~ Welcome to Quills ~

Bit later than I'd intended but hey, it's still 'tomorrow'. Besides, the longness justifies the lateness
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“Come on you. Nothing to see here.”

“Kei –!”

I found myself lifted entirely off my feet and set outside. Keith reached back in the close the door. Corey and Doc M stood some ways away, the Doc furiously trying to raise Amy on the two-way. They paid us absolutely no attention; Corey, who ordinarily would have been, was crouched down, seemingly studying something on the floor.

“You saw nothing,” Keith informed me.

“You’re right I didn’t,” I hissed back. “What the hell –”

He gave me one of his meaningful looks, one of the special ones that said a thousand words. Something clicked in my head, and in the darkness I blushed fire engine red. Keith nodded, put a finger against his lips and jerked his head towards the other two: Right – and not a word to them. I returned the nod vigorously. Though I was a little insulted he would think I would just blurt it out, my embarrassment outweighed any inclination I might have to follow up on that thought. In my mind’s eye, I saw Dean suppressing a grin over my loss of composure, as he always seemed to do.

And he’s alive, I forced myself to think as the sight of Amelia’s desecrated corpse flashed through Dean’s image and melded with it. He’s alive goddamn it.

In what state? Said the snide voice of my subconscious. I was beginning to wonder if I had a split personality.

“Amy!” the Doc kept shouting into the radio. He fiddled with a knob, and called again. “Amy, can you hear me?”

Finally, he voice broke through the static. “M? M? Oh, thank God. It’s about time. Amelia,” she said like someone just remembering. “Have you found Amelia?”

There was a long pause. Keith and I both stepped closer to the Doc, as if to comfort him, when for the second time, his icy exterior momentarily fractured and slid away. But his eyes hardened and his posture straightened, and his voice was smooth when he answered.

“Yes. She was already gone.”

“OhmyGod.” A long, jagged breath. “Oh … oh my God. This can’t be happening.”

In a whisper that shouldn’t, by all rights, have carried across the shaky signal, Doc M replied, “I know.”

Again, a pause. The door creaked as Rae and David rejoined us. The Doc’s glasses had been lost at some point in the fray, and when he thought no one was looking, he swiped at his eyes with his sleeve. The only sounds on the other end of the line were tiny gasps, as if Amy were crying or hyperventilating or both. For it to have such an effect on her, I wondered about Keith, but when I chanced a look at him, I saw that his face betrayed no unusually sharp emotions. The big man almost always had a slight air of sadness about him, especially, I had noticed, when he was parted from Amy, and his current demeanor was no different. His calmness – whether it stemmed from sheer nonchalance (which I doubted greatly) or the ability to bury emotions until there was time to deal with them – was probably a greater asset that his strength or size.

“N-No …” Amy broke out suddenly. “No, you don’t … you don’t understand. This can’t happen right now, I … I have to …”

“What is it?” the Doc asked softly, compassionately.

“I l-l … lost … Selene’s gone,” she sobbed. “It’s why I was trying to contact you.”

For a second the Doc froze, blind eyes wide as if that would make it easier for him to see a lie or a solution. Then they narrowed to the thinnest of slits. “What?” He cursed. “You did what?”

“She –”

“You lost a child?!”

Anger at the accusation bubbling through, Amy retorted, “If you’re going to blame this all on me then you can just feel free to go –”

“Shut up!” Doc M snapped, dropping the radio on a table. “Just let me think.” Propping up on the same desk, he put his thumb and first finger to his temples and massaged his forehead. He looked like he would have preferred to simply crush his own skull and be done with it.

“So the other little princess is done for too,” Corey remarked, more disinterested than cruel. “Huh.”

I was too appalled by his uncaring words to react. The Doc either didn’t hear or simply chose to ignore him. Keith, though, reprimanded him, “Corey, we need to talk.”

While I was still pondering on what a talk with Keith might entail, Corey shook his head and spoke again in his aloof tones. “Yeah, I’ll have to get a rain check on that, big guy. Whatever that shadowy thing that we saw earlier was, it wore boots.” He glanced up. “Might’ve been Dean.”

“If it was Dean, he would’ve joined us,” I put in hurriedly.

“Yeah, well, maybe not, Cyclops. Here. Just look.”

I went over and kneeled next to him. Keith opted to join the Doc in his ‘thinking’. Rae and David – I couldn’t quite look at them yet. Besides, I had more pressing things to worry about.

“Cyclops?” I demanded quietly.

“Sure, you know. From X-Men.” Corey put two fingers to the side of his head, miming the superhero’s posture. “The one with the eyes.”

He met mine for only a second before standing up and striding over to the rest of the group. I sighed, didn’t even bother to watch him go. His constant reminder that he knew I was different were becoming tiresome. For a second, my eyes – oh those most hated eyes – filmed over, and I dreamily considered how easily, in these dark halls, I could dispatch him. A quick, easy … snap.

A shudder broke me out of my murderous trance. What the hell was I thinking, I … I wasn’t a monster. No matter how annoying his little game might be, he was Amy and Keith’s friend and a valuable member of –

I shuddered again. It was more the movement someone would make from tasting something particularly bitter than from a chill. Anyway, I wasn’t cold. I was … drawn towards the hall outside – the direction the boot prints led. Maybe, just a few steps out the door wouldn’t hurt. Maybe, maybe Dean was out there, waiting for me. If I blocked out everything else, I was positive I could hear his rhythmic breathing … just … outside …

“Trinity?”

Another jerk. Keith’s hand on my shoulder.

“Find something interesting?”

“Oh, ah … no. No, I don’t think this is Dean’s, though.” The lie came easily. I had barely even looked at the print, but I knew I had to keep the others convinced that there as no way Dean was anything less – or more – than human. If they knew, if they all knew, the truth about us, God alone knew how they’d react. “I think it’s too small,” I added, needing some perfectly ordinary reason.

“Hmmm.” Keith squinted down and tilted his head. “Might be right.”

Relieved, I took his offered hand. He pulled my up and led me back to the table. Doc M and Corey were engaged in an argument that was trying very hard to be a discussion, and they stopped when we joined them. Maybe it was just paranoia, but I was convinced they were talking about me. The fact that Rae wouldn’t meet my eye backed up my suspicion.

Amy’s subdued voice crackled through the radio. “Well, what are you going to do? Without Erin and Amelia, Selene is your only real helper anymore. Lucas is still a little young, you know. And … with the macular degeneration, your eyesight’s only going to get worse – you’ll need someone’s hands and eyes.”

I was surprised to hear here argue the logical side. The again, Doc M’s place on the emotional side was fairly obvious – whatever I had thought of him at first, it was plain by now that he cared deeply for ‘his’ kids. It dawned on me that Amy was simply providing him with the logic his tired brain wouldn’t piece together, to give him a real excuse to go crusading for his other lost girl. Whether or not he realized her intentions was unclear.

“Of course,” he said irritably. “I can’t manage without her.”

“You mean to tell me that –” Corey started, but Keith silenced him with an uncharacteristically sharp look.

I tried hesitantly to compromise. “I did suggest, before, that we split up …”

Corey interrupted. “And I did, before, shoot it out of the air,” he mocked. “Splitting up in this place is suicide.”

I winced – Russian Roulette, anyone? – and hoped no one had seen.

“No,” the Doc said slowly. “No, it might be the best way. Two groups. One to find Selene, the other to follow these footprints of yours.”

Corey started to object again, and this time Keith pointed a finger at him and gave him a glare. The smaller man’s jaw tightened and eyes tensed; Keith lifted and eyebrow and raised his chin slightly, as if to emphasize his superiority; finally Corey turned his disdainful look towards the wall, crossing his arms. I watched the exchange in something like amazement, surprised by how well I could puzzle out their ‘conversation’.

Shut up, Corey.

Don’t tell me you go for this bullsh*t.

Don’t forget who’s in charge.

…Fine.

“If you’re quite through with your power struggle?” the Doc sighed. Apparently he could decode their looks as well; maybe it wasn’t as difficult as I’d thought. “All right.” He waved a hand towards Corey. “You obviously want to pursue the tracks. The girl knows who you’re looking for best. I trust the two of you will be fine on your own? A smaller party such as yourselves will find it easier to move.”

Now it was my turn to object, and despite Keith’s warning, Corey joined me. Neither of us wanted to be paired with the other, and between us, we came up with a myriad of false reasons why. In the end though, Doc M settled it by telling us that he frankly didn’t give a sh*t what we did, as long as we stayed out of his way. With nothing to object to, we found that there was no way we could both do what we intended to do without teaming up. With sullen, distrustful looks, we reloaded or guns – his rifle, my two pistols – and agreed with the others that we would meet back in the Green Room in two hours, no matter what. If one team didn’t make it, the other would give them fifteen minutes; then, there would be no choice but to move on. To make sure someone got out alive, Doc M would be staying there in the Green Room, so he could guide whoever came back, while Keith, David and Rae searched for Selene.

It plainly pained him to stay behind instead of look for the girl, but Amy, the only voice of reason in our dark little hellhole, convinced him it was the only way. Corey and I traded wary looks, then, bidding farewell to the others, set off.

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

“Trinity? T-Trinity?”

Corey and Selene’s calls echoed through the tunnels long after they were gone from my sight. I shuddered; the fire only seemed to make me colder, or maybe it was the chunk of ice in my stomach. At first I tried to come up with some clever way to outsmart the ‘joker’ and yet still get everyone out alive, but by my figuring, the time constraints just wouldn’t allow it. I had no idea how long it would take Corey and Selene a safe zone (the Green Room), but it probably wasn’t long enough for me to find my way out of the sewers. Then I considered drowning myself, but the idea held no attraction – and I had a suspicion that no matter how he lost me, the ‘joker’ would go after Corey and Selene as retribution. Finally, I just scooted as close to the fire as I could – no reason to waste heat – and decided I would have to simply overpower him. Not that hard in theory, but he was armed where I was not, and he also seemed more than a little bit insane, which I knew to lend people strength.

How long had he been alone? Apparently he had been watching the Doc for some time, but instead of reaching out, he had chosen to stay hidden. Why? In a world almost devoid of life, what would possess a man to choose to stay alone – in a grimy sewer no less? Was there any reason other than sheer insanity?

“There.”

I looked up in dread. His form followed his voice by a second – strolling closer, hands in his coat pockets, ratty hair forming a sort of dark trailing nimbus for his head. I immediately wished his would show his hands. After all, he had a knife, and while I did seem to be as good as impervious to physical damage, I wasn’t immune to pain. Unfortunately, his hands stayed in place even as he sat down cross-legged across from me.

“Done,” he said cheerfully. “They’re perfectly safe and sound. I imagine your other pals will find them, too. So nothing to worry about.”

I swallowed and watched him silently. He did the same for less than three seconds before jumping up again and ducking into the shadows once more. I tensed, hands balling into fists, expecting him to come at me, but instead, his voice floated out of the darkness.

“Fire’s a bit weak, isn’t it?”

