~ Welcome to Quills ~

Jess · V.I.P 260

RE: The Park: Apocalypse (Story)

Ravynlee · ~ ModMother / The Cougar ~ 290

As this is rather ambiguous with time (and deliberately so) this update can slot into anywhere between your recent posts Jess. I tried to keep it as vague as possible but still drive this point of 'divide and conquer' in essence - at least planting the proverbial seeds of doubt, that could be interesting to play with in upcoming updates. I'll stop ranting now and just post. Hopefully you can use something to work with, maybe, maybe not ;) Sorry by the way it took me a while to get this done. Master procrastinator at work...

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Sleep. It seemed like it was all I ever did anymore.

Rolling my head upon the pillow I frowned up at the ceiling exchanging one blank canvas for another. My head was aching. Too much introspection. Too much thinking. With a groan I closed my eyes and slapped a hand across them. I felt miserable. I felt heavy. I didn’t feel sick, I felt… I didn’t know how to put it into words. I should have. I knew I was smarter than this, at least I had been, should have been, before all this… I grimaced. Idle hands were the devil’s playground, I thought. Somehow that analogy seemed apt. Pushing myself up with a groan I sat looking around the room with my brow crumpling. The same four walls. Same cement floor. Same hairline cracks in the mortar. Same architraves mounted above the doorways. Same shadows festering beneath the fluorescent lights. Same everything. I knew it all. I knew it all so perfectly. I had contemplated, categorised then counted everything so often I had lost count of what I had been counting – I only knew it was still all there. Same as it was last hour. Same as it was the hour before that. Raising my eyes up at the clock bolted to the wall I let go a sigh so heavy it dragged my shoulders down.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

What day was it, I wondered. Did it matter anymore? Why was it so hard to let go of the old social adherence to time with all its constrictions? The world was dead but still I couldn’t seem to let go to the habits of my past, I couldn’t let go period, maybe that was part of the problem.

Again I sighed.

Wearily I pushed myself to the edge of the mattress and delicately manoeuvred my feet onto the floor. It was strange but a feeling came over me as if I hadn’t actually used my muscles for quite some time. That dissociative sensation that had been with me since the start remained but it felt worse now, feeling like a thick fog blanketing my brain, like a head cold. Fear came and went, a paranoid impulse, along with a slight thrill akin to victory when I found myself standing at the side of the bed. Though I didn’t know how long I had been in here, sleeping, dreaming, dozing, my body hadn’t suffered any ill effects like muscle wastage or lag. I don’t know why I had expected it to. I knew I hadn’t slipped into a coma at any point during my stay here, at least the parts I was conscious of, but whether it was this room, or something in the food, or the haunting echoes of my nightmares, or the lack of physical company, or any other form of mental stimulation aside from the ceaseless ticking of the clock, I still didn’t feel altogether… whole. Hitching up the hem of my shirt I stared down at the white patch across my stomach and touched it. It didn’t hurt. It was a dull twinge now, if that. My frown furrowed seriously. With my thumb I picked at a corner of tape that had come away from my skin. I tugged it. I grit my teeth. With a snarl and one foul wrench I tore it off. My skin beneath was pale but otherwise mended. Rather than ease with relief my brow continued to crumple.

Thoughts of infection, golden staff, and sepsis ticked through my mind, along with flashes of memories of a sterile surgery with disinfectant and blue dye and an overwhelming sense of fear. With a dry knock I swallowed and let my shirt down, smoothing out non-existent creases. Briefly I realised I was cradling my stomach before I dropped my hand and shoved it into my hip pocket. I pouted in place of speaking. If only I had someone to speak to – what would I say anyway, I thought bitterly, nothing had changed, nothing was out there, nothing was in here, what have you got left to live for? Nothing, that’s what.

I blinked up at the clock again driven by a sudden impulse to smash the face with my fist or elbow and drive the shard of glass into my inner wrist – both of them, if the ligaments held up long enough. The flash of red so bright and vivid and scarlet fixed me to the spot staring vacantly until I blinked and shook the vision and the connotation behind it away. Since David’s confession about his suicidal ex I’d been burdened with guilt I knew I couldn’t share with him. Memories back there at the service station amidst the dust and the sea of rotting flesh and the helplessness of the situation came upon me again like a crashing wave. I let my eyes fall seeing the gun in my fist and feeling the cold metal against my chin as if reliving it. My bottom lip quivered. Guilt and self-loathing hung upon my like a cement coat. It weighed me down. More guilt to bear. As if I didn’t already have enough. For a moment all I could do was stand there enslaved once again by my thoughts.

Keep thinking like this and you really will drive yourself crazy, crazy like you used to be, back before the war, back when you thought you had nothing to live for, back before 6 billion lives ended. What right have you got to grieve, at least you’re still alive. You’re one of the lucky ones. At least you got out. Anyone would think you wanted to be one of those things- They’re still people- No they’re not, they’re wild animals and you know it- No I don’t, what if- What? What’s the best you can hope for now? Wander the earth and slowly starve to death or stay here and slowly whittle away on your sanity, if you’ve got much of that left anyway. It’s only a matter of time, you know this is all for nothing, better just quicken the pace, make life easier for everyone, one less mouth to feed- But it’s different now, I have David- And you think he’s willing to give up his life for yours? Rob did and look where it got him. You’re a sympathy f*ck and nothing more. He doesn’t want to die alone, no one does. Its human nature- No it isn’t. It’s more than that. He loves me… I think- And what, that’s it? You find a nice house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and settle down while the zombies devour what’s left of humanity and live happily ever after?- No, but- But what? What are you really doing here? You’re not going anywhere. You’re as much a prisoner here as you were out there. At least out there you had a chance; you could see the enemy coming. In here you’re just-

“God, stop it,” I grumbled.

My voice echoed in the empty little room, scalding me, mocking me. Reluctantly I drew my fists down, rubbing the bright pink teeth marks with the tips of my fingers. I had to get out of here, I realised, if only this room. I had to find the others, but I didn’t know where to-

A sound, low, muffled, squeaky stalled my thoughts. I frowned as I turned towards the door. At first the shifting shadow didn’t register as anything but a trick of the light until I heard the door close with a gentle click. Leaning my head to the side I strained for further explanation but received nothing. Spurred on by impulse I found myself in the doorway leaning out. The corridor seemed alien to me, I didn’t recall seeing it before and it took a moment of mental regression to realise I’d been unconscious when I’d first been brought in. At first I didn’t even know if I was in the Doc’s compound anymore. The faint smell of disinfectant lingered but I had no way of knowing now whether it was residual or literal or perhaps mistaken for something else. Oil lamps dotted the corridor on both sides sparingly, gloomy amber spheres of light encapsulated by a tunnel of darkness. It had to have been night outside but again I had no way of knowing. Searching for that sound again, that sound that for some reason reminded me of laughter, a child’s giggle (here? In this place? You really must be losing it!) I craned my head to see into the darkness before bravery, or stupidity, lured me outside and tentatively left into the darkened corridor.

Ravynlee · ~ ModMother / The Cougar ~ 290

“Hello?” I called softly.

Internally I berated myself for every horror movie I had ever seen growing up watching the heroine walk into the serial killer’s lair announcing her arrival with vague abandon, or indifference, or both. My face however bore the scars of suspicion. Tugging down the hems of my sleeves I crossed my arms as much in defensiveness as to abate the sudden dip in temperature. It seemed unnaturally cold in here I thought. I don’t know what obscure reference I drew from when I remembered something about the extremes of climate in the desert.

But we weren’t in the desert were we? We were still for the most part in mainland America- And what do you know about mainland America that you haven’t been fed through the filters of movies and TV? You’re so far out of your comfort zone I doubt they even have a word for it, my inner voice sneered. Oh wait, yes they do. It’s called ‘foreigner.’ You don’t belong here sweetheart, best for everyone if you just tuck tail and run. Fast.

I shivered a little as I crept along the corridor cringing from the bright light and fighting the urge to return to my room, sure that any moment someone would be looking for me there and panic when they couldn’t find me. I scoffed at that but didn’t vocalise my thoughts as I stopped at a corner and peered around. Another dark tunnel. Another closed doorway.

What the hell were you expecting, a surprise party? Rob? David? That crazy b*tch with the
red eyes and the superhuman strength?

I pinched myself with my folded arms to stop that internal monologue before it continued in its pointless path. I studied the hall before and behind me before deciding the only option left was to keep going forward. I shuffled through the shadows, aware eventually that I had come to a locked door. The way behind me seemed impossibly dark, like someone had been snuffing the lights as they skulked along in the depths behind me. It took me a moment to realise that sound was back again, and it was closer now, a teasing siren that drew me to turn blindly in another direction, and face to face with an opened door. The small sliver of face behind it afforded me a half smile, one dark eye, and then the door creaked inward and a small child stood before me. It was a boy. Impulsively I smiled at him.

“Hey,” I found myself saying.

Out of all the sights I’d been expecting in this stereotypical dungeon of horrors this was the furthest thing on my mind. Tucking my hands between my knees I bowed down to face him closer to his eye level. He drew back behind the door again as if shy, but the chuckle, that small innocent giggle, echoed the arc of his thin lips. Finally he drew the door open enough to stand beside it. He wore a simple blue-grey shirt and pant set, unremarkable yet strangely so ‘perfect’ I had to do a double-take to convince myself this kid was real and not some spectre from my fractured conscious made manifest. I nodded at him and stepped forward. The boy cringed, his dark eye peering back again from behind the opened doorway.

“It’s okay,” I cooed. “I won’t hurt you… My name’s Rae… what’s yours?”

The boy stared up at me. He pouted. A look came upon his face as if he didn’t understand a word I’d said. Then he smiled again and took my hand. I flinched and gasped aloud. The child’s hand was cold, as cold as ice, but it was still a healthy shade of pink. The boy frowned but I picked up my smile again just as his hand froze in mine. I gave it a reassuring squeeze. The boy smiled, reluctantly. Then he walked into the room and dragged me along behind him. I followed. No questions asked.

Rooms, like hotel rooms, complete with faded green floral wallpaper and dusty brown wainscoting opened up before me. Worn furniture. Dust. Disinfectant. It was eerie just how that sterile smell seemed to be everywhere I thought, yet seemed to have no original source of varying degrees of intensity, it just was, like the scent of perfume in an elevator long after the occupant has left. At first I was bemused as I was led through them, room after room, through what seemed to be a house in its general layout but without definitive beginning or end. There was a living room with a dusty TV set and a kitchenette with a table set in readiness for a meal that looked to be 50 years too late in coming. Through a narrow hall we came to a bedroom and cots lined the walls, 2, 4, 6 of them, along with the sound of deep, even breathing. I couldn’t even get my head around the fact that other children were in here, that there was anyone in here alive the place looked so… decrepit, so stuck in a time warp. Drawn to a sudden stop the little boy looked up at me and raised a finger to his lips.

“Shh,” he said.

At least he can speak, I thought. I nodded agreeably. Then he tugged my hand and drew me towards the wall at the end of the room. Again he came to a stop and pointed. I frowned and looked down at him. Ah here we go, I thought, any second now the penny will drop and you’re going to wake up back in that bed drenched in sweat and curse another damned cryptic and inescapable nightmare… But then I noticed something. Light. A tiny hairline sliver of light that ran along the top of peeling imitation boards. I frowned and leant closer. The boy pushed it. The crack began to widen. I realised as it was revealed to me that we were looking at a secret compartment tucked away behind a hidden door. At first I frowned at the child not knowing what was expected of me. I was still caught up in this ‘idea’ it was a dream that I didn’t question the validity of taking orders from a mute, angelic looking, deathly cold child let alone question why. With a nod of his head I understood what he wanted me to do. His fingers beneath mine began to loosen. I tried to hold on. I saw my knuckles glowing white with the strain but the boy didn’t seem to be reacting to pain, he seemed to be cringing from something external, something frightening, not painful. He backed away from the room and I wondered if perhaps he was not allowed in there. Again, I wasn’t in the position to question why. Studying the bright light, so bright in fact I had to shield my eyes from it - I nodded at the boy and shuffled forward stooping to enter with my heart thrumming in trepidation. I turned to face him thinking I should at least say something by way of thanks or in the least encouragement. The look on the boy’s face struck me numb as he looked over his shoulder and quickly pushed the door closed. And then he was gone.

Ravynlee · ~ ModMother / The Cougar ~ 290

For a few seconds I waited, moving forward again simply through lack of alternative options. What I saw, rather, what I heard in those brief moments of blinding light and choking stench of disinfectant and what smelled like old seaweed stopped me in my tracks as good as a bullet. A groan. An angry, animalistic groan. A zombie. In here? That was-

“Ah,” a voice said.

It was low and steady and articulate, a voice of a man I knew well from my dreams but not enough to draw any real comfort from. I couldn’t see him at first, his words coming only to me in waves over the ruckus of a zombie and the rattle and clang of metal grating on metal as I stepped out into a room that seemed to materialise out of the fluorescent brilliance. Coming from the cool dank conditions of the corridors behind me such a contrast immediately reminded me of the concept of walking into Heaven. I realised, as I stood up and slowly looked around, that this room, for want of a better word, was anything other than utopia. This was beyond comprehension. I was rendered speechless as I stood there taking it all in. This was a lab, and not one of those polished, sterile CDC style labs I’d seen in movies. I expected to see people walking around in hazmat suits attached to oxygen tubes that resembled umbilical cords and made them sound like Darth Vader’s colourful offspring with each intake and exhalation of breath, but instead I saw zombies, many of them, too numerous to mention, either strapped to gurneys or tethered behind cage doors, all suddenly ‘alive’ and boisterous as they no doubt caught the scent of another ‘meal’ entering the room.

“You needn’t concern yourself,” I heard the Doc say over the din; “They’re perfectly secured. They can’t hurt you. Come. Sit. I see you found your way without incident.”

Without taking my eyes from the growling, snarling, groaning mob that stared back at me from behind the nearest rusted cage, I made my way further inward towards the centre of the room where the lights seemed brightest and the low whir of machinery could soon be heard. The Doc sat on a stool beside a gurney with an array of tools laid out on an operating tray beside him. On the gurney and chained and padlocked and restrained from forehead to ankle a zombie lay there following my approach with wild, glazed, yellow-red eyes. It snarled and gnashed its teeth, chewing at the air as I came to a hesitant stop a handful of metres away. On the other side the Doc was ‘focussing’ on the drill bit boring away into the creature’s skull, the grinding sound of metal on bone enough for me to cringe outwardly and shelter my arms once more around my chest in disgust. After a moment of fierce intense high-pitched drilling the sound cut out and the Doc removed the drill bit and placed the tool on the tray atop the others with a clatter. He wiped his gloved hands on a stained rag before tossing it aside. The creature between us continued to writhe and struggle seemingly ambivalent to the gaping hole in its skull as black bile-like fluid began to leak down the side of its face.

My stomach rolled. I kept my eyes averted. Around me in my peripheral vision it seemed like every conceivable mechanical tool or device lined the walls or shelves or cluttered aluminium tables. I was sure I even saw a hydraulic lift and some vice like contraption hanging from steel cable far off on the other side of the room. My initial impression, that we were in some kind of converted garage or body shop, was replaced soon after by that haunting sense of sterility and dissociation I’d had upon first arriving. This was the operating room from Hell, I thought, and almost laughed aloud at the notion. The groaning struggling snarling undead that cluttered their cages, at least 3 that I could see, and arguably heard more, pushed me to the proverbial edge of laughing aloud in fear and subsequent madness.

“You’re experimenting on them?” was the first thing that came from my mouth. I couldn’t believe how offended I sounded, like some snivelling civil libertarian, upholding the rights of those I arguably had no right in defending. But the Doc, whether he found my comment amusing or disappointing, merely snorted at me as he perused his selection of tools with his thick green-black goggles as if he could actually see them.

“Your ability for over-stating the obvious both amuses and confounds me,” he said matter-of-factly.

He looked up again as if he could see me, which I knew somehow he couldn’t, but the intensity of his stare if not my dubious reflection in the lenses made me shy away as if a child being chastised by a parent.

“How else do you think we’re meant to study them? Their brains hold the secret to infection. I can’t harvest that in the open can I? I may as well serve myself up on a platter. Make yourself useful and bring that light over there closer. That one behind you. I can’t isolate just what it is about bright light that subdues these things,” he uttered, removing one bit from his drill and replacing it with another, longer, thinner bit with deftly skilled hands. “I wouldn’t say it subdues them as much as it constricts them. For some reason they prefer the darkness. They’re sensory animals; they don’t necessarily need eyes to see.”

Clutching the lamp I drew it closer, taking care to avoid getting anywhere near the zombie studying my every movement like a predator stalking in the grass with a guttural growl and a lethal snarl. The Doc shuffled closer and leant over the zombie again, ambivalent to the growl and gnashing teeth it warranted as he levelled the drill bit in the hole he’d previously drilled into the thing’s head. Whether or not he spoke out of experience or again factually I nodded as if he were able to see it, ignorant of the fact he had started his drill up again and with a whir and was boring away into the thing’s brain as though I wasn’t even there. I was wishing at that point I wasn’t as I closed my eyes and retreated internally. After a few moments the drill stopped and I found myself looking again. Not only was I looking I had leant closer. The zombie thrashed and clawed its gnarled fingers at me. Its grip was hard like a steel vice as it snagged the hem of my shirt and wrenched me forward. Choking on a squeal I back peddled and managed to break free. The Doc’s laughter was low and brief as he sat there on his stool drawing the black viscous fluid into a large syringe, the smirk on his face not so much amused as it was mocking.

