books about dragons back in the day.

Sammy babbles his nonsensical language, having no idea he’s never gon’ see his sister again.

Clothes, and books, and silly, pointless trinkets.

Corncob trots in front of them, occasionally doubling back to make sure her people are still following, somehow
knowing the right direction to walk.

At least it distracts her from the overbearing heat.

There are a few still clinging to hope, trying their hardest not to give in, but, for the most part, Millie’s surrounded by lifeless hawthorns and locusts, their bark turning gray with rot, their leafless limbs beginning to sweep toward her.

On her chest, Sammy makes a sad, agitated little sound and opens his eyes, blinking woefully up at her.

As miserable as Rose sounds about it, some broken shard of glass inside of Millie slots itself back into place.

Some jerky.

Nothing at all like Brianna, her mama, who was all quirky and exciting and weird.

She was kinda forgetful—she forgot Millie’s whole birthday the first year Rose lived with them—but she was nice.

And she did get Sammy out of the arrangement.

Back before, you know, everything was terrible and dead and finding anything to eat, ever, was next to impossible.

She figured out how to repurpose the clothes he’d grown out of into reusable diapers and wipes with just some needle and thread.

“Rose, that feels really inappropriate given the circumstances, don’t you think?”

“Rose, that feels really inappropriate given the circumstances, don’t you think?”

No way Millie would dare show even a hint of human emotion for more than two seconds.

“Well? What about this? We can just forage for mushrooms, right?”

Sammy looks down at the little fungus and reaches out experimentally to grab it.

Rose allows for a few moments of forced patience before growing tired of both.

“You are a caretaker of the land. Your people have lived here since time immemorial. You should know this.”

She picks up her dad’s radio, turning it on to familiar static, and tucks it under her arm.

It’s kind of really in the middle of nowhere, just a little nothing convenience store and gas station for people on long-haul road trips.

The tears that well up in Millie’s eyes seriously make Rose question her own sanity.

Whatever weird emotional journey her stepsister is going on because of some forest vegetation is really none of her business.

The lucky ones—if you can consider anyone who just watched more than half the planet get turned to actual freaking dust right in front of them lucky—were left in a world with no technology, no real government with any real power, and very, very little food.

She watches, half-fascinated and half-indignant, as the smog overhead whirls furiously toward her, like a thick blanket of toxic gray fumes clinging to the air.

She rips the bandana from around her neck over her nose, masking up.

Of course, a year of apocalyptic living has changed the vibe of the little store immensely.

What he didn’t see firsthand, he learned from broadcasts from the survivors’ Sanctuary.

’Cause apparently, they’d take those trucks into any towns they could reach, loading up all the food and supplies they could find, and then keeping it all behind locked doors back at their headquarters.

Her dad was brilliant.

Kindling, for later, in case desperation for a fire outweighs the dangers of starting one.

Kindling, for later, in case desperation for a fire outweighs the dangers of starting one.

When her fingers collide with something round and cool, she pulls it out.

Rose has every intention of hurrying back to the woods as quick as possible.

But she’s only taken a few steps into the truck stop parking lot when the radio under her arm changes from a quiet, thrumming kind of static, to a more mechanical, clicking sound.

It’s lyrical, lilting, almost like a songbird.

It’s lyrical, lilting, almost like a songbird.

Frantic, she yanks some of the old newspaper out of her pocket.

She’s so desperate to find something to scribble with, half listening to the broadcast and half searching, she don’t even notice someone is coming up behind her until they grab her arm.

How do you convince a hungry baby to eat, when he don’t want the only thing that’s there?

Rose’s last words replay ominously in Millie’s mind.

And she knew, when Rose said her goodbyes, she wasn’t joking or being dramatic.

The idea of her stepsister never returning, never walking back through those trees, never again shooting her a bratty little smirk or an eye roll, makes Millie’s stomach hurt in a whole brand-new way.

“Feral child! Please calm down!”

