~ Welcome to Quills ~

For most of the morning the guys set to patching the wall; Keith and Corey using whatever tools they could utilize to unscrew a few doors to nail up over the breech in the wall. Dean checked weapons, stockpiled ammo, and Trinity and Jonathan were sent to dispatch the corpses that still littered the scene from the previous attack. Amy tended the kids, and I did my best to help, while David was relegated to whatever light duties were needed. Though he’d been instructed to rest if he wanted to fight another day it was hard to enforce it, his constant pacing and restlessness reaffirming what the all of us were feeling, it was just that no one was ready to say it out loud just yet.

 

For a long while Amy was distracted. I saw her gravitate towards the old two-way that she’d used the day before to communicate with the Doc through. Though she tended to it regularly there was no sound forthcoming through the hiss of static, and no sign at all as the day progressed of the man in question himself. In an eerie way it was as if the Doc had simply vanished into thin air. When the kids mentioned his name she was quick to support them the only way she knew how. Her arms must have been tired from holding them, nurturing them, but Amy never did anything without a sense of grace or purpose - including grieve. I had to hand it to her.

 

Sometime after lunch we all came together again, reaffirming plans for the days to come, touching base simply because we were able, and in some way no doubt giving Keith some much needed reassurance that the rest of us were comfortable with our decisions. I knew to some degree they were highly suspicious of me in particular, I saw it in their forced smiles and heard it in their saccharine tones, but no one really came right out and questioned me about it. They must have known that wherever David went that I was going, that was just a given, whether it happened to be in my best interests or not.

 

The afternoon that followed was long. It was hot, drawn out, and strangely vacant. Though the wall was once again patched and the grounds secure, Keith took no chances, splitting us up again in pairs to patrol the area, to check every room, every closet, under every bed, basically reassure not just him but all of us collectively that when the time came we all knew there was nothing more we could have done to prepare those left behind – and probably more pressing to insure the Doc, in whatever fashion, was not hiding out some where, hurt, delirious, or infected. It was probably no accident that Keith and Amy slipped away unseen for a little while as Corey and Dean generally amused the kids. They were, for everything they had been though in recent months and notwithstanding the Doc’s disappearance, an eerily well-behaved and well-adjusted bunch. They also seemed more grown up than they physically alluded.

 

“Are Keith and Amy making babies?” one child, a little dark-haired runt named Jake wondered.

 

Dean, who had been in the process of cleaning his weapons for the billionth time at a table nearby, laughed amusedly. Corey stuttered. Dean decided to step in and help him with his usual under the breath (but loud enough to hear) dose of sarcasm.

 

“Who told you that, kid?” he asked, “And where do you know where babies come from? What, the bombs drop and all of a sudden I’m getting sex-ed lessons from seven-year-olds now? Christ.”

 

Jake, having received no satisfactory answer from Corey turned his attention to Dean and came to a stop on the other side of the table where he stood silently, saying nothing. Dean, unsettled by the kid’s presence, eventually looked up at frowned at him.

 

“What, short stuff?” he muttered. “In case you didn’t notice I happen to be a little busy here, okay, so, why don’t you just… run along. Go play with your friends. Go play hide and seek. I don’t care. Just quit staring at me like that okay? You’re creeping me out.”

 

Corey chuckled, watching this exchange with a table full of kids around him all scribbling fastidiously on sheets of crumpled medical papers.

 

 “You’ve got a way with kids man,” he teased, “I think he likes you.”

 

Dean frowned and turned his attentions back to the kid. “What? What is this, Village of the Damned or something? Go away. Don’t you speak English? Do you want me to spell it out for you?”

 

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Jake asked.

 

Dean’s mouth, opened to respond in sarcasm, closed uncharacteristically silent. His frown darkened, his hands frozen from where they had been feeding bullets into a magazine clip. His knuckles glowed white briefly. With a clatter he placed the clip on the table. Corey, sensing something amiss, called Jake over, who found a spot and clambered up to join the kids in their impromptu art class at the table. As Jake settled Corey got up and after assuring the tykes we wasn’t going far, he went to Dean to apparently attempt some kind of pep-talk. He didn’t get that far. Right on que Trinity walked in, her clothes dusty, dark brown smears staining her hands and arms with gun in hand, and with an obedient Jonathan trailing as always not far behind her. Whether it was the narrowed eyes Trinity afforded him, or the small smile Jonathan seemed to be constantly wearing, Dean’s face darkened as he looked down, snatched up a gun, and started snapping it back together. Not a word was said between the three of them as Trinity made her way over to Corey.

 

“Hey, where’s the big guy?”

 

“What, you mean Keith?”

 

“No the other big guy. Long white beard, all those commandments, sits up in Heaven on a big golden throne, with angels-”

 

“Okay, okay,” Corey placated. “He’s uh… indisposed. Currently. I think. QT. Why?”

 

Trinity looked uncomfortable, if not a little agitated. Her face was rosy from exertion and the stench of sweat and death followed her like a physical entity. She shook her head and nodded towards the children. Something about her expression told us her news wasn’t for their ears. Corey, and Dean, when he managed to drag his eyes up, frowned expectantly.

 

“I found Erin,” she murmured. “Most of her anyway.”

 

“What do you mean, ‘most of her’?” Dean quipped.

 

His tone was nothing short of bitter, as if Trinity were incapable of knowing what a full dead body looked like. The kids began to react, whether sensing a change in atmosphere, or the looks on their faces, or something else, and started to ask questions. From where I’d been sitting on the other side of the room at a table using a needle and cotton to mend one of the backpacks the kids had dredged up I heard the words ‘missing’ and ‘head’ and practically froze like a statue. Visions flashed before my eyes of what I’d seen at the base the day before, of the headless corpse in one of the rooms, it’s flesh pale, grey and sunken, surrounded by a halo of dried blood catching in the flickering light.

 

“How do you know it’s her?”

 

“How many other people do you see walking around in nurse’s outfits in the middle of the god damn desert!”

 

“That’s not possible,” I heard Corey say, and was on my feet before I could really stop myself.

 

The kids were gathering around them by now, full of questions, needing attention, craving answers, as I made my way through. Reaching out I clasped Trinity by the shoulder. She swung around to face me. Considering we’d barely said one civil word since I’d verbally attacked her that morning, the look she gave me was nothing I hadn’t already been expecting.

 

“Show me,” I said.

 

Outside in the sand and dust, the sun bore down through the angry clouds, creating a humid atmospheric soup for the Doc’s poor ward’s remains. Trinity, Dean and I stood looking down while Corey reluctantly stayed with the children and Jonathan was prised off Trinity long enough to find Keith and Amy and tell them the news. For a long while none of us could speak, the sight of the young girl’s uniform, saturated in blood, in such a state, and so ‘incomplete’ had us all scowling gravely. My news about what Keith and I had seen wasn’t commented on though I didn’t think they doubted me with the evidence, such as it was, laid out in such a manner before us.

 

“What do you think did it?” Dean asked, strangely sombre despite the tension that still simmered in Trinity’s presence.

 

Trinity didn’t answer as she squinted upwards. The horizon shimmered in a watery haze in every direction for miles and the sand had settled, covering the perpetrator’s tracks – it looked as though the girl had been dragged outside, mutilated, and her attacker simply flew away.

 

“I know you don’t want to hear it,” I ventured, bringing Trinity’s eyes back to me squarely, “But it’s possible-”

 

“It’s not Taijitsu.”

 

“Tai-what-now?” Dean wondered. “Oh right, you mean that big ugly thing back at the…” He fell silent beneath both our reproving stares. After a moment of terse silence Trinity turned her attention once more back to me.

 

“Look,” I said. “I know what it sounds like, okay. I know how it seems. But you have to admit, it is possible, whether we like it or not. It’s not all human, it’s going to crave human blood, that’s just its nature.”

 

“Did David tell you this?” she quipped tightly.

 

I sighed, gathering composure. “No, he didn’t. But he also wasn’t the one carrying that thing around in him for weeks having it feed off him. I did and I can tell you, it wasn’t normal. You were there, Trinity, you saw it, same as I did. Whether you like it or not it’s not normal. It almost killed me-”

 

“Yeah, but it didn’t. How many times do I have to tell you it’s the one out here trying to protect you, trying to save you!” she fired back. “You’re its mother for god’s sake!”

 

“Yeah, I am,” I said, feeling guilt sink like a stone with that small admission. “But it’s not human. It doesn’t move like us, it doesn’t talk like us, isn’t it at all possible it doesn’t feed like us either? You said it yourself after it was born it was trying to get to the milk in the cold room, right? Well, did you actually see it drink any milk or did you just see it talking to Amelia?”

 

Trinity’s jaw locked tight as she brooded on it, her expression buckling by degrees. “Yeah I did actually, so what?”

 

“You don’t think it’s odd I didn’t lactate at all after it was born?”

 

Dean cringed in disgust. “Come on man, seriously-”

 

“Well, it’s not feeding off me, and so far as I know there’s no one else out here capable of feeding it, no cows, not even an old abandoned dairy factory that we know of, so where’s it getting its meals?”

 

“It’s still all circumstantial.”

 

“Trinity,” I sighed. I looked at her. I felt, strangely, as if I were her parent, not the thing we were discussing. “It’s not its fault. It’s just its nature. It has to eat. It’s infected, remember? It’s the only thing out here that could be doing it, the only thing we know about-”

 

“Exactly.”

 

“The point is-”

 

“The point is you’re condemning it for being different,” she said with more empathy than anger, as I had been anticipating. “I’m different. Are you going to condemn me too? Are we really that different, or are you just saying that because you know me, because you think you know me – hell, I don’t even know who I am myself!”

 

After my fight with Rae (argument, really, but its aftermath felt like that of a fight), which was ironically interrupted by David himself, I burned off my frustration by pacing back and forth across the lunchroom. How can she be so … blind? I demanded of myself, And yet think I’m the sightless one? I, at least, knew when I wasn’t in control of my own actions, and that was when I was with Dean. She was right – and I’d known it already without realizing – when she said that there was no room for love any more. Hadn’t Dean and I done impulsive, idiotic things in the name of love, or the lack thereof? By his own admission, he had “stayed alive for me”, and for my part, I’d crawled into a grimy, pitch-black sewer to find him, and god knew what else that I just couldn’t remember.

 

It was pointless. How had Rae said it? Love impaired our judgment. It was impairing hers right now. She was willingly putting herself in danger just so she could trail along after her precious David – I spat merely thinking his name. How could she not see that?

 

They’d come out of the back kitchen, and were sitting at one of the tables. David put up his façade of giving a damn about her, which was even worse than simply dragging her along by the hair, in my opinion, and she bought every second of it. Eventually she nodded and wiped her nose. Any seed of doubt I’d managed to plant was erased.

 

Damn it. I slammed my fist into the wall and glared in the opposite direction. Why couldn’t I help her? She was the only thing I’d ever had (as far as I knew) that was anything like a mother, even though it sometimes felt like I was the parent. She was the only thing I’d really felt safe loving, especially after Dean’s … episode with his ‘game’. Now I just felt betrayed. And helpless.

 

“Jamie –?”

 

“Piss off,” I snapped without even looking back. Who else could it be?

 

“Well, excuse me, Sunshine.” Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed him crossing his arms. “But look, someone needs to clear out the dead guys still hangin’ around the building, not to mention evict the dead dead ones, and you seem to have some frustration to work out. Join me?”

 

For a second, the sheer silliness of his phrasing overcame me, and I almost asked him if this was what constituted dinner and a movie now. Then I remembered that I was just as angry at him and his … devotion … as I was with Rae and hers.

 

“I’ll stay indoors,” I said instead.

 

He sighed and uncrossed his arms. “Jamie, it’s either you or that … guy you brought along for the ride, and I’d as soon it was you or no one, okay? But the big guy’s not about to let me out alone.”

 

“Well, after your little flight, it’s no wonder, is it?” I asked sweetly, turning to smile up at him thinly. “Don’t worry about it. Jonathan and I will go. Shine your revolver or something.”

 

He stiffened. I’d aimed to hurt, and it had worked, and I still didn’t really know why I’d done it. I guessed I knew, if only subconsciously at first, that the only way to drive him away was to hurt him. I still felt guilty about it – I didn’t really want to hurt him, I just wanted him to go away and take his temptation to feel something with him.

 

“Maybe I will,” he said in a very controlled voice.

