It Could Happen Here - CZM Book Club: Everything that Isn't Winter, by Margaret Killjoy, Part Two

Episode Date: December 28, 2025

Margaret reads you part two (of two) of her own story.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. CallZone Media Book Club, book club, book club, club, club, club, club, I wonder how long I can do that for. Book club, book club. No, I should probably stop. Do the rest of the introduction.

Hello, and welcome to Cool Zone Media Book Club, the only book club where you don't have to do the reading because I do it for you. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and this week, and today, this very day, the reading that I'm doing is also writing that I did. This is the second half of a story that I wrote in 2015 called Everything That Isn't Winter.

And if you didn't listen to Part 1, well, with so much love, what the fuck are you doing here? How does your brain work? How do you tune in to the second half of a short story and think this is where I'm going to come in on? I just don't understand you. More power to you. This is that weird week between Christmas and New Year's

that feels like the last lap in Mario. Like not the third and final lap, but the one that you drive afterward on autopilot where your race stats play in the foreground. Or at least, that's sort of how it always feels here. It's a bizarre time. But we're continuing the cozy energy of early winter with a quote, and I'm quoting Hazel here,

a surprisingly cozy for how much gunfire is in it, end quote, story. So hopefully this hits your post-holiday malaise with a fresh burst of energy. The kind of energy that will make you shoot people in time. Wait, I don't want to spoil anything. Where we left off, we had our main character, Aidan, who runs point on tactical for a tea-growing commune called the In-between during a Beltane celebration, and yes, we know that that's May Day, but stick with us for the holiday theming.

Some of the collective's tea fields are torched by raiders, and we follow Aidan and Bartley, a fellow tracker and a tactical point, as they hunt down and kill a suspect. Aidan returns to a strained relationship with their boyfriend, and we got some devastating dialogue about the cracks that exist between the two of them. Now we pick back up with everything that isn't winter by Margaret Gildre. There's a certain kind of peace on a farm, and the tea leaves were emeralds in the moonlight. The night birds sang in the forest.

The trees stood like crows on the horizon. There's a certain kind of peace in holding a rifle as well. It shares the same simplicity, the same honesty, with that rifle in those feet. my intentions were bare. We worked the earth. We defended the fruits of our labor. I walked our eastern perimeter, through rows of tea and through the burned scar

where so much of our tea had been. Ahead, at the gatehouse, electric lights spit out a flood of red across the tracks and into the hills. We used red to save our night vision. We used lights at all because they made a good distraction, made any potential attacker believe that her attention was focused on the railroad.

I'd learned every bit I knew about tactics the hard way. There were more bodies buried in our fields than there were people living in the lodge. But that night, while I clutched a radio in one hand and waited to hear from Bartley, they didn't come for us from the trees. They didn't come for us from the tracks or over the green river

or from the mountains or the roads. They came for us, with artillery. It took three seconds for two shots to destroy the lodge. I saw them those meteors as they arced through the sky

on a low trajectory and reduced my home to rubble. They were tracer shells marked to help their gunner aim and they burned phosphorus through the sky. They'd come from the east. They'd come from Stampede Pass.

I'd leveled trees older than my grandparents to help build the lodge. I'd peddled rebar 80 kilometers up the tracks from the ruins of Tacoma to reinforce the stone and mortar construction. And I'd killed two people, a woman and a man, who tried to rob me on the way. I like to think I knew the difference between the evil and the desperate, and those two had just been desperate. I'd left their bones in the forest. Three seconds, two shots, and all our work was gone.

With adrenaline in me, I don't consciously process sound or scent or touch. Everything is visual, everything is slow motion. I ran through the green fields towards the shattered lodge as people streamed out. People were shouting. I might have been shouting. I saw Khalil walk across the road carrying someone toward the bomb shelter. That man existed to help people, to carry people, to nurse green shoots up out of the soil and into the light. I existed for other purposes.

I gave up on returning to the lodge. They could rebuild without me, and Khalil was alive. And what good would I do? And I was their guard, and I'd failed, and I couldn't face Khalil. And I ran for the gate. I set a rail cart onto the tracks, settled in. into the saddle, put my feet on the pedals, then gave a last look at the lodge. Khalil was watching me, hands on his hips. His chest heaved. He turned his head and he walked away.