This makes their presence slightly better.

Millie don’t think she’s unintelligent, exactly.

Did she eat one of those mushrooms, and now she’s dead, and this is some weird afterlife where nothing makes any sense?

Or is he lulling her into a false sense of security so he can barbecue her later?

How could a girl who lacks any self-control at all possibly know when to shut up?

What alternate reality did she accidentally step into?

“Ben was our counselor at drama camp. We were putting on a production of Peter Pan. You know”—she flicks her wrist—“when everything went to hell. Anyway, I’m Addison.”

And lastly to two white kids, both with blue eyes and colorless hair, practically identical to each other, except for one being a boy and the other a girl.

That was the only real conclusion she’d come to after looking over the map, before Sammy wouldn’t let her anymore.

“Also, he’s really squeamish. He’d probably throw up if he ever had to fight someone.”

Millie raises her eyebrows at the man, sarcasm dripping off every word when she says, “Well, gee, don’t you just sound like my hero.”

Millie raises her eyebrows, skeptical.

Rose is on the verge of a conniption.

The giant hunk of metal looks like something out of a movie; what was once perfectly ordinary is now totally alien in this world.

The yellow paint is in obnoxiously good condition, like the bus just dropped off the last kid at home and is about to head back to the schoolyard to sleep it off.

Someone has painted NEVERLAND across the side in sloppy, goopy black smudges, really only legible because Millie is smart enough to use context clues.

She ain’t sure what’s worse—how incredibly impractical it is to live in this kind of mess when they might have to run or fight at any moment, or how she hasn’t seen this many luxuries in one place since before the Flicker.

Just lying around, like every single one ain’t precious?

She plops down onto a particularly high pile of pillows and props herself up on her elbows.

Ben looks like he’s gonna pop a vessel.

Millie pats his back in fake understanding.

In a mocking baby voice, she tells their brother, “Your sister’s a weirdo. Yeah. She sure is.”

“That’s … that’s an interesting comparison that I hadn’t considered before.”

“Besides, don’t it make you a hypocrite—telling them they should be embarrassed, when you’re sitting your happy butt on this bus right now, too?”

“Okay, hey, hey. I think we all need to just simmer down.”

Just as the ignition turns over and the bus flares to life, rumbling underneath her in a familiar-but-forgotten kinda way that makes Millie’s whole body tremble, she adds, “Before he died, my stepdaddy told me that everyone in the whole world always swore they were just doing their best. He said they kept swearing it while they stood around and did nothing and watched the world end.”

Rose rolls her eyes at Millie’s turned back, but then sticks her tongue out, to Sammy’s amusement.

Bells, in all the hubbub from finding the Lost Boys and setting out together, she’d forgotten the message that’d come through earlier.

Rose struggles to remember, frantically pushing through her brain to try and dredge it up.

“You wouldna happened to’ve heard what I was listening to, did you?” she asks Ben, too hopeful for her own good.

“It’s a survivors coalition, right? We’ve run into a few people who didn’t immediately try and kill us this year—some of them had stories about the Sanctuary. No one had ever actually been there, but some of them knew people who had. Some of them were looking for it. That’s who you were listening to—a broadcast from the Sanctuary?”

He wanted to be a professor, and teach sociology.

“And anyway, it’s complicated. The same way you and your sister are on your mission, we’re kind of on one of our own.”

“And anyway, it’s complicated. The same way you and your sister are on your mission, we’re kind of on one of our own.”

Instead, he says, “I keep journals—the basement we were in was full of composition books and pencils, and all of them survived. I’ve tried to write down everything I’ve ever learned about the Sanctuary. Maybe there’s something there, something that could help you crack the code. You could read through them, if you wanted. Is that something you’d like?”

Millie’s standing over a jerry-rigged camping stove, dried-up twigs shoved tight together inside what mighta once been a hubcap from a car, smoldering all yellow and orange.