He reappeared with an armload of dry wood. Where he’d gotten it from I didn’t know. The important thing was that his hands were visible. Yet, I somehow couldn’t … He carefully constructed a teepee of sticks around the fire, the precision making me think of someone with OCD, and we both sat and watched it burn. I realized that his hands were in his pockets because they were cold; the long knife was up his left sleeve, a barely visible stiff stretch.

“Jonathan,” he said suddenly, and looked up from the flames. “My name’s Jonathan.”

His voice had changed for those two statements. The annoying nasal tone was gone, leaving a soft, pleasantly deep voice not unlike Keith’s. Slowly I looked up to meet his eyes over the remains of the teepee. “Right.”

I felt more like an awkward guest than a personal slave. Making a lame excuse as to why I couldn’t hang out with him and wandering off seemed, for a moment, like my best chance of escape. But then his eyes lit up, the grin came back, and he repeated back to me, in the same old voice, “Right.”

He stood and took three quick steps around the fire to jerk me to my feet. “Shall we dance?”

“D-Dance? But,” I tried, caught off-guard, “there’s no music.”

He put an arm around my waist and clutched my hand with the other. “Just imagine it,” he whispered, and I wasn’t sure if it was his good voice or not.

We danced. By firelight, in the middle of a sewer, we danced. I had no memory of ever having danced before, but either I had or I was a very quick study. He was graceful, more so than I had expected him to be, and it left me wondering at his life before the end of the world. Or maybe dancing was something he’d picked up afterwards? I could almost imagine him, alone in the dank corridors, dancing by himself to music only he could hear.

When he spun me away, I returned to him without even considering my action. It was what was natural, what was right – when you’re spun away, you spin back. Like returns to like. Madness joins with madness. I couldn’t have been said to be truly enjoying myself, but there was a mindlessness at work, preventing me from being unhappy. Like menial labor but more elegant, the dance consumed mind, body, spirit, time, and when he bowed my over and kissed me, that too seemed natural and right.

Then Jonathan was ripped away. I snapped out of my reverie only when I hit the cement, and pushed myself up in confusion. What had –? Someone else was in the tunnel.

“You – keep – the – f*ck – away – from – her!”

Still catching my bearings, I looked around until I was able to make out a shape that was only barely in the fire’s light. Jonathan – the smaller of the two – on his back, arms thrown over his face, the other figure kneeling above throwing punches between every word. The serrated knife appeared only long enough to stab into the attacker’s shoulder and be ripped straight back out and tossed aside. It landed in the water with a splonk. Delivering one last punch to Jonathan’s inanimate form, the attacker rolled onto his heels and stood up smoothly.

“I-Is he dead?” I breathed, appalled.

“Maybe. Who cares?”

“I do!”

“What, don’t tell me you were enjoying that?”

“Well maybe I was!” I shouted. “And besides that, you have no f*cking right to come in here all knight-in-shining armor and mess up a perfectly fine situation and it’s none of your f*cking business if I was enjoying it!” Then: “Ohmygod you’re alive.”

I lunged at him with enough force to knock him over, wrapping my arms around his neck. The combination probably would have killed another man. But not Dean.

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

Once my crying and Dean’s laughing was done, I shoved him away and crawled over to Jonathan. Though unconscious, he was still alive, and didn’t seem to be dying in a hurry. Still, I was pretty sure that without some medical attention, he wouldn’t last long. My amateur examination turned up at least three broken ribs, a fractured collarbone, and bleeding from the missing teeth.

“We’ve got to get him back to the Doc’s.”

“Are you serious? You do know precisely what he was planning for you, right?”

“He’ll die.”

“So?”

“If you won’t get him, I will.” I scowled and easily lifted Jonathan into my arms. I suspected he would’ve been fairly light even without genetically enhanced strength.

“Do you ever stop being mad at me?”

“Occasionally.” I smiled and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek.

“Oh, so he gets it on the mouth and I get it on the cheek?”

“Be careful or you won’t get it at all.”

He finally outright laughed. “Jamie, have you been storing up all your sass just for me?” Jamie. I realized how much I had missed him calling me that.

“I have,” I told him solemnly. “Now please tell me you know the way out of this rotten place.”

“Sure.”

He walked behind me with both hands on my shoulders, guiding me swiftly toward what I assumed to be Jonathan’s shortcut exit. Our steps matched. Our breathing was synchronized. Simply walking with Dean gave me a sense of … perfection. Why hadn’t I missed that more? What had happened to me to make me forget it, when we were trapped together in that room? I shifted my elbow to elevate Jonathan’s head.

“Dean?”

“Hm?”

“What happened? To us?”

This time, his laugh was bitter. “Which time?”

“Most recently. It’s like we forgot who we were, or … who each other was. I don’t know. And, apart from that, what happened to you?”

I felt him shrug. “The first one? Cabin fever. We weren’t … designed to sit around in bed all day. At least I wasn’t.” His voice lowered. “I – Jamie, I’m sorry. For what I must’ve put you through.”

I didn’t reply. Couldn’t think of anything to say. Then I did.

“I did it too you know. I was … curious, but mainly I …”

“You …?”

“I couldn’t think of any reasons not to. With you gone and everything.”

He stopped, and without his guidance, I stopped too. For another long moment, neither of us could think of anything to say. I studied the patch of darkness that, in light, would become Jonathan, and compared his shallow, strained breathing to Dean’s and my own. I could no longer recall why I had been afraid of him; he was so delicate in my arms. And somehow, that appealed to me just as much as Dean’s strength. One I could protect, the other could protect me. I had never realized how high on my list of priorities both of those were – having someone to watch my back was a given, and no one could do it better than Dean, but when I thought about it, tending to Corey had come naturally. And hadn’t I practically made it my life’s mission to defend Rae?

We walked, and in time, there was light. It hurt my eyes, and when it hit Dean’s, I saw them dull from bright red to brown, just as mine had. It illuminated that patch of darkness, which became Jonathan. I squinted upward, thinking that something so bright was surely the sun, and the sky had cleared, and the zombies were all gone, and Rae had a normal, healthy baby boy. But it was only a light bulb, which grew a tiny bit brighter before whatever life it had came to an end.

Later from my seat at the table I watched Trinity, Keith and Corey leave the Green Room, and a moment later Keith came back alone. He nodded at us with his gun easing at his side. The coast was clear. Now it was our turn. The Doc was on the other side of the room with his back turned to us. I watched him as he muttered to himself, maybe he was sniffling in remorse; such was his pride he was struggling to keep himself together until the last of us left, but I didn’t get a chance to wait for confirmation. David’s hand gripped my leg, stealing my attentions. I blinked back, mentally elsewhere. The look on his face, and on Keith’s as he came to a gradual stop behind David’s chair, brought everything back with sickening clarity. I looked down again, vacantly pondering the gap between our seats that at some point following the ‘meeting’ (that had basically been a 5 minute heated slanging match between Corey and Doc M) had been turned to face each other. David’s grip was hot and anxious. He wasn’t accustomed to such acts of consolation but at least with Keith’s ‘presence’ he was willing to try. The sound of his voice, intermittently broken up by impatient groans and pensive sighs, told me while he didn’t understand my apparent reluctance to go back out there and kick some zombie ass with his usual enthusiasm, he didn’t begrudge me for it either.

“Rae, I know you’re worried-”

“It’s not that-”

“You don’t have to come with us. You can stay here with the Doc. We’ll be fine,” David asserted, looking aside for Keith’s consent without actually wanting it. “We’ll only be gone a few hours.”

On the other side of the room the Doc spluttered. His disbelief and grief was one thing, his animosity was another as cloudy slitted eyes swung back over his shoulder. “What? Do you think this is some kind of game? No she can’t stay behind. I need every one of you out there to search for Selene-”

“We got it.”

“Need I remind you what’s at stake here? She’s a child, she’s defenceless-”

“Yeah well she wouldn’t be if you’d stop f*cking with her,” David muttered under his breath. I saw the way he was rubbing at his arm, reminding me briefly of the little girl’s prosthetic. I looked up at him seriously. The Doc, behind me, made a sound like a man drowning in water. His rage was palpable, it was frightening to see such emotion in him now, brief and for the most part still in check, but to think not that long ago I’d looked at him like something less than- (what, human?) empathetic. Maybe it was the change of location in this base away from his camp, maybe it was the loss of his ‘children’ - one that David had dispatched right in front of his very (blind) eyes – or the total upheaval of his life with our arrival, but something in the man had definitely changed, and not necessarily, I thought, for the better. As he continued to murmur something distasteful about the situation David, Keith and I simmered in the mounting tension until David finally swept the impassive look from his face and flicked his eyes up, narrowing in the Doc’s direction.

“Cool it, alright?” he snapped gruffly. “You’re not our f*cking boss, just give us a god damn minute!”

The Doc, with his tone pinched somewhere between shock and all-out loathing turned his eerily focussed face towards us. “What did you just say to me?” he challenged.

“What are you deaf as well as f*cking blind? You want me to spell it out in Braille? Back the f*ck off!”

“May I remind you,” the Doc snapped back, his face still pale, almost waxen as he strode towards us, “if it wasn’t for me you’d all be dead already! I took you all in and what thanks did I get? A dead nurse, two missing children, one dead, the other god knows what, a hole in the side of my compound that will take days to repair, and you’ve got the audacity to talk down to me? Who the f*ck do you think you are?”

“The person that’s about to leave your other kid out there to die if you don’t watch your god damn mouth,” David grumbled.

I whispered his name to curtail him but my attempts dwindled beneath his bitter stare. Though I could no longer face anyone for the tension choking the room, I could see his expression in my peripheral vision, that haughty gaze that always made me feel like an idiot, that warned me to keep my mouth shut, that had always kept me at arms length, and I felt my stomach nosedive. Behind me Doc M’s footsteps had stopped. I just knew his eyes were on me, I could feel them; they may as well have been laser sights for all intents and purposes.

  “Cute,” the Doc said. He drew in a deep breath. “You’ve apparently found your niche in this war haven’t you? Oh the irony, really, biblical hero taking out the defenceless giant of a 6 year old girl. Bet that gave you a hard on didn’t it? Some hero you are. Speaking of giants, you’re forgetting something aren’t you? Your little girlfriend there, wasn’t it me who saved her life by bringing that abomination, Taijitsu, into the world? Quite a selective memory you have, David.”

I grimaced and closed my eyes. Behind closed lids I was back there in that surgery caught half way between life and death, screaming in pain and unimaginable terror, watching the Doc dragging something cold and grey and bony from my body.

“What the hell is that?”

“Shoot the f*cking thing!”

“No … please … - Trinity? Trinity, did they – is – ?”

“It’s alive…”

“For f*cks sake, would you shut up and listen! - That thing is her son!”

“…Her son?”

David’s voice, low and grating, and dangerous brought reality back with a sickening jolt.

“You better watch your f*cking mouth-”

“Or what?” the Doc fired back. I saw his arms go out, gesturing a challenge, his lack of vision obviously no deterrent to physical retaliation in a just enough cause, but I found myself more amazed but what I couldn’t see – and I strained for those few brief seconds over my shoulder to look. Where were the scars on him, I thought. I’d seen David straddling his body pounding a fist repeatedly into his face – the sounds of the blows still fresh in my memories were enough to make me cringe even now – why then couldn’t I see any marks on him whatsoever, not a graze, not so much as a bruise or a red mark anywhere on the surface of the Doc’s face at all?