His gait told me more than any words ever had. It was the gate of a man who'd given up. I peddled east with my rifle, held across my lap. I peddled until the adrenaline cleared, and the evening's fog rose thicker and thicker, and I had the chance of the chance of to realize what a mess I'd just thrown myself into alone, which was better than acknowledging the mess from which I just fled. It didn't make sense to destroy the lodge. It didn't make sense to destroy the fields. It made sense to capture our holdings.

Whomever I was running off to try to shoot, I didn't understand them. If you know your enemy and you know yourself, you need not fear 100 battles. If you know yourself and not your enemy, You will lose as often as you win. If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will never know victory.

I'd peddled those tracks hundreds of times. The cascade range was my home. I'd grown up in its shadow. But fear creeps into your system and renders the familiar into something alien. The fog was milk thick, as thick as it had ever been. My eyes tracked movement I knew better than to register,

the shifting of moonlight through wind-blown branches, the glint of light on the steel of the rails. I passed a rusted junction box, still painted with pre-collapsed graffiti, which meant the tunnel was only a few hundred meters out. I stopped peddling. Set the brake so the cart wouldn't roll back downhill, then dismounted as quietly as I could. It's hard to disguise the sounds of heels on gravel. I heard my own, but there was another footfall, fainter, right behind me. A hand-claned. down on my shoulder. I whirled, went for the knife on my belt. Bartley. She had one finger to her lips, her eyes betraying sleepless exhaustion. We scrambled up the embankment, pausing where we could

just see the tracks at the edge of our vision. My hands were on the bark of a poplar. Its scent was in my head, and I was grounded. There in the tunnel, she said. She was murmuring low into my ear. they've got military ordnance two big guns on two rail cars plus a whole train of weaponry stretching into the tunnel who are they don't know i've seen about 20 of them most of them are camped inside the tunnel alongside the ordinance looks like they've been there a few days uniforms i asked nope motive no idea partly said they fired a couple artillery shells. What'd they hit? They took out the lodge. I'd never known Bartley to wear her heart on her sleeve, but she took a breath at that, then another. Casualties, she asked. I didn't stop to count. We should kill them all. She wasn't judging their character. She was addressing a

strategic concern. How? I mined the tunnel a couple years back. What? I asked that too loud, switching for a moment into whisper instead of murmur. I didn't tell anyone, because I thought people might get mad, and I figured our general assembly wouldn't go for it. How close do you have to get to set it off, I asked. Close, Bartley said, real close, ten feet inside the front of the tunnel against the south side wall, there's a rotted hunk of plywood. Behind it, a cheap old breaker box I put in.

Switch the first three and the last three breakers, and then we've got two minutes to get clear. Will that set off the ordinance on the train? Probably not. How do we get there? I've got an idea. I'm not going to like it, am I? I asked. Nope. But do you know what you will like? You will like the six savings on these products and services. Oh, what a deal. What a deal. That business idea you've been sitting on, this new year. Stop waiting for the perfect time. GoDaddy Arrow uses AI to build your website, logo, and marketing in minutes, not months. No tech skills.

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and we're back I'm here to negotiate our surrender the words were foreign in my throat and hung strangely in the air they weren't my words they weren't words I really knew how to say but I said them loud and attracted the ire of a number of armed women and men

women and men I hoped wouldn't object too immediately and too violently to the rifle I still bore slung across my back. The fog was thinner at the base of the tunnel, and it calmed me down to see the silhouette spires of the trees and the faint glow of stars above me. Two flatbed rail cars extended out from the tunnel, each with an old-world gun larger than some houses. Inside the tunnel, a string of boxcars stretched farther than I could see. A half-dozen people approached me, Most no older than the kid I'd shot on the cliffside. I like to think I knew the difference between the evil and the desperate.

And these people weren't desperate, not on the face of things. Each had a rifle trained on me. Each watched me with some mixture of indifference and malice. Evil isn't something we do to one another. It's the way in which we do it. It's why we do it. There were two clear authorities. A man about 10 years my senior with Gray flecked into his

red hair, and a woman with at least 20 years on him. The two conversed briefly, and the man approached. General Samuel John, he said. He didn't offer his hand. Aidan Jackson, I said. I didn't offer my hand. Our terms are simple, the general said. Anyone who leaves between now and noon tomorrow will not be hunted down and shot. Who are you, I asked. General of what army? the new Republic of Washington, he said. Another warlord. What's your claim on our land, I asked? I knew his answer before he said it.