 

I was the one to walk away. Keith or Corey or someone had laid out all our weapons on a table on the other side of the room from where Amy occupied the kids. Corey was perched on the edge of the table, flicking a switchblade in and out in a way that suggested boredom more than malice. I knew he’d been watching Dean’s and my little exchange, but any disapproval he felt was kept hidden under a mild expression. Jonathan sat in a metal fold-out chair as far as he could get from Corey while still technically being seated at the table, legs pulled to his chest and arms wrapped around them. His eyes brightened as I got nearer, but he didn’t say anything. When I picked up a rifle and dropped the pistol of Dean’s I’d taken from the room, Corey was the one to ask what I was up to.

 

“I’m going to clear off the zombies that’re still straggling around the complex.” I turned to Jonathan. “Come with?”

 

“I’d be delighted.” He sprung to his feet, grinning.

 

My hand hovered over the other pistol, the one Dean had handed to me back in the Park, but even with Jonathan hovering next to me, offering a perfectly good excuse to give up that last relic … I just couldn’t. I told myself firmly it would be used only as a backup.

 

“You’re not getting a gun?” I asked Jonathan to take my mind off the pistol.

 

“Don’t need one,” he responded dismissively. I shrugged. He’d managed just fine before I’d come along – who the hell knew what he’d faced in that military bunker?

 

It didn’t escape my attention that Dean waited until Jonathan and I left to approach the weapons’ table. Nor did I fail to notice Corey’s open disapproval when he and Dean began talking. See if I care, I thought, knowing it sounded immature. Corey just needs something about me to dislike, does he? And with Dean, it’s him or no one. Nice.

 

As we passed out of the well-lit, clean section of the clinic and into the area that was under construction, Jonathan stepped up to walk beside instead of behind me.

 

“I don’t think your friends like me all that much,” he commented.

 

“Yeah, well, they’re not my goddamn parents.”

 

He nodded. “That’s true.”

 

I snickered.

 

“Hm?”

 

“Now, see,” I explained with a smirk, “with Dean that would’ve been an argument. He would’ve said ‘yeah, well, maybe not, but they’re just looking out for you’. Like he is. Like Rae is. Like every-f*cking-body does because they think they know best.” Even as I said it, I knew it was unfair, but what could I say? It certainly felt that way.

 

“Hm.” Jonathan shoved his hands into his coat pockets. “Maybe they do know what’s best, for them and the cohesion of their group, but I must say I’m more accustomed to doing it my way.”

 

“And what, pray tell, is your way?” I asked dryly.

 

“That would be the it’s-easier-to-stay-alive-if-you’re-alone way. No cohesion to worry about, so long as you’re not schizophrenic.”

 

I laughed despite myself, though there was more bitterness in it than amusement. “So I guess you resent being part of this group now. You hate me for bringing you.”

 

“Not at all.”

 

“No?”

 

He stole a glance at me, and copied my dry tone. “I hardly think you’ll be slowing me down, Miss Trinity.”

 

“Damn straight,” I muttered, opening the door to outside.

 

Jonathan winced at the light, and almost immediately a zombie lunged at us. I kicked it back, then raised the rifle to put a bullet through its head. By the time Jonathan opened his eyes, it was dead.

 

“Damn straight indeed,” he agreed, still squinting as he followed me out.

 

 

* * * * * * * * * *

“The three B’s of survival. Haven’t you ever heard of them? Bullets, Balls, and Bitches. Guess where we fit in?”

 

The undead were fairly few and far between, not close to enough to distract me. Jonathan and I took turns leading, so that one could stand back and rest – though neither of us needed it – while the other dispatched the next tiny wave of zombies. He used the same knife that had nicked Selene’s throat down in the sewers, effortlessly weaving between the clumsy undead and slipping it into their soft skulls or through their necks. I could only categorize his movements as a kind of dance. My body, if not my mind, remembered taking some form of martial art ‘before’, and I admired his grace and form.

 

“This isn’t about love. It’s not about loyalty. This is about survival.”

 

When it was my turn, I used a combination of kicks and whacks with the butt of the rifle, on the rare occasions that one of them got close enough. It wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done. I wasn’t in the mood to be pretty, anyway. I was too busy mulling over Rae’s words, which seemed less and less naïve and more and more weak.

 

“There’s not enough of us to go around now, why do you think they’re so overprotective? It’s not love. It’s ownership.”

 

Ownership. That was how it felt. Two points for Rae. Points off for allowing it to be ownership. I watched Jonathan spin around to stab one zombie in the medulla, simultaneously kicking one behind him away, and as it stumbled back, I raised my gun automatically and filled it with lead. Jonathan, no three feet away from the spray of bullets, looked up in surprise.

 

“That one was mine,” he complained.

 

“You didn’t kill it fast enough.”

 

“Well sorry, sweetheart,” he laughed. “Aren’t you the bloodthirsty one?”

 

I smiled back emotionlessly and took point. I supposed it would sound funny to someone outside my head. But I found absolutely nothing amusing in it. I just wanted it to all be over, and if I could speed it up by shooting a damn zombie a couple seconds before he could stab it, why not? Three more stood motionless, moaning and baking in the sun, with another two crouched nearby feasting on one of their fallen brethren’s flesh. I picked off the standing ones; the other two didn’t even notice.

 

“Bullets, Balls, and Bitches. Guess where we fit in?”

 

Suddenly dashing over to the other two, I growled under my breath, “Maybe that’s where you fit in, but I happen to have a few f*cking bullets.”

 

Stomping in the second zombie’s head gave me a brief, savage thrill. I was strong, I was powerful, I was –

 

About to puke my guts out.

 

“Holy hell,” I said, backing away, coving my mouth. I bumped into Jonathan, who looked over my shoulder and whistled.

 

“Did a number on her, didn’t they.”

 

“She … has no …”

 

“Head,” he finished, maneuvering in front of me and kicking the fallen zombie’s out of the way. “Funny. I think I saw a bit of this up above.” He paused. “S’pose that’d be down below, now. Just not down all the way. You know?”

 

“You mean in the army base?” I approached the corpse, crouching to get a better look. Underneath the blood and dirt and entrails, it seemed strangely familiar, but I guess after a while, all the bodies did.

 

“Right. There.”

 

I gasped. No – it was familiar. “I know her,” I breathed.

 

“Know her?” He looked over at me, either confused or concerned.

 

“Yeah, she … she, ah, worked for the Doc. She was his nurse.”

 

He prodded the body – Erin’s body – with one outstretched finger. “And how can you tell?”

 

“Uniform.”

 

He squinted. “Oh. Obviously.”

 

I sighed and stood up. “Don’t be a smartass. I – I should tell the others. I mean, the kids’ve lost the Doc for good, probably, but maybe a proper burial for Erin … I don’t know, maybe it would help them come to terms or something,” I frowned and rubbed at my eyes wearily.

 

I felt Jonathan’s hand on my forearm. “Okay?”

 

“Of course I’m okay.” I scowled. “I barely knew her. I just hate having to tell the others. Especially Keith.”

 

“Keith, hm.” His hand dropped away. “Remind me again – is that the bald one, the one with the dreads, or the little one?”

 

“The big one with the dreads.” I sighed again, looking down at what was left of Erin.

 

“Why him?”

 

I shrugged. “Erin had some kind of crush on him or something. He’ll probably feel bad about not being nicer to her. I mean, we knew she was dead, but still.”

 

“So you know him pretty well then.”

 

I looked back up incredulously. “What’re you, f*cking jealous or something?”

 

He laughed. “Of course not. No offense, sweetheart, but I’m not exactly laying claim to you affections here. Just feeling out the group.”

 

“None taken,” I muttered, returning my gaze to the corpse.

 

“What, you’re not heartbroken now – are you?”

 

“Not hardly.”

 

“Good.”

 

“Right.”

 

“Because you’re the only person here who can abide my presence.”

 

“I know.”

 

“So pissing you off wouldn’t be in my best interests.”

 

“Exactly.”

 

A pause. “Trinity, are you trying to make a point?”

 

“No.” I c0cked my rifle and turned to him. “Let’s get something clear here. I’m no longer in the market for love. Okay? I do not love you, Keith, Dean, or anyone else here. So don’t worry about it. I’m only –”

 

“– here to survive and make sure you don’t run out of food, water and ammo,” he filled in. “Hm?”

 

I nodded brusquely.

 

“No personal attachments made, so no qualms about leaving anyone behind if it puts you in danger.” I thought about Keith, David and Rae, trapped by zombies, and Taijitsu intent on leading me to them. And what had its selflessness gotten it? “No putting others ahead of yourself.”

 

“Makes sense to me,” I said coolly.

 

He regarded me for a moment, arms crossed, nodding slowly. “Then let me make something clear to you, sweetheart. I’m not here for friends either, so I’m not likely to be falling in love with you no matter how many undead we put out of commission together. No matter how often I chat you up. No matter how many nights I spend next to you.”

 

I bristled slightly at the last one, but nodded back curtly.

 

“And if at some point I find myself in a position to save you, but have to risk myself to do it, don’t expect it.”

 

“Understood,” I returned. “So long as you don’t expect it from me.”

 

“Understood.” He nodded and held out a hand. “It’s a deal?”

 

“Deal.” We shook on it: a pact to not care about each others’ lives. At least, I thought, I knew where I stood with him.

 

 

* * * * * * * * * *

 

He skulked past me, climbing onto the table and after that, up to the top of the shelving unit. Jonathan slipped past on my other side, easily finding a few wooden chunks to wedge open the door and a folding metal chair to bust the glass outside the Green Room. Rae was completely motionless in the center of the room – and she stayed that way until Jonathan shot me a meaningful look and I barked at her to pay attention. If that didn’t wake her up, the sound of shattering glass did.

 

One set of moans instantly became louder. Alongside that noise, we could hear Jonathan whistling and clicking to the zombie to keep its focus on him; when he tired of that, he started singing a short, repetitive song to it, and kept it up even as he backed in the door. His smooth agility and the zombie’s sluggish movements made it seem as though he were a feral cat playing with a nearly-paraplegic mouse.

 

Rae had moved only to turn around and watch his show. She actually seemed surprised when he ducked behind her and scurried up to cling to the side of the shelf.

 

“Rae!” I called. “Move, dammit!”

 

Finally, only as it caught scent (or sight, or whatever) of her and lunged in her direction, she scrambled away. Predictably, she didn’t make it far at all before tripping over another small pile of debris and tumbling to her knees. I opened my mouth to shout for her to get up, that it was only one f*cking zombie, but before I knew it, Dean’s rifle cracked in my ear and the zombie fell down dead. I whirled to chew him out.

 

“T-Trinity,” Rae gasped, interrupting my reprimand, “I really don’t th-think I can do this.”

 

Giving Dean a glare for good measure, I dropped to the floor and knelt next to her. “You can,” I said, trying to sound forceful but encouraging. “You’ve made it this far, you can give one zombie the runaround for a little while. Just … don’t be afraid. You do know I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, right?”

 

“Yeah,” she said, but her averted eyes told another story.

 

I swallowed and motioned for Jonathan to fetch another zombie.

 

“I wish he could do this,” she ventured. “He’s … comfortable around the undead, don’t you think?”

 

Her implications, though vague, weren’t very subtle. I forced a smile, trying to think of some light response, but Jonathan beat me to it: “I do too, but somehow I don’t think the big gray one would mind much if my head got popped off.” He gave her his best winning smile before disappearing around the corner.

 

“Hey, that makes two of us,” Dean mumbled, still on the shelf. I ignored him.

 

“Just stay strong.” I squeezed Rae’s hand. “We’re right here.” If you don’t trust me, at least you trust Dean.

 

Crash.

 

I pulled Rae to her feet and retreated to the relative safety of the table, not wanting to get too far away from her anymore. I realized that with the tension between me and Dean, and Dean and Jonathan, and even Rae and Jonathan, I’d begun to lose sight of why I’d started this. I hadn’t come down here to fight with Dean and tell the men off for their snide comments; I had a mission. With the realization came a wave of relaxation and clarity, and I hadn’t even realized how tense I’d been.

 

Jonathan’s song drifted down the hall, and this time I was able to pick out the words.

 

“Ma-ry had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb

Ma-ry had a little lamb, with fleece as red as blood

Ev’rywhere that Mary ran, Mary ran, Mary ran

Ev’rywhere that Mary ran, it followed as fast as it could.”

 

“Sicko,” Dean said from above me.

 

“It followed her right into hell, into hell, into hell

It followed her right into hell where both still surely stay

It chases her, and chases still

And Mary runs away…”

 

Jonathan backed into the room again, snapping his fingers just far enough away to avoid its sloppily wind-milling arms. He laughed slightly as if he was teasing a family pet – or maybe more like a bully tormenting a small child, on second thought – then drew it nearer to Rae and darted away to join me on the table. “The ones here are so pathetic,” he murmured. “So slow. Anyone with a little common sense can move with complete ease.”