“You should kill them,” I said, my voice quavering fearfully.

Again the Doc snorted. He filled a small vial, then another 2 with the last of the fluid before setting the syringe down and wiping his gloved hands again on a bloodied rag.

“My dear,” he uttered, “I don’t need to remind you the paradigm of killing something that’s already dead. Think of them like car engines. They need fuel to operate but they’re not technically alive. You don’t kill a machine, you shut it off. That’s what I’m attempting to do here. Find the source and isolate it, and then, to coin a colourful phrase, cut the head off the snake. Engine stops. No more zombie.”

A breath escaped me, a short sharp sound that sounded as if someone had thumped me hard in the back. I think I even staggered forward a fraction, stopping short at the menacing glare of the zombie in front of me.

“You mean… like a cure?”

“Cure? You know better than that,” the Doc murmured, still intently labouring with his work. “Dead flesh doesn’t regenerate. It continues to rot until the natural process of decay renders the body useless and it can no longer support itself. Muscles, ligament, tissue, all of it is biodegradable. Even bone, eventually. Once the fibres holding it all together break down all you’re left with is a pile of bones and eventually over time dust. At that point, when the muscles contract to a point they can no longer bight, they die, if you want to look at it that way.”

“So, you’re telling me these things can starve to death?” I asked. My heart rose inside my chest expectantly. It came crashing down again with the brief pause the Doc afforded me without so much as sparing another condescending glance in my direction. “I don’t understand…”

“I don’t expect you to,” he told me.

He sighed. His tools clattered once more to the trolley. They stayed there for an indeterminable yet agonising stretch of time as I stood waiting. The zombies were still growling. They seemed to have no idea we were talking about their ultimate demise. Across the trolley the Doc stared at me. It was at this point I suddenly wondered where Erin, his make-believe nurse had gotten to.

“What do you know about them?” he asked me suddenly. The words fell from his mouth like a challenge, a threat. I stared back anxiously. I didn’t respond. I didn’t know if he even wanted me to, which, it turned out, he obviously hadn’t as he soon continued. “They eat but they don’t digest. They communicate but they can’t talk. They function on an almost subhuman level yet they congregate like animals. They can still reason, they know light from dark, they know dead from alive, these things have heightened senses better than they ever could pre-infection and this is all after death when things are supposed to have shut down. They don’t have a heartbeat yet somehow they still bleed. Blood congeals at an impossibly slow rate. They can practically bleed dry without stopping. And their strength… None of this makes any logical sense with anything we’ve come to know about biochemistry or complex physio-anatomy. They shouldn’t exist but they still do, and what’s worse they’re driven by an innate need to multiply and infect like parasites. These are human beings like you and I in every way but something about this chemical, the way it reacts to the blood or tissue or some quadrant of the brain, this infection is what separates us – man from blood thirsty animal – and you want to ignore all that with this primitive notion of ‘shoot first ask questions later’?” He scoffed with his shoulders rising and falling. “That is the American way after all,” he uttered under his breath. He paused. He didn’t even bother to look up. “I’m sorry; you’re not one of us are you? You’re not one of them,” he gestured aside towards the zombie. “What exactly are you doing here in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of misfits and mercenaries for hire? Why do you have such empathy for these things, the things that the rest of them out there seem fit to annihilate?”

-- Edited by Ravynlee on Saturday 27th of June 2009 11:44:00 PM

Ravynlee · ~ ModMother / The Cougar ~ 290

I opened my mouth to protest, protest which part I wasn’t exactly sure, but seeing the look on his face, or more correctly what I could see of his face around those huge green-black goggles had the words snag in the back of my throat like a fist and choke me. I felt myself shaking with a rage I hadn’t felt in what seemed like years, not since I’d been held captive by all of them, when they’d seen me as a threat, as one of these things, and had first brought me out here to-… No, I couldn’t think of that. I shook my head, uncertain whether I was defending myself from the memory of my friends’ betrayal or the idea that I was inturn defending these things that were meant to be our common enemy. I just stood there mutely staring at the Doc with his severe countenance and the zombie beside him, eventually unable to face either as I instead sought relief staring at the cement floor. When I heard the Doc stand I felt myself retract, a child expecting a jug-cord, a whiplash, a reprimand, but received nothing but silence and a jittery expectation as the seconds whittled away. Finally I looked up to find the Doc ‘looking’ at me. If I didn’t ‘know’ he was blind I could have sworn he was staring right through me with the omnipotent gaze of a father if not some back alley sinister looking demigod.

“You don’t want to kill them, do you? You want to save them… You want to save him, don’t you?”

My mouth fell open, slowly. Realisation seemed a long time in dawning. But the doctor kept talking, his voice like a low, conspiratorial murmur, his tone condescending yet enlightening at the same time, luring me in and pushing me down with each cold, crisp syllable that fell from his mouth.

“Even after everything you’ve witnessed, after everything you’ve endured, you’re still looking for that miracle cure, aren’t you? If you stay here you can find the answers you seek. No more running. No more fear. Here we have resources. More than you’ll ever need, but out there…”

“But… I can’t… You-”

“Beware the company you keep. Sometimes the enemy is closer than you think,” the Doc said. Then, with that, he walked past me and ended the conversation.

I was too gobsmacked to say anything. I didn’t really have time to. Feeling an ice cold hand around mine I gasped and froze on the spot, the small boy at my side smiling up at me in my peripheral vision slowly bringing life back into my rigid limbs. It was a nervous smile, a scared smile. I didn’t know whether he was reacting to the zombies or even the back of the Doc as it disappeared across the other side of the room. A moment later he was leading me back out of the lab again, back towards the secret door, and briefly came the question, this suspicion for such cloak-and-dagger tactics, before they were whisked away again behind the echoes of the Doc’s grim warnings. Enemy. Company. My heart was pulsing in my chest, an anxious thrum as I looked around, watching the zombie still strapped to the gurney, still staring at me behind its shackles and restraints, still snarling like a rabid beast with a cold look of murder in its eyes. With a dry knock to the throat I saw another’s face and was forced to turn my head away. It wasn’t until I was out of the lab and safely away inside my ‘room’ again that all of what I’d just seen and heard and had transpired finally seemed to make any semblance of sense. Scarred by too many recent betrayals, by strange occurrences, by loneliness and confusion and stray glances and ambiguous words I realised with a sinking sensation just what it was I had to do.

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Jess · V.I.P 260

ZERO DAYS BEFORE THE GUNSHOTS

Heavenwon’tletmeinHeavenwon’tletmeinHeavenwon’tletmeinHeavenwon’t -

I woke with a ragged gasp, followed by an equally jagged exhalation, and I knew I was alone. The silence of the room overwhelmed all of my senses – it even tasted empty. Tears were in my eyes before I even grasped what that meant.

I killed myself. I came back. And Dean hadn’t.

While outwardly I fell apart – my face instantly covered with scalding tears, my hands shaking, my legs going numb – internally, I thought calmly about what I had to do. There was, first and foremost, an excuse to come up with. I considered telling the truth, but it was so far-fetched it would look like an excuse. It would seem like I had snapped, gone completely out of my mind and killed Dean.

Dean, I sobbed silently.

I rose up from the bed and look across the room at him. He hadn’t moved; I would’ve been disturbed if he had. Still, the wish, the hope was there. But no, he was just as dead as before, and the blood, bone, and brains had merely smeared down the wall in the time I’d been … out. That begged the question, how long had I been out – but despite my obsession with second-counting before, I couldn’t remember what time it had been. Now, after a quick number-crunching, I figured that I had three hours to do something before Selene appeared in the doorway and was greeted by this ghastly scene.

Ghastly. I actually remembered the last time I’d thought that word. It had been while I considered my coming with Keith and Rae to the Doc’s in the first place. I had thought of her situation then as ‘ghastly’ or perhaps that I was taking advantage of it was ‘ghastly’ – either way, the word made me think of how I’d wanted to get away from Dean. And for that matter, he wouldn’t have shot himself if I’d given a damn – if I’d told him not to, I was certain he wouldn’t have. But I had wanted him to go away, and away he had gone. Well, in a sick way it was fair. I left him, so he left me.

But did you have to do it so goddamned permanently? The words almost came out my mouth, but the overwhelming realization that no one was there to hear kept them bottled inside.

Finally I slid off the bed and tiptoed over to the table. I closed his eyes with one hand and cradled my own face in the other. It was wrong – it was just wrong that I be given something to make me happy, something to help me piece my life back together, and then have it ripped out of that very life. I let myself cry for just a second longer, then clenched my teeth and shook my head and forced myself into action. Three hours wasn’t much time. I slid my arms under Dean’s body and picked him up – not stopping to wonder at the strength I shouldn’t have – and carried him into the hotel-esque little bathroom. The tub made a f*cking terrible last resting place, but for now, at least, it would have to do. Grabbing a wad of the spotless white towels Selene had provided us with, I dashed out of there and slammed the door behind me, fully knowing I would have to re-enter later. I wasn’t concerning myself with the future just yet.

Even after the wall, table and mirror were as clean as they were going to be, I kept scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing – as if eventually I could erase the marks from the cloths or the memories from my mind. That particular thought sent renewed by frenzied scrubbing. It was erased memories that had caused all my problems in the first damn place. In no time the towels were stained with red and gray and a mixed-up, murky brown color, and I had to admit that nothing else I did could help. Gathering the towels, I uneasily slipped back into the bathroom. In the cramped space, with a mirror covering much of one wall, it was almost impossible to avert my eyes from the tub; I kept my eyes on the countertop while I filled the sink. Then I dropped the stained rags in and got out.

While I was working the changes hadn’t been so noticeable, but stepping back into the room, I was shocked by how normal it all looked. The table had been shifted around, and both the bed were messy when Dean and I both compulsively made them up – or at least we had – but it was otherwise so … the same. Bitterly, I complimented myself on being such a good murder-scene-cleaner-upper.

I crossed the room hesitantly, passing by my own bed to stand next to Dean’s. If I closed my eyes and pretended hard enough, I could hear him breathing. It had been the constant background noise when I was trying to eavesdrop, not to mention laying awake and listening to it back in the Park. God, how had he become such a fixture in my excuse for a life so quickly? Here in this Land After Time, the passing moments became warped and twisted – the few days I’d spent with Dean seemed to stretch out to infinity, while everything that occurred in my previous life had collapsed down to a couple unattainable seconds.

Tick

Tock

Not even that long.

Tick

Less even that that.

T –

And that was it. All I knew about myself could be told in a single breath, a half a breath, a quarter. A disdainful exhalation. Without opening my eyes, I felt my way onto Dean’s bed and curled up in the center, his nest of sheet untouched all around me, a shrine to his existence. How long had he been planning it, I wondered? Had he lain where I now lay, and thought about getting up to kill himself? He had paused at the foot of my bed, as I recalled – had he wanted to say something to me and for some reason, decided not to? I couldn’t fault him for that. We hadn’t spoken calmly in days; no doubt he was sure that any wayward comment would spark an argument. But … what if that realization was what had spurred him to reach over and pick up his gun and … It isn’t your fault, I told myself unconvincingly. It is not your fault, Trinity – Jamie – whoever you are – it can’t be your fault. Even if you could have stopped him, even if it’s possibly your incommunicativeness that sent him over the final edge, even …

Being alone with nothing but your thoughts and the dead body of the only person you truly let yourself love is a special circle of Hell, and one which I inhabited for the next couple of hours. When Selene’s knock came, I merely called indistinctly from the bed. I heard the door open, and I heard the girl step in softly.

“T-Trinity?” she said.

I mumbled something to the extent of “I’m not feeling well.”

As soon as I said it, it occurred to me that I was in a doctor’s clinic, and she was bound to want me to visit Doc M. But instead, in a tiny voice, she whispered, “Something terrible’s happened.”

Oh god how can she know – “Wh-what are you talking about?” I sat bolt upright. Selene stood in the doorway, real hand and three-fingered metal one twisting together in front of her. They were speckled with blood. There were bloody handprints – her own judging by the size – on her skirt, and larger ones on her arms. Reacting rather than thinking, I leapt out of the bed and was kneeling in front of her in a split-second. “What’s happened?” I demanded.

“I don’t know,” she said, and started to cry. Driven by some half-formed maternal instinct, I awkwardly put my arms around her. She melted into them.

“You have to give me some idea, sweetheart,” I said helplessly. If Dean were here, he would know what to –

Selene stammered out, “Things – th-this thing – b-broke into the hospital. It went after Rae and David tried to stop it and it threw him against the wall and more things came in and …” Her speech became less and less coherent through her sobs. I gathered that zombies had invaded the complex somehow, seemingly guided by a sort of uberzombie. There were multiple mentions of Rae and Amelia, and it sounded as if Erin had been killed

“Listen, Selene,” I detached her softly and held her apart from me. “Is any of this blood yours?”

She shook her head, eyes still wide with fear. “M’s,” she whispered.

“The Doc’s injured?” I frowned. Much as I didn’t like the man, he was really the only one who could patch up the rest of us. “Okay, sweetheart, listen. I’m sorry to do this to you, but I’ve got to get to this place where the … where the things came in, and I don’t know the way. You’re going to have to take me –”

She shook her head fervently.

“Selene –”

“No no no no no,” she said, panicking. “M threw me out the door and told me not to come back until he came for me.” She hesitated. “But I can tell you how to get there.”

“That’s even better,” I assured her. “Do you think you can get Keith and Corey and do the same for them? It sounds like we’ll need all the help we can get.”

Selene nodded, swallowed, and for the first time, looked around the room. She was going to notice Dean wasn’t there, and she was going to ask after him, and I –

I pushed her out the door and quickly asked for her directions, then sent her on her way. I loaded my gun on the way, praying Keith and Corey weren’t far away.

The room had been demolished. It was fairly large, with several hospital beds along one wall, and the remains of other along the other, which had been breached. Breached – hah, completely knocked in was more like it. Luckily there was no sandstorm outside, but the flood of zombies and hellmutts pouring in was plenty enough to make up for it. Not far from the door, David and the Doc were making what look ominously like a last stand: standing behind the piled bodies of terminated undead, firing on whatever came too close and, when the opportunity presented itself, those not too close. Eerily, David seemed almost in his element – eyes bright and muscles taut, a deadly combination of quick reflexes and an accurate aim. Still, I saw that his left arm was crossed over to clutch at his right side, and he was obviously favoring it. Selene had said that a ‘thing’ had thrown him against the wall – it was highly possible he’d broken a rib or two in the encounter. Even with David’s glaring injury, Doc M was the more battered-looking of the two. As Selene had been, he was flecked with blood. His white coat would never be the same. Blood had also left its tell-tale trail across the side of his face, the source being somewhere on his scalp. His glasses were gone, and the lack of focus in his eyes unnerved me – it seemed as if he could easily shoot an ally unintentionally, especially in his exhausted state. He kept ducking behind the zombie barricade to fiddle ineffectually with his shotgun, which seemed to be jamming periodically, and each time, David would shout at him to stop being a coward and f*cking fight. I almost felt sorry for the Doc.

And yet, as horrible as it was to see the two men in such bad shape, what was happening at the breached wall was even worse.

The inflow of other zombies was stanched somewhat by the creature standing in the makeshift doorway. Rae’s child was still thin, but its bones had received a hard layer of muscles, and its fingers had grown even longer, so that the extra joints didn’t seem quite as out of place. Yet even so, even with its gray skin and black eyes, its resemblance to a human was … disconcerting. More unsettling were the spider-like hands wrapped around Rae. It couldn’t or didn’t lift her off the ground, but it was definitely trying to take her away. Was it simply a baby that wanted its mother, I wondered? Was that possible? Rae, screaming and shoving at the thing’s nimble fingers, didn’t seem to think so. David, sending a bullet its way every time he could, didn’t either. But I had to pause and stare and consider – I had, after all, seen the thing in a moment of perfect innocence, merely wanting the milk that was normal for it to crave. Wanting its mother was another perfectly normal action, but …

If it came down to killing the thing to keep it from kidnapping Rae, I would do so without regret. I dashed to David and the Doc’s gory barrier and removed the shotgun from the Doc’s hands. His eyes flickered up sightlessly for a moment, and it occurred to me that there was more emotion in the thing’s eyes than in his. But the moment passed, and I could see his fear and helplessness – neither, obviously emotions he was used to – clearly.

“Took you long enough,” David growled when I arched up to give the zombies a blast of shotgun pellets.

“I ran as fast as I could.”

“Should’ve run faster. Where’s Dean?”

“Keith and Corey should be on their way now.”

He glanced at me and repeated, “I said, where’s Dean?”

“I don’t know, all right?” I snapped impulsively. “F*ck off.”

He grunted and didn’t look at me again. I saw him kicking at the Doc, commanding him to do something, but ignored the exchange. The thing was getting closer and closer to being able to escape, but on the plus side, the closer it got the where the zombie passed through, the more it killed to keep away from Rae. It was definitely protecting her; I felt a twinge of anticipatory regret that it would have to be killed.

The Doc suddenly grabbed my ankle. He motioned urgently for me to join him on the floor, so I dropped down to reload. Whatever jam he had had in the gun was gone – either he had been handling it improperly or, well, he had been faking it.

“Girl,” he hissed. “You were there when Taijitsu was born, and it may recognize you as the one who stopped me from killing it in the first place. It’s possible you can communicate with it.”