David though, true to form, was on his feet before any of us could stop him. Keith did at one point clutch the shorter man’s shoulder, but David brusquely shrugged it off – then, an instant later, stopped and stooped forward. He tried to stand again but he immediately recoiled again. He looked, briefly, as if he had been shot. Panic slowly swamped me. I recoiled in my chair as my mind went haywire, watching Keith grapple to assist David and David, growing increasingly agitated, try and shrug him off. He hissed and clenched his teeth in that universal expression of pain. Huffing his breaths he shook his head, deflecting our apparent fears with utterances that he was ‘fine.’

The Doc, who had been slowly approaching drew to a stop behind my chair and gripped the back of it, poising to take it all in. Even by the strange smirk on his face I could tell he knew without seeing what was going on and just for a few moments was revelling in it. I snarled and turned my head away, glad that he couldn’t see it.

“Doc, what’s wrong?” Keith asked. His reliance on this mad man of science was at best unsettling, but I sensed genuine fear there too. We were already so few in numbers, surely one more would be one loss too many… But David, still bowed and gripping his side and trying hard to act like he wasn’t struggled his eyes up towards the Doc had lost none of his previous venom, of anything his pain was only amplifying it.

“If you’ve done something-”

The Doc scoffed. Ah there it was, the ‘old’ Doc I thought to myself, cold, cynical, cruel… “Like I’d have the chance, or the need to,” he goaded. I was sure I heard delight in his tone. Oh but how I’d like to. That’s for pulverising Amelia, he was thinking, payback really is a bitch, isn’t it? But he just stood there smirking waiting for the right words, or the right moment in which to express them. Keith’s worry was infectious. Fear was taking over. I found myself rambling things that made little if any coherent sense, if only to me. The men’s scathing looks, and the Doc’s dour laughter did nothing to ease my growing panic. He pushed himself forward to snag David’s arm as David did his best to fight him. In one fluid move the Doc swept David’s arm aside, ducked underneath it, and came into contact with David’s ribs. David made a sound and practically swooned over me. At first I thought the Doc had hit him but panic constricted my throat. As Keith grabbed David to right him the Doc stepped in along side still pushing against David’s ribs in a way that was obviously hurting him. I grit my teeth and went to stand. The Doc stood upright and stared vacantly, his hands pressing David’s tee-shirt. Then I finally understood.

“It’s not what I’ve done,” the Doc said matter-of-factly, ‘It’s what you’ve done. Your little stint in there, Don Juan,” he murmured, receiving a bitter glare from David and the opposite from me. He tapped his temple gesturing as if he had heard. My face was too hot by this point to contest anything, as it was I still felt ‘dirty,’ no doubt we still had the stench of it embedded on both of us – but the Doc merely continued to examine and smile. Trust a man with heightened senses to pick up what those with eyes had missed. “You haven’t done yourself any favours. A cracked rib, maybe two. Needless to say you’ve gone and made it worse. You’ll only have yourself to blame if you lose a lung from it.”

“What?” I cried.

I was too embarrassed, too angry and too scared to really consider the implications of his diagnosis. The Doc sighed heavily. For a brief moment his brow furrowed. Gone was his haughty revelry. He was back in Doctor mode and judging by the prognosis I could tell it wasn’t good. In a time when disease, malnutrition, stress, exhaustion, mental and physical fatigue, not to mention zombie related inflictions could suddenly impede on a person’s lifespan, something as grave as an internal injury let alone this far away from the Doc’s surgery that had already been badly damaged, it felt like he had just given David a terminal diagnosis. I couldn’t do anything except stand there and watch as the Doc urged David to take his shirt off and didn’t seem surprised when David couldn’t do it.

“You need to rest,” he sighed, aggrieved by the development, and quite possibly the prospect of having David for company instead of David’s earlier proposal of me. “If you don’t give it time to mend there’s no telling how much worse it will get. By the way you’re breathing now I’d say it’s pushing against your lungs, am I right? Naturally I can’t tell you how bad the damage already is until-” he began, but David had other ideas.

“No. I’m fine. Strap me up, do whatever it is you have to do, splint it, I don’t give a sh*t, but I’m going back out there,” he said. He made it sound like a threat. It wasn’t for Selene’s benefit, and the Doc had to have known this, but the sad glance the Doc gave him, albeit briefly, assured us that the Doc well realised as much as he needed another set of eyes out there to hunt for Selene that in doing so he was sacrificing one soul for another – one generally able-bodied, well-armed, skilled other – and right now he needed all the help he could get.

After realising that reason would be lost on someone like David the Doc shrugged and sighed and lamented, “Your funeral.” Keith started to protest, maybe David should listen, the Doc wouldn’t tell him this if it wasn’t really important- but he was cut off half way through speaking. The Doc, who had been walking around us, moved forward too fast for any of us to see or stop him - I heard the thud, and saw David try and swing back. He lifted his fist and something stopped him from following it through. A mere heartbeat later he was hunched over his knees again looking pained and exhausted.

“If that had been a real attack,” the Doc said over David’s shoulder, “You’d be dead by now.”

It was inevitable but it was still a decision I was not happy about making. In truth my decision had been made for me. I couldn’t let Keith go out there on his own to search a military base full of walking dead for one little girl all alone. I knew I had to go with him, what I didn’t want to face was the fact we now had to leave David and the Doc behind, and I truly couldn’t face it.

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The silence was intolerable. Over the buzzing dusty bulbs and our careful steps and ragged breaths I could hear nothing. No movement ahead or behind. All doors we passed were silent. All corridors were long, endless, and threatening. More than once I found myself being caught up in paranoid fantasies, that I was probably asleep, that this was all some stereotypical dream scenario, that time had stopped, or worse had passed me by altogether and now I was trapped down here, just the two of us, wandering the pits of hell until starvation, zombies, or insanity finally finished us off. Luckily Keith was my buoy, with a word or a look or a tiny facial spasm he was keeping me grounded, constantly checking back over his shoulder to reassure himself that I was still there, mentally as well as physically. It had been my first real time out on the front lines so to speak without David or Rob right there beside me, and I knew I looked scared. I felt it. It showed. There was no way I could possibly attempt to hide it.

Along the second level we crept – these were the sleeping quarters for a majority of the base’s personnel. Design-wise it was reminiscent of what you would expect on a cruise ship – narrow halls, steel door after door after door as far as the eye could see. Post-apocalyptic living wasn’t designed to be glamorous but basic, manageable. As Keith and I strode these endless corridors I couldn’t help but wonder if the designers had not intentionally set out to create a new world underground that reinforced this notion of conformity, sterility, even oppression from its unwitting subjects. Everything felt like it belonged in Cold-War Russia, not underground U S of A. As Keith led I followed, scanning the numbers on the doors, straining my ears to hear over the sullen thumping of my pulse. Behind every door there had to be people, families, zombies, but we couldn’t hear anything. They were either dead from starvation inside or… I swallowed loudly. I struggled to block out the thoughts of whole families, mums, dads, kids in their arms, cuddled up to their fetid chests, locked together like mummies, putrefying in their darkened tombs. I tried not to think of their terror in those final moments as panic swept through and people they probably knew started turning on each other, of kids screaming for their parents, hearing their fear echo off these cold hard walls. They’d probably locked themselves away inside their quarters, the smart ones realising the recently infected lacked the relevant hand-eye coordination to open a door from the outside, or in. And then came lock-down, all doors permanently sealed shut; then they were cut off from food, water, and worse, information. Those inside their rooms only delaying the inevitable, while those on the outside had no where left to run; it would have been-

“Rae,” Keith whispered.

In front of us, a few feet away, stood the gaping black slit of an open door. Broken light flickered within. There was no sound forthcoming as we inched closer towards it, guns at the ready. My fear was so overwhelming in those few moments my head became lightheaded and dizzy. I drew a deep breath and closed my eyes. Focus. Okay, you can do this. I tried to convince myself this was David, fearless, focussed David who always knew what to do. I opened my eyes to the reality as Keith shot me a look over his shoulder. I nodded, fighting back a grimace. He began to count.

“One… two-”

On three he jabbed the muzzle of his rifle into the room, shouldering the door open wider. It creaked on dirty hinges. Light from an upturned lamp struggled against the carpet. Furniture was upended. Clothes were strewn about. The smell of dried blood and seaweed, otherwise known as the sharp tang of rotting flesh, assailed us. There, on a darkened stain on the floor, a body lay. The bulk of its torso had collapsed, the exposed flesh on its forearms settling aside like slowly melted wax on either side of it. This poor bastard had been dead months – but there was no way of knowing whether or not he had been one of the infected. His entire head had been ripped off, not only that it was gone. Through jagged chunks of waxen-grey flesh and severed bone and nerve endings, it seemed as if his head had been, puzzlingly enough, not blown off by a shotgun blast but chewed, and chewed completely – there were no bones, no teeth, no skull fragments anywhere at all amidst the crusted blood pool. Cautiously coming to a stop a few feet away Keith frowned down over it and looked back at me. I shook my head, unable to say anything. The fact that the rest of the body remained intact suggested whatever had done it hadn’t been zombie. This wasn’t Hollywood. Zombies didn’t eat brains. At least, nothing I’d ever come across. Still grimacing I turned my head away, allowing Keith a moment to inspect the rest of the surrounds. The room didn’t extend much beyond what we could see, just bunks bolted on either wall, dresser between, desk behind the door, and chaos, lots and lots of chaos.

“Hellmutts?” He wondered. He backed up to meet me still standing guard just inside the door.

We both looked back at the body, still wearing its boots and military fatigues, ‘face down’ near one of the bunks. I shrugged.

“Maybe.”

“What about… Taijitsu?” Keith murmured.

I frowned and looked down, loosening my death grip on David’s rifle. His parting words echoed in my ears, lending me logic and commonsense that in these conditions I sorely needed. Again I shrugged and shook my head, dismissing the irony that this thing he so casually referred to had been given a name in essence making it more ‘human’ for us to comprehend in place of just calling it what it really was – a monster. I wondered if its name had any real significance, and if it did what it meant. I wondered if it had human emotions, human hunger – and I wondered what I would have called it had I been given the chance, had it been born human, had it actually been mine. But it is yours; it looked human, at least part-human. David didn’t see it the way you did, he didn’t stare it in the face after Trinity placated it, he didn’t see the emotion in its eyes – emotion? I scoffed. Internalising a wince I cleared my throat and looked ahead, my jaw tight set tight.

“No,” I eventually uttered. “If that’s the case why didn’t it do that to me when it had the chance?”

“Maybe it was going to?” Keith ventured without sounding convinced about it. Rather than say anything we merely exchanged glances, both reliving those horrifying moments back at the Doc’s lab hours ago. It felt like days. In the stress and subsequent dramas it probably had been. Time, like most other extenuating factors, was constantly against us.

“How much time do we have left?”

“It’s only been twenty minutes.”

“God damn it.”

“We’d better keep moving,” he said. I followed him out.