 

I made a mental note to add something to that list – bullets, balls, bitches, and maybe just a tiny dose of brains.

 

Rae kept control of herself this time. She backed away from it steadily, not too eager to trip again. But, though the fear was clear in her eyes, it would be obvious even to an observer that she was in no real danger. Not from a lone, staggering corpse. Damn. It wasn’t supposed to com to this.

 

I leaned close to Jonathan. “Bring in two more.”

 

He raised an eyebrow, but slid off the table to obey, skirting around the zombie in such a way that its attention was never diverted away from Rae.

 

Crash. Crash.

 

Dean jumped. “What the –”

 

“Hold it,” I snapped. “Remember you’re here to do as I say or just leave. Don’t you dare shoot again without my say-so.”

 

“Jack be nimble

Jack be fast

If you’re not then

You won’t last.”

 

Rae glanced at me, panicky. There wasn’t any mistaking the shattering glass sound, and I supposed we all already knew Jonathan wouldn’t be singing his messed up nursery rhymes for no reason.

 

“Jack and Jill come up the hill

To fetch their share of skin

But Jack will fall and Jill will stall

To feast on him instead.”

 

Soon two more zombies had shambled into the room, and Jonathan had settled down again beside me. With all three of the undead shuffling after her, Rae’s movements became more and more erratic, more and more jerky. Dean growled at me, but I silenced and stilled him with a raised hand. Between the three of them, they kept her away from both the door and the table, either of which would have ordinarily been an easy escape. Slow they may be, I considered, keeping the stock of my rifle against my shoulder, but they don’t seem quite as brain-dead as the others. What happened here – is the Doc responsible for these things, or was it something before? Rae called to me, then changed her mind halfway through my name and called Dean instead. I gave him a warning look, teeth clenching. Any second now, Taijitsu …

 

 --------------------------This is all I've got and I've run out of time for now. I'll continue it over the week, and post again on the weekend (maybe maybe maybe sooner?) Anyway, if you get bored, feel free to post yourself, and I'll adapt to yours

I stayed under the table for a while, not so much to figure things out but because I had no will to move. At one point, I realized that if I could kill myself, I would, but later I briskly told myself off for such a thought. I still had a mission. I still needed to find out who I was. After that … there would be time to see if I could drown, burn, bleed out. Hell, maybe (there were an abundance of ‘maybe’s in my life suddenly) I would even find a way to reverse what the serum had done to me, and I would be able to die a normal f*cking death.

 

After disposing of the corpses and leaving the rifle on the table, I unjammed the Green Room door and stole through the complex as fast as I could. I figured, the rifle wasn’t really mine, and I wouldn’t need it anyway. I had a pistol and plenty of ammo, and I had other advantages that whoever next touched the gun wouldn’t. I also had another weapon in mind, one that didn’t need ammunition, which had made it invaluable to me at an earlier time in my life. It wasn’t fair to keep the rifle.

 

An hour or so had passed, by my figuring. It wasn’t dark, but it was darker. Dean and Rae were nowhere around, but when I emerged from the underground base, I saw Jonathan sitting not far away, idly drawing designs in the sand. The wind whipped each one away even as he formed it. When he noticed me, he leapt to his feet and took a few steps closer, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched.

 

“Why are you still here?”

 

He shrugged. “Whatever you’re doing, I’m doing it with you.”

 

“Why?” I asked. “After just giving me a lecture on not risking other people’s lives?”

 

“The difference is that I come willingly.” We were still too far apart to talk normally. The wind tore away any inflection he might have put on the words.

 

“So would they,” I reminded him.

 

He lowered his head and came nearer. “I have no illusions about you protecting me, Trinity,” he said as he walked. “We made a deal, didn’t we? I come because you interest me, and because I’m bored, and …” He hesitated, just a step away. “I’ve been alone too long to readily give up the contact.”

 

“Stay with the others. They’re interesting, and they’re safer than coming with me.”

 

“They’re not as interesting as you, though. And without you, I doubt I’m welcome.”

 

“Tell them it’s a favor to me. A parting favor.”

 

“Sweetheart, realistically,” he said, looking up with a grin, “you can’t stop me.”

 

I sighed. I thought about apologizing, but that seemed superfluous and cliché, so I just punched him instead. He fell back, completely unconscious, blood already seeping from his mouth. I’d probably reopened some wound Dean had inflicted. As I rolled him over so he wouldn’t choke on his own blood, I decided that I should really apologize anyway, even if he couldn’t hear it.

 

“Sorry if I messed up your pretty face,” I mumbled, stood, and started walking.

 

 

* * * * * * * * * *

 

 

Walking didn’t last long. I ran. It figured that I could run faster than your average human, and mourning my lost humanity was pointless, so I took full advantage of it. The Doc’s clinic went by, followed by the service station where Dean, Amy and the others had met Keith, Rae and I so long ago. I thought about Mike, the strange loner we’d met there, and wondered if he was alive. I wanted to believe he was, but I knew it wasn’t very likely, even if I hadn’t seen his body.

 

Soon after I got a little confused. I had slept for most of the van ride from the Park to the clinic – I had no landmarks. But the Park was in a slightly wooded area, so when I smelled pine trees, I went towards them. Some little details came back, half-asleep memories of looking out the window and seeing this fallen tree or that creek. I went a little slower, at a pace a normal, fit human might’ve kept up with. Like when I’d been tracking Jonathan, my body found its way with no help required from my mind, which left it with plenty of time to slink down

Memory Lane

.

 

It seemed like years instead of days ago. I hadn’t known what I was getting into when I offered to go with Keith and Rae – following a stranger to a stranger only to protect a stranger, as Dean had put it.  It had been a naïve thing to do, but really, I’d barely thought twice about it. I had only just found out about Dean and my particular brand of differentness, I was scared and off-balance … and how did I try to remedy the problem? I ran away from it. I might try to call it nobility – say it was out of some sense of allegiance to Rae – but it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. I was compelled by fear, nothing else, and I had been afraid of Dean and my past, even though I’d also wanted to learn more. What I was doing now … maybe it would atone for my previous weakness. I could live in hope, right?

 

Instead of going backwards as it should have, my

Memory Lane

trip took me to the first time I’d seen the Doc. He’d looked like a miner, not a doctor. I smiled slightly at the mental image, though he’d unnerved me at first and I hadn’t ever grown to like the man. I had to admit that he knew what he was doing. He demanded respect, and he, blind, had been able to see every one of our flaws – individually and as a group. Given more time around him, we would have either become closer or scattered entirely, and both would have been preferable to our current uneasy situation. But that won’t be happening now, will it? I reminded myself darkly. Not with your blood in his veins. God alone – and if not God, then Satan – knows where the Doc is, or if he’s even sane or alive.

 

He was infected, I defended. If my head was a boxing ring, this second voice was half the other’s size, had no gloves, no coach, and no fans. There wasn’t a choice, he said it himself.

 

He would have been better off as a zombie. Look at you. You’re f*cked – now he is too. You should have refused to ‘help’ him.

 

He knew what he was getting into. The defender shrank back into its corner. I didn’t. He’s a man of science, and I’m barely old enough to even have a driver’s license.

 

And he was always a little screw-loose. The attacker shook its head. It knew this battle wasn’t even worth fighting. You know what the serum did to Dean – and he was mentally stable before. What do you think the Doc’s up to now?

 

Hell. I didn’t know. From what Amy had told us, the Doc had lost the rest of his mental marbles. They thought it was the early stages of infection, and I wished I didn’t know better. But at this point, all I could do was hope that he was dead, that his body hadn’t accepted my blood – because if he wasn’t, he was just one more wild card that I didn’t want to consider.

 

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

 

The Park, our grand fortress, was decimated. The buildings hadn’t been broken into – they were only zombies after all – but the outer walls had been knocked down and the garden trampled. If Jill and Wesker had come back to their home after leaving the rest of us, and surely they had, there was no sign they’d even made it this far. Yet, there were no straggling zombies lurching around what was left of the walls or within, no remainder of the horde that had supposedly forced us to abandon the Park in the first place. Once all the life had been driven from the place, it seemed the zombies had lost interest.

 

 Walking through the gate, I felt strangely nostalgic; none of my memories of the Park were especially good, but it had been more predictable. I had woken each morning knowing with some degree of certainty that nothing would try to bite off my face that day, that I would eat reasonably well, and perhaps I would even hold a civil (if awkward) conversation with Rae. Then – I sighed – Dean had come along, followed by Amy and the rest, and everything had gone haywire. I’d only had a few days, but they were kind of … nice, at least in retrospect.

 

Hearing a scrambling noise behind the door to the Rec Room, I paused. How could anything have gotten in …? Then I saw the small hole next to the door. It looked like something had essentially chewed its way in, and it was too small to be a zombie. Curious – and intending to go in the Rec Room anyway – I eased the door open. A pair of dark eyes stared up at me woefully from underneath a chair, and the dog they belonged to whimpered. I c0cked my head. Could it be one of Corey’s dogs, somehow survived the attack? I knelt and held out a hand.

 

“Come on, fella … I won’t hurt you,” I called gently.

 

The old dog slowly crept out. Yes – it was Corey’s, the one Amy had referred to as his pet. The old golden retriever called Lady. One of her legs looked like it had been broken and healed wrong, but she was able to walk with no apparent trouble. I just couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t infected, or for that matter, hadn’t gone feral.

 

“How’d you make it through all that, huh?” I asked, scratching her behind the ears. She looked up at me lovingly, the way only a dog can. I wondered if, even after all this time and trauma, she still remembered her master.

 

When I stood back up and started making my way across the room, she followed, claws clicking against the floor. With the only fading light coming in through the door, the far side was dark, but I could see fine. Picking up a metal spoon from where it lay next to a congealed bowl of oatmeal, I saw that my reflected eyes were red. It struck me as a little strange – I didn’t feel any different, after all. Seemed like I should. Lady whimpered again, and I sat the bowl down on the floor where she, with her bad leg, could reach it, and continued on my way.

 

The table Jill and Wesker had always sat at was barren. Unlike whoever had been at the other table, they hadn’t been interrupted mid-meal by the zombie attack. I wondered who it had been – Dean maybe? David? Didn’t matter. What I was looking for was still there, under the table: the rolled-up blanket where I’d left my katana. Trinity.

 

Could I call it that, since it was the name I used for myself? No … but it wasn’t my name, really. My name was Jamie; it could be Trinity.

 

Jamie. My name, though only Dean knew it and only Dean called me by it. He’d said that Trinity didn’t fit me anyway, and I guessed he was right – it fit the sword, but not me. So then … Jamie it would be. I didn’t plan to go back to the others, so it didn’t matter that they would always know me as Trinity. Anyone I met, who I spoke to, I would introduce myself to as –

 

“Jamie!”

 

I spun around, Trinity in hand, to see Dean standing in the doorway, panting. The red faded from his eyes as I watched.

 

“Jamie,” he wheezed, “why … d’you leave?”

 

“I had to,” I said in a tiny voice, letting Trinity lower to my side. He finally caught his breath – god, how fast must he have run to catch up with me? – and started towards me, almost tripping over Lady but never looking down at her.

 

“Are you still going … back? Home?”

 

I nodded.

 

“You can’t go alone.”

 

It occurred to me to be angry. After all, I could go alone. I was a big girl. But he only wanted to protect me, to look after me, to keep me safe. I couldn’t think of quite why that had bothered me so. Still, I didn’t want to put him in danger. He was as resilient and fast and strong as I was, but I simply couldn’t run the risk.

 

“I’ll be fine,” I told him.

 

“You won’t be fine,” he said, exasperated. “You’re not fine now. That – that lunatic has you believing all kinds of thing that aren’t true, that –” He was right in front of me now, and grabbed at my arms. Trinity tapped uselessly against my leg. “That there’s something wrong with you or … that you’ve done something wrong. But there’s not, you haven’t – he’s lying or he’s just too f*cked up in the head to know better. I don’t know and I don’t care.”

 

“But … I …”

 

“No,” he said softly. “No. Whatever it is, it’s not your fault. I may not be, but you’re better than that. You can’t do bad things.”

 

“It’s like you think I’m some sort of saint,” I objected weakly.

 

“You are. You just don’t realize it,” he insisted. His grip on my arms, which had been hard, as if he was trying to keep me from running away, relaxed. “You’re perfect in every way.”