Millie’s standing over a jerry-rigged camping stove, dried-up twigs shoved tight together inside what mighta once been a hubcap from a car, smoldering all yellow and orange.

“Yeah, lucky your parents could afford to send you to a fancy sleepaway summer camp.”

But the embarrassment ain’t enough to stop Rose from tucking in again, anyway.

In the silence that follows, Millie mutters, all condescending like she always is, “The closet. Obviously.”

Rose don’t appreciate some city boy from Pittsburgh coming down here and basically calling her an ignorant hick.

Her heart skitters in her chest, the rhythm strange and offbeat.

When she makes the accusation for the third time, Ben yanks on the bus lever to open up the door and hollers out, “Can all of you please just go find something to do and let me focus? Please.”

Somehow, Millie thinks he must know that was just about the only thing he coulda said to actually get her to give up on the interrogation and follow the rest of them.

Noah is asking, pointing at Sammy, who’s strapped to Rose’s back and babbling nonsense up at the spindly, dead tree branches overhead.

The one on the ground gives a pitiful little whimper, and the one in the tree gives a long scream in response.

Eventually, the mama bear continues on, either deciding Millie isn’t a threat or that she can’t do nothing about it, regardless.

Before a solar flare and a year of drought killed every green thing on these hillsides, they were rolling and lush and kinda magical.

Now that everything’s dead, the hills still look like something out of a story, but this one’s science fiction.

Naked mountains, covered in the crispy, withered husks of trees, really don’t look like they’re from Earth.

She thinks maybe it’s his adrenaline that gets hers going, too.

“Y’all ever run into them before?” she asks Addison, watching the other girl from where she’s sitting, rigid as steel, by the steps.

Quiet enough that it isn’t an invitation to the whole bus to join the conversation, she says, “Almost—a couple times. The first time was just a few weeks after everything … happened. We didn’t know who...

...… happened. We didn’t know who they were. We were parked in some small town, looking for gas, when we saw them from a distance. They had this huge trailer hooked to the back of their truck, and it was full of medicine bottles. At first, we were excited. The twins have allergies, and my mom’s diabetic. She needs...

...hooked to the back of their truck, and it was full of medicine bottles. At first, we were excited. The twins have allergies, and my mom’s diabetic. She needs insulin. But that was back when I thought maybe my mom might still be alive, or that I’d ever see her again. Anyway.”

There are only two sounds in the whole world—her heart beating as fast as a hummingbird’s wings, and Sammy’s innocent gurgles.

If she loses this one, she’s just gonna shear her freaking head.

It sounds wrong coming from him, but Rose puffs out her chest anyway, ego inflated.

And it ain’t just creeping along this time; it’s moving with purpose.

“Freaking brutal, man,” comes another voice, over another speaker, alongside another laugh.

“They might actually let you on a convoy soon.”

They crackle and buzz and whir, spitting sparks everywhere, and the boys laugh and laugh.

“Like, the US didn’t go to war with Britain so they could be an independent country. They went to war because a judge in London started trying to outlaw slavery in England. And America freaked out, because they were scared they were going to lose their slaves. They all got together, north and south, and had a whole congress where their leaders promised America would always have slaves. Very next year? Revolutionary War.”

She doesn’t wanna interrupt Rose too much when she’s concentrating, so she gets quiet and lets the broadcast finish.

For the first time, it don’t make her irritated.

She looks down at her knuckles, too nervous to meet Rose’s eyes.

They’re basically invaluable.

The others look away, too uncomfortable to watch the tough, angry girl sobbing, clawing at her skin, rocking back and forth as the waves of grief hit one by one.

But Millie knows she don’t deserve to look away.

Something squirms in her gut, making her nauseous.

She reaches into the oversized pocket in her shorts, pulling out her notebook and flipping open to the page she made her notes on.

“This … is gibberish.”

Scribbled in Ben’s handwriting—for real, Rose has never seen a grown.up with worse handwriting than her, until Ben’s, sheesh—is another one of the Sanctuary’s cryptic messages.