“I don’t speak zombie,” I told him bluntly, standing again. He tugged at me again, but this time I disregarded him. After a moment he dared to straighten up from his cover to whisper in my ear.

“Speak to it the same way you’d speak to an animal,” he insisted. “Tone of voice is everything. It may even understand some English, but the most important thing is to be calm and soothing. It may trust you.”

“That’s an awful lot of indecision.”

“Well, it’s that or you let it take its mother.”

I glared at him. But I was afraid he was right – ‘Taijitsu’ or whatever he had called it had moved past shuffling. It didn’t seem to care if it stepped on or knocked over its smaller cousins, as long as it made it back out into the world with Rae in tow. Only keeping a firm grip on her was keeping it from just striding out. I bit the inside of my lip, measuring up the situation. I did have certain … advantages, and it really no longer mattered to me if anyone found out about them. If I could save Rae, and potentially win the thing’s favor, who cared? In truth, they would probably all care – but I didn’t.

“All right,” I breathed.

I couldn’t be infected. I couldn’t die. I dropped the shotgun and walked out into the undead maelstrom. A bullet of David’s ripped through my arm, but I barely felt it – my eyes and mind were set on Rae in the thing’s hands. He shouted at me from so far away, but all sounds had been dampened to allow me to hone in on the tempo of Taijitsu’s steps. A zombie, already floored, bit down on my shin, and another took a piece of my left shoulder, but my walk was inexorable. David dispatched both of them, and I could almost feel his crosshair on the back of my head – best to end it before she gets too far – but for reason, he didn’t shoot. Maybe the Doc had talked him down, or maybe it was the gut feeling that natural warriors like him were so famous for. Either way, from then on he covered me as best he could. I received three more bites on my body, and distantly, I remembered the multitude of scars on Dean, but I knew I wouldn’t scar. I would remain as human as I was, with my human flaws and my human features, which wasn’t very human at all, to my mind.

Up close I saw that the thing had gotten a bit taller; it now had to bend its back to fit inside. It saw me and bared its needle-like teeth, narrowing its eyes suspiciously, but somewhere in my I found a soft, melodious voice to speak to it in. If I ignored the way it looked and pretended it was a kitten – Keith’s kitten, the one I had heard Rae call Lucky …

“There, there … It’s okay …” I murmured, moving forward still. Rae was staring at me with wide eyes. She had stopped struggling and Taijitsu had stopped walking, conveniently right in the ‘doorway’, so that nearly all the zombies were blocked. “We won’t hurt you, big guy … You just can’t take Rae away like this, okay? You can just stay here if you want to be near her … It’s all right …”

Its expression changed from suspicious to … regretful? Its fingers loosened, and Rae began edging away, keeping her full attention on the thing. I started thinking, It doesn’t look so big when it’s not angry, then realized that it was actually shrinking – its spine seemed to be collapsing down like a telescope, and its fingers curled up to hid their true length. While still almost as tall as Keith and just as hideous as it had been before, it wasn’t quite as terrifying. Rae turned her eyes toward me.

“T-Trinity!”

I looked down at my torn, blood-soaked body. Fist-sized chunks of flesh had been ripped out of my torso and legs. I could see my own torn abs and behind them glistening, quavering organs. Why wasn’t I dead? Why couldn’t I die, even if I wanted to? Time, in its warped way, seemed to move slowly as I looked back up at a shocked Rae, but all around us it sped up. Taijitsu spun and roared at the zombies, scattering the majority of them, and David and Keith cleared out the rest of them. Corey appeared with Amy, and Selene peeked out comically from behind Amy’s skirt. When she saw the Doc, she gasped and ran to him. He welcomed her with an embrace and a tender smile I wouldn’t have thought him capable of, and he assured her that she had done well. Meanwhile I stood, and Rae stood with me, frozen in a parody of a moment.

Then I felt my legs finally weaken, and I opened my eyes once more to see that Rae and David had caught me.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Jess · V.I.P 260

I knew that the voices were quiet but to my ears they sounded like angry shouts. I cried out the instant I heard them and moved to cover my head. All that accomplished was pulling the things connected to my arms into the sides of the bed, making them crash over and create and even more clamorous racket. I struggled against what I perceived as restraints, and the needles slid out of my arms with deceptive easiness. Still convinced that I was somehow tied down, I writhed on the bed, striking out at anything that came near before hands managed to catch my wrists and forced them down into real restraints. My ankles followed. I raged against the straps, but with no effect, I soon calmed enough to hear the voices for what they are.

“– not listening to a single f*cking word we say –”

“Calm down, she’s secured now, and besides, she probably can’t hear us.”

“And why the hell would she not be able to hear us?”

“The girl was dead for three minutes. She can’t come back %105 just like that.” Fingers snapped.

“Shh.” Keith’s comforting rumble was least offensive to my sensitive ears. “She’s resting now. Let her rest peacefully.”

Dead for three minutes. Hey, that’s nothing, Doc. I was dead for an hour or two earlier. No biggie for a freak like me. I will be back up and running, ready to save all your asses from zombies and other mutants, again in no time flat.

I tried to open my eyes, and then realized they were already open. Something was covering them, allowing just the tiniest bit of light in around the edges. I almost panicked again, feeling claustrophobic, but just as my muscles tensed, a small hand reached out to rest in mine.

“M? Is she going to be okay?”

The Doc’s voice was as soft as it always was when he spoke to the children. “Of course. Just give her time.” There was a pause and a rustle, followed by a sigh. “Selene, now that Erin’s gone, I’m going to be relying on you more and more, okay?”

“Okay.” The little girl sounded frightened, but there was a small amount of pride and eagerness in her tone, too.

“Right now I need you to gather up the other children. Make sure none of them have gone missing, and you and Lucas search the compound if any of them have. If you still can’t find someone, write down their names and … I’ll deal with it. After that, take them all to the lunch room and make sure they stay there. Then, if you haven’t come across him yet, I need you and Lucas to search for Dean. Send him here and join the other children. Got all that?”

“Mm-hm. Find the others and take them to the lunch room, then me and Lucas find Dean, send him here, and then we go to the lunch room.”

“That’s it. Go on.”

The girl ran off, anxious to fulfill his wishes. I wondered if she saw him as a father figure or, if she even knew what a father figure was. Or if she saw him as a master who must be obeyed, under penalty of abandonment.

“That was just creepy,” came David’s blunt comment.

“Go f*ck yourself.”

David snorted. “So eloquent.”

The Doc actually laughed. After a moment David joined him, and Keith’s bassy chuckle followed soon after. I suppose there comes a time when you’ve snapped and growled and shouted at each other all you can, and you just have to laugh at yourselves. When the tension breaks, it’s either made of spun sugar or lethal glass, and I envied them their sugar. My face felt paralyzed and I was certain that a laugh would make my lungs disintegrate. Smiling or laughing with Dean dead, and soon to be found by an innocent child, was heartless, unimaginable.

Breathless from his little outburst, the Doc ushered David back to Rae and Keith, presumably, back to both Amy and Corey. He complained that he had done all he could for them, and now it was his chance to try and keep himself from dying. Keith offered to help, and the Doc’s dismissal was, as usual, coated in insults, but his typical acid seemed harmless just then.

Once the others had gone, I lost track of the Doc. He was shuffling around the area in circles or pacing, but didn’t seem to be really doing anything. A machine beeped, and he hurried over to it. I could practically see his confused frown merely by the ‘hmm’ sounds he made – then he walked slowly toward where I lay. My skin prickled as he got closer, and my arms actually spasmed when I felt his breath in my ear.

“You’re not human,” he whispered. “Are you?” At my silence, he chuckled. “I know. You wouldn’t want your friends to find out, I imagine, even though it would be in their best interests. No matter. I think we can come to an understanding.” His head rested on my pillow, and his voice lowered further. “I’m infected. But from the tests I’ve run on the sample of your blood I took earlier, I’m positive that your blood will act as a vaccine. Allow me to take what I need – I know you could fight me if you wanted to, leather straps or no – and your secret is safe with me.”

My blood is a …? No – no that’s impossible. It can’t be that simple. I can’t have that power. What about Dean? He was immune too, will his blood be a vaccine too, or is it only mine? I had the more advanced version of the serum, but – but still –

“Well?” the Doc growled. “I need an answer, girl, now.”

Haltingly, I nodded. He sighed in satisfaction, perhaps even murmuring a soft ‘thank you’. I barely took note of the needle sliding into my arm. It couldn’t be – could it? He was a doctor, one who’d been studying the effects of Gas Z for a long time; he had to know what he was talking about, but … Could my blood really hold such a precious secret?

Time passed. The Doc moved around, left my area, but I could hear him in an adjacent room or perhaps on the other side of a curtain in the same room. He seemed just as calm and suave as he ever was, whoever he was talking to, and I had to admire his composure. Another man might be secluding himself just in case his vaccine didn’t work, but the Doc went on with his work. Then, I realized what he was saying.

“Rae. David. There’s something you should be told.”

Oh god.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
There ya go, Rav I'm back. I've got the rough idea for another post, but I thought you'd want to handle this part - I'd hate to get Rae's reaction wrong.

-- Edited by Jess on Tuesday 30th of June 2009 05:11:42 AM

Ravynlee · ~ ModMother / The Cougar ~ 290

Hmm. Apologies if this post comes up twice. This server's d*cking with me apparently. I posted an update and couldn't see it so I'm trying again. Fingers crossed this works. It's near 3am and I've been furiously writing away for several hours. I want to get this up before bed, fingers crossed it works this time. Sorry for any typos and such, will edit in the morning. Later in the morning, of course

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From the bathroom I could hear the rattle of the doorhandle and the eventual creak and click of a door opening and closing. Twisting the band around the end of my braid, I stepped out. David, upon seeing me, curled out of his secretive haunch. Though we hadn’t been given any official orders to keep apart, since the little girl Amelia’s earlier reprimand, perhaps even since our arrival here, David had seemed to have interpreted our group’s division as a sign of oppression and orders he seemed strangely hesitant about breaking. I stopped in the doorway and smiled at him, that reflexive gesture of welcome, relief and defiance that I echoed with my arms folded across my chest.

“Hey,” he greeted. As always I echoed it, watching him scour the room like an alley cat in new territory. “How are you?”

“Yeah. You?” I answered. I watched him come to a stop and frown at me. Digging my cheek with my tongue I dropped my eyes to the floor.

He mentioned something about seeing Keith, though I’d spent enough time around him to know full well he was studying me more than just making idle conversation. His eyes narrowed as he approached a step closer and stopped again. Again he looked around. Even at a mere few metres distance I could smell the dirt on him, the sweat, see the veins protruding in his temples when he thought too hard or was pumped from physical labour – and both were probably the case. It seemed from the minute we’d arrived at this place he’d been sent ‘digging’ for reasons he never fully explained and such were questions I thought wary of urging him. In this environment curiosity wasn’t the healthiest of alternatives, I’d reasoned, and David would tell me if he thought I should have known, or so I’d hoped. But then all rational thought was taken over by what I’d seen at the Doc’s lab again, hearing the zombies, and a rash of fear prickled the skin on my forearms. Discreetly I swept it away. In his fist David was squeezing something but his fingers hid what it was from me. I guessed it was probably a key of some sort without stopping to reason that this door wasn’t always locked – fear of the unknown more than anything Erin or the little blonde kid could ever say or do kept me in here more than physical force ever really had. But by now I’d already come to accept the truth of my impeachment, in real honest terms what I was doing here as opposed to feeling like a piece of driftwood being dragged around by a chaotic current. When I looked up again to find David confronting me, and with his brow heavy and his lips pursed in a way that was again all too familiar to me by now to misconstrue, I found the colour drain from my face with what I knew was about to follow.

“What?”

“What do you mean, what?”

“I just asked you. What are you looking at me like that for?” A pause. “What’s wrong?”

Nothing’s wrong, I thought impulsively. I’ve seen the light, if there’s one to be had in all this carnage. I can help here more than I ever could out there but I know right now what you’re going to think about it-

“What did Keith say?” I asked instead.

I tried for what it was worth to make myself sound interested when my thoughts were for the most part swallowed up with something else. I hadn’t heard much about the others, if I marked time zealously instead of in intermittent bored periods I may have noticed days would have passed without even seeing David, but again on some subconscious level I knew my brain was softening the blow by obscuring facts like time and memories in order for me to better cope with my current situation. Thinking about Trinity only reminded me of her red eyes, or failing that the zombie attack on the service station, and thinking about Keith just brought me back to- But the look on David’s face continued to darken, pulling his face down so his eyes were practically glowering out beneath a crumpled blanket of disappointment – or some unspoken challenge, or with that exectutioner-esque façade, a threat.

“That’s not what I asked,” he said. In his grating monotone he grumbled. I sighed. I chewed my inner lip. I almost found myself smiling at him but sucked it back in before it could have been misread. The last thing I wanted after what seemed like days of mental preparation to this very point was to be picking my smile and perhaps a tooth or two up off the floor in a moment of disgrace.

“Don’t shrug your shoulders at me, Rae. I asked first.”

I opened my mouth, deliberating which sentence should come out first. Instead, like a coward, I said neither. My smile grew bitter instead of hopeful.

“What’s that in your hand?”

David looked down and seemed to remember what he was holding. Rather than show me he squeezed his hand around it again and eventually shoved it in his pocket. His shoulders fell, and with it a sense of guilt washed over me. A moment ago he’d charged in full of energy and promise and now he looked... Damnit, I hated this. Before I could have taken his gruff demeanour with indifference but now everything seemed to have a weighty gravitas, things meant more than they should have, they were too open to misinterpretation now, there was too much unknown grey areas when there should have been, as there had always been between us, a simple black and white exchange, or business, as he often so called it. I shook my head dismally as David lowered with a sigh to the end of the bed. His head was bowed, hands clasped with a sense of urgency draped between his thighs.

“I saw him the other day,” he finally admitted, “he said something about 2 days. 2 days, that was it. I thought he was talking some kind of… mutiny, but now…” He shrugged again. His eyes wandered about briefly. “I think it’s time we left this place, Rae. Just you and me. Something’s coming, I can feel it. I don’t know what it is, I just… I think he’s right. We’ve got to go and I mean now, soon. Permanently.”

He blinked up, brow crumpling, to gauge my reaction. Again came this uncertainty, this urge in me to yell back at him and tell him to stop throwing around obscurities and just bark orders and tell me what he wanted me to do like he’d always done instead of this… But when he looked away again I smiled back, small, weak but thankful none the less. He had, without knowing it, paved the way for me to confess my news to him without having to make a war out of it. With a sound I too sunk down on the end of the bed beside him. I even found myself blush a little, struck with a barrage of memories, most of which I’d never held in much esteem until that moment, and still felt awed for want of a better word that such a beast of a man actually had a softer side and was willing to share that with me – not that he’d be so candid with anyone else, of course - the world had ended but certain things like reputation and typical male bravado still continued on nonetheless. With stinging cheeks I looked away and waited, biding my time as the seconds on the clock above us counted them down.

“I hear what you’re saying,” I said eventually, “But I’m not going. I’m staying here. I want to help; I can’t do that out there.” I was quick to speak up just as his mouth fell open, as expected, to protest. “I don’t mean shooting and… dismembering and all that,” I added. “That’s your thing. It’s never been mine. I do it because I have to, because there’s never been another way. But here… maybe, I dunno, I can be part of the bigger picture you know, a final solution.” I faltered with the flat wayward glare in his eyes. “Not like that, you know what I mean. Just… I dunno. Out there, what have we got? It’s a handful of us against an entire world of walking dead. There’s only so many bullets, there’s only so much we can do. But in here maybe, I can use my skills for-”

“What skills?” he finally intersected, and predictably with all the venom such an outburst was due. He scoffed at me with a smile that was half humoured half lethal and shook his head at me before speaking. “Rae, you worked in a bakery before this sh*t went down. What skills could you possibly have that could help… solve the world full of infection?” He was laughing internally, it barely made it to the surface as a lamentable kind of wince, but as we sat there in silence I could feel that same sentiment echoing loud and clear within me, I just couldn’t voice it.

“I know you don’t understand-”

“You got that right.”

“But I really think it’s… I have to do this. I’m not like the rest of you, as hard as I try to be. I’m not tough, well I am, I’m just… I can’t help it; I still see them as people, like they were before they were killed-”

“These ‘people’ are out there to kill you and you want to feel sorry for them?”

“They didn’t have a choice, okay. The infection took out everyone. I saw mothers eating their babies out there, kids turning on their parents-”

“Exactly.”

-- Edited by Ravynlee on Thursday 2nd of July 2009 03:21:58 AM

Ravynlee · ~ ModMother / The Cougar ~ 290

“But they didn’t ask for this. None of them deserved to die like they did. They should be resting, in the ground, like it’s always been, and I can’t… - letting them rot on the side of the road like that or just… I can’t… keep doing this,” I said, finding the words harder to push out. “I know how it sounds, but each time I kill another one of those things I feel less like a person inside and I don’t want that. If we’re all that’s left I don’t want humanity to become as cold and as detached as they are, otherwise what are we fighting for, really?”

“I can see you’ve put a lot of thought into this,” David murmured towards the floor.

He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand – it was probably a physical distraction so he didn’t give away the fact he was shaking – or maybe it was merely a ruse to stop himself from physically lashing out. I had no way of telling whether he was being sarcastic, reflective, or had even heard a single word I’d said. I gave back a hurt grimace to appease him.