 

“I’m not. Think about it. I mean, just today I … I ruined my relationship with Rae and dragged her down into that place and put her danger and wouldn’t let you help her and it was all just because I wanted to prove something. And now I’m abandoning you all and I even,” my voice broke, “I even hit Jonathan when he was actually being nice to me.”

 

Dean rolled his eyes. “And before that, you saved his life and Rae’s, defended them all from a horde of zombies …”

 

“That doesn’t make it okay for me to … play with them!” I moaned. “And … and I let you try to kill yourself.”

 

“Yeah, but, it didn’t work.”

 

“But –”

 

“You didn’t put the gun in my hand and say, ‘Hey, bet it’d be fun to play some Russian Roulette’, did you?” he interrupted. “Let me be accountable for my own actions.”

 

“But I could’ve stopped –”

 

“Maybe, maybe not. It doesn’t matter. It happened, it’s over, it’s not happening again. Okay?” He put a hand under my chin to make me look up at him. “Okay?”

 

I started to protest again, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. He had decided, somehow, somewhere along the way, that I was perfect. Even when I was in the wrong, I was in the right to him. He was so beautifully, beautifully deluded about me – and he had known me since childhood. How was it that someone I’d met only the day before was able to see me for what I was? Maybe, a voice whispered in my head, he’s the right one, and you’re the deluded one. Maybe you aren’t a danger. Maybe you can do more good with the others. Protect them the way he protects you. But the stronger one said, And maybe you’ll only continue to bring hell to their doorstep. Maybe you’ll only keep losing control. Maybe you’ll only go more and more insane, and maybe some day instead of shooting yourself, you’ll turn that gun on Rae and David and Amy and Keith and Corey.

 

I let Trinity clatter to the floor completely.

 

“Jamie?”

 

“What you’re forgetting,” I said quietly, “is that I am different. I’m wrong, I’m messed up – I survive things that kill normal people, and –”

 

“And so do I. So what? So we’re better than them.”

 

“I’m not better than –”

 

“Physically, you are,” he corrected. “You were made that way. Might as well accept it.”

 

“Made …?”

 

He hesitated. “The serum, I mean.”

 

“That’s – that’s not what it sounded like.” Slowly, I reached up and brushed his hands away. The use of that simple word, and his brief pause, hit an off chord deep inside me. “That’s not what it sounded like at all.”

 

“It’s a just a word, Jamie – so it didn’t come out quite right. It doesn’t matter.” He scowled.

 

“It does.”

 

“Look –”

 

“Dean, when I go back, I’m not going to find something that … doesn’t add up, am I? I’m not going to find out you lied to me somehow?”

 

“Of course not.”

 

“Then why are you being so defensive?” I whispered.

 

“I-I’m not.” Like with Rae before, his guilty, shifty eyes told a whole different story.

 

“You have,” I breathed in horror. “You have lied to me. Oh god …” I backed away from him. “What – what is true? How much of it did you come up with? Some things I can’t deny, I mean obviously we’re immune to bites and I don’t scar, and we’ve got these strange abilities – so then it’s how we got them. What? What did – did we do something? We stole the serum?” Still backing, I put a hand to my temple and shook my head. “No, we – I remember –”

 

He looked up suddenly. “What? You remember something about –?”

 

“No,” I snapped. “I don’t know – my head’s so messed up maybe I just came up with it.” To myself, I muttered, “Why would serious head trauma make me remember something? If anything that should’ve made me lose memory –”

 

“Jamie –”

 

“My god,” I cried. “Is that even really my name? Or it just the first thing you thought of when you saw me? Do we actually have any past together, or – or was it just random dumb luck, seeing me? Was I just a free pass into the Park, where it was safe?”

 

“I – of course not – I wouldn’t …”

 

All the doubts I’d had about him originally came flooding back. My back finally hit the wall, and I slid down it, hands over my face. I knew nothing. Every tiny fact I’d thought I’d gathered about myself was very likely false. That memory I thought I’d had, which I’d been so certain would lead me back home, when I thought about it, made absolutely no sense. I had shot myself in the f*cking head – that was no way to bring back memories. More of a way to erase them. Oh – oh god, what if things had happened even after I’d come to the Park, and I didn’t know anymore? What other things had that impulsive action wiped out of my brain forever? Frantically I tried to piece together every waking second, looking for holes, but there were so many; who can really account for every instant of their life? But to me every little skip was another potentially important event. Maybe in that couple of minutes, I’d exchanged hellos with David, gotten some glimpse at his true character, something that would make all my assumptions about him unfounded. Maybe that giant gap of three or so hours had been spent happily chatting with Jill, who’d seemed so harsh, but I’d discovered she wasn’t. Maybe the breakfast I couldn’t remember had been eaten with Rae, who’d told me about her life, justifying the actions I’d condemned as weak. Maybe … maybe I’d lost whole days.

 

“Jamie?”

 

“Leave me alone,” I said hoarsely.

 

“But … J-Jamie, I…”

 

“I said GO AWAY,” I shouted, refusing to look at him. On the floor, his shadow slumped, then shrank as he walked away. Just before he disappeared completely, I called after him, “Tell the others I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt them.”

 

“I don’t think you ever did,” he said faintly, and was gone.

 

I wondered how fast he would run to get back. Lady, Corey’s lost dog, came limping up to me, nudging my knee. Even she made me question what I thought I knew – she had taken to me awful quickly, had I paid her attention before? Had Corey and I spoken, laughed together, discussed his dogs and the other people we traveled with? Was that why he’d seemed to turn on me so quickly, because he’d noticed a significant change in me? Or it might not have been significant; perhaps we’d gotten to know each other quite well. Perhaps – I even considered – we’d become more than friends. How had Dean acted around Corey? I’d never noticed, but surely if there had been anything between Corey and me, Dean would have treated him with cold indifference at best. I realized I couldn’t remember them ever interacting. Was it simply because they never really had, or …?

 

Groaning, I hit my forehead against my knees. Lady turned in a few circles and lay down next to me, her chin resting on my feet. I petted her head briefly. There was really only one person I was sure of, I decided. Jonathan. He hadn’t come into the picture until after my failed suicide, and due to the all-around strangeness of all of my encounters with him, I could remember each one in detail. More than I’d thought, it seemed, I knew where I stood with him, and him alone. Maybe he could even help me figure out if I was truly missing any other memories – after all, he’d said he’d listened to the others talk about me. He may well already know things about me that I don’t know.

 

Kneading my temples as if that would help coerce memories to the forefront of my mind, I slid my feet out from under Lady and stood up. Let’s see – I couldn’t just leave her there. And Corey would be so happy to see her. Would it be safe if I carried her? Going that fast? Probably. And if there seemed to be any ill effects, I could go slower. Carrying an injured or dead dog back would be pointless, and I had all the time in the world, as far as I knew.

 

What about Trinity? Since I wasn’t sure if I was heading out on my own anymore, did I need her? I knew the Rec Room would act as a time capsule of sort. If I ever did need to come back, she would be there on the floor, waiting for me, whispering in my head when my hand hovered over her hilt. With that in mind, I hefted the surprised dog into my arms and left the sword behind. Lady squirmed, but obeyed my shushing and stopped soon enough. I carried her out to the old front gate of the Park. It seemed odd that in a world previous populated by millions, there were no zombies around. How many had been killed? How many were still alive and shuffling? How many could there possibly be … and yet there was not a one here, nor at the clinic?

 

Maybe they’re almost all dead, and they’ve taken the old world and all its curses and promises and oaths with them, just like the Doc said, I allowed myself to think, burying my face in Lady’s fur. Maybe.

 

 

* * * * * * * * * *

 

 

Firstly apologies it's taken me forever to get this post up, yes I've been busy but I had been struggling to get my head around a few important 'developments' in your last post Jess, I thought rather than just dismiss them things that heavy needed to be explored in more detail - hence the 30 page rant that's about to follow. I know I say it every time but I'm going to try not to make a habit of this kind of length. I couldn't help the fact I got over-involved this time, I enjoy character exploration and development so I went a fraction overboard trying to get this ready before the weekend. It's 2am. Nearly 3am. I didn't do too bad I guess. See what you make of it.

Oh and it should be noted, in case anyone else is reading this (if any) happens to forget, an over-generous amount of vulgarity lay ahead. Why? Watch David throwing his hissy-fit in M.O.L. (the "I should whip my f*ckin d*ck out and p*ss on you" rant he gives the front row of the audience that won't stand up or do what he tells them - and later the cameraman while he keeps venting on the bus after the show) and argue your case (see where I draw my inspiration?) Who says this isn't realistic? *lmao - and sigh, twice* Fun memories. Ah but now, let's get back to it, shall we?  


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

            “We’re getting out of here.”

No sooner had Dean uttered the words than we were back out in the hall, away from Trinity and Jonathan and the corpses of the three dead zombies behind us. It had all been a waste; Taijitsu hadn’t shown. Whether or not it had been responsible for Erin’s mutilation we hadn’t found out. What had revealed itself in the monster’s absence was something far more terrifying and unavoidable - Trinity herself.

Out in the corridor with the gun back in my thankful hands, Dean led us away from the dreaded Green Room without speaking. I don’t know why I trusted his sense of direction so well but I followed without question, anywhere was better at that point than being back there with her and her psychotic counterpart and his bloody nursery rhymes.

It didn’t seem to take too long before we emerged at the Base’s exit. In my shock and overwhelming fear my legs were like jelly as we climbed the sloping ascent up towards freedom. I wasn’t altogether sure how I was still walking at that point. The adrenalin of having faced the dead yet again hadn’t as yet fully sunk in. I’d survived the war, I’d survived the end of the world, and I’d made it all this way constantly fighting the enemy, surviving; facing three more shouldn’t have been such a big deal, but in truth it was. I’d lived through the Apocalypse while the rest of the world died around me but I’d never really done it on my own, no matter how stringent my sense of pride, I’d always had that added benefit of someone looking over my shoulder, I’d always had back up, other sets of eyes, even just one to watch over me, to make sure I could sleep, to keep pushing me forward, but back there just now-

“Stop,” I gasped.

Out of breath I reached out and caught Dean by the arm. The door stopped mid-scream on rusty hinges. Beyond him, over his shoulder, the sky wasn’t quite dark in its heavy state and nor was it light. Sunset wasn’t far away but bathed in elongated shadows that bled out across the red sand it seemed later than it probably was. Maybe I just wanted it to be, finding appeal in sneaking back to the camp under the cover of relative darkness. But squinting up at Dean’s sudden stare I drew back a step and slumped against the nearest wall. My legs wouldn’t stop shaking. I didn’t feel strong enough to make it to the clinic just then. I didn’t feel strong enough to do anything let alone face-

“I just… need a minute,” I apologized.

A weak smile flashed upon my face but fell away too sharply. Dean’s expression reminded me all too much of Trinity. God, even thinking her name at this point made my insides tumble downwards. Closing my eyes I swallowed a sickening boulder, huffed out a breath that was meant to be calming, and fought to gather my thoughts. But my mind was my enemy, too freshly scored with the events that had just transpired back there in the underground military base to let me think about anything other.

The sound of Dean’s boots scuffing at the cement made me smile again, only this time with anxiety. In my mind’s eye all I could see was the bloated rotting faces of the dead lunging towards me and Trinity’s viciousness as she barked at me to move – How tiny I felt even in the wake of it looking back. Of course she could talk to me like that she had nothing to be afraid of, I chided. She was invincible, she couldn’t die, but I could, and somewhere along the line she’d obviously forgotten that. Not only had she forgotten but it felt as if she didn’t care. It was now as I stood there struggling to process things that I started to really question her claims of amnesia as well. Strange as it seemed after believing so long she truly didn’t know anything about her past I started to wonder now what she was deliberately keeping hidden from us, and from herself, and what was worse, why. Regardless how she looked, regardless how hard she tried to sound empathetic, the truth was she wasn’t human, she was about as human as the monster we’d been chasing, the only difference was Taijitsu wore its disfiguration on the outside whereas Trinity’s true nature lay dormant, hidden away behind this presentable façade of a human, a young innocent woman. I wondered if on the inside, were someone to strip her flesh away, she still resembled a mortal, or bore the grotesque form of Taijitsu – or worse. My brow furrowed as a sickening shudder ripped through me.

“Rae,” Dean said in his soft, un-abrasive accent, “We have to go.”

I nodded nonchalantly.