I grew more confident that I knew him, that I could outwit or outshute him. Small holdings like yours and the rest of the new world are a relic of an era we aim to put behind us, he said, on script. Washington has suffered too long without central authority. Lying to people is fun. and it's kind of dangerous how fun it is. You're right, I said.

We will drive this train to the end of the line, laying waste to everything in our path, and raise forth our savior from the coastal waters. That was a pretty different script. We'll raise new cities, the general said. His eyes rolled back. He held his palms face up in front of him. Pure cities, built of light and manna,

and we will live in his grace. Until the zombies, the older woman added, until the zombies come and devour those of us who remain in the cities. I looked around from bandit to bandit. Grins were painted on every face. You're screwing with me. Of course we're screwing with you, the general said. We're not on some moral or religious quest. We've got artillery, and we want the path so we can tax caravans, and if you try to stop us, we'll kill you. That's the world now. That's always been the world. It's a good world for people like me and mine, and that's the only metric.

I judged by. We were going to just tax you, you know, the woman said. A little bit of fire, a little show of force, and then we'd tax you. But I heard you shoot my grandson. All eyes and guns were on me, which I wanted with a certain, very limited understanding of the word want. I'd lowered them away from the mouth of the tunnel. Behind the trumped-up highwaymen, in the thin fog, Bartley lizard crawled toward the

breaker box. I didn't feel like lying anymore. You'll get yours, I said. There have always been people who want power over others. There have always been people who don't. The whole of our history is the history of people like you, killing people like me. Of people like me killing people like you.

You'll live a miserable, shit life, distrustful and afraid, and you'll get yours. I'll get mine in the end the same as you, but I'll have lived a life in a society of equals among people I love. I'll have loved them. Hey, one of the bandits, a young man, turned in time to see Bartley crawling into the tunnel. He raised his rifle and fired at my friend.

I turned and ran uphill, perpendicular to the mouth of the tunnel. Always run uphill. People don't like chasing uphill. I made it behind a thick stump 20 meters up the embankment, and bullets lodged into the decades' dead tree flesh. I unslung and unsafetyed my rifle, returning fire. Bartley made it to cover herself on the far side of the train from the bandits. They could keep me pinned down and outflank me,

put a bullet in me, then turn their attention to Bartley. I had two spare magazines, one friend, and no hope for backup. I had no hope at all. I shouldn't have been cruel to Khalil. That man had left his family, left the safety and stability of Bainbridge Island, to follow me into the mountains

and to the edge of the new world. He'd followed his dreams. We'd met in the winter. Every winter since the first one, we'd walked out along the Green River to its source. We made a week of it, 60 kilometers round trip, and we'd held hands and stared at the breath of the sky, and camped in the snow, and walked out along the ice. We'd never get the chance again. He worried about me. He was right to worry about me.

I was about to die. Bartley caught my attention, then started banging on the steel of the car with the butt of her rifle. This drew all eyes, and they were out from cover, moving to flank me. I squatted up, aimed, and picked off the general with a round through his cheek.

His head spun, his neck snapped, and his legs gave out. The bandits turned away from Bartley, and she stood and shot the older woman, the second in command, perhaps, or maybe just the general's mother. either way she collapsed with a hole in her sternum a bullet grazed me then it burned across my shoulder blood welled up stay and guard the train one of the remaining women shouted into the tunnel the four remaining gunners returned to cover crouching by the wheels of the train bartley ran past the train and for the trees she drew fire but not from every rifle i took two quick deep breaths let the oxygen and fill me up, then rolled from cover. I learned long ago not to let myself listen for individual

shots once I was committed. Fear is the antithesis of action. I heard a scream, a woman's scream, and I ran down the embankment into the dark of the tunnel. There was the plywood. Behind it, the breaker box. It was too dark to see, but I found the breakers by touch and tried not to focus on the muzzle flashes coming from outside and inside the tunnel alike. Bullets are dangerous. I know that intimately. But most bullets aren't aimed, not really, and un-aimed bullets are like lightning in a field. If you stay low, you'll survive more likely than not. I hit the six breakers. Two of the gunners from outside had crossed the tracks, and I saw their boots as they worked their way down the other side of the train. I'd be flanked.

