Written by Anakerie

Okay, let me explain where this came from. I could use some feedback, too.

I was playing the Sims and I made a prison. Well, my inmates set the place
on fire and only one survived. He looked lonely (this prison is huge) so I
bought him a baby. Well, I couldn't get this weird idea out of my head,
about a guy in a post-apoclypse world raising a child in an abandoned
prison.  So anyway...

Beyond the Walls

He never rested easy when Jessica went outside the walls.

He would have liked to forbid her to leave at all, but he understood that
there were things they needed that could only be found outside. And he
couldn't go himself.

He had tried. He had stood at the edge of the old iron gate, trying to will
his legs to take that final step, to go beyond his sanctuary and rejoin what
remained of the world, but he was unable to do it. He had stood against the
stone wall, the cracks pressing into his forehead, and tried not to weep at
his own cowardice.

Jessica had understood. Her small hand had closed around his, the way his
took hers when she had nightmares. "It's okay, Daddy." She had said gently.
"You don't have to go. I'll go. I'll get enough for both of us."

And so, hating himself, he had watched her leave. Of course, he had insisted
that she take one of the guns. He had taught her to use it himself, and she
was good enough to defend herself if she got the chance. But a
nine-year-old, even a nine-year-old expert shot armed with a decent gun, was
still easy prey for those who lived beyond their walls.

Still, Jessica was smart and knew how to avoid taking chances. And she
always returned with things they needed. Seeds for their garden, needles to
patch up their clothes, and if she was exceptionally lucky maybe a book or
two.

Bruno had done the supply runs until six months ago, when he had taken a
fever and died. Steven hadn't been particuarly upset at his passing. Bruno
had been an unpleasant man and the only thing that had kept Steven from
choking the life out of him was the fact that he didn't actually choose to
live in their sanctuary, but outside of it. And Steven guessed he could
tolerate anyone he only saw a few times a week.

They had disagreed on the subject of Jessica the most. If Steven had been
living alone, Bruno would just as soon as spit on him than bring him
supplies, but the older man had taken a shine to Jessica when she had been
just a little bitty thing and helped them out for her sake.

Of course, Bruno had stated more than once that he thought he just might be
Jessica's real father. Steven snorted at that. Lots of people had dark hair
and eyes; didn't exactly make them kin. Jessica's real daddy could have been
any man, and was most likely dead by now. Her mother had certainly never
given  him a name before she upped and died on Steven.

She had stumbled into his sancuary not long after the outside world had
fallen apart, and he had taken refuge here. He had seen her fall just
outside the gates, her stomach almost bigger than she was. He had opened
them just far enough to drag her inside.

He had done his best to save her, but he had about as much medical knowledge
as a rock. He was still amazed that she had managed to push out a living,
healthy baby before her eyes rolled up in her head and her breathing
stopped. He knew enough to clean the little thing off and cut the cord, but
after that he had been totally bewildered as to what exactly he was supposed
to do with it.

A good lot of the supplies left here had rotted away, but the powdered milk
had still been good and the baby girl didn't seem to mind it all that much,
especially after he put some sugar in it. He vaguely remembered his
grandfather telling him about giving orphaned horses milk laced with sugar.
He had some old pillowcases that made decent enough diapers and figured it
would hold her until he figured out somewhere to take her. Problem was, he
was too afraid to go beyond the walls to take her anywhere.

So in the end, he had just kept her. He hadn't expected her to live very
long; nothing he had ever tried to raise did. His fish went belly-up, his
plants turned brown and gave up the ghost. Even his cat had managed to get
itself flattened by a car.

She was a tenacious little thing, however. The first time she had smiled at
him he had gone around grinning like an idiot himself for the rest of the
day. He kept her by his side at all times, especially when she started
toddling around. It would have been easy enough to lose her forever in here
if he wasn't vigilant at every minute.

"You can't raise a little girl in a prison!" Bruno had argued.

"I can and I am. I've done okay with it so far!"

"Steven, she needs other people. She needs to be around other children,
other adults. If you love her as much as you claim to, you'll realize that."

"We don't need other people!" Steven snapped. "Shooting at each other,
raping each other. Killing for drugs, for little bits of food. She's not
going to be a part of that. She's safe here, and I'm going to keep making
sure she's safe."

"Some places are like that." Bruno had agreed. "But there are good places,
too. Sanctuaries like this, only with lots of other people around. You and
Jessica would fit right in there."

Steven had folded his arms. "People are trouble. I don't care how nice and
pretty those places are now. Sooner or later someone's going to want
something someone else has and then it all starts up again. I've been
through it once and I'm not going through it again, and Jessica's not going
through it at all."

