I don't know how it was that Jackoby and I wound up in this dank old basement. Okay, maybe I do. Honestly, it's kind of a blur. One moment, I am rooted to my spot on the sidewalk. I could feel them reaching for me; grabbing, pulling. The next, I am being pulled--lead, rather, away from the cluster at my back by Jackoby's hand.

    We had stopped in a city which looked relatively cleared-out. There was naught but trash and dried blood on the street; no signs of life save for Jackoby and I and our traveling companions (who went by the names Skin and Alice, though it has always been common knowledge that neither is either of their real names).

    We came in search of dried and canned goods--any nonperishable, really--and medical supplies, the staples of any mid-apocalyptic settlement of survivors--I say mid- and not post-, by the way, because I firmly believe we cannot rightfully say the end of the apocalypse has come and gone when the dead still wander.

    As I stepped further from the barely-running car we had arrived in, Jackoby stepped with me. He seemed to think me incapable of doing anything productive or useful on my own, which begged the question of why he wanted me to come with him in the first place. He was the official-unofficial leader of our party of four, despite how awful he was at picking who would accompany. There was me, only a year younger yet apparently in desperate need of a baby sitter--honestly, if he thinks I'm so useless on my own he should have picked someone else and not brought me at all. He needs someone useful to him, not a child he thinks he needs to babysit. We already have one, anyway:

    Alice. Nine years old and brought along strictly because Skin wouldn't come without her. Skin--dubbed as such, by the way, for her utter lack of hair anywhere, leaving her mostly skin and scars--was a sort of foster mother to Alice. She was without kids of her own, and Alice was without family. It was a much better babysitter-child pair than Jackoby and I. Skin, at least, could focus on the task at hand while still keeping her charge safe and sound. It seemed Jackoby existed only to tell me I wasn't doing this and that right, or I wasn't being careful enough, or I was straying too far from the group. A bunch of rules and nagging and not much allowing me to be productive and still not being productive himself. However, I digress.

    I had long since gotten used to Jackoby's behavior around me. Instead of dwelling on it, I had come to simply ignore it--or, if he was being particularly vocal about how wrong I was doing whatever I was doing, pretend he wasn't being quite as controlling and annoying as he was. I would have liked to believe Jackoby acted the way he did because he cared and didn't want me to get hurt, but I was more convinced he just wanted a subordinate to boss around as he pleased. Even that being the case, he didn't pick a very good subordinate. I wasn't very good at listening to what Jackoby wanted me to do. One might think if I did he'd follow me around and reprimand me less, but such was not the case. I do try to listen to his orders sometimes; as closely as I can, even. It still was never done quite right enough for his tastes. He was a bit of a nuisance. Skin would have been a better leader, had she not her adopted child to look after. Alice was Skin's first and foremost concern.

    Then, maybe if I listened a little better we wouldn't have come to be in the situation we had. I walked along the street, eyes peeled for the least decrepit building I could find. I figured such a building would be the least-touched and the most likely to bare some amount of edible material. At least, I hoped such would be the case.

    The sun was beginning to fall behind the taller buildings behind Jackoby and I when we came upon what looked to be a mostly residential neighborhood. It was largely made up of brick buildings; some housing multiple apartment units, others simply homes divided to house multiple families. It was our shared hope that at least one or two of these homes would yield some amount of canned goods; after all, with the sky darkening, we were meant to find our way back to the car soon to check in with Skin and Alice with the hope that at least one pair had found something worth taking back to Constitution.

    Jackoby, with his ever-present need to be without-a-doubt in charge, instructed me to stay put on the sidewalk while he went to go search the first of our selected houses. "We haven't seen anything since we got here," he assured me (despite the fact that I hadn't been in search for any assurance), "You'll be fine. If anything happens, just holler for me." That was roughly the time I started to think maybe Jackoby just followed me around because he thought I was the most likely to need a hero, and he wanted to be a hero. Don't think of that as a good thing. If anything, his need to be a hero was an inconvenience to say the least, and I was pretty sure I was more likely to do something stupid with him following me around like that--spite, and all.

    The sun was setting far too fast. That, or I had zoned out because Jackoby was taking his damn time inside. The latter was more likely, I reckoned. In any case, my surroundings were rapidly getting darker and even in my late teens, I was terrified of the dark. However, if I called to Jackoby simply for that, he would have no patience for me. His irritating hero fantasy likely didn't include saving me from the dark.

    I don't know what was worse. Feeling like they were there first, hearing them approach after, or my utterly inability to move. It was one thing to take notice of how dark it was. It was another for the monsters I always imagined in the dark to suddenly become a reality. Why now, of all times? Why did they choose to shuffle out at that moment? It was like they knew I was the most terrified just then, and they wanted to add to that fear.

    And that's how I wound up rooted to the ground, unable to move to a safer spot, unable to call out to anyone, unable to "holler" for Jackoby, unable to make myself run. In my head, I was screaming, but it was as though the rest of me simply accepted that I was alone with these things and this was how I was going to go.

    I am now convinced Jackoby is the god of perfect timing, because he chose just then to finally exit the house I was sure he had previously been lolly-gagging around in for the past hour. I was only vaguely aware of him shouting my name--"Onyx! Onyx!"--shouting for me to move my dumb ass as he stepped down the front steps, but I didn't really pay him any mind until I felt his hand locking around my upper arm and pulling my sharply to gain my attention, then pulling me with him down the street.

    Even then, I was barely aware of what was going on. I could only hear the shuffling behind me, desperate to keep up but too decayed to run. I could only feel Jackoby's hand slide down to my wrist to tug me along beside him as he jogged away from the scene, useless Me in tow. I could only see the bag bobbing against his back as he ran, not looking any heavier or packed fuller than it had been last I'd seen it. What a disappointment. I'd almost let myself get killed in wait for him to acquire a whopping bag full of nothing.

    Before I knew it we were indoors, and then it was dark--darker, even, than it had been outside. Fear and how jarred I was by the event made me forget to keep my voice down, and so more loudly than I should have I began to inquire as to where we were. I wasn't yelling, but my voice was higher than a whisper, louder than a polite indoor-voice.

    I only got a few words out before I felt his hand clamp over my mouth, a harried "shush" leaving his lips in the same moment. I felt a few flecks of his spit land on my face. I was too shaken to care and still not quite able to force myself to move to wipe those little flecks away. I only shushed as I had been told to. Now was no time to raise my voice in spite of Jackoby's authority over me. There was a time and a place to be insolent, and this was neither.

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