“If you and Keith and the rest of them want to go back out there I get it, I do,” I said, all the while thinking to myself the exact opposite. “But I can’t. There’s too many of them, and we’re running out of time. We’re running out of places to go, out of people to trust. What if the enemy’s, you know, closer than what we think?”

“What?” David cried.

He glowered at me over his shoulder, having had his fill of all the bullsh*t he was likely to take from me in one sitting. But rather than recoil I merely found myself smile back, a nervous smile, for having the Doc’s words fall from my mouth so easily. It was in that moment as I struggled beneath his intense narrow-eyed glare that I realised perhaps for the first real time since our paths had crossed how alike in our ways of thinking, and simple innate suspicion and self-defence, we actually were.

“I know,” I nodded.

I knew it came across condescending but in essence I was trying to soothe the savage beast as he sat beside me rattling in his proverbial cage. I remembered walking in to the Doc’s lab with the exact same look on my face feeling my heart beat an angry, indignant rhythm not that long ago. It seemed in only a few hours (but were in fact days, being in this room alone with my thoughts it was hard to tell indisputably either way) I’d matured or mentally progressed light-years ahead of all of them, and it left me feeling a tad haughty if not sympathetic to the look on his face. Getting to my feet I stood there looking over him before reaching out to offer him my extended hand. David looked at it, and up at me, like he wanted to drive his fist into my face without restraint. Thankfully something stopped him. Words were only going to get me so far, I thought to myself. It’s now or never, put up or shut up. I backed up towards the door, mentally trying to reorient my steps that the boy had taken me through the winding corridors in the dark and then back again.

“You probably won’t want to see it, I don’t even know if the others even know about it, I don’t think so, I don’t think he wanted anyone else to know really, but there’s something I think you should see,” I blurted, hoping if my words could not convince him of my motives for staying then perhaps a little show-and-tell just might. I didn’t even stop, or more appropriately, allow myself to think of what the Doc would say to this unwelcomed intrusion as I led David out of the room, feeling relief comfort me as his fingers tensely wrapped around mine.

What happened next quickly put a stop to that.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It hit like an explosion.

Without parallel it was like a grenade had landed beside us and brought everything to a sudden, deafening stop. Mid stride I found myself being thrown towards the ground. It all happened so fast I didn’t even have time to put my arms out on instinct to stop me slamming face-first into the floor. Some unseen force seemed to have exploded at my back. I was too disoriented to think or react, catching flashes of sights, of blurs, but not much – if any – sound. It took me a split second to realise David was not behind me, and the flash and subsequent ricochet that caught the wall in my peripheral vision wasn’t debris but a person – it took me a further second to correlate the two. I didn’t actually see him hit the wall, but the way he collapsed to the ground after it. It reminded me of the Hollywood stunt men who would throw themselves off buildings into piles of cardboard boxes, only there was no film crew here and nothing beneath him to soften the blow. Again, I didn’t hear it, but what I saw was enough to fill the audible fog that had clouded my brain. I think I screamed his name then, two jagged syllables that were swallowed up in the chaos and maelstrom around us. In a flash it had struck. Two flashes later I was moving forward. It was not by my own volition. What I saw, or rather what I thought I saw in those terrifying, earth-spinning, dissociative moments, made me crawl up inside my own skin and die. It, whatever it was, was holding me – it’s cold grey claws wrapped around my arm and waist. It was moving fast, or seemed to be, as the room blurred in the ensuing heartbeats of sterile tile and fluorescent lights - and I found myself cursing my apparent wrong turn. This wasn’t the lab, I thought, but even that thought was barely coherent, it was more realisation than thought, instinct. I think I was too deaf from the initial attack to even hear myself screaming but from the force in my chest I knew I was – only sound wasn’t making its way out – or maybe it was, and I was mentally too far gone to register it anymore.

And then came the zombies. There was a fleeting moment, an instant of clarity, no longer than the beat of a butterfly’s wings, and I realised that death was imminent. It was an eerily peaceful moment where I could do and think and say and feel nothing but just was, watching the wave of ambling blue grey figures slump forward through the hole in the wall. Alone the dead were horrifying to behold but arguably easy to dispatch, but in their masses…

I saw the Doc then, caught off guard, his goggles that had been trained on us for barging in were now fixed elsewhere with his expression a perfect mockery of a renaissance statue carved from stone. He was inhumanely agile for a blind man, whipping out a shotgun from seemingly nowhere and blasting into the horde as several of the creatures fell. Time exploded in a hail of spent cartridges and murderous growls and moans and flickering swinging fluorescent light. At some point I caught sight of David stomping on a creature’s head and caving in its face beneath the heel of his boot. A small mound was erect and they were shooting out from behind it, a tangled blackish mound of twisted limbs and gaping mouths and torsos. All of this came to me in flashes, like the room was besieged by strobe light instead of zombies. I didn’t have time to process any of it. In my mind I had regressed back, back beyond the war, back beyond even the womb I’m sure, howling internally for help without the faculties or comprehension to speak it. The thing was looking at me. It wasn’t even familiarising itself with me, there was a sensation, a cold-water-in-the-bowel sensation that it actually knew me in those brief connecting seconds. Catching sight of myself reflected back in those huge black eyes I realised with horror I actually looked like one of the dead, frozen and practically slack in fear, I just wasn’t dead – yet. The walls still moved and so did the ground beneath me but the sensation of walking was lost on my senses. I heard bullets whiz past striking the thing that howled or screeched or even weathered without complaint, but we were still moving, at some point mindboggling fast and yet at the same time paradoxically slow. Heard isn’t the right word, I don’t think sound came back until much later in the aftermath, but it seemed as if in the absurdity and absolute terror of the moment that time and space both seemed to stop and I could actually see sound move rather than hear it, mentally bridging the gap for what my senses could no longer do. And then, suddenly, she was there.

“There, there … It’s okay …”

Approaching. Talking to it. Soothing it. She moved as she had at the service station, fluid like, with purpose. Again came this sense of the magnificently surreal as I watched Trinity move through the crowd of zombies like she were wading through water.

“We won’t hurt you, big guy … You just can’t take Rae away like this, okay? You can just stay here if you want to be near her … It’s all right …”

What was she-? How did she-? But I was too taken aback to speak. The pressure around me loosened like a switch had been flicked. My body was moving again without knowing I was doing it and finally I was in control of it – if control could even be considered an adequate description for the adrenalin-fuelled impulse of self-preservation. But for each heartbeat, each jagged half-breath that marked the passing split seconds, reality was still too far away in dawning. And then I turned to Trinity and saw perhaps the worst sight of all – watching as one after the other or with pack-like mentality the fallen and falling undead took chunks out of her flesh, great bloody, gaping wounds… and still she moved forward as if she didn’t seem to feel it at all. The terror in me was beyond measure, staring fixated on her eyes that were staring straight back, possibly straight through me, something to behold with the army of dead swarming all around her oblivious.

“T-Trinity!” I screamed.

The word, ruptured from lack of breath, left my body like a searing blow to the chest. Gunshots continued to ring out; I was mutely aware of them now, distant, again oblivious to their imminent threat, lost on the revulsion of what stood before me. Trinity stood looking down at herself, bloodied fingers dancing around the edge of an opened, oozing wound. When she looked up at me everything in the peripheral haze just fell away. When she fell I reached out, catching her along with another set of arms, cradling her upper torso as she crumpled to the floor. It didn’t even occur to me until afterwards that she could have turned that moment and infected any one of us, turning us all into more of those things. But it wasn’t until later after she’d been tied down and restrained on a gurney that I remembered back to my reason for being in that room for the first place, and reacquainting myself with the feelings I’d had so long ago back when she’d first been brought in at The Park.

“She’s one of them,” someone said, “kill her,” but I just smiled and shook my head sadly.

I wanted to say something profound, something worth saying, but the trauma of the event had stolen all but my ability to follow orders. I was directed by a set of steel arms that were shaking to lay down on a gurney as the sound of hammering and drills filled the air. There were people everywhere but their voices came and went like a churning angry sea. As the shock finally kicked in and panic infected the room, I lay there for a long time staring back at the girl who’d saved my life, twice, and died, until a curtain was drawn between us. I didn’t have time to grieve – it was with a degree of dubiousness, then fear, that I’d heard someone pronounce she started breathing again soon after. I didn’t want to believe it but I knew what it meant. Just like that it seemed like all the chips I’d been trying to rationalise off as something else had finally fallen into place.

“Shh,” I heard a deep voice, Keith’s, finally murmur. “She’s resting now. Let her rest peacefully.”

I smiled at that. It was overflowing with bitterness.

Of all the things those ‘things’ like Trinity could do, resting in peace was not an option anymore, and that was probably the cruellest irony of all.

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-- Edited by Ravynlee on Thursday 2nd of July 2009 03:21:03 AM

Ravynlee · ~ ModMother / The Cougar ~ 290

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Funny how after everything that had happened, my first reaction, upon David returning to my side, was to wrap my arms around him and not let go. I’d never been one for open displays of affection but it seemed I no longer cared. Not that, but after so many horrors (indeed there weren’t enough let alone adequate words in the dictionary for the things we’d seen since the gas fell), I had no choice not to care anymore, there was only so much distance I could keep, only so much front I could hide behind, before the cold reality of loneliness and fear and desperation came flooding in. Funny too how natural it seemed under scrutinizing eye when we’d wade in awkward waters in the ‘comfort’ of privacy for so many months. I just remember calling his name with a wince that was lost against the crushing security of his collar and neck and lips. Tears probably came but if they did they were brief and probably more reactionary than actually required. I was still too shocked to rationalise my way through anything, but in a strange way it was as if a veil had been lifted not placed, paring away all the nonsensical trivial bullsh*t and leaving me with a degree of clarity that no doubt bordered on cold, at least in the tone of voice I eventually heard myself speaking.

“I thought you were dead,” I confessed to him, watching him settle on a knee on a chair leaning over my bedside.

“Yeah,” David sn iggered without really adding anything else.

His expression was rosy, heightened no doubt, still wired and on high alert from the battle, but his tone suggested he was, among other things, thankful for the respite. He held my hand and was practically squeezing sensation from it. I didn’t care. It meant I could still feel, and that, after everything else, was a twisted kind of blessing, I told myself. Then I found myself stroking his head.

“Your hair’s growing back,” I said quite matter-of-factly.

David chuckled and drew my hand away simply nodding. It was a silly, out of place comment but at least it was coherent – by anyone’s standards I should have been a babbling mess confined to a padded room and a special white jacket right about now, I thought. My gaze flicked briefly to the curtain that kept Trinity away from sight. I was distracted by voices behind it but I didn’t hear what was being said. Elsewhere I realised Amy and Keith and Corey were talking, sharing their relief in their usual threefold way. I blinked up as footsteps approached the bedside.

“How are you feeling?” The Doc queried.

I frowned up at him. David’s expression crumpled. I was glad if nothing else that the whole horrid incident hadn’t robbed the Doc of his ineffectual bedside manner – but could only nod back mutely.

“How the f*ck do you think she’s feeling?” David quipped, as always, my ever-trusty and razor-sharp to-the-point mouthpiece.

His fingers were crushing mine. I tried to make a fist but couldn’t move my fingers let alone wriggle them out. His apologetic gaze, though it came briefly, didn’t shift a great deal from the defiant stare he afforded the newly re-spectacled Doc. The Doc mentioned something about having given me a sedative which was a moot point considering the shock I knew I must have been experiencing was doing precisely that just as nature had intended, but nature of course had little if anything to do with the state we now found ourselves in. And it was about to get a whole lot worse with one sentence.

“Rae. David. There’s something you should be told.”

“…Okay.”

The world’s ended. Zombies run the planet. Something inhuman tried to kidnap me, and I just saw someone get eaten alive and apparently hold a brief conversation with you less than a minute ago, whatever you’ve got to say shoot, surely things can’t get much worse, I dared him. In hindsight I could have laughed aloud at that brave, foolhardy, sentiment.

“I’m afraid I haven’t been honest with you-”

“Here it comes-”

“That… thing that just… tore a hole in the side of this building-”

“So much for a goddamn defence post this is-”

“David!”

“You’re not helping-”

“And I suppose you are, with your lies and your bullsh*t. This here is nothing but an illegitimate Dickensian whorehouse for little boys and girls. You hide behind your glasses and white coat, you’re nothing but a medical paedophile, why the f*ck should we trust you-”

“David, please!” I barked.

It wasn’t so much for the disrespect or the venom he was speaking, which were similar feelings I had festering inside of me for longer than I could remember, or for the fact that the others were watching on, secretive whispers, contemplating who should speak up and say what, if anything, to stop it. But something else, something I could sense, maybe in the way the Doc was regarding me behind those goggles that for all intents and purposes reminded me of welder’s safety glasses, something I couldn’t put into words let alone recognise it for what it was. I could only feel it sinking in my stomach along with a familiar kind of guilt and anger and regret. But the two of them were too busy now in their malarkey to pay me any mind as they ‘glared’ at each other like rival foes. The adrenalin had only worked to over amplify everything so that even the heat in their words sounded hotter, colder, crueller than it normally would have been. David, still wearing that jubilant gleam in his eye, still pumped and reactive to the last fibre was on his feet and in the other, taller, man’s face without another moment’s hesitation. It would have been amusing save for the fact there was no skerrick of humour left in the dead world anymore – and the anticipatory atmosphere noted it too.

“What else have you been lying to us about, huh? You’ve got more of those things out there in the back somewhere that can break loose and come after us, is that it?”

“For f*cks sake, would you shut up and listen!”

“I’m not gonna listen to another f*cking thing you say-”

“That thing is her son!”

A pause. A gasp. “…Her son?”

All eyes turned to me. What more could I do? I denied it. While all the while, in my head, the memories came flooding back.

(“You’re freezing.”)

“No- That’s not possible-”

(“I’m okay.”)

“Ask her.”

(“Come here… Better?”)

“She’s lying.”

(“God I’m so cold.”)

“Ask her yourself. I’ve run the tests. That thing isn’t yours, you’re off the hook. Celebrate!”

(“You’ve probably got a chill.”)

“Then it’s a mistake… Do it again.”

“For what? I’ve been doing this long enough to know what it is I need to be looking for. I guarantee you, you don’t have it. It doesn’t have your DNA, trust me, these glasses and white coat are here more than just for show, you half-witted red-neck…”

(“R-Rae? - I’m sorry.”)

…I know…

-- Edited by Ravynlee on Thursday 2nd of July 2009 03:19:48 AM

Ravynlee · ~ ModMother / The Cougar ~ 290

It seemed like the Doc’s voice, and David’s, echoed in the background like some secondary heartbeat, one I seemed able of consciously blocking out until the memory had naturally run its course. When I felt the Doc snatch back the sheet and poke at my abdomen the sounds grew loud, like shattering glass, I cringed away from it, his voice, as much as the connotation behind what he was saying. But David must have thought something else had happened, maybe he thought the Doc had hurt me, indirectly, verbally, I suppose he had. In a blur and a clatter and an eventual thud the two men were on the floor, exchanging blows on the other side of an upended gurney. It was almost funny, save for the fact the real provocation lay veiled behind the shouting, cussing and flying fists – It was easy to see why Keith had leapt to his feet and was dragging David off the Doc with the insults flying in every direction; there was nothing funny about watching some big guy beating on a blind man, let alone a blind man in a doctor’s coat, regardless whether he’d arguably warranted it or not. It took both Keith and Corey to drag David off, and keep him off when his shoes got enough traction for him to charge forward again for round two. But Amy stood blocking his path, delicately helping the Doc back up to his feet and dusting him off. I was amazed at how vulnerable the Doc looked then, bloodied, pale, his vacant stare fractured without his beloved specs, but maybe amazed wasn’t the right word after all. Maybe it was closer to fear and disgust. Even though he’d been blindsided literally by a cowardly act, something about it all shook me more than I’d been expecting. I knew David’s temper even if I hadn’t really expected that. None of us had. But I was more shocked to recognise a sense of fragility in the medic that seemed to resonate throughout all of us – though we hadn’t ‘known’ him long the Doc was probably the best of us, best prepared, best adjusted, and for him to look so… ‘human’…

In the seconds following the fight no one spoke, other than Keith to subdue David with a few terse and grating words. I’d never seen Keith like that, only glimpses of it back at The Park. He gained equal amounts of respect and hatred from me in that one electric moment. It took longer than usual for a sense of ‘normalcy’ to return after that, if one had ever been present before it.

“Alright, alright, now everyone just calm the f*ck down!” Keith eventually ordered, taking charge where no one else was in a position to do so. It was clear after that, even as he stood there shrugging off Corey’s menial attempt at restraint and spitting at the floor that David with his surly stare had just made himself enemy number one - at least if the looks on everyone’s faces were anything to go by. But the Doc, thanking a smiling Amy as she ‘found’ his glasses for him and bowed with an appreciative touch of the cheek, seemed to shake off the proverbial sh*t storm with his usual apathetic flair.

“Well, that was certainly productive wasn’t it?”

David snorted. He obviously seemed to 'remember' at that moment that his ribs had been hurting, aggravated by the sudden movement no doubt having made it worse, but even as he stood there tentatively pushing against his shirt he openly defied this show of 'weakness', needing to hold on to his reigning title of victor for every bittersweet split second it was obviously worth - still, despite his grimace he glowered at the Doc as if he had been the cause of his injuries. Maybe he was making ready to throw his hand in regardless and break the rest of his ribs in an act of vengeance. It certainly flashed across his face with a hot shade of red.