As we pushed on we moved in silence. We had no way of knowing where the other two had gone, let alone any way to communicate with them that wouldn’t also alert the zombies congregating in the darkness around us. Though we constantly worried, at least I did, neither one of us spoke about it. Being separated as of late seemed par for the course, if nothing else the Doc had well taught us the value in that. As it stood all we had were our rifles, our senses, and out proverbial wits at our disposal to find little Selene in the scariest and deadliest rat-maze of all time. Visions of Amelia back there outside the Green Room haunted us but neither one of us mentioned it. If Selene was infected by whatever infected her then we’d deal with it. There was small consolation in the fact that I now carried the very rifle that had obliterated that little girl’s ‘life,’ whether she had been infected by a zombie, by Taijitsu, or by something else completely – but any consolation had to better than nothing, at least that’s what I reminded myself as we turned another corner. Then – movement.

“Did you hear that?”

“What the f-?”

“Shh!” Keith urged. His frown was lethal, focussed. “There,” he said a moment later. “You hear that?”

I nodded. “What is that… is that tapping?” I frowned back up at him. “Since when did zombies learn Morse Code?”

Keeping flat to wall, Keith peered around a corner. Grabbing his shoulder I wrenched him back, copping more of his death stare and a sound that bordered on insulted for apparently scaring him. As scared as I was I tried to make him see reason, as much as I could without being able to speak too much or too loud, and stress my point enough for him to finally get it. If that was one of the others out there they’d shoot first and ask questions later. All movement down here had to be considered hostile. One moment’s hesitation and-

“That’s not Corey,” Keith assured, after another pause. He flexed his fingers around his rifle’s stock anxiously and rolled his head aside against the cold cement wall. The tapping relented. It was followed by a low dragging sound. In the shadows, between the dusty overhead lights, I practically clung to his side, staring up at him intently. What do we do? I wanted to ask him. What came out sounded a lot more determined than I actually felt.

“I don’t think that’s Trinity either. I don’t think that’s human.”

Habitually Keith closed the door behind us and looked around for something to jimmy the handles down tight. Finding nothing in the sparsely decorated hallway he snatched up my rifle from David’s hand and wedged the barrel in place, using the leather strap to hold the heavy end of the stock up. I went to argue but Keith smartly stopped me. We were out of options, we didn’t have anything else, he argued, and besides, David was in no position to use it. He was right of course. Between his injured ribs and his gouges and scratches marring the left side of his body, his face and neck taking most of the brunt, he was far from battle ready. Along with my fear came this sense of resentment too; I was angry at him for coming along after he’d vowed to stay behind, angry that he’s risk his life in his injured state, let alone coming down into god knows what to help or ‘save’ me – it was like he didn’t trust I could take care of myself. But I couldn’t maintain it, I was struggling as it was to keep it together, the growl of the dead outside and their hurried footsteps competing with the furious pace of my pulse and my heartbeat. As I carried much of his weight Keith was left then as our only gunman. Now basically down to one weapon between us, mine dangling at my side burdensomely, we hurried through the corridor without any cohesion, without a sense of order. Inside the further we walked the dimmer the lights became. The darkness around us was indeed getting darker. Outside night had to be falling. It made no sense at all of course, we were trapped inside, hundreds of feet under the earth, there should have been no conceivable way of knowing what time it was outside above ground – all I knew was that the further we walked inside the darker, the colder, the stiller the air became. At one point I was almost convinced I could see my own breaths bursting in front of my face, not stopping to think about the amount of dust that must have settled here in the months since the infection had wiped the entire base out. That should have been a calming thought but in my fear I was not thinking clearly. Limping along with David I scanned the doors we passed, scanned the windows for signs of life – whatever the state. I could see none. I was openly terrified. There should have been people everywhere. In times of crisis people always flocked to churches and houses of worship, even those that usually had no belief in any god. All of us who had survived the end of the world had seen this more times than we wanted to remember. It was practically an unwritten law, along with avoiding the blood if not the overall attention of the dead. Stay away from anywhere where large amounts of people would congregate en masse; not only were they breeding grounds for infection, they were death traps for anyone happening past after the fact as well. Where then, were all the people?

Having braced myself for nightmarish visions of piles of undead corpses rotting and feasting away on the remnants of the living in an orgy of blood and filth, the absence of bodies did not pacify me. Not unlike the rest of the base we had already seen it was eerily clear of corpses. Dark smears indicated previous struggles. I saw what looked to be some kind of bone amidst some detritus lining the wall, but I didn’t see a body. It wasn’t unfeasible to think that the Doc in his wanderings had come this far and cleared the place as he had elsewhere with his minions of dogs and child slave labour, he did have a vast array of medical supplies at his lab, I recalled, it had to come from somewhere, but here? As we approached what looked to be some medical department I saw behind glass walls rooms opening up. Furniture was scattered. Plastic curtains were torn and blood smeared. Blood flaked on the inside of the glass; I stared at a bloodied handprint as we passed. With a shudder I moved on. Sliding his hand around my back I expected David to draw me closer, to say something encouraging, to allay my fears. Slipping the knife out from the waistband of my pants he frowned. Clearly he sensed it too. He pushed himself off me and lurched around as much as he was able on his own. He was like an old hunting dog, his strengths may have been depleted but his instincts at sensing danger hadn’t waned. He nodded at me as if assuring me he was now able to hold his own. I frowned back dubiously. He looked pale. He had lost too much blood. It saturated the neckline of his black shirt, giving off a sheen as the light caught it. The dead no doubt were salivating over the scent. David was practically bringing them to us but for the life of me I knew I couldn’t say or do anything to turn him away. I may as well just shoot myself if I do that, I thought, smiling weakly. I hefted up his gun and offered it to him. I knew he didn’t have the strength now thanks to his ribs to keep wielding it, but I needed to see him pick it up regardless. With his palm David shoved the barrel away and continued walking. I followed close by. Keith, as always, was our ringer following on high alert behind us. The dead had reached the door now. They were banging on it, throwing their bodies against it in a haphazard wave one after the other. The sound made me think of fat rain droplets splattering on plastic. And then we heard the squeaking. All 3 of us turned around to stare back through the dark. The doorhandle was rattling as if… as if someone was trying to turn it. Could their really be survivors out there, I thought impulsively. If there were why didn’t they say anything? Why did they just growl? Maybe their throats had been damaged, maybe they were dehydrated- what, all of them? But that sound, that loud, angry, frustrated growl sent a cold shiver the entire length of my spine. That wasn’t human, I knew it, I just couldn’t comprehend what-

A low sound snatched me back to attention as David took the fore, stepping in ahead of me, knife in bloodied hand. I followed, reactively hunching lower. After all these months it was habit, and one I was strangely glad had been enforced on me. It was like a switch had been flicked on in my brain. I was more focussed now, shaken, jittery, but focussed none the less. Together the three of us came to a corner and stopped. Zombies. Somewhere. They were moving close by unseen. Their shadows danced across the floor. David and Keith exchanged wary glances. I hugged the rifle against my chest like a terrified child squeezing a teddy bear. Two fingers went up. Right. 5-… 5 metres away. I nodded beneath David’s stare, drawing strength from familiarity; at least his system I knew, with Keith I felt alien, I felt unprepared. Keith nodded back, whether he knew what David directed or was merely prompting action. With his back to the wall David huffed out a sound, preparing himself. Keith reached out and gripped his shoulder. He lowered his face and shook his head. Without hesitation he shuffled forward and took David’s place at the head of the line. Carefully, and as silently as possible, Keith handed David his rifle in exchange for the knife. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch it, but I couldn’t stop from watching on as in a blur of movement and aggression Keith stalked one zombie, jamming the knife straight down into its head. Bone crunched. The zombie growled. With a swift twist it landed face down on the cement, it’s body facing one way, it’s rotting face another. The other zombie lunged. Keith caught it with a kick to the chest. It staggered back, clattering to the ground with a heavy thud. Almost immediately Keith was on top of it, kneeling on its chest, looming over it, running the knife of the blade across its throat. I hadn’t even seen him retrieve it. The zombie continued to growl and gurgle, black-red fluid oozing from its wound as he stood up, brought his boot up, and slammed it down into the creature’s face. Bone strained and cracked as ligaments gave way. Another boot and another and another- and Keith had practically vented his mounting frustration until there was nothing recognisable from the neck up on the motionless zombie. Standing I met Keith giving him an appraising nod as he huffed one back to me. Hearing David struggle to stand we both hefted him up, one either side, barely able to fit side by side, all three of us, as we hurriedly made our way down the corridor.

“In here,” Keith said. Using the back of his fist he pushed a door open, revealing what looked like a medical lab before us. Antiseptic smells wafted out, triggering memories of the Doc’s lab, and before that of countless visits to any hospital pre-war. “We need supplies, or he’s not going to last much longer,” he said.

“I’m fine,” David grumbled, but even I could tell from such close distance there was fear lacing his voice, regardless what his expression said.

Keith bid me to hold him while he quickly searched the room. Rather than stay still David pushed forward and followed and soon the three of us were wandering this room separately. Rows of desks divided us. Atop these was a mindboggling assortment of glass containers, beakers, jars, test tubes, the works. Microscopes sat amid opened textbooks and papers, much like a few I’d seen before up in the Green Room. These however didn’t bear the mark of official government documents but rather patient’s names and details. Beneath a fine film of dust their Polaroids sat staring up at me as I lingered, their faces bearing the tell-tale signs of illness, of influenza, the early stages of infection. This must have been where it started, I thought, these poor doctors had no idea what they’d been dealing with. A chill, a fever, strange wounds or lesions like bight marks – but they never would have correlated the two. In the early days following the first few sketchy reports of cannibalism people had confused the infection with rabies but the medical profession had been at a loss to explain how it was contracted. None of the bights ever looked infected, ironic when one considered that humans contained more bacteria in their mouths than any living animal on earth, I scoffed. Still, I couldn’t blame them in their ignorance. Rabies and zombies? The world, still reeling from the war with the East, had been a maelstrom of misinformation and panic. Even had official word gotten out it never would have reached the people in time to stop it. The infection was too aggressive, it was too fast. No one wanted to give up their loved ones even if it meant risking infection themselves… I smiled sadly to myself blinking my eyes up in David’s direction. My smile went unacknowledged and in its own time fell away. On either side he and Keith surveyed the room while I studied the evidence strewn about in pieces around us. All that time I kept thinking of the news footage I’d seen back in that hotel room before Rob had happened upon me. I hung my head and pushed onward, needing to shirk the ghosts of the past but unable to shake them off completely.

“Over here,” Keith directed in his lowest tone of voice.

He’d come to a stop in front of a first aid kit, it’s lid already open, it’s contents scattered across the table top. Some littered the floor. David met him and together they rummaged through the contents. Curiously I pushed on. Behind a plastic curtain I saw more benches, more shelves, more folders heaped into a pile that no doubt held the medical records of all the personnel who had worked here before the sh*t went down, and probably then some. A nearby filing cabinet verified my suspicions. As I cast my eyes over them I became aware of just how many people must have been on this base when the call went out. I shuddered and kept walking. Something on the floor ahead of me alerted my suspicions. I hurried towards it. Tentatively I reached down and at the last minute refrained from picking it up. It was a doll. A child’s doll. It seemed familiar to me – if not so vastly out of place laying on the floor in an underground medical lab. Then it hit me. I’d seen this before…

“Amelia,” I breathed.