“Rae-”

“I know- I know- I just-”

Unable to finish the sentence I sighed heavily and braved a glimpse up. Dean was surveying the surrounds with his usual due diligence. I nodded to myself. How much do you really know about her, I wanted to ask. Instead I threw my gaze down when his eyes fell on me.

Around us in a kind of distant drone the pit of the undead continued to moan and clatter, struggling ceaselessly to get out of their dirt cage and get at us. No doubt they could sense us so close to the edge of the cave-in and were frustrated they couldn’t see their intended meal on the other side of the steel and concrete and earthen walls. Easing the stock of his rifle against his shoulder Dean relaxed a minute. He cleared his throat as if making ready to say something. For a long drawn out moment nothing followed but that distant drone, and the silence beyond that of a desert preparing for the onslaught of night fast approaching.

“Look, I’m- sorry-” he began, with a half-shake of his head.

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.”

The look on his face attested he wasn’t comfortable with his apology; it was probably not something he often said to Trinity I assumed, and then with a scowl I looked away. He started saying something then, sounding all too much to be justifying Trinity’s actions that I consciously blocked most of it out. I was still too angry, too scared, too shaken to believe that she’d treat me like she had, and not only that but I was mad at myself for having gone along with their stupidity in the first place. David was going to be pissed when he found out. Oh god, I winced, David-

With a huff I pushed myself off the wall, intending to press on determinedly while my expression continued to deteriorate with each passing second. It was Dean’s turn to stop me as he took my arm and give me a look that bordered on parental.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded and smiled back encouragingly even though it sat like lead on my face. I blinked down and frowned a fraction at his fingers locked tight on my bicep. His grip eased immediately. His hand drew away. I leant forward. A hesitant moment later I raised my face and kissed him. Dean flinched, if just barely. With a scathing frown slowly slipping from his face he leant down unsurely kissing me too. It was slow, gentle and awkward. A few harried breaths later we parted as I felt Dean lean backwards, drawing away from me snaking his tongue across his lips and hiding it behind the back of his hand. He continued to frown as he cleared his throat, the tenor of his thoughts playing across his face. Exhaling loudly through his nose Dean looked down at me and smiled - for about 2 seconds - before it was gone again. I struggled to hold let alone maintain his gaze. Bighting my lip I swallowed loudly.

“Uh…” he started. Then, again, it was followed by nothing. His tone said more than his words, or lack thereof, could. Guiltily I bowed my head.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” I murmured.

It was a stupid thing to say, made worse by the hot flush scorching my cheeks that he wouldn’t have been able to miss. I was amazed I could speak at all. My throat felt so tight I was struggling to breathe while my mind was a dizzying hive of noise and chaos.

God you’re so stupid! I was lectured in a bitter monologue. What the hell do you think you’re doing? The guy saved you from certain death and this is how you repay him, not stopping to realise the question and answer were one and the same. Yes he had saved me; he’d been the only one in there who’d really had my back. He’d shot a zombie to save me, openly defying Trinity in the process. I wasn’t even considering the fact that Jonathan had been the one to dispatch the rest in the end in an even brasher manner. To my way of thinking he had only done that for the sheer thrill of the kill not for my benefit at all – he had been as bad as Trinity in their absurd little plan, using me as live bait to draw Taijitsu out. Dean alone had been the only one to denounce it, and he’d been the only one to really give a damn when he put his arm around me and told me it was all going to be okay and that I was safe. I had felt safe then, I realised, sickened at how fragile I felt, at how fragile I’d been, unable to stand, unable to fight back; as good as a Roman slave facing off against the lions in the Colosseum for the amusement of Trinity and her unstable partner beside her. But even as I thought about this, even as I remembered, something else was nagging me too, bringing my shoulders already falling down further. I just couldn’t lend a voice to it – as it turned out I was spared from having to as Dean cleared his throat again, awkwardly, and apologized.

“I love- I care about Jamie,” he said against his shirt collar. “A lot.”

His eyes were as low as his voice but they were open and sincere when they met me. There was no malice, no shame. He even managed a small smile at me as if his declaration actually meant something. I was happy for his light bulb moment but I wasn’t able to share it with him. Inside my stomach felt heavy, burdened, a hot raging furnace of guilt and regret as I lamented on what was; I couldn’t even get to dreaming about what could have been. In my mind’s eye I saw David. He was waiting. I knew he was back there a few hundred metres away inside the Doc’s lair but I couldn’t go to him. In truth I didn’t want to for the same reasons that I did. His earlier declaration of being there for me meant nothing now after what I’d endured, after I’d spent almost every passing second staring at the exit waiting for him to appear there like he always did and save the day. Only he hadn’t saved me, Dean had. I didn’t stop to check myself, equating any feelings I thought I suddenly had for this country guy with feelings of neglect or abandonment or even relief that I’d survived some kind of hell and had lived to tell about it. In those moments tasting him on my lips and in my mouth all I could really feel was hurt.

She didn’t deserve him. What did he see in her? Is it because I’m not like her, I’m not as strong as her, am I too frail for someone like him, I wondered, feeling each question sting like a paper cut and drawing an instantaneous wince and grimace with each passing one. I struggled to raise my eyes up after that, my head too loaded with dialog, hearing Trinity herself condemn him, calling me his ‘contingency plan.’ I should have been insulted by the notion but I wasn’t. Maybe I was too jaded after all this time to really know what to feel anymore. Maybe she’d been right; despite the fact in her naivety she’d turned my own words against me. She was just a kid; she hadn’t even lived life yet. What did she, a half-breed, this mutant with an unpredictable bloodlust, really know about life? She could survive the reanimation virus, she could survive bullets, she was strong and agile, had heightened senses, she could talk with other species, but for all her strengths what did she really know about human relationships? Clearly she didn’t know how to keep a man happy; if she did she wouldn’t have been traipsing after this creepy contender Jonathan that no one seemed to trust. She wouldn’t have ditched Dean, the only true constant she had in her life even before the war if stories were to be believed – and how rare was that? After the world ended along with several billion lives almost no one had survived with a familiar face or family member intact to console them and yet here they were, Trinity and her childhood friend, and that miracle in itself meant nothing at all to her – but if it had maybe he wouldn’t have run off like he had previous. I couldn’t blame him for that; rejection hurt, it didn’t matter who you were. But maybe if she was smarter, if she was as all-powerful as she thought she was she would’ve been with him right now-

Instead of you, you mean.

I pouted guiltily.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I actually meant it. I wasn’t necessarily speaking to him alone, but he readily seemed to accept it.

In his irrepressible way Dean smiled, shrugged and rolled his head and shoulders, lightening the mood, or maybe hoping to, and rubbed my bicep consolingly.

“Hey,” he beamed as if riding the coattails of the funniest joke known in man’s history, “you know, you’re…” he paused, pondering upwards with a confused pout before he settled on the word, “awesome. You’re… one awesome chick.”

To my narrowing eyes Dean cleared his throat again. Even in the shadow of the inner doorway his blushing cheeks were hard to miss.

“Um… woman,” he clarified, sounding, and looking like an awkward teenager on his first date. I couldn’t help but smile then, more so at his demeanour as he apologised again and added, “Sometimes you know the brain’s not working but the mouth just refuses to stop, you know?” His smile fell away again. He internalised a groan. “Of course you don’t. I’m an idiot. I just… I’ll… I’ll stop talking now. Take my foot out. Promise.” It ended with a sudden serious face. Behind it lurked his awkwardness and unease; it was endearing. He was like a little kid playing emotional dress-ups. It wasn’t until that moment that it struck me how young behind the skill and smart-mouth he really must have been – and how strangely… familiar. With a hint of nostalgia I looked down, strolling through memories of someone else. My heart swelled, but only briefly.

“Dave’s lucky,” he said. Memories stopped abruptly. I looked up hoping to see a goading smirk there, but all I found was sincerity. He meant it. Of course he did, he’s nothing at all like- “To have someone like you, I mean.”

I nodded. “Yeah.” I didn’t believe it. I didn’t argue it either. There was no hope. My head was already spinning with what lay ahead. Suddenly the thought of going back to the clinic didn’t seem as appealing as it had been before, but there was nowhere left to go, was there?

*

The sound of voices echoed in the passageway as we made our way towards the lunchroom. Through the open doorway we heard two very familiar voices both barking over each other hotly; Keith and David were having a confrontation.

“We don’t know that-”

That was Keith. Even without seeing his face I could hear his exasperation. Whether or not the argument had been raging on as long as we’d been gone or it was due to other extenuating factors was anyone’s guess as we slowed our approach to listen.

“No,” David countered. As usual, he was his usual obstinate self. “I’m telling you, I’ve been around this god damn place twice and I didn’t see any of them-”

“That’s bullsh*t, alright. That doesn’t make sense. Trinity told me-”

“I don’t give a f*ck what that bitch told you, I know what I saw. Or what I didn’t see-”

“Would you mind your language, please? There happens to be children in the room-”

“We’ve got more important things to worry about! Look, I don’t know where they are but they’re not out there. They’re not patrolling the god damn-”

“Maybe you’re just blind,” another voice, Corey’s, piped up. Dean and I frowned at each other gravely. Without the gift of visual clues it was hard to tell whether he was being sarcastic or was merely tired of the attitude and was picking up the mantle on behalf of the youngsters. “Or maybe you’re just afraid your sweetheart up and left you without saying goodbye. Maybe they left early-”

“-Without their supplies?”

“God knows. If I were her-”

“You keep talking, little man,” David rumbled.

In the background Amy too sounded exhausted. Though I didn’t hear what was said clearly I recognised it in her tone. She seemed to be pleading for calm, but Amy rarely begged for anything. Behind her pleas was a sense of impatience and ire. The children were murmuring. They were restless. They were probably now wary – no, scared – of the big bald wolf; with his dry rasp rendering his monotone little beyond a constant growl David certainly sounded like one. That was probably the idea. Given his tone and the atmosphere that supported it, it was little wonder I could hear at least one of the little kids, the younger ones, crying. I hung my head as if responsible. In some way, I knew I was.

Again the others were still ‘talking.’ Apparently Keith thought David’s idea of sending out a ‘search party’ in some form was a blatantly dumb idea. Resources were limited as it was and manpower was stretched to near breaking point. Sending more than one person out would be leaving those left at the clinic at risk, and sending one out alone was practically a suicide mission, and not one Keith wanted on his conscience, no matter how tempting it might otherwise have been. But there was a hint of arrogance there too, despite how noble he may have sounded. There laid the unspoken implication that Trinity, the be-all and end-all of zombie-killers, would ultimately triumph; she always did. Keith seemed, in his weary sigh, to be imploring David to just sit back and wait and prove him right – Trinity would bring us back unscathed, regardless as to where we’d ventured off to, or why. But before any of that could be entered into in any great detail, before the argument grew too intense, Dean gave me a focussed look, nodded as if assuring me he knew what he was doing, and started in. I couldn’t stop him. I don’t even know why I hesitated to follow as I did.

As we emerged in the light of the oil lamps the conversation ended abruptly. All eyes turned towards us. David, having relegated himself into a sulking position behind his folded arms, turned around and glared at us. When relief dawned his shoulders fell down, his anger dissipating with a nasal huff. He dropped his guard and stormed towards me. He barely gave Dean the time of day with narrowed eyes as they passed. No love lost there, I thought. Stupidly my cheeks responded in kind. Dipping my hot face I was relieved as David embraced me, crushing me against his chest allowing me to briefly hide behind him. I could feel the eyes from the others on me but I didn’t have the strength to face them at that moment. I was happy to be back in spite of everything, convincing myself that David’s tight grip was normal, that he was just happy to see me and that he didn’t suspect anything- why then couldn’t I relax against him?

“Where the f*ck’ve you been?” He asked with a peaked voice.

His hands on either side of my head were shaking as he drew my face down and kissed my brow. He murmured something against me; even in the relative quiet of the lunchroom I didn’t make out what it was. I didn’t doubt it was probably meant to be endearing but I didn’t hear him use the word love. I don’t know why I was expecting it. Maybe after what I’d endured I somehow felt as if I’d earned it. Behind him the others were greeting Dean. Though I didn’t see it, I heard their distance. They may have been happy enough to see him but clearly his absence from before, however ‘vaguely explained,’ had left a permanent question mark beside his name. And as David eventually eased his grip enough for me to see over his shoulder, it also became clear by the looks on every one of their faces that he wasn’t what they’d been waiting for either. He wasn’t Trinity. So where the hell was she? As one by one they studied the empty doorway, Dean turned back and caught my eye, seeming to verify what I was thinking as if he’d somehow been able to read my mind.