“Uh!” Keith warned.

People refused to sit, all but Trinity and I who both remained on our gurneys. I at least was sitting up in mine. There was nothing at all forthcoming from hers, other than the swish of material as her curtain settled back into place having being stirred up by a small gust of wind. The surgery was deathly silent after that, punctured only by ragged breathing and lethal stares. I didn’t stop to ask where the sound of hammering and drilling from before had gone let alone brave the question of who wielded the tools. In the back of my mind David’s colourful statement of labelling this place as little more than a slave house for kids struck a nerve in me, striking root to grow. I found myself unable to look at him then, not so much for the loathsome stare he was affording me but for the fact I really felt like I deserved it. Then, predictably, the questions started, questions I didn’t feel ready right then and there to answer – least of all to an audience, but at the same time part of me supposed it was due. Was I infected? No. Logically that didn’t make sense to me. But grappling with logic after fighting zombies, after being kidnapped by something that defied comprehension let alone… anything else, after all we’d seen and heard and endured as individuals and as a group, logic was something as flimsy and malleable as the concepts of fair fight and commonsense in a world that no longer adhered to any sense of either.

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” someone, Corey, echoed. “If that thing is infected, and she’s not-”

“The father is.”

“Is?” Corey’s brows rose expectantly.

Tucked away in the corner of the room, arguably I realised, at the furthest distance from me as was physically possible, David stood shoulder buried against the wall, arms crossed, shaking his head bitterly. “This is bullsh*t,” he would occasionally mutter, but it was hard to discern beyond that whether he was angry about the fact he was not the thing’s father or whether he was now in the background, out of contention, and comparatively no longer part of the bigger ‘pressing’ picture – he should have been dancing for joy. I didn’t stop to wonder for a moment what he had to look so disappointed about.

“So… you’re telling us, she slept with a dead man?”

“The concept of loving someone to death just took on a whole new meaning.”

“I think that’s called Necrophilia.”

“Corey!” Amy snapped, shooting him a stare that bordered on motherly.

But the Doc resumed speaking, his tone reminding me of some college professor who had, by the sounds, been studying his diagnosis so intently before this he could prattle off facts and hypothesis without a moment’s hesitation. That thought alone rattled me, more so than the factual way we were all just calmly sitting or standing around like this talking. Again came this impression we could have been at camp swapping ghost stories in some abandoned sanatorium, but I was weighed down by the looks they were trying hard not to give me and the guilt that I had ‘unknowingly’ brought this threat to them and could have ended in their and probably my untimely demise.

“The fact is we don’t know enough about the virus’ molecular construction to know what it’s… influencing factors are on the body’s reproductive organs,” the Doc said.

“Excuse me? You might want to explain that last part,” Keith apologised, elaborating with a weary yawn that they weren’t all Harvard graduates. Corey, obviously struggling to get his head around this entire ‘Taijitsu’ revelation, took it one step further.

“F*ck that,” he said, emphasizing this last part as if speaking to a dumbard, “Do you speak English?”

The Doc sighed. He removed his goggles briefly to rub his eyes that were eerily focussed ahead, as if through the white fog they were actually able to see the pouting form of David on the other side of the room. Smearing some flakes of blood from the side of his face he returned his specs and sunk down into a nearby chair.

“The rate of infection varies depending on how the blood enters the system… the gas could have left residual traces on DNA… tainted water, food, prophylactics…”

“This is bullsh*t,” we heard, as David pushed himself off the wall to stomp into the centre of the room. “I was there, remember? That night, the three of us spent in that barn on the edge of that town, the night he died. He was already turning before we even got there, you know it, I know it, there’s no possible way-”

“He said that thing didn’t bight him!” I bellowed back, oblivious to the way the rest were watching us, like spectators at a tennis match, looking from one back to the other staying silent. “It bled on him, that means it was slower, the infection didn’t-”

“It doesn’t matter how Rae, the point is he was f*cking dying before we even got there and you were too stupid to notice! You took him up there and did god knows what while the man was drawing his last f*cking breaths! What and we’re meant to believe you didn’t seem to notice he was already half way turned before you climbed on top of him? What the f*ck was wrong with you? He was already turning cold; he was shutting down, how the f*ck was he even able to get it-”

“I thought he was sick!” I cried. “I was trying to help!”

“How, by sucking the life out of him, what was left-”

“F*ck you!”

“Yeah, I bet,” David scoffed a bitter smirk a dour pout and a shake of the head as his eyes lowered to stare at the floor. “I bet he was sick alright. And hungry, I remember that. I was the one who had to drag you out of there while he tried to take a bight out of your face, remember, only you wouldn’t let me. Was he still sick then or maybe delusional? Maybe you’re the one that’s delusional. This whole f*cking story doesn’t make any sense! I was there, I was down on the ground, I was patrolling the f*cking place what while you two were up there having your little soirée? I didn’t hear anything, maybe he was already dead and you just couldn’t stop yourself and climbed on board, how the f*ck do we know, huh? Who needs consent when the whole f*cking world’s gone to sh*t!”

-- Edited by Ravynlee on Thursday 2nd of July 2009 10:17:52 AM

Ravynlee · ~ ModMother / The Cougar ~ 290

I didn’t care that anyone else was in the room, I didn’t care that they were criticizing me, paring away what arguably amounted to my ‘love life’ with judgemental eyes and disparaging looks. I’d been through too much to let something like humility or embarrassment dampen my spirit, but what I couldn’t handle, and what I knew David was doing with well-honed precision after weeks of practice, was pushing the only true button I had left at my disposal – and my detriment – picking on the last person who was in no position to defend himself; Rob.

“You don’t know,” I answered, for the first real time with actual hate in my voice. “You don’t know anything. Damn you… Damn you to hell.”

“If there’s a hell, I’m already in it,” David returned in that same ominous and loathsome tone. “And in case you haven't noticed, so are you, b*tch.”

Like me, he even leant forward to aim his verbal blow right where it was intended. I didn’t maintain eye contact after that, there seemed no need. I sat seething, hollow, feeling cheated of the precious time I’d spent thinking I’d actually grown feelings for this man that turned out to be nothing more than a web of self deceit. But just as David had added something unsavoury, something about some circle of hell being reserved for pederasts and corpse abusers, a voice rose up above the din, that wasn’t, ironically what anyone was expecting.

“Leave her alone,” it said, a soft spoken commandment coming from the opposite end of the surgery.

All eyes turned searching for another’s presence with no one else save for the previous regular faces in sight. That’s when the curtain moved and a small figure stepped out. It took me a moment to recognise the boy as the one who had led me through to the lab what felt now like years ago as the Doc beckoned him over. He wasn’t alone. Selene and Lucas looked shaken as they made their way over to the Doc’s side. Just how long they’d been hiding there was anyone’s guess, but as I met the boy’s eyes he decided, apparently on impulse, to step away from the Doc and stand beside me. He took my hand in his cold fingers and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“He says thankyou,” he said with what one could only call innocence.

The Doc cleared his throat and got the boy’s attention. “Lucas, come here. Good boy. Now what did I tell you before about… that?” He said. It was hard to understand what he was referring to.

Initially, and with a quick glimpse I had to reaffirm he hadn’t spoken out of turn for David who was looking back at me with an unreadable stare. My pulse was still thrumming with the after-effects of adrenalin and fear and an overwhelming desire to fly off the edge of the bed and beat him within an inch of his life for what he had said – whether he meant a word of it or not. But there was no real time to dwell on the raw wounds of the past or the subsequent character assassination that had now been dragged out and flogged mercilessly in such a ‘public’ arena, let alone any real time to ask otherwise. The look on little Selene’s face had Amy at least getting to her feet anxiously.

“What is it sweetheart?” she wondered.

She stooped over with her hands between her knees and was walking towards the child with her fear lingering just behind the thin veil of concern. But Selene was obviously too shaken to say anything just stand there and shiver, her prosthetic claws entangled in her pale little fingers fearfully. That’s when someone said it, speaking Dean’s name like an afterthought, a last minute invitation to a party that hadn’t even had the decency to show up for.

“Where is he?” someone, probably Corey, asked, as everyone exchanged varying degrees of the same dubious or pissed off glances.

The venom that up til this point had been charging through my veins keeping me hyper-vigilant and rigid relented now and drained away like the colour seeping from Selene’s sweet little face. At the spoken fear that something may have happened to our quick-witted country bumpkin I found myself looking at David with a sense of anticipatory apology. If there was ice melting on his gruff exterior I wasn’t readily finding it. I dipped my eyes away. The Doc was stooped close to Selene and she was whispering something in his ear. A moment later he was on his feet.

“You and you,” he pointed at Keith and Corey, “take the west corridor. Amy, you and I will take the east.”

He was snatching his shotgun up and snapping it in readiness, a sound that had all of us on our feet in a more unified manner than any rousing speech would ever have done. All I heard in the ensuing panic was something had obviously happened to Dean, just what it was, and what we were all searching for wasn’t entered in to. The hole in the wall may have been sealed for now but some of those things, or even worse the dreaded hellmuts, could have still stolen away inside and were now running loose in the compound. Sliding off the bed I approached the Doc just as he was looming down, murmuring something in Selene’s ear as the boy Lucas stood by watching obediently.

“Where do you want me to go?” I asked him.

I thought of course my presence had been overlooked or worse I was being left til last due to the outburst that had stripped any last modicum of humility I may have up til that point still carried in his eyes. But the Doc stood still focussed, still mentally miles ahead, the very picture of paternal benevolence, and disappointment etched around those dark lenses. He still wore a few red welts on his face but moved and spoke like no real injury had been sustained from his beating, which in reality hadn’t looked to have amounted to much – strange I thought, considering the force with which I saw David swinging, and the sound of each landing blow afterwards. I’d seen him beat those other things to an irreversable state of ‘death’ with nothing but his fists… Maybe, Doc was one of those rare types impervious to pain, I told myself, in his profession it was possible, all of this in the duration of a few split seconds while his nimble hands assessed his rifle before throwing it aside – and landing in David’s hands with a clatter.

“If you two have finished your lover’s spat,” he retorted, as David could be heard pumping the cartridge into place and stopped short with a tinge from his ribs and a stern glance – was that betrayal? – in the Doc’s direction. “You two stay here. Look after the girl. Make sure it doesn’t come back.”

I was about to argue, whether out of habit, whether still residually pissed off after our public slanging match, or merely only because judging by the look on David’s face I was expecting that was what he was wanting, but the Doc seeming to anticipate argument shot me down before a single syllable was able to escape my lips. In my face, looming over me as did pretty much everyone save for the children in his care, the Doc muttered the word ‘Taijitsu’ and something about not having a repeat performance of earlier before he stoutly stormed out. Though I didn’t know what that word meant in the literal sense-

(how could it have a title if he didn’t know what ‘it’ was? Surely by giving something a title that had to mean there was more of them out there, that that ‘thing’ from my dreams and my nightmares that was suddenly all real wasn’t the only one, right, surely?)

-I’d learnt enough now to associate it with that thing that had grabbed me, and as such it had to be perceived as a threat. But in truth I wasn’t really listening, and I pretended not to notice the way David rolled his eyes and followed the Doc all the way out to the closing door; a spoilt brat stuck serving detention with someone he apparently hated - like any other night before this when he was desperate for company he acted any differently, I scoffed inside. I almost laughed aloud, but something internal was stopping me. Whether it was the shock wearing off, or the realisation having dawned in some obscure corner of my overwrought, wound up, near irreparably damaged brain, I found myself shaking my head, smiling, cursing this notion, this reality of this thing actually being part of me-

(Part of Rob, you mean)

-and somehow calling it, recognising it for what it was. Irony was a bitter taste on the tongue locked away in a room with the stench of the undead nearby, knowing something quite illogical lay still breathing behind a curtain not far from me and keeping company with a man apparently more at peace thinking he were the father of some illegitimate monster than the retreating outsider he’d been proven to be – and to think in my darkest hour I’d somehow managed to wreak a new havoc on the world I hadn’t even been privy to the fact I’d been making. Wandering across the room I slipped behind Trinity’s curtain and stood there staring at her frozen for a moment as the memory of her ‘bravery’ came and left the forefront of my thoughts. When they passed in due course I found myself smiling, dragging up a chair to sit beside her. She didn’t move as I lowered myself down, reaching out, hesitating, then making contact to touch her skin. It seemed a little cool but still warm, human, as I gently swept the dark hair back from her face.

-- Edited by Ravynlee on Thursday 2nd of July 2009 04:39:38 PM

Ravynlee · ~ ModMother / The Cougar ~ 290

“Shh,” I whispered, nestling down briefly to kiss her forehead.

I looked down over her in her human form but in my mind’s eye I was seeing her as she had been, as she would be, no doubt, the shape of things as yet to come. I heard David approach and saw him snap back the curtain, affording my gesture of latent maternal bonding with a quizzical then worried stare.

“I’ll protect you,” I said - ironic after all that had happened but still there it was - still whispered, still speaking in that soft soothing monotone I could only guess could be referred to as maternal instincts.

-Whether you like it or not that thing out there is part of Rob and while it lives it meant he doesn't have to die. Just like you always hoped. Just like you always dreamed- Yes, but I didn't want for it to turn out like this, I wanted a human child, a healthy child- That thing is alive, right now that's the best that it gets- I can't do this, it's not natural- Hey you got what you asked for. It can't help what it is, it didn't ask for this anymore than you or the rest of them did. You know what you have to do. You know what's at stake. Step up to the plate now and own it. No one can take that away from you now, not even David. Think about it, Rae, this is yours, no one else's, this is your son!-

I looked across Trinity’s body still sleeping, still dozing obliviously, staring across at David with a strange smile growing, slowly infecting the rest of my face. I didn’t care if he understood it anymore – and I could judge by the unsettling look he was returning he apparently didn’t - it didn’t seem to matter if I’d even fully accepted it or not. A saner mind might have recoiled at the notion but no, this almost felt like kismet; the dreams, the visions, Rob’s ominous haunting, his warnings, us coming here now to such a facility – he was still out there and now I was finally starting to see the bigger picture coming together. Taijitsu, or whatever that thing was that Trinity had spoken to on my behalf was still out there somewhere and she alone seemed to be able to communicate with it. She was more than just the bridge between us; she was, in my twisted logic at that moment, the human element I needed to take the horrific edge of what it really was I had ‘given birth’ to. She was, in short, the surrogate face to what I was starting to see as the future, maybe our best hope yet against the enemy. It was nature’s misgiving, its cruellest blow so far, but still it existed, against all reason, against all logic, against all odds – like the rest of us, survivors; I had no choice but to empathise with it, a monster without allies on either side. This thing, this Taijitsu, was my mistake, my burden, my legacy to the world of the dead – and it had to be protected, studied, secured – ultimately, no matter what the cost.

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Not originally what I had in mind but the one I could wring the most (vulgarity, apparently) from *lol* Hope you can do something with it

EDIT: Oh and its worth mentioning, if it didn't make sense or don't remember/didn't scroll back that far, that all that broken speech above in brackets and italics was Rae and Rob's exchange way back in the very beginning, page 5 MS Word count on my documents *lol* - I know, I'm anal about the details aren't I? The point is it was confusing, and was meant to be that way. In between her recollections we had Dave and the Doc 'reasoning/arguing' in the background, ending with a kind of lamenting regret she doesn't voice she just... thinks. Accepts? Anyway, I wasn't sure how it would read so I had to edit to point that out. Yes there's about 4 different people speaking in that section, 2 voices from the past and 2 that arent in italics or brackets that were in the present. Hope if you didn't at all get that, that you get it now... or confusion will just have to reign supreme *lol* Damnit I'm sleep deprived, I'm off to bed consarnit... As I said before, hope that doesn't screw up your plans in any way, but you can always call me a liar at any point where you see fit. I'm 'crazy' and in shock here, remember? *lol* Ah the lunacy continues...
Good luck =)

-- Edited by Ravynlee on Thursday 2nd of July 2009 10:41:06 AM

Jess · V.I.P 260

Ehn, this could be much better, but it's just to early to do any editing.
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Amy panted, running after M. He alone had heard what Selene had whispered, and judging from his quick reaction, it was something serious. Besides, it wasn’t exactly reassuring to be told to kick down every door she came to and be ready to shoot. Finally, the tension and lack of knowledge got to her – she seized his arm before he could dash away again.

“M! Tell me what’s going on!”

He glared at her through his now-broken glasses, harshly shrugging off her hand. “The kids couldn’t find Dean.”

“And that’s a reason to bust down doors why?”

“Because –” he stopped. “He has to be somewhere. I don’t like not knowing where.”

“You’ve never told a more transparent lie.”

“Deal with it.”

He tore off down the dark hallway again. After a second, she went after him, annoyed that he could run so fast so soon after standing off against a horde of zombies and being walloped on by David. She, even with stitches in her side, should’ve been able to at least keep up – she was taller for god’s sake. And he had to be exhausted. She’d only seen him move like that when one of the girls was in danger, or, well, she was.

“M!” she shouted suddenly. “Are we in danger?”

“We’re holding guns, aren’t we?”

“From what?” She grabbed him again. “From Dean?”

This time he wouldn’t look at her. For him, that meant it was more likely he was telling the truth – he could lie straight-faced but truth was a thing to be shifty about. “…Possibly,” he allowed.

“Would you tell me what the hell Selene said?” she asked lowly.