I rolled under the train and took shots at the boots. Hit one, was rewarded with a man falling prone and I shot him in the temple. I crawled my forearms on the ties and gravel. The wound in my shoulder was beginning to protest. I shot another woman in the foot and the two remaining bandits outside fell without me firing. Bartley was alive. I was almost to the mouth of the tunnel when the charges blew and only the behemoth of steel above me saved me from the cascade of rock that followed. It was no good to think about the lives that were about to end, suffocating in the darkness behind me. It was no good to question whether or not I was evil. In the dust and fog, I crawled forward toward the faint moonlight. And do you know what else crawls towards you

through the firefight? It's the sonorous sounds of these products and services at your whimsy, in your telephone, on demand. Here's the ads. This new year swap someday with today. You've already got the idea, so make it real in 26 with a pro-level website. GoDaddy makes it easy with the lowest-priced website builder, guaranteed.

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Who catfishes a city? And meets some memorable anti-heroes. There are thousands of angry, horny monkeys. Clap, if you think, she's a witch. And it freaks you out. He has X-ray vision. How could I not follow him? Honestly, I got to follow me.

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I was going through a walk in my neighborhood. Out of the blue, I see this huge sign next to somebody's house. Okay. The sign says, my neighbor is a Karen. Oh, no way. I died laughing. I'm like, I have to know. You are lying.

Humongous, y'all. They had some time on their hands. Listen to reasonably shady from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Bartley had a hole in her leg where muscle and fat and skin should have been, and I got her onto the rail cart with a tourniquet on her thigh. People say you can't use a tourniquet for more than a few minutes, but I'd learned the bloody way that you could get away with one for longer if you needed. Hey, do me a favor, she said as I started to peddle.

What's that? Don't let me die, she said. That's all? I asked. That's all, don't let me die. You're not dying. Okay, I've got another favor. What's that? Don't let me die. I really don't want to die.

I peddled harder. It was downhill, easygoing, and we went in and out of fog banks, and Bartley went in and out of being in a mood to talk, went in and out of looking like she was going to make it. All I could think about was Khalil. About how sure I'd been I was going to die. About how sure I'd been I'd never see him again. It was a long half hour before we reached the ruins of the in-between.

Three people met us at the gate, including the woman who'd come for the harvest, the one who'd dance with Khalil. She helped me carry Bartlett to the makeshift infirmary set up on the road. Any awkwardness between us lost to more pressing matters. Doc told Bartley that she'd live. I gave a quick report, and that report spread quickly. Khalil wasn't around, and a fear came over me.

A fear worse than firefights. He was okay. I'd seen him escape the lie. I knew he was okay, but he wasn't okay with me. I first met him when we'd both been visiting Tacoma, during the death days, when neither of us thought we'd lived to see 20. I'd loved him half my life, the half that mattered.

I went down the concrete steps into the bomb shelter. It was full of people, and they were hurt and scared, and they wanted to talk to me, but they all had the distinct disadvantage of not being Khalil. I went to the lodge what remained of the hall we'd built. There were people who weren't Khalil picking through the smoking rubble, shoring up the surviving walls, digging for survivors and corpses. I went to the remnants of the bridge that had once in the old world crossed the green river.

But there was no one there to kiss me in the shadows of the ruins, no one waiting in the river with his hand on the small of my back, no one singing in sweet low tones. I thought about walking into the river anyway until the water took me the river and spring is as cold as snow I went to the fields and I found him in the northeast corner

the corner we'd seen from our poster bed his hands swept across the leaves he sang wordless serenades to the tea Khalil he heard me because his body tensed and he paused his song but he didn't turn around Khalil I'm sorry For what

He was far enough away That I could scarcely hear his voice For a lot of things You do what you do A breeze came across the fields from the river whispering against the tears of my cheeks And I fought harder to keep my voice level Than I'd fought to stay alive an hour prior

I don't want to just do what I do I said He turned toward me, and he was crying harder than I was. He always cried harder than I did. It's okay if you worry about me, I said. You ran away tonight, he said. He didn't try to disguise the pain in his voice. You went alone.

Maybe it's too much for me, that you're not here when I need you, that you're never safe, that you take stupid risks. I halved the distance between us, and he was just out of arms reach. I was going to die tonight, I said. I sat down, hugged my knees. I was going to die, and I was never going to see you again. And now I've survived, but what if I never get to be with you again?