Behind me David and Keith were peering back over their shoulders. Keith raised his chin, wordlessly inquiring as to what I was looking at. David’s brow crumpled heavily. Standing upright I wiped my hand on my thigh even though I hadn’t come into contact with it. I decided it was best not to mention I had seen a toy a lot like this the night young Lucas had led me through the Doc’s compound in to his secret lair, sitting on one of the children’s cots as the child slept in relative peace beside it. With a nervous smile I shook my head, motioning towards it dismissively.

“Selene,” I said, impulsively. In our panic our quest to find her had been pushed from the forefront of our minds.

Keith nodded as if remembering. “We have to hurry,” he said, grabbing up fistfuls of supplies to shove into whatever pocket he could. David, eventually, did likewise, but there was little urgency in his movements. I didn’t know whether his reflexes were slowing down now due to injury or sheer exhaustion or if in fact he really did care so little in regards to the Doc’s missing child. As Keith hurried up to meet me, and quickly lead the way, I caught David’s eye as he shoved the last roll of gauze bandage into his pocket. The look on his face made me turn away. With a chunk of ice in my stomach I followed Keith as we left the labs, entered another room, swept it clean, and disappeared out another.

It seemed like we were going in circles. And it seemed too as if we had been walking for hours. When I asked Keith how much longer we had to go he grunted something about not having enough, and dismissed committing anything else at least vocally. I knew now that we were dangerously close to missing our curfew but I couldn’t make myself verify the time in David’s wrist watch no matter how tempting it may have been. I couldn’t logically accept we had been walking around down here for almost two hours already when it only felt like half an hour at the most. I didn’t stop to think that the further we walked the further we had to backtrack to go back to where we were meant to be and the further away we were to the others and to getting the hell out of this place. As for Selene I tried not to think about her at all but in doing so just opened the floodgates to let nothing but those kinds of thoughts to come flooding in. It stopped me from looking at the signs on the walls that told us how much closer we were to the dreaded Chapel or how we had to go left to the base’s schoolrooms in the next hundred or so metres. It seemed as if Keith was deliberately leading us around in circles but I couldn’t begrudge him for it. We were starved, thirsty, disoriented, and still badly shaken by what we had seen. Now in the wake of it the intensity of the facts had been pared away by self doubt and logic. And fear. Though we walked for the most part in stiff silence none of us wanted to admit to the possibility of what we’d seen, or what we’d thought we’d seen, because that painted a picture far too terrifying for any of us to comprehend, especially with the rest of our ‘friends’ out there. By the time we reached a crux in the corridors that lead to the schoolrooms one way, and the exit the next, Keith drew us to a stop, sighed, and slung his rifle against his shoulder.

“Damn it,” he murmured. “We’re almost out of time.”

Our shoulders fell heavily. Beside me, still with his arm around my shoulder and using me as a personal leaning post, David could barely raise his head up to properly face us. He wasn’t well but I wouldn’t admit to it. I looked at Keith as a respite waiting for him to say something to me, to tell us what he thought we should do next. The look on his face stripped me smartly. Loss. Guilt. Regret. Oh how I knew that look, I knew it intimately. I knew the downcast pout, remembering having worn it for far too long now every time I thought of Rob. He was missing Amy, no doubt worried sick for her safety. He looked at me a moment as if he understood my sympathy but a moment later he cleared his throat and shuffled around, skirting me, avoiding my sad gaze and attention that wanted to tell him that everything was going to be alright when I knew that I couldn’t. I had no right to. At least I wasn’t alone down here in hell, he was.

“We can’t get back there in time,” I said, if only to bring our fears out into the open. “If you go now you might catch them-”

“No,” Keith declared.

It wasn’t a suggestion it was outright denial. He even looked offended at the notion that he abandon us just to save his own neck, and beside me David glowered back equally hurt, but I couldn’t just leave it. I shook my head. I summoned strengths in my hunger and thirst I didn’t even know I had to smile back and lay a hand on the big man’s forearm. My smile sat like lead on my face. It was like sending a loved one off to war knowing their chances of ever coming back again were slim to non-existent. Still I smiled for his benefit, and for David’s.

“You know you have to-”

“You cannot be serious-”

“You know it’s the only way-”

“Yes, she is,” David piped up. We both turned towards him. His smile was jaded and just as forced as mine as he pushed himself upright and stood independent of me. Pain flickered on his face despite how hard he fought to disguise it. His whole head was discoloured. He looked ill. He looked- infected? No, sunstruck. His grip was tight on my arm as he gave me a reassuring squeeze then pushed me away. My shoes shuffled in the dust towards Keith. We both frowned back. David continued to smile. “That’s why she’s going with you.”

“What?” I cried. Keith, hot on my heels, also objected. There wasn’t any real time to glean insult from it, intentional or not. As I returned to him David backed up, putting his hands up, gesturing for me to keep away. He refused to listen to me as I told him I couldn’t leave him, I wouldn’t, he needed help, it was unthinkable, let alone Keith’s paternal offering that the three of us had to stick together. That small gesture brought a smile to my face, reminded of the several times I had been witness to David and Rob as they continued their alpha-male power struggle, thinking sadly that for a little while at least, in spite of the terror and horror and fear things had felt somewhat ‘normal’ with the two of them, a welcome return to what had been better days. But David could not be reasoned with. He had already come to accept his fate. As he stood there laying out the facts I realised just how laboured his breathing had become. There was a rattle to his voice I didn’t like, it wasn’t the rasp of the dead it was the groan of the dying. David was hurt, no amount of running through infected corridors was going to save his sorry ass, but without him to slow us down we could, he said, referring to Keith and I. I was fighting tears by this point, all too wounded to say anything as the men battled it out in that cold, dusty corridor. Logically I knew he was right but there was no way, there was no way…

“I’m staying,” I eventually told him, my voice eerily dissonant and calm. “I don’t care what you say. I didn’t leave Rob. I’m not going to leave you.”

“Rae-”

“No!” I snapped.

There was fire smouldering in my eyes. Words struggled to make themselves known at once. I wasn’t going to be told what to do anymore. No I didn’t care what he or anyone else said for that matter. No I didn’t care if he was right, I didn’t care what he or the rest of the god damn planet thought, for once I was taking control and there was not one f*cking thing he or anyone else could tell me that was going to change my mind. Huffing from my minor outburst it took me some time to dredge my eyes up from the floor and when I did I was half expecting one of them to slug me, one for going against either one of their decisions and two to literally knock the fight from me, but neither one of them did. Keith stared at the ground reflectively. David frowned back saying nothing. His smirk, when it crept out, had me smiling back, albeit tentatively. Reaching out he cupped the side of my neck in his hand. He bowed forward, resting his forehead against mine. He sighed rather than say anything. I was glad for his silence. Keith’s gaze over us was unsettling. I could sense his frustration; in part I could even share it. But as I looked up, turning my face from David’s heavy embrace, I too couldn’t say anything. He had to leave us alone to save his own skin or we were condemning him to death down here with us. Amy needed him, Corey needed him, hell even the Doc needed him, David and I didn’t. He had to go – and he had to go now, there was no two ways about it.

It seemed cliché in the moments that followed, the awkwardness, the strained expressions in place of any real words, as if words would have made the situation any of us now faced any easier. Parting from David I wrapped my arms around Keith, holding him, thanking him, trying to convey a sense of peace with our collective decision rather than fill the moment with corny statements about coming back and not being long. That was all superfluous, first he had to get out, and his escape was going to be nothing short of miraculous if he managed it at all. In the back of all our minds, at least mine, I had to brace myself for the fact that one, if not both of them would turn on me; Keith, if bitten would almost surely come back to attack us, and if David really was sick… But it was now a risk I was willing to take. For the first real time since the war had started I actually felt in control of my life again and it filled me with a sense of empowerment, of purpose, if only for a fleeting while. As Keith and David exchanged cordialities, and a back thumping embrace, I watched on, wary for signs of movement around us. The scratching was subtle but I knew it was there, behind that door, behind other doors in that particular section to my immediate left dead children were chomping at the proverbial bit to get at us. They were only metres away but for now doors and rooms were worlds apart. Turning my focus back to the men, who apparently hadn’t noticed – or chose not to for the same reasons I did - I picked up my smile and waited patiently for the moment to end. Eventually Keith began to withdraw, a few steps at first, and then a half dozen. Though he’d quickly drafted up some kind of plan with David in their low grumbling utterances I had no real idea as he left just how on earth he was going to make it out past those things that had followed us, distracting myself with thoughts that these levels surely had to have more than one way in or out and relying on my sense of logic against undeniable odds to soothe my fears. I was sad to see Keith leave but I wasn’t scared for myself. As David and I stood side by side we watched on, feeling the darkness and loneliness and isolation creeping back upon us. I tried to tell myself that later, when the sun rose again, him and the Doc and the rest of the crew, with Selene and the elusive Dean in tow, would come back down here better armed, better prepared, and they would drag us both out of here, each venting their frustrations at our decisions to stay behind veils of relief and bemusement. It was a nice thought but I wasn’t counting on it. Before Keith’s footsteps had even finished receding I turned my attention to David, who, still coated in coagulating blood, with one eye practically glued shut now and leaning to the side to compensate his injured ribs, was smirking back vaguely as if half drunk. If we didn’t find a safe haven soon for him to rest I knew he was done for. I huffed out a breath determinedly and wove my arm in under his shoulders, hefting him forward. His shotgun was poised and ready in my other fist. Though our roles had been vastly reversed I found no humour in it, just need. There wasn’t time to draw comparisons, to wonder if this was how he must have felt all those times he’d dragged me out of harms way when I’d been his burden. I wasn’t thinking about anything other than finding a room safe from the infected that I didn’t hear footsteps hurrying back down the corridor towards us. Keith’s voice, preceding all else, told us to hurry, to run in fact, without actually telling us what we were running from. Like a wave crashing us from behind he charged up, thrusting an arm around David, practically dragging him away from me as I followed dubiously behind. I stopped and turned around. I heard the roar of the dead, and the thunder of their footsteps, well before I saw the first shadow dancing across the ground. By the time I could smell them Keith had already deposited David elsewhere and had come back, attempting to repeat his tactics on me. But the sight of the zombies running, literally running full-pelt towards me as opposed to assuming it had frozen my legs solid to the floor. I wasn’t going anywhere. I couldn’t. I couldn’t believe it.

“Rae, come on!”

“The Doc,” I murmured, backing up, or maybe he was dragging me, either way I was moving. “His experiments… he did this… his file, in the lab, I saw it… he worked here… he did this…”

But Keith wasn’t listening. In two strides he swept me up into his arms and practically carried me away, slamming the door to a jarring stop behind us. The hard kiss of metal on metal echoed like a death knell around us, the last chime of a bell signalling the end of midnight. Zombies slapped against the door, flesh and bone cracking, pounding, voices growling on the other side. Backing up with wide eyes I stared at Keith, thanking him, but sharing his fear, too shaken at that point to ask what had happened let alone how he’d managed to escape.