Pulling away from her again, he finally relented. “I told her and Lucas to round up the others and find Dean. First off, they can’t find Amelia.” He swallowed. It was no secret that the little blonde girl was one of his favorites. “And apparently Dean wasn’t with Trinity or in their room, but there was blood all over the place. Lucas knows how to operate most of my lab equipment, so he’s going to be testing to see whose blood it is.”

“Surely you don’t think –”

“I don’t know the man.”

“Yeah, well I do,” she retorted, though it wasn’t really true. “There’s not a mean bone in his body. He wouldn’t’ve hurt Amelia.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Luckily there were no voices this time. Only breathing, and the rhythmic thumping of someone pacing back and forth. I was able to turn down the volume in my head before I opened my eyes. David, rifle in hand, was the source of the pacing – unsurprisingly perhaps – and the breathing mainly came from Rae. When she saw my open eyes, she beamed down on me. My initial reaction was to smile back; I was alive, I was warm and safe, and someone else was happy about it. Then I realized that last I knew, Rae was understandably freaked out by me. How long had …?

“What happened?” I asked, moving to sit up and finding my wrists and ankles bound down.

Rae quickly set about undoing the buckles, still smiling. “I’m glad you’re awake,” she said.

Apparently, I thought, rubbing my freed arms. Able to sit up and pull my knees to my chest, I did so. There were gaping holes in my t-shirt, and I frowned at them in confusion. Then the memory came – and then, the thought that I would need a new shirt.

“Are you okay?” Rae asked me.

I nodded, not worrying myself over how. “Where is everyone?”

“Looking for Dean,” she answered, finally uneasy.

My stomach flip-flopped. I closed my eyes.

“What is it?”

“N-Nothing.” Irrational as it was, I felt like I should start making excuses – for myself, for Dean, for our separation, I didn’t know quite what. “He um … He wasn’t in the room when Selene woke me earlier. I don’t know where he is.”

The look on Rae’s face said she didn’t really care, as long as I was alive and well. It disturbed me – nice as it was to be cared about, the truth was that I didn’t want Rae’s attention just then. I wanted it from someone who was no longer alive, and I wanted a slightly different kind of attention. Besides, her sudden affection made me wonder if she hadn’t been hit on the head at some point. My eyes slid up to try and meet David’s, but he kept pacing, pacing, pacing; ignoring Rae and me.

“I’m sure they’ll find him,” Rae commented, laying a hand over mine.

“Yeah.” I couldn’t think of a nice way to pull away, but I refused to meet her eyes, as David did mine.

T the door slammed open. Rae and I both jumped, while David seemed to have almost been expecting it. Keith and Corey came in, bickering in a very strange way: Corey’s snapped at Keith a mile a minute, while Keith silenced or countered him simply with looks and gestures.

“And for all we know not that little b*tch –”

An exaggerated eye-roll.

“Look, we haven’t got a goddamn clue what she’s capable of. You saw her out there – bullets tearing through her, zombies treating her like an all-you-can-eat buffet – and now she’s f*cking fine. What the hell is she? For all we know she ate Dean alive.”

A snicker.

“Damn it Keith, are you even f*cking listening to me?”

Keith saw me and drew his thumb across his neck. Corey silenced, glaring at me from the corner of his eye. Could he seriously think I …?

“Amy and the Doc aren’t back yet?” Keith rumbled.

Just as Rae began to shake her head, Doc M slouched in the door, Amy close behind him. Both looked exhausted. One look between Keith and the Doc said a thousand words, and only two remained:

“What now?”

The Doc sighed and slowly rested his weight against the wall. He glanced at his watch. “Well,” he said. “It’s ten o’ clock in the morning. There’s a giant hole in the defensive wall. We’ve already … misplaced an able-bodied fighter, not to mention Amelia. My nurse is dead. I’m injured, Keith’s injured, David’s injured,” his eyes scanned over me but he made no mention of my already-healed wounds, “and Rae could be in better shape.”

“So basically what you’re saying is, we’re screwed?” Corey growled. I tried to remember back to when he had seemed kind and harmless, and I wondered if he had always been so harsh or if he had changed.

“No,” the Doc growled back. “We can lock down the breached section, and we’ll live for a while yet even with our injuries.”

“What about Dean? And Amelia?”

“I have another camp.” The Doc massaged his temples. “If she’s still alive, Amelia’s there, but it’s not the most … secure place. We need to move, now.” All signs of tiredness gone, he hefted his shotgun over his shoulder. “Someone will have to stay behind, watch the children.”

“I will,” Amy offered, not so quickly that it seemed like she was chickening out. “They know me, they trust me. It’d be best.”

Selene, whom I hadn’t even noticed as being in the room, piped up with, “We’ll be fine alone.” The boy next to her – Lucas, I thought his name was – nodded seriously in agreement.

“No,” the Doc said curtly, making both children recoil simply with his tone. He didn’t even seem to realize his effect on them, turning to the rest of us and motioning for us to follow. Most of us did so, Rae, Keith and I sending sympathetic glances towards the kids. Corey, however, crossed his arms and planted his feet.

“And?” he demanded.

“And what?”

“Forgetting Dean, aren’t you? The one who’s actually useful – the one who can fire a gun with the kickback knocking him over?” Corey looked at me pointedly. “Seems like some people shouldn’t be so quick to forget.”

I flinched, but the Doc coolly answered, “If you know where to look for him, by all means lead on.”

Corey had to concede the point, but as he strolled up to join the rest of us, I could tell he’d done what he’d set out to do. He’d gotten to me. He just didn’t understand that it wasn’t guilt – or at least, not the kind of guilt he wanted it to be. I actually wasn’t sure what kind of emotion it was. I guessed there was some guilt mixed in there, but it wasn’t because I’d really killed Dean or made him kill himself – it was because I hadn’t stopped him, and for some reason that was different. Hell, I thought resentfully. Doesn’t he realize that if I’d killed Dean I wouldn’t feel guilty? And it wasn’t just guilt, obviously. A large part of it was horror, confusion, and everything else that went with them. Strangely enough, most of it was just simple shock. It should have been long enough since … what had happened … for me to at least accept it, but I just couldn’t.

But I had to, and by god I wasn’t leaving him in that f*cking bathtub for the rest of time.

“Look, before we go out on our merry jaunt,” I said, trying to sound as plucky as I could, “I’m going to need to grab my ammo belt and everything from the room.”

“Of course.” The Doc waved me off.

“I, uh … I don’t know the way,” I admitted.

Keith stepped forward silently and motioned for me to follow him. Well, I could do worse, I figured. When I ‘discovered’ Dean’s body, Keith wouldn’t be one to freak out or accuse me of anything. I hoped. I tried to decide just how much how much I trusted him, anyway. Corey, after all, had become someone I didn’t know – Keith seemed more stable than that, but … Dean had seemed stable too, three days before he decided Russian Roulette would be a fun game to play. Keith did have certain behavior in his favor. Things like protecting a kitten – who, somehow, was still securely tucked into his hood, blinking down at me – and showing kindness towards Selene and even bratty Amelia. So? whispered a voice in my head. Doc M’s a heartless bastard but he’s nice to kids. Corey’s officially on the people-who-hate-me list and he took care of a small pack of dogs. But Keith’s just different, I argued. For how long?

We entered a familiar area of the complex. I noticed that all the doors were open, except the one leading to Dean and mine’s room.

“Our room wasn’t checked, I guess?” I asked, trying for nonchalance.

“No, it was.” Keith corrected me, sounding a little embarrassed. “I just didn’t want to leave the open since … you lived there.”

See there, I told myself. He’s a good guy. A little misguided maybe, but a good guy.

More importantly, I thought, what the hell? They didn’t check the goddamned bathroom because the door was closed? Or they’re blind, or they’re lying, or – oh god, what if this is a set-up of some kind? How could it be? I don’t know, I just don’t …

“Corey searched the room,” Keith said, opening the door for me and standing back. “Might’ve made a mess of it.”

I smiled tightly, now completely paranoid, and stepped in. Corey didn’t seem to have disturbed much, if anything, but the bathroom door was ajar. Stomach acid bubbled up to tickle my tonsils. I was afraid I would have to duck into the cursed room to avoid throwing up on the floor, but I was able to keep my supper down and walk past the door.

“You know, Corey doesn’t trust you,” Keith said, sounding uninterested.

Feigning a calmness of my own, I asked, “Why is that?”

“You’re different, he says.”

“Different how?” I was slowly riffling through Dean’s backpack. My fingers contacted with the sweater he’d given me – how had it ended up back in his bag? I thought I’d left it on my bed.

“For starters, I told him about your eyes.”

“My eyes?” I looked up to study them in the broken mirror. “My eyes are perfectly normal. They don’t change, remember?” I pulled the sweater over my head and bucked the backpack closed.

“Mm-hm.” He was either unconvinced or uncaring, or both. He was also slowly working his way further into the room, closer to me, without even looking my way.

“So if that’s for starters, what else is there?” I questioned.

“I believe he referred to you as animalistic.” He picked Dean’s gun up off the table. “Yours?”

“Dean’s.” I took it anyway and slipped away. I dumped both of our bags on Dean’s bed and flew around the room, collecting those things that we had spread out. Repacking might be difficult, both because half of everything was Dean’s and would remind me of him with every touch, and because he’d been better at packing than I was. Not to mention I had convinced myself that the only way I was getting out was in a hail of bullets – obviously Dean’s body had been found and for some reason, they wanted me to think it hadn’t.

“Go on,” I told Keith, a fake semi-smile stuck in place.

“Not much else to tell, really. But I know you know we all saw you out there earlier.” He leaned against the table, casually observing the bed I had claimed as mine. “You had to’ve been bitten half a dozen times.”

“Funny,” I said brightly, peeling up my sweater and shirt to display a scarless stomach. “Nothing there now.”

“I know.” Finally he turned his eyes to me. “I know.”

I stopped and looked up at him. I swallowed painfully. “So. Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” he said simply. Simply and sincerely – I refused to believe that he could lie with such a look on his face.

“Why?” I whispered. “I’m not even positive I trust myself.”

“Because what I saw today,” he said softly, stepping towards me, “was someone willing to put her life on the line for someone else. Someone she’s only even known for less than a month. Someone who could die tomorrow anyway, in this wicked world. But she did it anyway – and that’s not something you see real often.”

All my fears and paranoia evaporated. Choking back sobs of relief, I leaned into Keith’s embrace. “Thank you,” I whispered, over and over again. “Thank you, thank you, thank you …”

I suppose I needed someone to remind me that the things we did weren’t normal; not really. Five short years ago, everything that was happening to me and that I did would’ve seemed straight out of a movie. Now, I scarcely thought about it. It hadn’t even occurred to me that to merely still be alive took grit, determination, bravery – and those were mine, not the result of some f*cked up serum. More than that, it took feelings, real, deep-rooted, unshakeable emotions to still be able to care for others and, to quote Dean, to still give a damn about life. I was still a person, and I took great comfort in that.

But I still had to function. I pulled away from Keith and wiped my eyes. I walked towards the bathroom as if there was something in there I needed, and flicked on the light.

Nothing.

“Oh my god,” I breathed.

Although the bloody rags were still in the sink, and there was a fair amount of it pooled in the tub, Dean was gone. At first I thought that Doc M must’ve had his body moved – if only to mess with my head all the more – but no. The handprints on the sides, the boot prints that were definitely Dean’s … he had walked out. He had even cleaned his boots before he stepped onto the carpet. He was alive.

Alive, my Dean was alive.

Ravynlee · ~ ModMother / The Cougar ~ 290

WARNING: Long post and arguably explicit scenes ahead. Some gore. The usual violence, not to mention profanity. And something else I'm not even going to bother trying to explain/rationalise *lol* This is a headsup of sorts. Can't say now you weren't forewarned, 'eh? Hopefully you can work with it. Best of luck I say!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It seemed like we waited hours for them to return with nothing to break the monotony other than the sound of David pacing continually back and forth. Nothing was said between us, even eye contact was minimal. I didn’t need it explained to me, a cold shoulder was universal, I saw it, I felt it, and I didn’t give two sh*ts about his apparent dummy spit. I was focussed, for those moments, solely on Trinity. Sitting there beside her bed, I was transfixed on watching her sleep – it was the best escape I knew, almost instinctive, so that I didn’t have to face let alone think about anything else. In my mind I kept seeing her wading through the crowd of the dead. I saw them bight and tear into her flesh; saw literal pieces of her oozing bright red from their snarling dead lips. I could hear them moaning, growling, hear the echoes of spent bullets ricocheting, hear the terror of my fractured scream - it all seemed diluted now in the aftermath, now that the adrenalin was ebbing and taking that sharp edge off emotions that were still otherwise unprocessed. She’d saved my life. Rob had saved my life. David had saved my life. How many times could a person narrowly avoid what was arguably inevitable – and why the hell did they even bother?

It seemed to take her a long time to finally wake. When she did I smiled. It was automatic, exaggerated. It was more to show my one-man audience I didn’t need his attention in order to be happy, but that wasn’t all it was. With a muffled clatter I freed her from her restraints, ignoring the cautionary look David at some point afforded. Still he remained silent, save for all but his footsteps as he paced back and forth on the other side of the curtain, setting the pace of an impatient metronome. Tentatively Trinity sat up, drew her knees to her chest, and asked about the others. I felt my smile falter. I told her they were looking for Dean. It was too hard to keep up a happy pretence so I didn’t; I hadn’t seen let alone heard of her companion since we’d gotten here, it was as much guilt for having ‘forgotten’ him in all this time as it was fear that something terrible must have happened. I could tell by the sound of her voice, by the uncertainty in her tone what I thought she was trying to say but for whatever reason couldn’t properly express. I found myself laying my hand over hers.

I know what you’re going through, I wanted to say to her. All that came out was something empty and forced along the lines of, “I’m sure they’ll find him.”

“Yeah,” Trinity said. I knew she didn’t believe me.

Her eyes slid upwards catching sight of David as he stomped past. With rifle in fist he merely turned his head and kept moving, pretending not to have noticed. Maybe he was still too pissed from his earlier tirade to speak let alone to an apparent ally of mine. The battle lines were still up and it was making me physically ill with the relentlessness of it. Maybe it was just fear, fear at what was slowly starting to seep into my conscious mind despite the cushion of shock. My upper lip curled in a contemptuous snarl in place of words I would never say aloud. I was still so angry, so raw from our public argument I could feel myself shaking. Beside me Trinity had heard something. She turned her head. Before I had time to ask what the door burst open and Keith and Corey emerged, apparently half way through a terse ‘argument’ of their own. Inside the room they came to a stop. Corey regarded Trinity with a narrow eyed stare. My pulse rose sharply. Again, it was instinctive. Whether it was this recent battle with the dead, the steep low that always followed the adrenalin rush or the high, or the overall fear, or sense of blame, or of vulnerability that seemed to fester around every one of us, the air seemed to spark with something akin to static electricity. I could hear it in Corey’s words clearest of all; something had changed in him since we’d arrived here, and having not seen him or barely anyone at all in what felt like weeks before the attack, I found myself looking at him now like a veritable stranger. In some ways he was. Something must have happened and it was affecting all of us – and confirmation lay as close as the look on David’s face. Only Keith stood out quite literally head and shoulders above the rest, as always the beacon of sensibility as he gestured for Corey to cut short his diatribe.

“Amy and the Doc aren’t back yet?” he rumbled.

I started to say something. It ended with another door slamming open. The Doc, ordinarily not one for such dramatic entrances, stood slouched against the buttress. All eyes turned to him and Amy. Dean wasn’t with them. Neither, for that matter, was anyone else.

“What now?” someone urged him.

“Well,” the Doc sighed. He glimpsed at his watch. “It’s ten o’ clock in the morning. There’s a giant hole in the defensive wall. We’ve already … misplaced an able-bodied fighter, not to mention Amelia. My nurse is dead. I’m injured, Keith’s injured, David’s injured, and Rae could be in better shape.”

My frown buckled. It wasn’t solely due to the fact I caught David snorting in agreement behind him. As the Doc’s blind eyes swept the room behind fractured glasses I couldn’t help but notice the way the Doc skirted any mention of Trinity. Corey, on queue, once again punctured the air with what was fast becoming his trademark sarcasm.

“So basically what you’re saying is, we’re screwed?”

“No,” the Doc growled back. “We can lock down the breached section, and we’ll live for a while yet even with our injuries.”

“What about Dean? And Amelia?”

The Doc’s plan was simple. It was the last act of a desperate man. Move. “I have another camp…”

It all happened so fast I didn’t have time to get my head around it before our next course of action was put into effect. It was agreed that Amy would stay behind to look after the remainder of Doc’s children who were, at that point I assumed still cowering in the lunch room as per the Doc’s last orders. As for how many were left, let alone in what state, weren’t entered into. I watched him dismiss Trinity as she mentioned something about fetching her things. Keith followed. No one spoke until they were well and truly gone.

“So this camp,” David muttered, distractedly assessing the shotgun he’d been holding all this time, “what do you mean it’s not secure?”

The Doc sighed. It was one long, grating sound of frustration. Peeling off his glasses and ‘squinting’ towards the ceiling, he cursed and flicked the broken lenses away. Across the room he rifled around in a drawer as David and Corey could be heard exchanging under the breath utterances about what possibly lay in store.

“What does it sound like?”

The Doc frowned and held up a set of dusty shades towards the light. The fluorescent tube, which had been knocked down during Taijitsu’s attack, continued to dangle from it’s power lead from the ceiling, sending a bright white light around the room in a listless 180 degrees before rotating back again on its axis. Shadows danced. An eerie silence befell the surgery. The stench of the dead, and disinfectant, and gunpowder, saturated the air.