Whether it was a trailer where the pipes clogged up for the hundredth time, or a stick house where the water heater ain’t always remember its job, or an apartment over some business where the landlord started threatening them that he’s gon’ put them out if they didn’t stop running up his water bill … Well, sometimes it was just easier to go rinse off in the creek, is all.

He thinks she’s just some dumb hillbilly who grew up under a rock, and he’s all sophisticated and brilliant and that’s why he gets to be transgender.

“What, because I’m so disgusting to you?”

Rose is gonna wring his neck as soon as he’s got clothes on.

“I ain’t phobic of anything.”

Only you’re thinkin’ it’s low-context language, ’cause you assume I can’t possibly know anything you know.

Problem is, when you spell it out for me like I got rocks in my head, you’re the one who makes yourself look like a bumpkin, pumpkin.”

When it gets too awkward, Rose steps back.

Rose shoots her a look, like she thinks there’s some insult coming, like it’s a setup for a criticism.

Rose picks up the swath of fabric Millie laid out —old clothes she repurposed a while back—and looks at it sadly.

From their little cove by the water, Millie can still hear the Lost Boys cutting up by the bus.

Antsy.

A brand-new excitement makes her bounce.

MILLIE squeals, throwing out her arm next to Ben’s face, pointing through the front windshield at the cottage as it comes into view.

She had a relationship with this land.

Even the chestnut and persimmon trees are dead and withered up, nothing but phantom reminders of who they used to be.

But it’s a real loud kinda not saying anything, and Millie pretends she can’t hear the unspoken words in the quiet.

It’s been a whole year, even not accounting for the world ending and all.

And then she’s gonna make all those Lost Boys admit how foolish they were.

Ben makes a pallet on the floor in front of the fire, and Corncob joins him.

She’s highlighted all the spots in Ben’s notebooks that mention them—there’s the one broadcast message he heard secondhand from some travelers they ran into earlier this year, the one about not being rich, and everything else is just thirdhand accounts of what it might be like there.

Others warn of some benevolent queen, and if you don’t follow her rules, she kicks you out and lets you starve.

Anything about animals or plants, any spotting of unusual critters in town, or anything about who won biggest gourd at the county fair, it’s all clipped and in the box.

As far as Rose can tell, the only thing they have in common is that they’re all real grim.

Others are about politics—the great divide between parties, civil unrest breaking out across the country.

Others are about politics—the great divide between parties, civil unrest breaking out across the country.

It’s short, just a couple paragraphs about Jimmy coming out from California to do a big press conference for the opening of Hive’s newest, biggest factory yet.

Or, okay, it ain’t like she was psychic.

The broadcast she didn’t get a chance to record hums like a record playing back in her head.

She ain’t really thinking when she snags the rusty old axe from its leaning spot by the door, working on instinct and adrenaline more than a lick of common sense.

“I know. I know. And—and, like I said, I am so sorry. And I will compensate you—we have peanut butter. And canned food.”

Why is Ben groveling for forgiveness from the people trying to murder them?

Before Neverland pulls away the next morning, while Ben drops off the food he’s paying for Rose’s careless mistake, she sneaks back into the shed for the newspaper clippings.

And even when she does, she’s left with frostbite.

“We have to leave tomorrow,” Ben says, to everyone and no one in particular, staring down at the camp stove where supper’s heating up.

Brown eyes peek up at her in the dark.

Rose pats the blanket lump solemnly.

She told Rose ain’t nobody actually need her, and her stepsister’d been all adamant that wasn’t true, but … well, just look at them.

If she ain’t nothing but the hollowed-out cast of who she used to be, a ghost town’s probably the perfect place for her to haunt.

That kinda thinking’s how a whole lotta colonizers convinced theyselves our people had pedigrees like dogs—and they could breed us out of existence.

“No offense.”