Bruno had been quiet for a moment. "Then you're going to lose her Steven.
One day she's going to wake up and realize just how lonely her life has
been, and she's going to run away from you and never look back. She's going
to rejoin the real world, and you'll still be stuck here in this prison with
your bug-eaten books for company. Just because you've ruined your own life
is no reason to wreck hers."

Bruno had died less than a week later. They'd buried him outside, near
Jessica's mother, and Jessica had put some lilies on his grave and read some
passages out of a bible she'd found in the prison chapel years ago. She
didn't understand what she read, but she knew you were supposed to read the
bible when someone died. It was a rule or something, and her father had
helped her pronounce the harder words.

She was on another run tonight, and her heart hammered in her chest, the
bulge of the gun heavy against her hip. She knew the prison upside down and
inside out, had slept in every cell at least once, had crawled across the
roof and explored the incomplete tunnels the prisoners had tried to burrow
out over the last century. It was her world.

This world she did not know. Here, there were no walls to keep out the bad
people.

Every once and a while someone tried to make it into their sanctuary. Her
father made her hide when this happened. Twice the trespassers had looked at
his gun and decided to bunk somewhere else. Once he had been forced to shoot
a young man who had been determined to seize the prison for himself. They
hadn't buried him or read Bible passages over him, just simply hoisted him
up and back over the wall.

She didn't like being on the outside, but there was no one else to do it.
She couldn't blame her father for being afraid to go back. He'd been out
there when "everything fell apart" as he called it.

The grey sweater she had pulled over her teeshirt was far too big on her,
but it was warm against the evening's chill. It came down over her hips,
almost to her knees, and had big deep pockets she shoved her hands in as she
ran. She always ran when she was on the outside. It meant getting back home
all that much faster.

The goal tonight was shoes. Bigger shoes, warmer shoes. The ones she had now
were glued and sewn and taped back together as much as they could be, but
they were still starting to feel snug. Of course, that was just the main
goal. She had an empty pack on her back that would hold as much as she could
carry. Not that it would be much.

Almost everything of any value had already been claimed. The skeletons of
the houses had long since been picked clean by human vultures. To find what
she needed, she was usually reduced to stealing it.

"But... this book says stealing is wrong." She had pointed at a line in the
Bible, showing her father.

"Stealing is wrong if you take something you don't need. Taking things to
stay alive is survival. We're survivors, Jessica my girl. We're going to
stay alive."

So, Jessica stole. It didn't bother her as much as she thought it would. And
she never took from people who looked like they'd die without whatever she
was taking.

She had learned some things right off the bat.

The good, honest people didn't have that much to take. They shared what they
had with each other, and learned to live without what they didn't.

It was the bad people who had the most, because they didn't care who they
hurt to get it. Jessica might creep up on someone who was sleeping and steal
their hat; these people would be willing to cut off the victims head to grab
it.

It was these people that Jessica prefered to pilfer from, although it was
much more dangerous. She'd been shot at before, something she had decided
her father was better off not knowing. He also didn't need to know that she
had been forced to shoot someone herself when the man had grabbed her. She
hadn't killed him, but the incident had haunted her for weeks afterward. She
knew on a vague level what bad men did to women and girls, and had concluded
that the guilt of shooting someone had to be better than living with the
memories of something like that.

Tonight was half-moon, and she blended easily into the shadows as she came
upon a stone wall surrounding a house. She shinned up it easily and tucked
her legs up under her, hiding behind a bit of masonary.

Unlike most houses, this one was still standing. It was actually closer to a
mansion, and had been built long ago, during the days of her bedtime
stories, when some people could afford to want things like big houses and
didn't have to worry about competing with rats for food or if there would
even be rats to eat. Rat wasn't bad if you used a lot of pepper, actually.

She could see people sitting on the porch, hear faint voices although she
couldn't quite make out any words. She watched saw a flame flicker in the
air for a second, then vanish.

"Out there, they've got this stuff, see? Powders and stuff like that. If you
start taking it, breathing it, you end up wanting more and more of it.
Pretty soon you'd be willing to do anything to get it. I know, I was hooked
on it for years. And the people who sell it, well, they know you'd do
anything for some. And they'll make you do anything, give them anything. You
don't eat or drink anything you find out there, Jessica. Any food you find,
you bring right back here to me to look at first. I won't let you get hooked
on that stuff."

She wondered if the people she was watching tonight were hooked on it. If
so, it might be dangerous to take anything from here. On the other hand, if
they were selling it, they probably had plenty of stuff to take.

And she really, really needed new shoes.