“It sounds like bullsh*t, is what,” Corey commented, “the six of us going out there into god knows what to find one little girl? I’m no mathematician but come on, seriously? You do the math. The odds aren’t exactly in our favour are they? Not to mention leaving Amy here with the rest to fend for herself-”

“She’s in the safest possible place she could hope for right now,” the Doc snapped, a nerve unquestionably struck. “Like I would intentionally leave her or the children in danger-”

“But you would the rest of us, is that what you’re saying, ‘Doc’?”

-- Edited by Ravynlee on Wednesday 8th of July 2009 09:12:48 PM

Ravynlee · ~ ModMother / The Cougar ~ 290

The Doc just stood there glowering across the room as if he could actually see it. His white coat was still speckled and stained with blood. I found myself wondering instantaneously just how much of that belonged to Erin, and supposed if that was why he had chosen not to take it off as yet. I couldn’t let myself wonder where she had gotten to, let alone Dean or bratty little Amelia, and fought to block out the memory of the zombies pouring into the surgery as they flashed before my eyes.

“Do you have children?” the Doc challenged a bitter faced Corey, “Do either one of you?” Silence. A chesty snort. “No? Then how could I possibly expect either one of you to understand?”

“Understand? Hey I understand perfectly! Amy’s my family! I care about her-”

“Well so do I!”

“You care about her?” Corey cried, voice pitching in anger. “You? Care about anyone else but yourself? You hide away out here like some Dr-f*cking-Frankenstein with your kids and your… things. You don’t give a f*ck about anyone else but-”

“Hiding away? That’s rich coming from someone who prefers the company of animals over others, especially that of his own species.”

Corey fell silent; a verbal stumble, but only briefly. He pushed himself off the wall and started forward as the Doc stood there defiant.

“We all know why you care for Amy but you keep your goddamn hands off her, do you hear me?”

“My boy, I hardly think you’re in a position to-”

“Oh yeah? Watch me.”

“Doc-” I ventured. I was drowned out as he spoke over the top of me.

“Trite,” He murmured, loud enough to put a stop to the intended backlash. “One uses semantics, the other his fists. Textbook bully tactics. I’m disappointed, but I’m far from scared. You want to intimidate me; you’re 10 months too late. You see, I might be blind but there’s obvious things even you can’t see that a blind man can; You’re both cowards, you and your follicly challenged friend over there-”

“Hey!”

“Doc!” I tried again. Again I was ignored, relegated to nothing more than background noise.

“Justify it how you want!” the Doc continued on hotly, “There’s a reason I did my best to keep you all apart! The lot of you are a powder keg of trivial bullsh*t when you’re together, one spark sets the whole lot of you off, and then what? What? You start throwing punches,” he said down over David, “you start throwing insults,” to Corey. “Not a one of you know what it truly means to give a f*ckabout anyone other than yourselves! Until the lot of you learn to confront your own demons there’s not a hope in hell you’ll ever work together as a team. Right now the children and I would be safer out there amidst the dead-!”

“Doc!”

“What?” he bellowed, spinning on his heel to ‘face’ me.

I balked. I almost choked on a dry sticky boulder lodged in my throat when I tried to swallow. Briefly robbed of speech all I could do was point to his coat; a splotchy mix of white, scuff marks, and congealing red-brown blood – a patchwork coat manufactured from Hell. For a split second I barely even registered the sound of footsteps hurriedly approaching from the rear as a door creaked open behind me.

“Are-aren’t they gonna smell that?” I asked him.

Trinity and Keith emerged, sounding a little out of breath, and momentarily perplexed, as they came to a stop in the terse silence. The Doc looked down and assessed himself with a quick pat of his free hand. His shoulders fell. A sigh echoed it. Without saying a word his head hung low as he held his gun aside for someone to take before shrugging himself free of the garment. With a swish and a sigh the material collapsed to the floor, a visual representation of Erin’s memory, I thought. No one said anything. Even our collective breaths seemed to have stalled in the wake of his outburst. Selene, who had spent this time cuddled in tight to Amy’s leg, scuttled forward and picked the coat up. She cuddled it in against her chest the way children before the war clung to Teddy Bears. The look on her face, her wide eyes above the bloodstained garment echoed what none of us were game enough to say. With a clatter the Doc snatched his gun up again and pushed out a heavy nasal sigh. He nodded to Amy who somehow seemed able to read it. The gun was c0cked and ready in her hands – For someone who ordinary looked so fragile she looked the very picture of menace with the children, Selene and Lucas, one on either side; A lioness protecting her cubs, I thought. I smiled and lowered my eyes limply.

“We’ve only got a few hours of usable light left,” the Doc uttered, slinging his gun against his shoulder. “Come on… if you’re coming.”

Though we could see through the patchwork gaps in the breeched wall that the sun had yet to make it to its pinnacle high above us, everyone exchanged wary looks rather than speak aloud in contest. I tried not to meet Amy’s eyes again as we filed past, avoiding the children, trying to convince myself that we would only be gone a few short hours at the most and there was no need to say anything least of all a premature goodbye. Silently and with weapons in hand, we entered another corridor and walked out. Amy closed and secured the door behind us. It was then, in that brief moment, that the Doc’s words finally hit home. Surrounded by familiar faces in that gloomy corridor I felt so vulnerable and alone. The Doc lead the way as, one by one, we followed. Save for our footsteps and anticipatory breaths not one of us made so much as a sound.

-- Edited by Ravynlee on Wednesday 8th of July 2009 08:31:34 PM

Ravynlee · ~ ModMother / The Cougar ~ 290

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Through corridors we walked, wading through the darkness until slivers of sunlight began to stream in through gaps in the walls. The heat too soon began to make its presence known. By the time the Doc stopped us at a barricaded door most of us were damp with sweat and partially panting. Unfastening the locks and shouldering the last stiff bolt, the door creaked open. The Doc snatched it up and held it shut. Though he didn’t say anything he gave us all the once over, a low ‘visual’ assessment, assuring himself as much as the rest of us that we were collectively as ready as we were going to be. Weapons clattered in anxious grips. My fingers were already stiff and aching from the strain. I was quietly relieved for the thin veil of shadow, flexing my fingers around the wooden stock to prompt colour back into my knuckles. Keith uttered something to the Doc but towards the back of the queue I didn’t catch what it was. I don’t know if the Doc even replied, for the last few minutes at least we had been taunted by a low droning sound that came and went as if carried on a stray breeze. If there was a wind it had stopped by this point, the air inside the corridor felt as stuffy and stale as the inner confines of a locked closet.

The Doc began to move, the door ahead creaking open. Light flooded inside temporarily blinding us. A low rumble, I assumed Keith’s voice, was instructing us defensive positions – all I caught were the words ‘slow’ and ‘quiet.’ A moment later and with my heart in my throat I stepped out…

Sunlight. Sand. Glare. Heat. In two steps I was thrust out of one world and thrown unprepared into another. The sight of the others fanning out, hunching down, automatically forced me to do the same. I had no idea where it was we were headed – my first few steps out of darkness were blind ones – and the irony of Doc’s everyday predicament was lost on none of us, including me. As I squinted through the blinding light beneath a raised palm I could see nothing in front of us that even remotely resembled a building. All I saw, once my eyes eventually adjusted, and the sky and sand separated from a hazy amber blur, were rocks, lots and lots of them. I stopped. Trinity, a few metres ahead, stopped to glimpse back at me. A low sound resonated back. It didn’t sound as if it had come from her but I knew that signal: awe. Instinctively my feet quickened their pace. I fell into line behind them, noting the way we all drifted into a staggered defensive pattern in twos with the Doc leading us into the fray. Keith slowed his pace, becoming the eyes in the backs of our heads. The desert before us spread out like an ocean of sand without beginning or end, undulating dunes breaking the monotony appeared like frozen waves. It didn’t take long for the doubt to set in and we all began to look at the Doc, or more appropriately his back, and each other, with fear and paranoia burning in our eyes. Where the hell was this man leading us, mars?

Smacking my lips together I licked them, hearing a mute knocking sound when I swallowed, or tried to. Thirst was killing me. In our haste to find this lost little girl we’d forgotten the one thing that was more crucial out here than firepower – water. I nervously kept studying the others to see if they’d caught on yet but for a long time it seemed like no one had noticed. Though my legs were burning and the heat was beginning to bake the material on my shoulders and back, a quick inspection confirmed we’d only walked less than a quarter mile away from the camp; it’s corridors lost by it’s clever design, ‘accidentally’ seeming to collapse in upon itself the further we walked away – even from such a relative close distance it looked no bigger than a modest run down home and attached garage instead of a fort – a good way to deter marauders perhaps, should any be stupid enough to roam this far out here in the middle of nowhere. Panicked impulse had me wondering if I ran off to the left or right that the building may have folded onto itself so neatly as to be considered almost 2-dimensional and no wider than a piece of cardboard. I didn’t stop to check such crazy thoughts as they came to me, knowing with a tiny sliver of detached logic that dehydration was most likely the cause. Fear came an indistinguishable second. It was then, what seemed like years later, I heard that sound again, louder than ever before, and realised with a sinking sensation in my stomach there was no breath of wind out here to carry it – that meant the source was close by. And familiar. Zombies. And not just one or two of them. But my body was still moving drawn by morbid curiosity as much momentum. It was impossible to pinpoint exactly where the sound was coming from, there was nothing visually around for miles, certainly nothing big enough to hide a horde of massing walking dead – unless they were all hiding away neatly on the other side of the Doc’s fort… possible yes but unlikely. There were no stragglers shuffling through the dirt. Eerily enough I almost wanted there to be, afraid that without materialising the sound must have been coming from my head, an echo, a haunting – god knows I’d had enough ‘questionable moments’ in recent history to support that theory, I told myself. By now I was all but convinced that my mind was playing tricks on me and dropped my guard before coming to a stop, glad to see confusion spreading throughout the group in front of me. Glad, but far from relieved about it. Half way through formulating some paranoid theory that the Doc had dragged us out here to dispatch of us enmasse, I realised that the man in question had come to a stop beside a jagged boulder. The others too had stopped. Most were gravitating towards him. Dutifully I followed. That’s when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Again I froze. I heard them before I could see them, hearing the noise grow loud, from a drone to a deafening roar, a cacophony of noise, realising with a churning flutter, a cold stone sinking in my stomach, that my previous fears were right – but grossly underestimated. As I tentatively approached I found myself staring into what looked like a gorge, a huge hole gouged away into the dry, hard earth. Its base was lost beneath a churning sea of zombies; there must have been at least several hundred of them, though there sounded possibly hundreds more. Their arms were stabbing, swinging, clawing in the air towards us. Their growls, their moans were ferocious; they were starving and packed in together so tightly they could manage little but jostle and sway. Never, in the months since the war had started, had I seen so many people in the one place at the one time in the flesh, albeit rotting infected flesh.

“How…?”

Maybe I’d spoken it but amidst the noise and the chaos there was no way anyone else could have possibly heard. I stared a moment, too mortified to do anything else, watching our collective shadows jostling against the writhing sea of dead. 6 against an army. I couldn’t have been more observant had I tried. It wasn’t until that point that I realised many of those down there wore the dusty fawn fatigues of the military – and realised what exactly I was looking at.

“We’re at a f*cking Army fort?!” I heard someone bark.

No, I wanted to say. I think I even shook my head, backing up as if distancing myself from the sight would somehow distance me from the truth of it. But I was too weak to really do anything except collapse onto a knee in the dust. Trinity on the gorge’s edge lowered to a crouch to assess the horde. David, Keith and Corey all stood striking varying grave poses looking in. Guns were silent, they were little more than accessories gleaming in the blinding desert heat – we may as well have shot ourselves, there were simply put too many of them, and we didn’t have the manpower let alone the bullets. There was nothing any one of us could say at that moment anyway, we were so vastly outnumbered there was scarcely a word I could think of to correlate to the symptoms that suddenly gripped me.

-- Edited by Ravynlee on Wednesday 8th of July 2009 10:09:38 PM

Ravynlee · ~ ModMother / The Cougar ~ 290

With a sound the Doc alerted us and we turned to see him standing beside an open door. It was, as I suspected, hidden away behind a cluster of jagged rocks. None of us argued as we approached; only one uttered a comment questioning the validity of Amelia finding her way down here on what was arguably the edge of Hell – she may as well have stayed up at the Doc’s barracks for the comfort this place provided. But still we entered, the cool darkness inviting us in only so far as a few metres or so. It was a blissful respite from the heat and the glare. What it wasn’t was quiet – the endless growls and moans of those dead continued on even louder than outside, seeming to echo off the concrete walls without beginning or end. It was at this point I was about ready to suggest running back to Amy but the only thing that stopped me was fear of being labelled a coward. I stood there with the rest of them, all of us with our backs pressed to the cold hard walls, all of us gasping, cursing, mentally grappling with the magnitude of what lay outside – but I’d never felt more dissociated from a group of people as I did right then. I looked at them all briefly, forcing a tight smile because it was all I could do to stop myself from throwing up. I wasn’t a soldier, I wasn’t ready for this, I wasn’t like David or Trinity, the concept of battle didn’t thrill me at all, it didn’t empower me, it weakened me, I was a little kid in a class full of seniors trying to fit in to a world I had no place being in, in the first damn place.

The Doc pushed forward, laughably the blind man literally leading the blind, as he stepped into the dark corridor and came to a stop. He checked his weapon. Reactively everyone else did the same. It didn’t need to be said, but I was glad when the Doc spoke up, telling us all to be on high alert. Those things he said were everywhere. He’d done his best to contain them where he could, but still in spite of his best efforts…

“We have to find where they’re getting out and stop them,” he said matter-of-factly. He made it sound like we were going on a Sunday drive, no hint of dire urgency about the imminent threat to one’s life or limbs so much as tainted his voice. I admired his fortitude but I was abhorred by his flippancy too – my head was buzzing full of questions and there simply was no time let alone chance to voice any of them. If these things were the same ones that had attacked earlier…

“What the hell is this place?” someone asked.

The Doc turned his shoulder. He motioned wordlessly to Keith and the door behind us creaked to secure close.

Lights illuminated our way. It was probably the first clue I really payed any attention to. After the gas had left most of the world’s populous a ravenous mob, the cities power stations and such either went by way of vandalism, through neglect blew up or burned down, or simply came to a grinding halt. Streetlights, traffic lights, neon lights, everything stopped virtually overnight – at least that was how it felt in the wave of panic following the gas. Soon after that houses, streets and neighbourhoods fell into a permanent state of darkness as power grids collapsed across cities and states and eventually continents like massive dominoes. Not even ‘natural’ resources were immune, wind and water turbines too shut down without the manpower to maintain their parts; for a while their grinding hot motors could be heard echoing beneath retaining walls in the silence of a dead planet not wanting to go down without a fight. Though it had only been three quarters of a year it felt now as if decades had passed. I found myself transfixed by the light bulbs flickering as we descended the sloping corridor, staring at them as if the most priceless jewels in the world. Real electricity, not oil light, not candle light, real light, I thought in awe. Memories of simple pre-war pastimes played on inside my head but they were a distraction I couldn’t afford. Gripping the rifle I followed the group down, feeling fear closing in along with the encroaching darkness.

Silence…

And I knew now we were far underground.

The air was cool here, but rank. The stamp of death had scored the air to such a degree that time would never be able to undo. As the corridor opened up we fanned out, a dishevelled, panicked mess. The Doc’s reprimand of disunity only seemed to make it all ten times worse. The noise of the dead was soft now, a dull echo, but thankfully muffled. I didn’t know by this point whether we were above or below them, or only a wall’s thickness apart. In the seconds to follow, as we studied our surrounds with guns at the ready, the Doc called me down. I met him in front of a closed door. He stiffly slid his arm in mine uttering something under his breath about Amelia or Selene. All I could gather from that was that he must have relied on them in some form to show him where he had to go – but why he chose me I didn’t-

“There! What was that?” someone uttered.

Footsteps, no a dragging noise, but it wasn’t the gait limp of the dead. It was over too fast for anyone to get a bearing on it. I felt the Doc’s arm briefly tighten around mine. My heart was pounding so hard he could have yelled in my ear and I doubt I would have heard it. The fragments I caught made little if any sense to me. It sounded as if he said that ‘it’ wouldn’t attack me but I knew such a statement was ludicrous, when it came to the dead everyone and everything of warm-blood was on the menu, even brave-faced snivelling cowards like me. I glimpsed back over my shoulder but couldn’t catch a glimpse of anyone as I was being urged ahead. In fear I wasn’t able to think anymore or rationalise, I was moving, doing, watching, but not thinking – the darkness was our enemy, I didn’t need another to compound it.

“Shouldn’t we spread out? Won’t we find this kid quicker that way?”

“You want to die in such a hurry, be my guest,” the Doc uttered. He told us that he hadn’t brought us down here just to see us get picked off one by one. Safety lay in numbers. Time was against us. Fortunately our topography wasn’t. “I wouldn’t be down here myself if I wasn’t sure of the inner perimeter,” he snapped. A moot point after the several hundred dead we saw all but crawling all over one another moments ago to get to us. “Most of the dead are locked behind sealed doors or dispatched and decapitated, thanks to yours truly and a few let’s call them ‘helpful hands.’” He smiled to himself but no one save me had a chance to see it. “God Bless the paranoid bastards that built this place; the walls are solid concrete and from what I can gather reinforced steel. They’ll hold off the dead indefinitely. It’s the ones that have somehow managed to escape that we’ll have to watch for. This was a lot easier when I still had the dogs to hunt for me,” he sighed.