“Where are the others?” someone asked.

There was trepidation there. God, did they actually fear for her safety? With a look of disgust I turned away from Dean and lay my head against David’s collar. I fought hard not to think about what had happened back there in the Green Room (and outside it), of feeling like a novice, like some bumbling idiot, hearing their scorn and conflicting pity and still tasting the tears of helplessness and betrayal I’d been unable to shed each time I swallowed. But I wasn’t about to break down now, as much I felt justified in so doing. Around us the air that had previously been rife with tension was now freezing over with a growing sense of dread. I almost wanted to laugh then, amused that they’d all but dismissed the idea of looking for us but were openly anxious about the fate of one other, the immortal one no less, the one who in her own way had dragged the rest of us down there for her own sick amusement - I wasn’t amused in a good way. But then something jolted me as David held me out at arm’s length.

“Where were you?”

“I-” In my peripheral vision I caught sight of Dean’s cautious gaze and struggled to read it. I shook my head and attempted a dismissive smile. “Patrol-”

“Bull sh*t,” David said quite bluntly. It wasn’t a dare it was as good as a full stop. Flicking my eyes up I saw his brow knitting, his expression dark over a dour pout as he waited. Receiving nothing but my wayward gaze he snorted and jerked me closer, his grip on my arms as good as steel talons. “Where’d you go, Rae?”

 

-- Edited by Ravynlee on Saturday 15th of August 2009 02:59:35 AM

 

“That’s enough,” Keith said. Again he reached for David, and with fistfuls of shirt actually managed to grab him. David viciously shoved him away. Keith clattered headlong into chairs before collapsing to the floor. David then stepped forward, having dispatched of Keith, and stabbed a finger in the air mere inches away from Dean’s furrowed face.

“Go spread your sick f*cking disease, create your half-bred army, see if I give a sh*t, but you leave her alone, you got that, huh? All of you! Come here!”

Reaching out he snatched my wrist and wrenched me forward. I winced in pain and protest as I was dragged along but the sound was swallowed up by the chaos of movement. The instant that Keith had stumbled to the floor (and once the shock of what happened sunk in) Corey rushed forward, lunging towards David with his fist drawn back. In the melee I heard Amy screaming Keith’s name followed jaggedly by Corey’s. It had all happened in the space of mere seconds, half a minute at best, between Keith’s fall and his friend’s retaliation, but it seemed unnaturally longer. The kids, whether reacting to their surrogate parent or to the violence playing out in front of them, were wailing too as Amy rushed to Keith’s side. David and Corey grappled. They were pushing and swinging, the atmosphere rife with the grunts of exertion and the kids’ terror and tears. It sounded like blows landed but it happened so fast I could barely make sense of anything. Over it insults were firing. Over that I could hear Dean’s voice replacing Keith’s pleading for calm, and seeming to know even as he spoke it he was wasting his breath and time. With an exasperated groan Dean shoved his gun aside and trudged forward as Keith, now back on his feet, too closed in on his attacker. As Corey buckled with his arms gripped around his stomach David backed up and grabbing a fistful of my shirt shoved me ahead of him. He was pushing me towards the door. Instinct kicked in as my heels struggled for traction on the dusty cement – or tried to.

“F*ck off!” David bellowed at the others. “F*ck. Off!”

There was a gun in his fist but I didn’t remember seeing it before or even seeing him pick it up. It didn’t look like his but I didn’t have time to realise he’d stolen Dean’s rifle from the nearby table and was hefting it away threateningly. His grip on my shirt was vicious; I couldn’t loosen it as hard as I tried. In my fear I must have been wailing too. I didn’t know what I said, I could only hear my voice echoing in my ears and chest, a woeful sound that didn’t sound like it belonged to me. In that instant I had a moment of clarity where I realised that Rob(‘s ghost) and Trinity and even Amy had all been right in their assessment of me, I had changed around David, I’d never been this weak, this vulnerable, I needed to stand up, I needed to-

“Shut the f*ck up!”

I felt the force before I heard it, a loud cracking sound that echoed deafeningly in my ears. I didn’t feel pain so I didn’t register what had happened. It wasn’t until I felt the hot tingling rash throb in my cheek and the sharp sting of tears that instantly welled in one eye that put it all together but I didn’t have time to react. Gruff hands shoved me. They gripped at my mouth, at my throat, smothering me. Over the roar of my pulse came the pitch of other voices screaming. The vice around my neck was so tight my eyes felt ready to burst out of my skull within seconds. I struggled to breathe and immediately panicked when I couldn’t. David’s face, so hot, so dark, so contorted above me, was unrecognisable; I tried to scream but nothing came out. And then, just as suddenly as it had started it was over as David was wrenched away from me. Like Polaroids I caught flashes, seeing Dean behind him and with his arm locked tight around David’s throat pulling him backwards. Though he struggled he was caught on the receiving end of Corey’s fist, hacking and bowing in pain as Corey no doubt relished in his revenge. Together the three of them eventually, and with a great deal of effort, managed to subdue David who ended up on his back huffing exhaustedly on the floor at their feet. Everyone was breathless, even the Doc’s kids in their terrified tears, as the lunchroom slowly began to pare back to something of its usual self. Amy appeared beside me and drew me against her, despite the small child still clinging desperately to her hip.

“Are you okay? Are you okay?” She repeated but I couldn’t answer her. It wasn’t only due to the fact my throat felt so raw and tight I could barely sip at the air let alone respond in my terror. The others continued to stand watch over David, murmuring amongst themselves on their best course of action. Dean leant down and snatched his rifle up that had at some point clattered to the floor. Whether he meant to merely retrieve it or was using it a token of his intentions, I wrenched myself away from Amy and charged towards them. Dean and Keith between them managed to stop me from getting to David.

“What are you-?”

“Don’t hurt him!”

“We weren’t going to,” Keith said.

Corey huffed. “Why not? He deserves it. Piece of sh*t.” Still nursing his sore stomach Corey hocked, spat at the ground, then brought the toe of his boot up for good measure. I cried out, or started to, but again Dean and to a lesser extent now Keith stopped me.

“Hey,” Dean said, taking me by the shoulders and turning me aside to face me. At first he struggled to speak but his eyes wandered. I thought it must have been a trick of the light when I caught a sliver of red fading from them – my ears were ringing and stars that had been dancing in my field of vision were now fading. Dean sighed as he said my name. In my mind I was back there in the base leaning against him, thrilled and sickened and elated by that one stray moment we’d shared, but I could tell by the look on his face that he wasn’t thinking along the same lines as I was. He looked disappointed for me. He looked disappointed in me. He sounded fed-up. “Jesus, man, he tried to kill you. Are you f*cking serious? He’s dangerous, Rae. He needs help. Professional help. The kind they just don’t have any more. Do you have any idea what I’m saying to you? Do you?” 

With his brows raised I knew what he was forcing me to consider but I couldn’t abide it, not as I saw David laying there out of the corner of my eye coughing and hacking and rolling over onto his side weakly. He tucked an arm in against his ribs and with that my eyes flicked up, narrowing in Corey’s direction. Corey folded his arms across his chest, equally proud and indignant as he glowered back at me. By the look on his face it probably didn’t register that his soccer-punch had probably just cracked David’s ribs again that hadn’t really had any time to properly mend. His puffed-up chest was probably more due to the fact he wanted to be the one to have landed the sealing blow that ended David’s life than it was having stood up for a friend or even a woman in obvious distress. With a snort I looked away again, down at David, wanting to, not wanting to, torn in my need to help him as much as I was tempted to signal an end to it all and watch as he was put out of his misery like a lame horse. I couldn’t do anything. The rest of them stood watching as Keith eventually directed a child, one who wasn’t so obviously distressed, to run off and fetch something. As they departed he studied us all with his steady gaze, gaining control of the situation once more like he once used to – it felt as if it were all years ago. No one was going to be killing anyone else on his watch he said, no matter what the rest of us may have been thinking. Killing a murderer in Keith’s logic didn’t make any of us different from those things we hunted out there (he said of the zombies), but I wondered as I watched the restraints and the chains being dragged in from another room just how much of his decision was based on democracy and how much further he could be pushed before he finally snapped and gave in to public pressure.

After David had been restrained (in a manner someone snidely remarked probably wasn’t all that unfamiliar to him) still laying on the floor, the rest of us tried to settle around the lunchroom as outside night began to fall – and still there was no apparent sign of Trinity or Jonathan.

“Okay, that’s it,” Dean eventually said.

He pushed himself up from the table he’d been sitting on, twisting the barrel of his rifle between his hands restlessly. We all looked up, the kids that weren’t drained from tears or busy conversing with others included, as he stepped down on the seat and came to a stop on the floor. He checked his gun for ammunition, slid his arm through the strap, and slid his rifle over his shoulder. To our wan looks he smoothed out his jacket as if making himself presentable and said quite simply, “She should’ve been here by now. I’m going back out there to find her.”

Before anyone could voice their opinions footsteps shuffled in the doorway. The sound, so reminiscent of the undead, had us all (save David) on our feet or seizing up in our seat expectantly.

“No need,” a voice said. 

Though shoulders relaxed a little no one seemed to let their collective guard down as Jonathan limbered into the room, dragging the sleeve of his coat across the bottom half of his face. He’d been bleeding at some point but the colour that stained his neck, what little I could see behind his long hair, was dark and crusted. Sand still shimmered on his jacket and pants and stained the sides of his boots, falling to the floor like fine red confetti as he drew to a stop and dusted himself off.

“What happened?”

“Where’s Trinity?”

“Is she with you? Where is she?”

It was funny how synonymous this relative stranger had become with one of our party though he’d barely been on the scene a day or two at the most – it felt far longer. Dean, the only one closest to the door, sauntered up to Jonathan and studied him suspiciously. Jonathan’s utterance that Trinity had slugged him took no one by surprise; Dean’s scoff was bitter more than actually amused.

“Why? No doesn’t mean no to you?” He fished.

Jonathan narrowed his eyes but smirked back. He shook his head as he continued to dust himself. “No. Unfortunately. And while I’d love to be able to fill you in on the details – she’s quite territorial with the bedcovers isn’t she? – I can’t. She left.”

Dean’s voice lowered as his jaw locked tighter. “She went where?”

“What do I know? She hit me.”

“Not hard enough, apparently.”

Keith called Dean’s name to placate him. Dean’s tone, not to mention his cold hard stare as he stood mere inches in front Jonathan, made the air chill again with a fresh dose of tension. Behind them for the most part we were all suffering from delayed shock. Amy didn’t want to believe that Trinity would just leave us like that without saying anything, especially after the meeting before when such a big deal had been made about dividing loyalties and giving others the option to stay or join her in her quest – it begged the possibility of course that Trinity, despite her obvious ‘gifts’, was probably dead out there somewhere, Jonathan having discovered some secret flaw or had basically landed a lucky shot and was back in here now pretending to be none the wiser for reasons that as yet eluded us – As absurd as that sounded it seemed to be a view most of us shared with our eyes narrowed in silence and doubt. But Dean and Jonathan continued, oblivious to our presence as their voices filtered on the stiffened air.

-- Edited by Ravynlee on Saturday 15th of August 2009 03:05:07 AM

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“Hey.”

Snatched from my stupor I blinked up. Amy had returned and held out the last plastic cup towards me. Coffee teased my senses. With a groan I took it, giving back a weary smile. I sat with my hands wrapped around it inhaling the steam. My face didn’t hurt but my pride still did. As she settled down once more beside me we watched as Keith make his way across the room towards David with a cup as well. David looked up defensively and didn’t bother raising his binds. Begrudgingly Keith held the cup for David to draw a mouthful and didn’t seem shocked as David spat out (what was obviously water) and smirked back like a disobedient child as it dripped off his chin.

“Rae,” Amy said, drawing my attention away. I nodded at the floor rather than face her. “You know he can’t stay here anymore,” she said, her voice soft and sullen with sympathy. Again I just nodded trying not to study David out of the corner of my eye, watching him watch those around him, even the children who were giving him a wide berth, with open disdain. “He’s dangerous. He’s too dangerous now. For the sake of all of us, he’s going to have to go somewhere else-”

“There’s nowhere else for him to go,” I murmured soullessly. I pouted in an attempt to smile at her. Too weak to maintain it, too worn from the fight, I just sat there nursing my chin in my hand waiting for something without really knowing what it was. Amy, uncomfortable with the silence, lowered her voice discreetly as she contemplated speaking.

“Do you… know what set him off?”