“That’s it,” Keith said. His shoulders fell heavily. His face, gouged by adrenalin, by anger, by defeat, crumpled as his gaze fell lowly towards the floor. “Time’s up,” he said.

His voice had barely been a whisper, still over the din of the ravenous zombies I managed to hear it. David, slumped over his thighs on one of the bunks, blinked back silently. He ran a hand over his stubbled scalp and too looked downward. Outside the dead kept beating and pounding and growling at the door. There would be no end to it; the dead were immune to exhaustion, fatigue, stress. They would continue beating until their limbs were shattered, until their bones gave way. They wouldn’t sleep, they would never rest, they would never take a break to replenish their energies, they didn’t know how to stop. Inside that room the three of us knew just how great the odds had been stacked against us, by our very nature we were at a disadvantage, we were no longer at the top of the proverbial food chain we had been outsmarted by ‘unnatural’ versions of ourselves. In a very real way Keith’s words echoed prophetically. Time really was up, and not just on a global scale. All that was left to do now was wait; the clock now well and truly ticking against us.

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

Done. Your turn.

Will this sh*t never end?

Doc M had left. Dean sat on the counter next to Jonathan (who was conscious but wary and in pain), arms crossed and bored-looking. He said that after I left, the Doc had gone into a rage and plowed out the door. Something about losing control, and having only one option left. Dean wasn’t too concerned. He was more interested in Taijitsu and where the hell I’d been.

Taijitsu itself, when it realized I knew where I was, had given me a long, considering look – then glanced at its mother – and then dashed away into the darkness. I didn’t try to stop it. I didn’t blame it for wanting to go. But I was a little sad to see it leave – it gave us some degree of security, and in a weird way, I liked its presence.

On the bright side, Corey and Selene had found their way back to the Green Room. Corey, Dean’s demin jacket around his shoulders, sat hunched in a corner, still shivering and glaring daggers at Jonathan. Selene sat curled next to him, but when she saw Keith, she leapt to her feet and ran to the big man. He dropped to his knees, a look of sheer joyous relief on his usually solemn face, and embraced her so hard I feared he’d break her.

Dean and Corey wanted explanations. Jonathan wouldn’t stop staring at me. David glared at everything. Doc M was MIA. Keith was eager to get back to the clinic. Only Selene and Rae didn’t seem to want anything from me. When, I wanted to know, had I become the person to look to for answers? Perhaps it was when you started talking to zombie mutants.

Since I provided nothing, Keith naturally took command. Corey was to tell Dean about Taijitsu; David was sent to join Jonathan, and Rae went with him; Selene went back to Corey; and Keith motioned for me to join him apart from the others.

“Any opinions?” he asked.

“On what, exactly?”

“Everything.” I gave him a sour look. He smiled and clarified, “We need to get David back to the clinic.”

“And Jonathan,” I put in, glancing over to where he lay, eyes still on me.

“Right. And getting Selene to safety is a high priority. We can’t wait on the Doc, reasonably. But …” He looked away. “He waited on us.”

“He ran off on us, too,” I reminded him.

“I know.”

“We really don’t have a choice though, do we? He’s the only one who knows the way back.”

He shook his head. “I could find it. I imagine you could … help.”

I crossed my arms. Keith had obviously picked up on my ‘differentness’, but the way he accepted it put me off-balance. “Yeah. I guess probably.”

“Then you think we should go on?”

I bit my lip, but decided to be honest. “I know he’s your friend and all, but I don’t trust the Doc as far as I can throw him. And he’s more … unstable. Now that Erin and Amelia are gone.” Not to mention, now that my blood’s spiked through his veins. “I hate to say it, but it might be in our best interests to leave him behind.”

He sighed. “You’re right.”

I was taken aback by his quick agreement, and even more surprised when he turned and announced to the group that as soon as everyone was ready to travel, we would be setting out. Corey, of all of them, voiced some doubt at the decision to leave the Doc behind, but apart from Selene, no one was willing to put their lives in further risk for the good doctor. She alone seemed mortified. Keith went to talk to her, and hesitantly, I boosted myself up to sit next to Jonathan.

His only move was to reach out and take my hand in his. I shifted closer, and he rested his head against my leg, eyes finally closed. I looked down at him, trying to sort out how I felt, and when I looked up, Dean’s betrayed expression sent my eyes downward again.

Keith stood. “Let’s go.”

Ignoring David’s objections and curses, Keith lifted the smaller man up across his shoulders. It was, he said, in the interest of speed, and since he didn’t seem to be hindered at all, only David’s pride could complain. Rae and Dean flanked him, the only two with rifles anymore. I wasn’t comfortable with Rae being on the front lines, but we were running out of options – two of our best fighters, David and Keith, were canceling each other out.

I walked a couple steps behind them. On one side, Selene clung to my belt with her metal claw, real hand twisting and untwisting in the hem of her skirt. I hated that she was there, not so much because she was a liability but because she had to see every mangled corpse and smear of blood we did. By then it had come out that she had followed us, intent on helping her precious Doc, only to ‘get lost’ – meaning, get captured by Jonathan. Her kidnapper was on my other side, his arm around my shoulders and my arm around his waist. Most of his weight was on me, and at times he seemed to lose consciousness for a second, forcing me to basically drag him for a step or two, but as long as we kept pace, I didn’t care. I suspected that if Keith could, he would have carried Jonathan as well, but even he had limits.

Corey was at the very back, with one of the pistols I’d taken back from Jonathan. His shivering finally all but stopped, he watched our backs. Just in case.

But our journey was proving to be strangely zombie-free. Judging from the front group’s murmurs, they thought that the undead had just gathered in one place, in some sort of ambush; apparently they had noticed some unusual, almost intelligent behavior too. Personally, I thought that Taijitsu had cleared the way for us. I doubted anyone would support the idea, but as long as we weren’t attacked, did the reason matter? We walked, and we hoped we wouldn’t be killed; there was really nothing else a group of people in our position could do.

Even with my convictions about Rae’s child being our guardian angel of sorts, I was startled when Keith stopped and turned to the rest of us, a broad smile on his face.

“Home free.”

Before anyone else could act, little Selene released my belt and dashed forward to open the door that stood before us. Twilight streamed in, soft but still just bright enough to make us all squint. Behind me, Corey gave a short, relieved laugh, and Keith grinned back at him. Rae’s happiness was muted (no doubt she was still worried about David), and Dean merely glanced over his shoulder to give me a quick, unreadable look before going on outside with Selene. Jonathan seemed to actually shrink away from the light.

Happy as I was to see our progress, I was a little wary of leaving the shadows. It took Corey, taking my hand as he passed me, to pull me outside. Maybe I was being affected by Jonathan’s repelled reaction to the sunlight, or maybe it was because I knew progress also meant I was closer to having to tell the others everything that had happened in the sewers. Either way, Corey wasn’t going to let me get away with it. At least he wasn’t trying to expose me as … whatever he thought I was anymore.

“Not far now,” Keith commented. David grumbled something – I couldn’t catch the words – and Keith laughed and crouched down to put him on his own feet. “You slow us down, though,” he warned, “and you’re right back where you started.”

David scowled at him. Rae hand away her rifle, and soon she was supporting David much the way I was Jonathan. The two of them fell back, leaving Keith and Dean to be joined by Corey, and walked alongside me. I had a feeling Rae wanted to talk to me – question Jonathan’s presence, say something about Taijitsu, comment on Dean’s return, I didn’t know – but I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to her. Inexplicably, her treatment of Taijitsu, as well as her devotion to David, rankled me; I couldn’t help but think that he was controlling her. I would’ve spoken to her had we been alone, but with the two men clinging to us and Selene still lingering at my side, I kept my eyes forward and my step purposeful.

And so, again, we walked. I tried to put the events of the past several hours out of my mind. I wished, for what seemed to be the thousandth time, that I could choose to erase some parts of my memory in order to get others back.

* * * * * * * * * *

Rae nudged me, walking on silently once I mumbled that I was awake. I sat up drowsily, rubbing at the grit in my eyes, and felt something slip off my shoulder. Confused, I twisted around and discovered that apparently, I had slept under Jonathan’s arm the night before. He was still asleep. A little embarrassed (I seemed to be embarrassed by everything, didn’t I?), I looked around automatically for Dean; unsurprisingly, he stood on the far side of the room, eyes on me, a look that could be called nothing but disapproving on his face. Though at first I felt guilty, the burst of anger that came from remembering my argument with him and my talk with Amy overshadowed it.

Meeting his gaze just long enough to let him know I didn’t care what he thought, I turned back to Jonathan and shook his shoulder, murmuring in his ear to wake him up.

Keith and Amy were separating the children into two groups. Lucas, the little blond boy who seemed to have replaced Amelia as No.2 in the kids’ hierarchy, and Selene stood, looking very solemn, in front of each group. Lingering next to Keith for a moment to catch his eye, I inferred that Lucas’s group would be bringing medical equipment to the lunchroom, and Selene’s would be bringing food, as we’d come close to wiping out the small stockpile in the kitchen. Once I got Keith’s attention, I beckoned him over to a corner.

“Yes?”

“I know a lot of plans were thought up last night, but was anything decided?” I asked. “I was kind of out of it.”

He shook his head. “There’s the Doc to consider. We don’t know if he’ll come back. If not, the children … we’ve no option but to take care of them. Abandoning them is simply not an option.”

“Of course,” I said hastily. “I wouldn’t suggest otherwise. It’s just, last night I realized there’s something I need to do – I wouldn’t want to drag the rest of you around behind me, but if you had no other sound plan, it would be up for considering.” I allowed myself a thin smile. “And, I’ll admit, I don’t … really want to go out on my own.”

Returning the gesture, he nodded. Once the children were occupied, he told me, we would all have a meeting, and I should bring it up again then. We parted, and I leaned against the wall and watched the others, my friends or family or bitter enemies. Amy, in her usual ‘social butterfly’ way, had drawn Jonathan into conversation. Though she smiled, he seemed wary of contact. Corey had taken over the kids, making sure the groups stayed together and knew what they were doing – he was just as good with them as the other two – and Rae was helping to herd them all. Dean and David leaned against the wall opposite me, but whether they were ignoring each other or engaging in some monosyllabic man-talk was impossible to say. I couldn’t help but wonder if Dean was complaining about me to the other man much the way I’d complained about him to Amy. Still, it was nice to see the usual bonds loosened somewhat, to see them all venturing outside of their usual circles. And yet here I am standing by myself. Great role model, huh?

The last of the kids filed out, and Keith, who had been surveying their exit, called us stragglers over to the center of the room. We made ourselves comfortable, sitting in a rough line (here, our circles asserted themselves somewhat) with him standing in front of us, and he told us exactly how this meeting was going to work.