“What do you mean, ‘somehow managed to escape’? If they’re locked up as you say-”

“You seem to be forgetting one rather ‘large’ problem,” the Doc said. His fingers were dancing across a keypad beside the closed doorway. When he uttered the name Taijitsu I felt something crawl inside of me. “If it’s breached the walls there’s no telling just how many infected may have gotten out. Or in as the case may be. But fear not, I happen to know where I’m going.”

To Hell? I wanted to offer. I merely stared at his fingers caressing the buttons as if he were committing the face of a loved one to memory. Around us the others were growing restless. The silence inside, along with the tight confines, were more than just a little unnerving. Now I know how a rat in a maze feels I thought. I pushed it aside. Stop thinking, period. Just stop- The Doc shuffled forward resting the side of his face against the cold metal. He ordered us to be silent. A mute hush fell over us as we waited.

“None of you discharge your weapons until I say so,” he said, quietly. “Unless you want to bring them all to us.”

“This is bullsh*t!” David quipped. His brow couldn’t buckle any lower as he glared back in disappointment. He was ready for war, even if the rest of us arguably weren’t.

The Doc hushed him. “Sound carries in enclosed spaces. If you had half a brain in that oversized cranium of yours, you’d know that. Only shoot if you have to as a last resort. Remember where we are. If they’ve somehow managed to rupture a gas main-”

“Wait, they have gas here?”

“This is an Armed bunker. What do you think?” The Doc lectured, still in a veritable trance half hugging the door. “Every main chamber, at least the one’s I’ve come across, is hotwired with explosive charges, more added security measures for the President’s paranoid Army,” he snorted. He went on to explain, while it wasn’t anywhere near as glamorous or as sturdy as ‘the’ bunker that was purported to house the Chief of Staff and those of the retreating ruling government hidden at some secret location somewhere under mainland America, it was at best a run of the mill oversized ‘fall out’ shelter built for the wives and families of the country’s local fighting forces, a place of sanctuary for those fortunate enough, and privileged enough, to escape an end of the world scenario. But the bunker had been apparently designed to withstand a nuclear blast, not a lethal infectious cannibalistic disease. One bight would have been all it took to turn this miniature self-sustained city into an underground tomb with only one way in or out. The place would have been a living, dying nightmare, and a literal breeding ground for the virus to spread. In the panic an attempt at containment may have seen someone blow up a quadrant filled with the corpses of those infected – collapsing part of the base and leaving it exposed on the surface now, it certainly explained the huge crater outside, allowing the dead on the outside access in and the dead on the inside a way out – if only they possessed the fine motor skills or comprehension to use their fingers for climbing rather than clawing…

A succession of beeps sounded, wrenching me from my stupor, as the Doc punched in a sequence of numbers upon the keypad. I was amazed it too, like the lights, still worked here. With a hiss the door opened. The Doc pulled himself away and stood upright. The room was clear he said, without telling us how he knew that. Trinity was the first one in. Begrudgingly the rest of us followed. The Doc and I remained locked arm in arm as the door was closed again smartly behind us.

“If Amelia’s here, she’s in the green room,” he told us. “Second floor.”

Corey scoffed. “Come on, you expect us to believe that kid’s made it all the way down here? With all of…” he swallowed hard, wringing the rifle between his hands. “That.”

The Doc didn’t seem perturbed by the question. “All the children know to come here if the base is compromised,” he said seriously. “It’s our contingency plan.”

“What about our contingency plan? Anyone thought about that?”

Ravynlee · ~ ModMother / The Cougar ~ 290

“Come on,” Keith said, shouldering his way through as he crossed the room. “Talking won’t find her. Or find Dean for that matter.”

Someone made an offhand comment along the lines of Dean escaping the Doc’s compound to run off with the little girl, but exactly what was said and by whom I deliberately blocked out. Though too much had happened to get my head around as of late, thinking of Dean as anything other than a smart, funny, decent human being (with deadly accuracy with a weapon, don’t forget) was too much for me to contemplate. I tried to reassure Trinity with a faint smile that no real insult should have been gleaned about her missing partner – but the look she gave back stopped it from fully forming. The Doc directed us to another door which had ‘SB’ marked above it. Another metal door. This one didn’t have a keypad but a good old fashioned doorhandle. We all gathered around it. No one except the Doc spoke up.

“Remember what I said. This is a reconnaissance mission, don’t try and be a hero, unless you want to be a dead hero. We find Amelia. We fix the breach. Then we’ll search for Dean, in that order,” he murmured. And then with a drop in pitch added, “Let’s pray he’s with her.”

The door opened with a creak. The lights above flickered. It had all the markings of a horror novel waiting to go wrong, I thought with cynicism. My smile screamed nervousness no matter how brave I was attempting to be. Trinity was to lead us. Her previous exhibition back in the surgery proved she was good for lasting a surprise attack if nothing else and buying us some time – she was in short our human shield with the rest of us creeping along behind her. The corridor ended at another door. She stopped to look at us. The look on her face said what words could not. Zombies. Close by. Right on the other side of that door.

“Hit it,” the Doc instructed. Drowning out Corey’s scathing backlash the Doc hissed lowly “Those things react to noise! We draw them out! Better that than a surprise attack from the corners of the room!”

Trinity, doing as she was ordered, pounded her hand against the steel door. The sound echoed like a dense bell, a death knell, down the deserted corridor behind us. She may as well have announced that dinner was served. A swarm of zombies growled and rushed towards us, their faces and hands thumping sloppily against the other side. Fingernails and bone scratched ravenously. I felt my bowels spasming with the need to release itself. Trinity, receiving a nod from Keith, took the handle in fist and slowly turned it. A deep breath. A pounding heartbeat-

The door exploded inwards, cracking against zombie skulls, the shuffle of feet and bodies clattering to the floor drowned out their moans. Like a wave we charged in. Loud cracks resounded as Keith and David brought the butts of their rifles down into zombie heads, using them like clubs. Trinity was a blur in front of us. The Doc pushed himself free to dodge a lunging zombie, tripping it and kicking it in one fluid motion not expected from a blind man. The lights buzzed and continued to flicker as the zombies surged from the darkness. Cracks, thuds, moans later – we were across the room, leaving a trail of fallen corpses behind us.

“Where the f*ck are we going?”

“Just keep moving!”

“Take the door to your left! Left! Idiot girl!” The Doc snapped brusquely.

The moans competed with the scuffle of our footsteps as we hurried from one room to another; a chaotic blur of green grey walls, dusty yellow light, and darkness. Zombies were everywhere – at least they sounded to be. In the boxy confines beneath tight walls and low ceilings the chorus of the dead echoed like a ceaseless chant, an unnatural heartbeat surrounding and disorienting us. Trinity cracked a zombie face with a sharp elbow spraying the wall behind it with red-black splatter. A zombie fell. Two more covered it.

“Get us the f*ck out of here Doc!”

“How, on my magic f*cking carpet?” The Doc howled.

Another sharp unmistakable crack as bone splintered beneath the wrong end of a rifle. Grunts of exertion filled the air. Hand to hand combat on an enemy whose blood could kill you made those moments electric. They were split seconds in reality but felt paradoxically drawn out. My senses were heightened, charged, my head was floating above my body by this point. I moved out of habit, instinct, clubbing one, kicking another, ducking, weaving, reacting as I’d done too many times before this. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Corey drive the barrel of his rifle through the eye socket of an attacking corpse. Without pain reflexes it continued to claw at him until he drove it back-first on the floor and slammed his foot down on it’s bottom jaw – there was a grating crunch as the ligaments holding the jaw to it’s skull burst before the top half of the skull broke free. Thick dark blood oozed as he wrenched his rifle out, gasping in triumph. His eyes were dancing; it was a far cry from the fearful creature I’d seen out there on the edge of the crater. Keith on the other hand looked like a lion. With his bare hands he twisted the head off one zombie before kicking the body away. The Doc called to Trinity, directing her towards a stairwell. She moved towards one door, slammed it shut, and wrenched open another. Corpses inside froze and peered up. The body of a child lay half devoured between them. It was not Amelia. The door slammed shut in their faces soon followed by their vilified moans and growls. More scratching. More thumping as they struggled to get out.

“This way,” Trinity huffed.

She motioned towards an opened door and waited as we filed through. David was the last to follow. Hunched over his knees he looked exhausted. The look on his face made my insides turn to water. Trinity rushed towards him. He brusquely shook his head, grabbed her wrist and shoved her away. He was fine he snapped. Hefting himself up he glared at us as if we were the enemy. He jabbed a fist against his ribcage and snatched his gun back in fist with a snarl. There was no time to say anything as he charged past, forcing his way towards the head of the pack. He didn’t have a death wish I told myself, but he wasn’t about to go down without fighting – such was the fine line between bravery and stupidity as typified our kind. Trinity, resuming her place in the fore, led us onwards. The stairwell around us was clear save of general detritus – the typical scattered papers and inconsequential’s that you expected to find in a place suddenly abandoned by a panicked pack of people. We looked up. No sign of zombies. No sound of movement. The silence was arguably worse than when they were attacking. At least with an attack we knew where they were or where they were coming from. Trinity led. Where we were headed was upwards. 60 steps up by my estimate. Never did an arguably short climb look so impossibly out of reach. I stood staring up at the landing, above which was the first floor. There was nothing to see but the underside of cement. We were blind to what lay above but without pause we knew the enemy were still here somewhere shuffling about on this the lower floor. We had no choice save for evacuation, and I knew the Doc wouldn’t let us turn back now. With proprietary nods Trinity started up with David, Corey, myself, the Doc and Keith behind her. Slow, heavy footsteps, one after the other, we started up. Breathing was short, sharp, and shallow as we strained our ears for signs of attack. The absence of wind, of external footsteps, even of that telltale moaning was more nightmarish than the pit of the dead outside. Still it seemed to echo all around us more like a vibration than actual sound. The dead had seen us, no doubt they could smell us, the only thing they couldn’t do, we hoped, was learn how to unlock doors in order to get to us. Still the irrational fears never ceased to linger in the back of my mind, just what if…?

Ravynlee · ~ ModMother / The Cougar ~ 290

About half way up the landing we came to a sudden halt. Trinity’s eerie reflexes warned us of movement we were slow to hear. There it was again, that dragging, clicking, scurrying sound. It was too fast to be footsteps. It was too heavy to be human. Dubiously Trinity looked down at the Doc for direction.

“Taijitsu,” The Doc uttered. Just that simple inference had me looking southward as all sets of eyes fell on me. “He’s probably following her scent. With any luck he’s clearing the way for us up there.”

“And if not?”

“The Good Lord gave you lips and an ass for a reason,” the Doc murmured. There was a nervous pause. The Doc, who had remarkably been able to follow us up without tripping, seemed to latch on to my sleeve then as if the pause in movement had disrupted his internal sonar. “You stay with me,” he uttered as Trinity started upwards. “If that thing decides to attack, you’re the last line of defence.”

I realised then that I’d been strategically positioned in the middle of them, as much their defence as they were mine. Taijitsu wouldn’t attack the group at the risk of hurting me, but there was nothing stopping him stealing me away from the head of the group as he had attempted to do before and leaving the rest of them vulnerable to a zombie attack – it was arguably risky whichever way we looked at it. Thankfully there was little time to assess the threat level as we continued our climb up. At one point I was curious to ask the Doc just how he managed to survey this place let alone traverse it with so many walking dead with all his handicaps but the lingering question was of more comfort than any answer I knew he might give; climbing steps blind was probably not as big a hurdle as surviving a zombie apocalypse in the middle of the desert with a bunch of… unique kids and hellmuts at his disposal. That last word rattled me; I couldn’t remember hearing the dogs barking when the zombies had attacked the Doc’s lair earlier, which meant one of two things, none of which I wanted to consider at that point. A breath, a footstep, two, three later I emerged on the first floor landing, flanked on either side by the rest of our fledgling squad. Corridors led both left and right, these too a scene of chaos and ghoulish slaughter. Blackish pools splattered the walls and floor, along with torn clothes, loose papers, an upturned chair, broken glass, a lost shoe… In front of us behind a blood-smeared plate of plexiglass a map was screwed to the wall– I crept towards it. The compound was massive. It had at least three levels, all laid out one above the other in coloured sections, Sections A, B, and C. A was the top floor of the facility, and it looked, with a quick assessment, to be the veritable central nervous system of this establishment, with the quarters below for the general populous and the ground level reserved for storage, power and agriculture respectively. The blood smear obscured a corner of the lower map. Reaching out I tried to clear it with my fingers. A sudden hand snatched mine and stopped it. Keith shook his head. Using his sleeve he dragged his shoulder across the map. He pulled away with a faint smile. I looked up and smiled back at him in thanks before turning my attention to the map again. I scoured the ledger. I exhaled in awe and disbelief. This was not what I’d been expecting of a pre-war fallout shelter – it wasn’t even anything like I could remember seeing in movies growing up. These people had been so delusional they’d created a mini town in here, complete with a hospital, a church and of all things a school! How did they expect for life to just go on like nothing had happened while the rest of the world died above them, I wondered. I shook my head, angered for a moment at my fellow man, angered more by our inability to see anything like this happening and being caught out so vastly unprepared. Damn it, we were the smartest civilization in the history of man; we could break the sound barrier, we could cure infinite diseases, we could penetrate the nether regions of space and create entire universes inside high-tech and super-intelligent computer systems, why then weren’t we able to stop this?! I found myself berating. I couldn’t face the notion we’d arguably done it to ourselves, intentionally, accidentally, or otherwise all in the name of science. Gripping at the star around my neck, I chewed my knuckle listening to the others regrouping beside me.

The Doc needed a moment to reorient himself. Clearly the further we penetrated this place the more obvious it was, at least to the rest of us, that little Amelia couldn’t have possibly made it all this way without help – but none of us wanted to be the ones to say it. After a quick confab with Keith he gestured Trinity onward and we turned, following her up another flight of stairs. Up to Section A. Up to the heart of the shelter. Up to Amelia, if indeed she was even still alive.

I’d mentally prepared myself for some grand high-tech room to open up before us complete with modern computers lining the walls and glass maps and the general wizardry perhaps better suited to Captain Kirk and his space-exploring buddies, but the reality of what confronted me left me feeling more than a little cheated, to say the least. As with everything else about this place it was cold, sterile, flat, and somewhat archaic. Nothing but more corridors and closed doors and flickering amber lights buzzing intermittently against the silence. And limitless places for several hundred dead to hide and watch our progress as we ventured further into hell, I thought.

We were panting now as we stood there, still running on adrenalin from the fight, from fear, and from the weight of expectation bearing down on our collective shoulders. We watched the Doc worm his way towards another door. ‘Attention’, a sign above it declared; ‘authorized personnel only’. Another; ‘Caution; this area under constant video surveillance.’ And another; ‘Wrong way, go back.’ This last one had at least one of us smirking bitterly. Looking around I realised this door functioned to cordon off the rest of the general public from those in so-called power. I scoffed as the Doc caressed the keypad. Another door. Another keypad. These people were delusional in their paranoia, afraid of bogeymen and spies hiding away in their cement towers instead of their own people. I thought back to movies I had seen where they’d used plastic swipe cards to gain entrance, this looked like… well, something straight out of the 1980s! The Doc leant his ear to the door. I wondered if, briefly, he were able to hear things with his heightened senses that we with all working 5 could not. My eyes slid aside to Trinity standing there with the hem of her bloody torn shirt poking out beneath her sweater. Clearing my throat I looked away.

“Shouldn’t you, you know, hit it?” Corey braved. “Just in case…”

The Doc shook his head. He leant back, punched in a few numbers and stepped clear. The door hissed and clicked open. Guns were poised at the ready. Anything was possible at this point, it didn’t matter what the Doc in his blind state said. In front of us a corridor opened up. Unlike the others this one was clear. No chaos, no carnage, it was… eerily perfect. And as still and as silent as a tomb. The murmuring of the dead that had haunted us all the way here was finally gone to be replaced by… nothing. I watched as Trinity bravely led us on through the corridor – and practically pissed myself when she jumped back, startled. A growl. A clatter. Suddenly it was everywhere, all around us. With eyes wide and a cowering reflex I realised we were surrounded on both sides by glass walls – offices, cubicles, labs – and trapped in each of these were the dead. Pulling the door shut the Doc wove his way through, surprisingly orienting himself around us without the slightest hint of tripping. We stared at him in disbelief and shock. How could he not hear? How did he not know-?

“Relax,” he said, making his way through the cacophony of clattering glass and low throaty growling. He stood at a doorway and waited for us to catch up to him. “I told you the upper floor was secure. The explosion did what it was meant to do, locking down the entire facility. Only those with the codes are getting in or out. And last I checked the dead lack the required cognitive skills to operate a basic numeric keypad. They can’t think. They can’t reason. They have the keys at their disposal and they lack the ability to use it. Ironic, isn’t it?” he snorted. “Smartest animal on the planet indeed.” There was a hint of dark delight flashing around those lenses as he rolled his eyes up towards the fake light as if basking in it. He rolled his neck, the muscles and ligaments popping and creaking amid the din. He sighed and motioned aside wordlessly. “They’re not going anywhere. We are. Inside. Now.”

It was an order we all dutifully and silently followed.