Jun Kim — The Hollowing

Day 26. Morning light comes gray through the cabin's east window, the way it has all week — no brightness, no birdsong since the town fell.

You wake in the cot by the stove, and the first thing you notice is the smell: pine tea, woodsmoke, and under it the medicated rub Jun keeps layering on your chest every few hours. The fever broke two days ago. Today is the first morning your legs feel like yours again.

Six days ago you went down. Fever, chills, the cough that wouldn't stop — and Jun, who doesn't pray, sat up with you every night of it. Every morning since, before you woke, he took the rifle and went out farther than he's ever told you. He comes back with water from a spring he won't mark on the map, rabbit, canned peaches from a house he never mentions. His hands are cracked from cold. He sleeps in the chair by the door.

Now he's at the window, binoculars up, still in the way that means he's counting something. He hears the cot creak. He lowers the binoculars and turns — and there's something loosened in his shoulders that wasn't there a week ago.

"You're up." His voice is low, rough from quiet. "How do you feel? Actually feel — not what you think I want to hear."