“He’s sick,” I said automatically. I hadn’t realised before this just how sick he’d been or even in what context, minimizing everything behind that one generic term. “It’s not his fault. I guess.”

“You can’t really believe all that can you? He tried to strangle you- in front of-” She muttered something under her breath but stifled it with a weighty sigh. “So I take it he’s done this kind of thing before?”

Again I shrugged and shook my head, unable to speak, not really sure what I could have said anyway. I felt cheated on so many levels by too many people I’d thought I could trust that even speaking to her now made a mockery of any sense of empathy I was feeling. Around the room Corey and Keith and the kids waited; Corey lay atop a table with his knee drawn up and his forearm draped across his forehead while Keith was caught up in Selene’s attentions as the rest of the kids did their own thing. It had been days since the Doc’s disappearance, and acceptance was slowly creeping in, bringing back a sense of normality – as much as it was able.

At some point following Jonathan’s extraction Dean had disappeared but no one thought to question it let alone know where to start looking. Jonathan’s well aimed words had no doubt left Dean feeling vulnerable among other things, and it wasn’t unfeasible to think he’d stolen off somewhere to get his head straight, or to go look for his beloved, without so much as a thank you, sorry, or see you all later. With a sigh I sat thinking, listening to the rest of them, and feeling like the ghost of the person I had been walking in here. Too much had happened I thought, too much to face, too much to forget – but Amy’s constant presence, while meant to be reassuring, further alienated me when all I wanted to do was curl up in some deep dark corner and hide.

“So I guess it’s true huh?” she ventured, making idle conversation. What a thing to make a random comment about, I snorted and nodded again noncommittally. “He really did, you know… that woman?”

“I guess,” I sighed. I deliberately turned the other way pretending not to care when my aversion told another story.

“Do you know why?”

Did it matter, I shrugged. I couldn’t speak as much as I wanted to. What was I supposed to say to that? Should I have been happy to find out the man I’d been sleeping with, confiding in, generally defending was some cold-blooded remorseless killer?

“Rae, you heard what Dean said. He has a point. Even if he is sick (what sane person would commit murder?) David needs help, help none of us can give him. If we let him stay here there’s no telling what he’ll do or what will set him off next. I know- I know you… want to protect him. It’s probably a shock (Gee, you think?) but for the sake of the kids, for all of us, he has to go. You know that, don’t you?”

I nodded in acknowledgement. Again Amy sighed. She was verbally tip-toeing but I wanted her to hurry up, get what she wanted to say off her chest, and leave me alone like the rest of them. But with a stray miserable look my anger fast dissipated. She smiled at me and patted my arm.

“What are you going to do?” she wondered.

“I dunno.”

“You know you’re more than welcome to-”

“Thanks,” I uttered, cutting her short. I had no intentions of staying behind, even if I had no intentions now of following my previous course of action, namely chasing Trinity off into god-knows where to find herself. As far as I was concerned she could find herself at the bottom of the deepest darkest hole and never surface again, but I doubted after his little spat David was about to be following along after her. He was only chasing her anyway to get away from this place and you know it, my mind prompted. There’s safety in numbers. The man’s not an idiot. I hung my head miserably. No he wasn’t. Unfortunately.

“Rae, you can’t seriously be thinking-”

“I dunno-”

“But after what he just-”

“I don’t know,” I said a little more forcefully.

Amy’s smile grew, dwindled, and fell away. Patting my leg she stood, gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze and left me to go sit with Keith a while. Rolling my eyes aside I looked to David who met my gaze without the slightest shift in his expression. He turned his face and looked away. He was condemning me for not defending him, for not standing up for him like I always had, maybe in part he was boasting arrogantly, his secret was out if it had ever truly been hidden and there was still nothing at all I could do about it. It seemed like I’d been the only one not to see him for what he really was and I was left now feeling like the biggest idiot in the history our species. I’d allowed myself to be played – and Trinity had said as much only that morning – and to think I’d actually started to have feelings for the guy. I still did. That was probably the worst part about it. If he was nuts what the hell did that make me? But no one could give me answers.

I sat alone for the most part as an hour passed, maybe longer, brooding on my thoughts before excusing myself to the bathroom. As tempted as I was to find something (in this makeshift surgery finding anything sharp and lethal wouldn’t be hard) with which to slash my wrists with or stab into my jugular in some misguided form of revenge, I didn’t, merely tending my business with this constant flat, emotionless façade. In the mirror I struggled to face my eyes and studying my cheek and neck for signs that in the gloomy glow of the oil lamps weren’t even there. Back outside in the lunchroom David now sat in a chair alone in a corner. His wrists were no longer bound but his expression was still dangerous. Drawing in a deep breath I picked up my gun and wandered towards him. Beneath the sudden, anxious stares of the rest I sat down alongside. Keith was on his feet but Amy had stopped him. Settling on the edge of my seat I looked back at them and nodded. Keith too settled back reluctantly.

“Come to gloat?” David said looking from the gun to me.

“No.”

He sighed. Clearly he didn’t feel threatened around anyone, let alone me, but he needn’t have feared as I set the weapon down beside me.

“Then what?” he said. Hunched over his parted thighs he ran his hand back and forth over his crown - the stubble creating a subtle coarse sound, like sandpaper - as he faced the floor or over his other shoulder other than look at me despite the arrogant tone of his voice. “If you’re here for an apology you’re wasting your time. You were in my way. You want to get with everyone in this room I’m not about to stop you. But I don’t have to like it, do I?”

“No,” I repeated. It had obviously been rhetorical.

Smiling as he rubbed at his shaded cheek he ventured, “What do you want? Aren’t you supposed to be over there cowering from me? I’m supposed to be the enemy right? God, you’re all the f*cking same. You waltzed in here with him and I’m not supposed to do anything? I’m not allowed to defend myself anymore; I may as well still be in that f*cking cage. God damn it-”

“You lied to me.”

“Meaghan? Yeah I did it. So what? She cheated; she got what she f*cking deserved, end of f*cking story.”

“You told me-”

“Yeah well I tell you a lot of things. I told you what you needed to know. Call it plausible deniability, I don’t give a sh*t. I did what I had to do. Comes down to it I’ll do it all over again. Just because the world ended doesn’t mean all the rules have changed. I’m still human… I still hurt… I don’t care what the rest of you think.” His words were cruel but his tone wasn’t as he sat bowed over interlocked fingers, staring vacantly at the floor.

-- Edited by Ravynlee on Saturday 15th of August 2009 02:41:58 AM

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Leaving under the cover of darkness let alone on my own was madness but I had no intentions of sticking around any longer than I had to. Besides being physically, mentally and emotionally spent, I was also determined, spurred on by everything that had happened and using my anger and grief still boiling away inside of me to my advantage. The rest of them stayed distant where possible. Amy too was feeling it, she looked ragged. Probably still grieving for Doc and Erin and little Amelia on top of all this, she had lost her luster, her essence, looking like a woman twice her age. We were all responsible for her transformation in our own way; some contributing far more than others. In the kitchen she worked, struggling to keep up this pretence of strength when I saw, I recognized, the pain in her eyes. She labored to feed the children while Corey kept them entertained with Lady. I didn’t know where Trinity and Jonathan had gotten to and I no longer really cared. With the backpack I had mended open on a countertop I shoved in a few cans as with a sniffle Amy tucked her hair behind her ears, sent the last child out into the main room to eat, and turned to me.

“Here,” she said, handing me a Swiss Army knife. She made some comment about borrowing it from Corey but assured he probably wouldn’t mind if I had it. “You’re going to need it out there,” she said as I dubiously accepted it. “There’s plenty of supplies for us back at the base if we really have to, but you’re going to need all the help you can get.”

“I’ll be fine. Thanks,” I assured and packed it away. Amy continued to fuss with her hair and sniffle and smile at me, none of which seemed right for her who, I remembered on first meeting so many months ago had looked so gorgeous, so powerful, and so full of life. We were killing her - maybe not in the literal sense, maybe this was the only way to really ‘cure’ her. With a wordless gesture I thanked her again, reassured her that everything would be okay, and eventually embraced her.

“Rae, you don’t have to do this. Stay here. Help us. The kids would love it.”

“I can’t,” I said soon pulling myself away. I pretended to pack again with more focus than it really required as she watched on, sniffling quietly – I wondered if she was sad to see me go or was merely acting this way because she thought someone ought to. She continued talking about the kids, whether dissipating the silence or as emotional leverage, and got my attention when she said the name ‘Lucas.’ He was going to miss me, she said, but I shook my head and made it seem irrelevant. He was better off without me, here he had a chance, he had a life, he had purpose, out there-

“He wants to go with you,” she said.

“What?” I balked. I shook my head and started shoving the cup and the torch and batteries and so on in my bag even faster. No, I didn’t need that. It was true I’d grown attached to the kid in what really was such a short amount of time, but I couldn’t think about that, the responsibility of keeping myself alive was overwhelming, I couldn’t do that to anyone else, I couldn’t expect him to- “He’s safer here,” I ground out. “I’m… flattered, really. He’s a cute kid. I just-” What, love him? Miss him? Treat him like your surrogate son in place of that monster that was still out there?He’s not yours and you know that.Why even give a sh*t when you damn well know if he ever does get the chance to grow up he’s just going to turn on you anyway or ware you down or kill you, if it serves his purpose? But I shook my head, willing such thoughts away, not afraid of what was yet to happen only concentrating on the here and now – and right now whether I liked it or not the reality was I had to leave Lucas here, I had to go it alone, and if I ever came back this way at least I knew I’d have one friendly face on the planet to call upon instead of feeling like the last of my species lost and alone on some alien planet.

To the low grumble of a clearing throat we both looked up to see David standing in the doorway. Amy’s expression darkened immediately as she folded her arms across her chest. She looked at me, mimicked my slight nod and anxiously side stepping David hurried out. With his arms folded across his chest David stared at the floor as she passed obviously aware of the disdain pinching her face but said nothing, and did nothing, to so much as acknowledge her let alone antagonize her any further. That must have been torture for him to do. After rolling the sleeping bag up I wrenched the length of cord around it and fastened it to the top of my backpack. With a grunt of exertion I snatched the bag up, swung it over my shoulder and shrugged it on to my back. The sight of another pack ready and packed and waiting behind David’s legs stopped me in my tracks tentatively.

“What is that?” I said, raising my chin towards it.

David frowned at the floor and shifted his arms still folded before he murmured, “What does it look like?”

“A backpack. Why?”

“I’m coming with you,” he grumbled.

A sound escaped me as I righted the straps on my shoulders. “I don’t think so,” I told him. David raised his eyes up to challenge me. “No.” I shook my head, strangled in my efforts to sound severe when I knew my averted eyes told a different story. “No. I told you, this is my decision-”

“Well it’s mine too-”

“No you don’t tell me you’re coming. You ask me. I’m making my own choices. You’re not in control anymore. I’m sick and tired of being your f*cking pet!” I snapped, twisting my hair free behind my shoulder. I flicked my eyes up to stare back at him. David’s dour pout, though fixed in place, lowered without argument begrudgingly towards the floor. He shifted his stance again and sighed without speaking.

“God!” I hissed and stormed past.

Catching my arm David drew to me a short stop. He met my narrowed eyes. Though he looked pissed he kept it all contained behind a hot face and scathing frown. His shoulders huffed as he stood there a moment staring at me. Then, reluctantly, his fingers let go.

“Fine,” he murmured articulately. “Can I come… or not?”

I sighed, trying to ignore the way he’d practically pushed the last word out behind clenched teeth. I wasn’t used to being so forthright anymore let alone with him of all people, before the war yes, then with Rob maybe, but David… This was new. There was a sick thrill in being able to tell the man who’d spent the last few months treating me like garbage what he could or couldn’t do – and I couldn’t stop reminding myself he was openly ‘dangerous’ now to boot (as if he was really any different to any other way I’d known him to be), or if flirting with death was actually a good thing to do. Still, the power of superiority was addictive if not emotionally taxing. Unable to look up I nodded watching his hand fall down then rise up again to touch me. Instinctively I jerked my head back, pulling away. I glared back at him saying nothing. He surely wasn’t about to think I’d fall back into that trap, did he? Outside in the lunchroom we heard small footsteps approaching. I pushed David’s arm away, watching it curl back in atop the other against his chest as a little blonde-haired child raced into the room. Wrapping his arms around my waist young Lucas squeezed me.

“I don’t want you to go,” he murmured against my shirt.

Rubbing his hair, his back, my hand froze between his shoulder blades feeling the unnatural coolness of his skin, and reached down to draw the child away and hold him out at arm’s length.