Why they can’t seem to get along is a mystery.

“No leaders, no rules to follow, no punishment if the rules weren’t followed. I mean … hey, I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s true, right?”

“I think what my little walking encyclopedia here means”—Addison chuckles—“is that people aren’t usually violent so long as they don’t need to be.”

There’s a new hope starting to take shape on the horizon—Millie can’t see it clear enough just yet to work out all the details, but she knows it’s there.

Especially when the beam from one of the watchtowers falls directly on the bus and a voice over an intercom calls out, “Step outside with your hands behind your heads!”

The mama black bear with a bullet in her head is all she can see when she drops down and starts shoving at her dog’s bag-of-bones body, pushing her away from the door with all the strength she can muster.

Not metal and chain mail or anything like from fantasy movies, but military-type stuff.

If they know that lilt in his voice is ’cause his throat’s shaking.

All seven of them huddle together, shoulder to shoulder, some even closer than that.

“Look, I can’t imagine the things you all must’ve seen out there. The things you must’ve had to do to survive? I don’t think I could’ve done it if I were you. The fact that you’re all alive is basically a miracle. They all owe you their lives—and I completely understand why they’d be afraid to trust someone else to do as good of a job as you’ve done.”

“The Hive only ever uses violence when necessary, the same as anyone else in this world. We aren’t cold-blooded killers.”

“The Hive only ever uses violence when necessary, the same as anyone else in this world. We aren’t cold-blooded killers.”

“And if we just lie down and die, then Ben sacrificed his life for nothing. You want his death to be in vain, Addi?”

“Well, we got a little bit of backup fuel in the emergency can. Noah, check it out, tell me how much we got. Zoe, go check out the damage the bullets did. We ain’t pouring no more gasoline in the tank if there’s a big hole in it or something. Olly, go with her, and keep an ear out for any Hive trucks.”

Like one of her books where the main character falls through a portal.

She sets it aside to fixate on it at a more convenient hour.)

She sets it aside to fixate on it at a more convenient hour.)

“Yeah. But the good news is that I’m pretty sure it’s mostly cosmetic. I’ll give it a better once-over in the morning, but as far as I can tell, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be drivable.”

Looking back, I can’t believe I let Alex pretend to be someone they weren’t when we were around my parents, just so I didn’t have to deal with the fallout.

I’ve known I wanted to marry them since I was a freshman in high school.

I can keep trying to be less of a coward, though.

Believing I’m a real adult with some kind of plan helps them relax.

Tate fills up the supper bowls and passes them out, a rare treat of instant ramen noodles.

Earlier in the summer, just a few weeks before the Flicker, she’d been running around in her yard in the sprinkler, cooling down.

“You’d have to be stupid and heartless to have a kid ever again.”

“Why should I care about some hypothetical person somewhere down the line?”

When the sun came up and they finally got a look at where they’s at, a horrible realization dawned.

They’d driven through this part of the hills last night after dark, and hadn’t gotten too good a look at the scenery.

Now they realize they’re sitting in the corpse of a wildfire.

Millie jumps up, too, like she might have to fight some invisible enemy and she’s ready.

The stoned-over resolve of someone who knows what’s coming for him and knows he ain’t gonna be able to stop it.

He don’t need to know all Millie’s personal business.

Maybe she’s giving in to heat exhaustion.

Oliver has a real punchable face, she thinks, watching the way he manages to look both smug and a little surprised.

All of them collapse as soon as they get to Neverland’s shadow on the ground, all of them deflated.

Millie follows the direction of his hand, looking out across the dead landscape to a … “House?”

Safe and warm and cozy.

“No, just my kin.”

Not like all them pretty new houses in her old neighborhood that fell in on themselves within a week.

Canned fish and deer jerky and pickled veggies, all homemade stuff in a stockpile.

Millie goes to head upstairs but—after testing the bottom step and feeling it strain under her—decides it ain’t worth it and heads out back instead.