He sat down across from me, mirrored my pose. You never talk to me, he said. I know, why don't you talk to me? I'm afraid, I said, but I said it too quiet. What? I'm afraid, I said louder. I'm afraid. I'm afraid of you and I'm afraid of us and I'm afraid of this new world we've built

that one day soon it'll be no place for me and everything I've done and everything I am. I'm afraid of everything that isn't winter and I'm afraid of everything but dying. My eyes were closed and I couldn't see him and I couldn't hear him and all I heard was my heart beating out of sync. For a minute at least, it was all I heard. I didn't see him move, but his arms wrapped all the way around me, around my knees and my back. He held me. I let myself go. He kissed the top of my head, and I nozzled into his neck. You do what you do, he said, and I love you for it. You love me? All stupid, all covered in blood?

I love you, he said. His hand went into my hair, and he held me like he used to. He held me like he wanted me. I took him by the beard and pulled his face against mine, felt his lips against mine, open mouth. His hands went to my hips, my fingers dug into his chest. Smoke drifted up from the ruins of our home. And love was something in my gut, and it made me want to live. The end. That's the end of the story. Okay. Hazel says, quote,

Hazel is a sap who just wants to let go and find love at the end of the world. It's very important that the listener know this is written in all caps. That's what Hazel has to say about it. And, yeah, what do I have to say about it? It's funny because a lot of the stuff I want to say about it is structural, but that's not like the vibe.

You know, right, like the point of the story isn't the structure of the story, you know, no more than a, the point of a home isn't the... the fact that it's like built with two by fours, you know. But to talk about the two by fours that built this house anyway, I guess I would say that, okay, so there's this thing called the try-fail sequence and the story writing. If anyone wants a crash course on writing short stories in the Western tradition,

here you go. The absolute bare bones of a traditional Western story, it's not the three-act structure, it's not the hero's journey, it is the try-fail sequence. A character has a problem. They try to solve that problem. as intelligently as they can, and they fail, and they make things worse. So then they try to solve that problem again, and they fail, and they make things worse.

And then they try again, and then they succeed. That is like the bare-bones story, right? And if you want to get a little bit more complicated and a little better, they have an external problem, and the reason that they're failing at solving their external problem is because they haven't addressed their internal problem, and it's only by solving their internal problem that they're able to solve their external problem. and that's the like tri-fail sequence and the thing that I really wanted to do with this story

was have two interlocking tri-fail sequences where Aiden are protagonist has two problems there's the attack on the lodge and the relationship with Khalil and in a certain sense you could say it's the internal versus the external problem but actually in this case it's inverted Aiden who doesn't have a gender marker

there's no pronoun for them anywhere in the story that was another technical thing that I worked really hard to do they're not even a they them They just don't have a gender marker. But their internal problem, this relationship, can't be solved until they deal with the external problem. And that was like the fun thing to do, right? They, as a writer. But it was also like, you know, that's not what the story is about.

The stories about love and how, who we can be and how we're more than just this like simple part of our story. ourselves and these things that we do. Yeah. Anyway, I'm Margaret Kiljoy. The world is ending and is dark all the time, but spend time with the people you love and eat nourishing food. Rest up, we've got a good fight ahead of us and see you in the new year and love you all. Bye. It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can find sources where it could happen here updated monthly at coolzone media.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. That business idea you've been sitting on this new year. Stop waiting for the perfect time. GoDaddy Arrow uses AI to build your website, logo and marketing in minutes, not months. No tech skills. No excuses. Just your idea made real. Get started at goaddy.com with Go Daddy Arrow If a Lenovo gaming computer is on your holiday list, don't shop around, just go directly to the source, Lenovo.com. It's your last chance to score exclusive deals on the gaming PCs you want, like the Lenovo Legion Tower 5 Gen 10 gaming desktop and Lenovo Lock Gaming Laptop. So avoid all that shopping chaos and price comparing,

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Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers? Who catfishes a city? Is it even safe to snort human remains? Is that the plot of footloos? I'm comedian Rory Scoville, and I'm here to tell you, Josh Dean and I have a new podcast

that celebrates the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals. It's called Crimeless, a true crime comedy podcast. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.