Found (After the Plague #3)

KILLING A PERSON changes you. Killing your little brother destroys you. I should know. His name was Carl. When he was a kid, he always ate the blue M&Ms first and then the green. He dreamed of going to go to the moon. I didn't hesitate. I didn’t even blink. BOOM down he went, and his eyes, so much like mine, locked on my face screaming a single soul-crushing question—how could you?

EVEN AS I PULLED THE TRIGGER, I knew the answer. I did it to save a woman with the warmest heart I’ve ever known, quick with a smile, and fast with a laugh. Her eyes are battery acid green and her touch is the only thing keeping me sane in the Groundhog's Day of hell we're living. Carl was going to desecrate her, hurt Auden. It was him or them. These are the things I tell myself in the night, repeat the words, but it doesn’t matter. I see his face in every shadow, hear his voice in every crow's call.

THE WORST PART, she doesn’t even know. She thinks the man who hurt her was a stranger, a random tweaker tossed our way by fate. She has no idea it was my brother I killed. She's too lost in her own pain and grief. I can't pile another burden onto her shoulders.

SO NOW, as we team together with a new crew and make the impossible choice of where we’re going to live out our post-apocalyptic lives, all I can think of is what will she say when she knows the truth?