And Millie don’t wanna jinx it, but he ain’t wrong.

Suddenly, the only thing she can hear in the whole wide world is that wind—screaming like some kinda freight
train right at the back of her head.

A cyclone of dust swirls and swirls, only feet away.

The taste of the peanut butter cookies their meemaw used to make, before dementia took her away, years before the Flicker ever could’ve.

They follow the winding mountain path until they spot their destination.

There’s at least a fifty-fifty shot here that they’re gon’ end up getting themself killed, and that’s honestly being real generous with their odds.

It’s all white linoleum and bright, fluorescent lights.

It’s all white linoleum and bright, fluorescent lights.

A little TV is playing reruns of some old sitcom they recognize but don’t know the name of.

Karen exchanges a befuddled look with the guard.

“Our satellite systems have been down for a while. We aren’t in contact with your father’s facility any longer.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, how did you end up all the way out here? I was under the impression your family hadn’t left the facility in California in months.”

“As soon as our last convoy returns, we’re sending a militia to…” Karen smiles, pausing like she’s trying to find the right word.

“Subdue their camp.”

’Cause they’re just here, just living their lives like the Flicker ain’t ever happened, like this is just some regular old apartment complex from back before the whole world ended.

It makes them envious, and angry, and sad in ways that are too big to carry right now.

She makes a face of obvious disgust at Rose’s clothes and unpleasant odor, clutching her kids a little tighter to her.

She makes a face of obvious disgust at Rose’s clothes and unpleasant odor, clutching her kids a little tighter to her.

They weren’t expecting to have an audience while they picked their floor.

Level 3—recreation and community resources.

Level 0—asset containment.

Level 0—asset containment.

“That makes complete sense. Let me show you to the pharmacy.”

Shouldn’t there be a clinic or something?

That feeling of familiarity creeps back in.

Are they willing to bank their life on that?

“I’m getting out of here—”
“Great. Be my guest. But if you open up that door, it’s going to set off an alarm that tells the whole Hive there’s a red alert. How do you suppose you’re gonna make it back to whoever needs medicine if that happens?”

They all look at Rose and Alex when they walk in, their conversations faltering and going quiet.

“I’ve been working with a group to help gather survivors and offer food and housing after the solar flare. We set up camp not far from here, because we wanted to keep an eye on what these guys were doing. Over time, we started finding ways to infiltrate. We planted a few people here and there. When someone who’d been in for a while realized Ben had been taken, they … created an opening as Karen’s assistant, then vouched for me to get me inside.”

Ben’s voice stumbles up an octave.

“I’m gonna get a message back to my people. They’ll come and find you. But the best I can do for right now is get you the drugs and help you get out. It’s good timing, honestly. A convoy just got back while you were upstairs. Everyone’s distracted right—”
“A convoy?”

“It isn’t the best-case scenario,” Alex grits out through their teeth, addressing the room at large.

“It isn’t the best-case scenario,” Alex grits out through their teeth, addressing the room at large.

“But it’s better than staying and dying. We have family here, I know, but we have family back at the camp, too. We will come back for the others. We are not leaving anyone behind—we’re just not staying here to martyr ourselves tonight, either.”

Rose’s heart surges at the passion behind Alex’s words.

To them specifically, Alex continues, “If we do it this way, we can’t go get the medicine. But I can get you all back to my camp, and I guarantee we have whatever Millie needs there.”

“Lost Boys,” Ben and Rose answer at the same time, and exchange a wry look.

They’re singing some kinda lullaby, Millie realizes.

A safe haven …
Millie’s eyes bulge.

“Ain’t no grandbaby of mine an intruder,” Grandma chides, putting her hand to their cheek.

There’s a makeshift shower and a little outhouse that ain’t fancy, but get the job done better than a creek, for sure.

There’s a big chicken coop—and a whole fenced-in pasture, too, with a couple goats and pigs, a cow, and even an alpaca.