“Everyone will have their say in an orderly, sensible fashion. There will be no interrupting. There will be no arguing. God help you if you don’t realize this means there will also be no fighting.” That last part, I couldn’t help but feel, was aimed at David, and I doubted he missed it. “We have several things to discuss. Most prevalent is the Doc, and his wards, but before I forget, Trinity? You had something to say?”

He retreated to the side. Someone, maybe Dean (he and Corey sat behind me), gave me a little push, and I stumbled to my feet. Now that I had to say it, I didn’t want to.

Standing before the group, I laced my fingers together uneasily, swallowed, and said, “I-I’m guessing you all realize that around the time Gas Z hit, something happened to me that caused me to lose all my memory of the time before. I’ve … remembered some things now, and I’m positive I could find my way back to my home. That’s my goal now. I need to go back and find out who I was – who I am – before I can concentrate fully on where I’m going.” I glanced at Keith nervously. “I’m not saying we all have to go. I mean, this is something I need to do, and I’d hate to make you all come along when you’d get nothing out of it. I don’t know if there will be any shelters or safe food and water sources along the way, but I do know that the fewer of us go, the easier it will be to manage. Which isn’t to say I want to split up – that’s the last thing I want – but if you’d all be safer here, then …” I shrugged and looked to Keith again. “That’s it, really.”

He nodded to me and I gratefully went to sit back down. As Keith acknowledged what I’d said and began laying out the situation for consideration – Doc M being missing, David’s injury, Taijitsu, the state of the clinic’s defensive wall, everything – Dean leaned forward and murmured in my ear.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?” I didn’t take my eyes off Keith.

“What you wanted to do. We could’ve left last night.”

His assumption that he would be going with me, while perfectly rational, made me clench my teeth. Even worse, he was pretending we had never argued the night before. I turned my head only slightly to growl back, “Maybe you don’t realize it, but I’m part of this group. I may have my mind made up, but I don’t run off without at least notifying them first.”

He made a quiet, dismissive sound and pulled back. I knew without looking that he’d crossed his arms and was shaking his head at me.

Keith finished talking about everything that had happened and slowly sat down to be completely equal with the rest of us. “Before any ideas are put up for consideration, the rest of you should know that Amy, Corey and I have made our personal decision,” he said softly. “If the Doc doesn’t return, isn’t found – if he doesn’t come home, we three will be staying here to take care of the children. Nothing, barring the Doc’s return, will change that. There’re too many of them, and they’re too young, to be moved anywhere, and we cannot in good conscience leave them here alone. The rest of you are welcome to stay or go as long as we are in charge here; if the Doc comes back, it will be up to him, as it’s his building.” He nodded to us.

“Now, having made the situation clear,” he continued, “why don’t we start with planning our next move? Rae, have anything to say?”

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And there's not much else to say about that

Seeing familiar faces again made me weep in relief – it was a shame I felt so wan, so high-strung still after my encounter with the undead that I could not openly reveal this. Even with a new face amidst our flock – and the beguiling disappearance of the Doc, I looked on with a degree of cool detachment as we were all once more reunited in the Green Room. There was no time for introductions, let alone explanations, as we were soon ushered collectively on our way. The fact we were headed back to the Doc’s lair and away from all this… insanity was all the inspiration I needed. As Keith carried David – much to his disgust – I took up flanking position opposite Dean and all of us as a group made our way back down the stairs and out into the blinding light as if walking through some fantastical dream…

Terror of course skulked our every move. In the back of my mind, now slowly becoming lucid again, at least in stages the further we walked from the Green Room and that godforsaken base, the greater the awareness and subsequent fear of those things I had seen hours earlier rushed upon me and refused to stay dormant. I could scoff about it now, putting on a brave face as the men eluded to it, convinced now that it had to be fear, adrenalin, post-coitus emotions toying with me, making me see things, making me think things that couldn’t have possibly been – how many times had I not just seen but actually conversed with Rob since his untimely death as a case in point, I wondered – but still as I kept a vigilant eye on my surrounds I gripped the stock of David’s shotgun tighter and murmured to myself something along the lines of a prayer. With so many lives on the line all I could hope was that I was in fact insane because the reality of facing those things again, the dead that knew how to run, how to open doors, how to plan an attack was more mortifying than losing my already tenuous grip on reality – losing the world to mindless drones was one thing, but this… this would have been a whole new final ballgame.

It was with relief – and apprehension – that we finally emerged in the Doc’s base and back into darkness without seeing hyde nor hair of them. We clung to each other as Trinity essentially led us through. It was with a sense of irony I found myself thinking that the Doc, wherever he was at that point, would have been proud of us in that one act for finally banding together for a common cause – luckily no one said anything much less argued. Emerging in what I supposed must have been the lunchroom of the Doc’s lair we were welcomed by Amy and a small army of bleary-eyed, tense looking children, but wherever the Doc had gotten to he was not with them.

“Oh my god, Keith-” Amy gasped.

We watched her bound from the desk she had been sitting on and rush across the room, throwing herself against her love. A small smile played on my face watching their brief exchange, reminded in some obscure way of passengers arriving at an airport nonchalant about the world around them. Reactively I lowered my eyes, leaning closer against David. For those first few moments it seemed like everything had changed, we were all finally united, sharing thankful relieved smiles, getting visually reacquainted, assuring one another without quite so many words that against all odds yes we had all finally made it and we were all finally safe. Funny how indestructible we all felt now, untouchable behind flimsy walls, high on a shared sense of accomplishment and pride – as if this structure was any more secure than the one made of concrete and steel behind us. As Amy repeated her mantra, something along the lines of thinking we were all dead, I looked down at the kids, at the sight of a little blonde boy, and felt Amy’s relief stall albeit temporarily. Lucas smiled at me in a weary way and, caught off guard as he stood a measured distance away, I smiled back. I heard someone usher Dean and Corey off to gather food but by the time I turned back Lucas was gone again, swallowed up in the veritable crowd. My smile remained, dying eventually, evaporating, as I thought then of Taijitsu, the way it had looked at me, almost like that, with the innocence of a child, and felt a cold shudder caress my spine.

Using some of the supplies she had gleaned from both Keith’s and David’s pockets, and utilizing some of her own, Amy set to work acting as fill-in for the late Erin nursing the guys’ collective injuries in her stride – her proficiency and apparent skill as she strapped, cleaned and assessed both David and newcomer Jonathan caused some concern in the back recesses of my mind. I told myself that it was a skill most of us had picked up since the war, a necessity without any kind of health care provider left on the planet that didn’t charge an arm or a leg, quite literally, and that she had been an associate of the Doc’s in whatever context long before the rest of us had met up – It wasn’t unfeasible to think Amy had learned something useful in all that time from the Doc, but still part of me couldn’t help but consider the possibilty Amy at some point might have been in contention to be poor Erin’s tutor if not her new replacement groomed for such an event such as this to step in. Catching her eye I smiled back at her slightly. I soon turned away.

After Corey and Dean had gathered what they could, Trinity and I were sent in as quality control, making sure that the guys hadn’t grabbed anything like soap or rat poison that in their haste to chow-down may have accidentally gathered. In the kitchen, a small nondescript room just as bland and outdated as the rest of the compound, she and I worked. Though we talked it was all minor, meaningless chat. I realised in spite of having her step in to save my life yet again without question I had barely said two words to her since our initial departure much less a thankyou. For the life of me any significant dialog I could come up with had nothing at all to do with a thanks or general proprietaries – out of the corner of my eye I looked at her in some regards with suspicion. The way she had sided with that monster, the way she seemed able to control it, it was my son not hers, I thought, and yet at the same time was so abhorred by the concept that I was physically ill just thinking of that thing in anything but in offensive terms. Nothing came of it.

Finally we all sat down on stools, on chairs, on whatever would be constituted a makeshift seat, to eat. Though I was starved I was still on too much of a high to want to eat – my body, literally driven by instinct, had other ideas on the matter. In the next room the kids remained quiet, nestled in their sleeping bags and blankets, no doubt at peace now with a sense of order having returned in us or still frightened for their missing patriarch they refused to get up out of bed for fear of rousing someone’s anger. Meanwhile the rest of us talked. We were still on a veritable high from our return but talk quickly and inexplicably turned sour at the mention of our missing acid-tongued medic.

“I got another call from M,” Amy explained, “but he wasn’t very clear. I – I’m afraid he was infected… I mean, one of the early signs of that is disorientation, confusion, right? He thought his sight was coming back, and he kept insisting that something was happening to him. He mentioned you,” she nodded to Dean, “but then he kept saying you looked dead, everything looked dead. Either he was infected, or … or he finally went completely insane. I tried to talk him down, but eventually he dropped the radio, and I think I heard him running, but whether it was to something or from something or neither, I don’t know.”

 Clearing my throat I looked around nervously, halfheartedly hearing whatever it was Corey had to say. I tried to feign interest in the predominately male exchange that followed, that I knew had been simmering away beneath the surface amongst all of us, at least those of us who had been witness to it, but now that we were back and the horror was strangely for the most part behind us, I couldn’t force myself to speak up and tell them anything that may have shed some light on their collective confusion. As I scraped my bowl clean and pretended to casually look around I kept a vigilant eye over my shoulder, wary for the slightest sign of movement that might indicate the Doc was back and he was pissed, no less for being abandoned as he would be to hear me half way through giving up his dirty manipulative secrets. If the rest of them knew of his lab, if they knew what he kept here, what was probably still here… Though I knew I should have spoken up I wasn’t able to, more scared of the elusive mad man than the risk of the dead in there breaking out and getting loose amidst the compound. There was also a small sense of invincibility with that, thinking that Taijitsu would save us from attack even if I hated it, couldn’t stand to be around it, could barely even look at it let alone recognize it as our savior. No, it was easier at least for a little while to tell myself that Trinity would protect us from harm, even if that came in the form of another wave of zombies or the newly infected Doc, if that was indeed what had happened to him. I sat listening, watching the way Trinity appeared to have already zoned out, wondering if she was feeling what I was in part feeling; a sense of justification and pride that the creepy blind man who had treated us like lab rats, some third world overseer, a god experimenting on both the living and the dead, had met an untimely if not ironic death. I didn’t think it would have been in good taste to mention it – but was too wary by this point to hide it if it made it to my face.

After the meal we rested.

Amy and Corey had already taken the initiative to shift a few of the smaller kids into the one ‘bed’ to give the rest of something to utilize besides from the cold hard floor. Keith and Trinity, unofficially our hierarchical two now, took first watch as the rest of us bunked up and settled down.

Despite what I had come to expect from the desert at night the lunchroom was surprisingly warm. Maybe it was the amount of bodies crammed into that space, each of us giving off collective body heat, as well as a sense of unity, or safety to rival even the warmest blanket. Lying down along side David I sighed, my body collapsing against the floor in such a fashion I felt one heavy sigh away from sinking down into it. I was physically, emotionally, mentally spent, but still sleep evaded me. With my head nestled against his arm, I cuddled in closer, relieved to have this anchor I could physically rest against as opposed to feeling as I had beforehand; isolated and lonely and feeling the weight of the world baring solely down upon me. David sighed. Having been cleaned of blood and strapped and dosed with some mild form of painkiller he was acquiescent now and not so stubborn or independent. I was sure I even felt him nuzzle a brief kiss against my crown as I lay there aligning myself against his body but I couldn’t be sure. Maybe I just wanted to believe it, but still… The oil lights, such a dim and drastic change from the electric ones back at the base, remained on in the kitchen, casting a comforting glow for the sake of the children if not, truth be told, for the rest of us. Despite this semi-shadow, I could see him, studying the grazes and gouges that marred the side of his face and neck and down further where I couldn’t see behind the neckline of his tee shirt that at some point had been exchanged for another. In my head I recalled the echo of that shot, I relived that knees-turning-to-water-terror as realization hit me over what I had done. Closing my eyes didn’t stop the memory running it’s course until with a grimace I buried my face against the musty material of his shirt and shook my head as much as I was able.

“I’m sorry,” I uttered. My words were muffled and low and for the most part kept discreet away from the oversensitive ears of our guards and fellow inmates around us. “I’m sorry I shot you.” Wow, so simplified, wasn’t it? “I didn’t mean it. I could have killed you. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t. I just…”

David made a sound that neither consoled nor exacerbated my fears. Rather he drew me closer, briefly, that universal gesture of sympathy, before he managed to squint his eyes down over me and halfheartedly attempt a smile.

“Yeah well, you didn’t. I’m alive.”

I scoffed again, taken aback he could be so blasé about it, and offended in some regard that he didn’t appear to grasp the gravity of what had almost happened – let alone appreciate my sentiment. Pulling myself up to rest on an elbow I frowned at him. David’s eyes, narrowed from sleep or suspicion or heavy thought met mine. He was placated again, as he had been back in that tiny office, back in what felt like a lifetime ago now, but he had lost that fiery edge and that accompanying smirk that usually worked to make everyone feel inferior to his irrepressible logic. Again I shook my head and smiled wanly over him. My lips twitched with intent but words weren’t forthcoming as we lay there in silence. Eventually David drew me back down to lie against him. His internal grunts and sounds told me though he could still feel the pain in his ribs he was no longer dictated by it. With his arm draped around me like a lead pipe he sighed.

“Don’t,” he murmured. “There’s plenty of people around that probably think I deserve it. They’d probably be pissed if you told them you missed your shot at killing me.” At my immediate response to defend him David made a sound that silenced me and went on to add matter-of-factly, “Rae I know I don’t have allies here. To be honest, the f*ck do I care. The only reason I’m still here is because I was with you when the sh*t went down. If it wasn’t for that they wouldn’t have come back for me. I know that, you know that, and you know the rest of them well enough now to know that it’s the truth.”

Again David paused to sigh. Though he was speaking so quietly his words barely deviated above this one low monotone, to anyone else he probably would have sounded as if he were incoherently mumbling. Together we waited as footsteps approached as Trinity, with rifle in hand, passed us by. Whether it was the content of his words, or the memory of her standing there in that doorway back at the base along side that thing Taijitsu, I shuddered and shimmied in closer. David, with his eyes constantly closing and opening appeared to be struggling to stay awake. He stifled an internal groan and, still with his eyes closed, frowned at me.

“What?” he murmured.

How I wished we were alone at that moment, I thought, restless with the urge to smother him, to kiss him, to prove to him that despite what he thought at least someone acknowledged him, someone needed him, but thankful as well for this sense of safety in numbers. With my eyes closed I tried to follow his lead, straining to listen to the hypnotic breaths of the others and synchronise mine along with them. For a little while at least the lunchroom was a scene of domesticity and peace with nothing but the sound of commingled snores, murmurs, and pacing footsteps of Keith and Trinity to disperse it. When it became apparent that sleep, at least for the time being, was still too busy with everyone else, I stirred again, looking for a response to make sure I still had a receptive audience. David’s brow furrowed. Caught on that precipice of unconsciousness he was as sedate as he was ever likely to get while still awake, but still apprehension prevented my words from coming out as easily as they should have.

“I- I don’t want to lose you,” I said.

David sighed. It was loud, loud enough to disturb one of the children nearby who fluttered open her eyes to look at us. Keith, upon passing, turned around just to make sure things were alright. As I watched his back dwindle across the other side of the room David physically tensed up beside me. His breathing was laboured. An interpreter would have recognised the signs, but as it was, I didn’t want to.

“Go to sleep,” he told me.

Feeling exposed, vulnerable, and too raw still from all that had happened I burrowed my face in against his shirt, trying for what it was worth to hide myself away. Before I knew it a hand tapped me on the shoulder. My eyes snapped open expectantly. David was by now well and truly out of it, his expression relaxed, at peace (the only time he didn’t seem to frown), causing me to frown back at him confusedly. Hearing movement, a low discreet clearing of the throat I looked up over my shoulder. I must have dozed off to sleep; my eyes were cloudy, my vision unclear. Keith loomed down over me. In the semi-darkness and at such close quarters he seemed like a giant. His smile, though weary, seemed out of place on such a gruff exterior.

“Rae, your watch,” he whispered.

After the meeting food was prepared and the kids were fed first while the remainder of us waited; some went for showers in a rotational system, some sat alone, or ate, or rummaged through the supplies the kids had gathered before, while the rest of discussed the meet, weighing up the pros and cons of our various options. David, who had again spent the rest of the meet observing and eventually speaking for the both of us in his usual fashion, had been prised away by a persuasive Amy to see to his wounds, leaving me open for several unwanted attentions. Though Keith afforded me his empathetic stare, it was Trinity of all people who managed to corner me as I sought refuge in the kitchen, keeping myself busy so I didn’t have to think about anything much less face it.

“What are you doing?” she asked me.

She sounded so much like an irate teenager that I watched her enter the room behind me with a look torn between bemused and insulted. Kids intermittently filed past, sliding their dirty plates and spoons up onto the bench tops that were still strewn with the chaos largely leftover from our revelry and exhaustion the night before. I thanked one of them, stroking the little girl’s head, watching her leave as I took a wet cloth to the counter to clean it. Trinity approached and stopped again, her arms folded across her chest, the look on her face, though I only caught a glimpse in my peripheral vision, all too reminiscent of someone much bigger, much older, and more masculine, not to mention balder. I sighed as I turned my back on her and resumed cleaning the mountain of dishes.

“Jesus Christ, can’t you speak for yourself? What’s the matter with you?” she challenged.

I was taken aback. It didn’t sound like her, I told myself, not that I really actually knew her let alone what she was in order to start relating, still I would have thought she of all people had no right to be asking me a question like that. Half way through thinking she must have been tired or stressed, or more likely this was her new pal Jonathan’s influence – after all she seemed to have adopted this new antagonistic quality since his arrival, fighting with her closest ‘friend’ and now suddenly wanting to break away from familiarity on some sudden impulse – I heard her mutter, “Rae, I don’t get it.”

Really? That makes two of us. “Get what?”

“You,” she said. “Him. This whole… everything. Are you really that blind that you can’t see it? You can’t see what he’s doing to you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about,” She blurt out. “David!”

She stood closer still, easily within arm’s reach, but even from this distance I couldn’t feel anything emanating from her – Why would you, an inner voice chided, she’s not human anymore, remember? – But rather than answer I just smirked back and shook my head.

“Damn it Rae, why don’t you stand up for yourself? Why are you letting him tell you what to do? You don’t want to go, we can all see it, we know. Did he threaten you?”

“Oh god,” I grumbled.

Trinity’s tone lowered almost apologetically. “Look, I know… things have been… strange between us lately,” she skirted. She dropped her gaze briefly towards the floor. Though her words sounded like a prelude to something else, nothing followed, leaving a stiffening silence to set like concrete between us.

Taking the opportunity to step aside I turned too to face her. I didn’t find it odd at all that I could confront her now so directly, someone who couldn’t die, who had the strength of so many, who could wade through the dead like Jesus on water, but who on the outset looked like a young, petite, intense-eyed woman. In truth I wasn’t afraid of her, whether it was the fact I felt somehow tainted by that monster Taijitsu, or whether I’d accepted some responsibility for our current predicament having liased with a dead man in the first place and in essence bringing us all out here, or I’d merely lost all sense of self-worth to accept a kind of subconscious death wish I wasn’t sure. But I looked at her now incredulously, daring her, challenging her to back up her claims or shut the hell up, simultaneously wanting to blurt out everything building within in a choking torrent of tears as well.

“You don’t have to feel obligated to follow me if you don’t want-” she started.

“I know.”

“Then why don’t you say something? Why don’t you just tell him you don’t want to go?”

I just continued to stand there and stare. Trinity, clearly torn in her decision to have even started this, backed up mimicking my body language with her arms folded across her chest and her hip leaning against the cupboard behind her. For a little while we were quiet as kids continued to wander in obliviously. Finally uncomfortable Trinity pushed herself away and began to walk out of the room. She stopped half way out and turned to look back at me.

“I know you’re mad at me for some reason but that thing, Taijitsu, it’s still your son. It saved you. Not m-”

“No it isn’t.”

“How can you say that? I was there when it was born-”

“It’s no more human than you are!” I spat.

Immediately my jaw tightly locked shut. Trinity, bighting her lip, said nothing. She shook her head. Then she nodded glumly to herself.

“You’re right,” she agreed. She looked at me more calmly. “But right now I’m still more alive than you are.” I was too affronted to speak, actually choking inside on sardonic laughter, but before I could even contest it, Trinity continued. “Rae, when I saw you and David up there in that office yesterday I- I thought-… I didn’t know what to think actually. I actually thought maybe you loved each other or something. Crazy I know. Now I know otherwise. You can’t say a thing to me that doesn’t sound just like something he would say; you can’t say anything without it somehow involving him. Face it, you’re not you, you’re just an extension of him. If he dies, you die. You’re already dead; you’re just dancing around like some puppet on a string. He’s in control and always has been. When he says jump you don’t even bother to ask how high you just do it. That’s not devotion, Rae, that’s control. He doesn’t love you, not the way you think. I know it’s none of my business but I’m just telling you because-”

“You’re right,” I murmured flatly. “It is none of your business.”

Trinity’s tentative smile crumbled and slid away. She pushed herself further out of the room. Again she couldn’t leave without getting the last word in as I slid my eyes aside at her, my arms locked so tightly together I was practically shaking.

“You know,” the younger woman said, “when I first met you I knew you were scared, I just didn’t know what of. I thought it was the dead. Now I know better. And you can tell yourself whatever you want, I may be younger than you but I’m not stupid-”

“Neither am I.”

“Rae-”

“He saved you,” I found myself retaliate with such bitterness, such incredulousness, that I was shaken for a moment to realise such words were even falling out of my lips without provocation. “On the river bank, you remember that? You know why he did it? You really want to know?” I huffed.

 Now it was out there I had to finish it, feeling Trinity’s eyes on me, narrowing (no red in them, no black either) as she waited, anticipating what was to come. She had no idea. I smiled coldly at her.

“To replace me. You were his contingency plan. He was my back up when Rob died. When he found you and brought you back to The Park, I knew it, I just didn’t want to face it. In case something ever happened to me, he had you.” I scoffed.

“Had me for what?” Trinity murmured.