“I’m sorry,” I said. In all sincerity I meant it. The look he gave me, as opposed to the one he gave David, made my heart ache with a billion-and-one emotions. I didn’t have the time or the luxury anymore to abide them. I had to go, and I had to go now, for all of our sakes.

Outside in the lunchroom Amy, Keith and Corey waited. Selene stood with them while the others for the most part continued eating. Though the rest of the kids looked at me with a kind of distant sadness they waved, said their byes, or continued eating without gusto.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Keith urged me.

They were all eying off David now just behind me with distrust. Clearly they seemed to be under the one consensus that he was only following me to do me in and finish what he’d started, but I didn’t really have the heart to tell them at least in some manner I didn’t really care if he succeeded or not. I nodded and thanked him as the big black man stepped forward and embraced me. I hugged Selene, even Corey who seemed uncomfortable with the gesture (he seemed in his element with his arms around his dog earlier I scoffed) and even patted Lady’s head as she sat leaning against Corey’s legs. Amy wept on my shoulder but she was too exhausted to really commit to it. Her fears for my safety were paramount in her words and gestures. If anything happened, she started, with her eyes narrowing in David’s direction. Don’t hesitate. We’ll be right here. You know you can come back. Just don’t bring any more psychotic murderers with you.

-Got it. Loud and clear.Aside from the fact that all of us in some way were murderers, I noted cynically, I promise.

As Keith excused himself a moment Amy took Lucas and Selene under her arms, one on either side, and walked with me towards the doorway.

“What about the others?” I asked, referring for the most part to Jonathan and Trinity, who still hadn’t shown themselves, or even Dean should he ever turn up again – or not. I couldn’t help but feel responsible for his absence as if in essence I’d scared him away. Why then was I the one leaving?

Amy shrugged. I could tell she still trusted Trinity and she had no reason not to, but I didn’t think it my place to correct her. I merely nodded, asked her to pass on a parting message for me, and waited in silence for Keith’s return. When he came back and tipped modest heap of bullets into my palm (and an extra clip or two for good measure) I didn’t know what to say. I felt overwhelmed like a kid being given a new set of wheels. After reassurances that they weren’t leaving themselves short as Amy had earlier attested, Keith slid his arm around me and led me out with David following behind, still saying nothing.

‘Head North’, Keith said. He recommended we seek out the furthest end of the compound and hold up there until just before twilight before heading out, it was safer that way he said than walking completely in the dark – and in the peak heat of the day. He’d written out our bearings which he also shoved into my hand along with a cap he’d managed to wrangle from somewhere and verbally walked me through the landscape before us. The Park he said would probably take about a week on foot, but if we could procure a car it would take notably less, stopping short on offering a vehicle in his disposal with which to aid us. I didn’t have the heart to beg him for any more charity. I had hoped to borrow his beloved van, the one I’d arrived here in initially in what seemed like years ago, but knew that out here he and Amy and Corey and the children would need it most. Though I didn’t know why at least they had a quick and relatively easy getaway without compromising any of them, it was a smarter option. I also thought too of the possibility of going back down to the base, back to where they kept their stores on the lowest floor, some rev-head had probably stowed his beloved Hog there that we could use to our advantage but I quickly put that thought out of my head too. No, walking was fine, it reminded me of earlier times back when it had been the three of us, Rob, David and myself, back when I didn’t know any of what lay ahead of us and I was blissfully ignorant, in my own way, content.

It seemed an instant later we were alone in the shadowed passageway with the voices of Keith and Amy and the others trailing away softly behind us. Gripping my gun in my fist I walked ahead with David following along still not speaking. His silence was unnerving but it was empowering too. It seemed in a cruel twist of fate our roles had been reversed, and though he was far from a sniveling coward in distress he strode along with a strange look on his face that in the soft glow of the oil light was not normal for him, or easy to decipher. We walked a good while, at least 15 minutes by my count, through darkened doorways and empty rooms that not long ago we had searched in pairs, looking for the Doc, looking for zombies, looking for assurance that the clinic had not been breeched - only now in relative silence and darkness it seemed to take on a new degree of malevolence. Stopping at a fork in the corridor I looked back at David to see him frowning back sourly.

“What do you think?”

I don’t know your highness, you tell me,the smirk on his face suggested. David shrugged and shouldered his rifle (that Keith had reluctantly given him, no doubt in good conscience he didn’t want to see me out in the middle of the desert with a lunatic and a shotgun at his disposal but I knew in his own way he was trying to do the right thing in trying to ‘protect’ me). You’re running the show. You tell me. F*ck, you’re annoying. “I don’t know,” David grumbled. “What do you think?”

Sour or not that question had to have hurt I thought, as I bit back my smile and turned away so he couldn’t see it. Relishing in that small rush of pride (and touching my fingers to my cheek dubiously) I turned towards the right and squinted into the darkness. “This way… I think.”

Whatever you say, princess. David snatched up his gun again. “Fine.”

Waiting for him to lead on, and smirking again as he huffed past me, I followed with gun in fist as we entered the blackened throat of the corridor, where the lights no longer penetrated, and kept walking.

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Your move

-- Edited by Ravynlee on Saturday 15th of August 2009 02:44:27 AM

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Silence.

Ear-ringing. Absolute. Silence. Not even the chirp of insects sang to us from their darkened depths as we trudged across the desert sands in the pitch black dead of night. There wasn’t so much as a streetlight out here, no headlights, not even a damned torchlight to be seen at all in any direction to guide us. Eventually a pale blue gloom settled as the moon struggled to break through the thick gaseous clouds. It resembled a reflection cast on putrid waters sliding in a slow current above our heads. Staring up at the sky I pined for the stars; I hadn’t seen them in so long I was starting to wonder if they were even there anymore. Maybe we were a lone planet orbiting an empty solar system now, I thought. This feeling of isolation, already so powerful and so overwhelming, was further reinforced with eerie precision as I paused and cast my eyes about. I saw nothing at all but black low-rising dunes lacing the horizon all around us. Nothing moved. Nothing at all save the two of us made a sound. I should have been relieved. In truth I wasn’t. Back out and exposed in the land of the dead something should have caught our scent, something should have been bearing down on us, but if it was I couldn’t hear it. The only thing I did hear was a low impatient clearing of the throat. Lowering my gaze I looked down at the black silhouette of David. Cast against the gloom he was as flat and 2-dimensional as a cardboard cut out – and equally as ominous.

Having strategically taken the lead as we continued on, he still had not spoken a word. We had left the Doc’s camp in a stiff defensive silence, and had been walking in the same manner since. Though my throat burned with the urge to speak, to say something, anything just for the sake of it, I couldn’t. It wasn’t just because of the way he refused to look at me (though I couldn’t see his face at all, only assume) or from the recent events that had transpired back at the clinic – In truth I actually wanted to talk to him, I needed answers, I needed some form of human interaction, even if all I wanted to do was vent at him. No, back out here away from other people and away from the relative security of confinement, old habits had come flooding back as if the last few months had just been wiped away or hadn’t even happened at all. There was a strange comfort in that. Out of sheer necessity we walked in silence – at least that’s what I kept telling myself – our footsteps hushing through the sand was our only form of communication.

By now the Doc’s compound lay well and truly behind us. Having ignored Keith’s well-meaning advice we’d made it to the edge of the fortification, found a vacant room in which to hide out, scrounged for a few miscellaneous supplies, and had disappeared right out the other side. With my mind made up I had a point to prove, I was determined not to let anything stand in my way, least of all not a triviality like physical exhaustion, and David in his usual obdurate way was not about to question it. A good few hours must have passed since our departure, leaving Keith and his weary brood behind us, but in the darkness it was hard to judge anything with real certainty. All I knew was that we had to keep moving and hoped with a tight hot knot in my gut that we were headed in the right direction.

We kept walking. Daylight seemed a long way off dawning.

By the time the first amber hues began to bleed out behind the haze, our footsteps had lost their fierce determination. We were now both dragging our feet through the sand and kicking up more than we stepped over. More than once I tripped and staggered a few steps before somehow miraculously righting myself. Determined as I was to keep moving until then, physically my body had other ideas. I felt like I’d been walking for days as opposed to hours. I’d also grown unaccustomed to carrying the external weight on my back anymore, having had no real need at either of the self-contained fortresses we’d holed up in, in the past few months. As such the force of gravity dragged my shoulders and my legs down as I walked, and soon it became all too much to bear. My arms were weak and shaking from keeping my gun at the ready but in my fear and paranoia I struggled to carry it down by my side as David had been doing. Out of the corner of his eye I was certain that he watched on, the lower half of his face still lashed by that same old arrogant smirk with which I’d become so accustomed. I didn’t know whether in his own thoughts he continued to berate me, whether like me he was unable to let go of what had happened back there at the clinic and was mentally effecting it, or whether there was a more sinister overtone to his demeanor now, now that I knew the truth about what kind of person he really was. As if I had a hope in hell of stopping him from following let alone doing anything else, I lamented miserably. I squared my shoulders and tried to at least look like I didn't care.

“What time is it?” I eventually croaked. Pausing to steal a sip from my water bottle I sighed. Before I even drew it to my lips a frown had begun to form. I shook the bottle as I swallowed the precious liquid. It sloshed against the sides. Not much left. Damn it!

David’s shoulders rose and fell. With a grunt he shifted the pack on his back. Gripping the shoulder straps he continued to survey the horizon in a slow, suspicious gaze. He watched his boot kick at the dirt rather than meet my eyes.

“Almost eight,” he finally rumbled. He squinted up fixedly. His face was stained now in a permanent shadow from nose to neck and framed his dour pout. “We have to find somewhere to bunk down. Before the peak heat of the day. Or we won’t make tomorrow.”

I huffed rather than answer him, simultaneously insulted and relieved that I’d been the one to break the proverbial ice between us. Too weary to bight back my scowl I slid the bottle back into its side pouch, shrugged the pack back into position, and, ignoring the fierce agonized pain in my shoulders and neck, nodded in agreement. I didn’t even have the strength to argue back as much as I wanted to, even just on principle. My sense of empowerment, of determination and strength that had led me out here in the first place had waned to a point of near non-existence and I resented the fact I could feel myself slipping back into old ways with him taking the lead and making the decisions on my behalf when this was supposed to be my journey to begin with. Smearing my face with my hand I continued to look around though the landscape had remained constant throughout since practically leaving the others. There was no shelter, no nook, and no cranny around us at all that I could see to deviate from this flat, hostile terrain anywhere. My eyes burned with tears that I was physically incapable of shedding. Dehydration was taking its toll already, and the heat hadn’t even set in yet.

We trudged onwards.

Every now and then I found myself looking back over my shoulder. It wasn’t an ambush from the dead I was expecting, but the monster with a human face; Trinity. In my long walk my mind wandered and I found myself thinking back to all the times when she’d showed up miraculously just in time to save my life. Where was she now? I wondered with my eyes bowed detestably. As glad as I was not to have seen her there was still a growing feeling within that all my animosity towards her was justified; as hard as I sought to come up with concrete reasons why I hated her so all I kept coming up with was veiled emotion – my exhaustion had robbed me of my ability to reason let alone think clearly.

By the time we came upon the first signs of civilization again I was practically running on autopilot. Shapes emerged from the dunes which had begun to rise the past few miles, gently sloping upward with the promise of something wet and shimmering on the other side – usually more dunes. But pushed to near breaking point I was about to drop my pack and follow it down into the sand when we saw it; a small black amorphous outline that began to take on definition as we approached. Afraid that it was yet another tantalizing mirage I didn’t hurry my step towards it but it drew closer none the less. Eventually, by the time I could ascertain it to be something solid and immovable my curiosities had carried me the next several hundred meters as if floating on a cloud.

“What is that? Is that a car?” I wondered – my voice was so raspy and parched by this point I doubted one syllable even punctured the still, warm air.

David didn’t answer. On his head he wore a tee-shirt, brow encompassed by the collar, with sleeves tied together behind the nape, resembling something between a black turban and a skull-cap, complete with excess neck protection. Frowning forward, his face hot and fixed and beaded with sweat he shook his head dubiously. Soon slipping his rifle from over his shoulder his step slowed with caution. Out of habit I did the same. Together we approached the mass that grew up out of the sand. It wasn’t a car but a small truck. The blue and red markings scored by fierce winds and stripping sands on the side, were readable none the less. SCIDEMARAP it read. Paramedics. This was an ambulance. All but one door was open.

With a grave nod David continued left while I rounded on the vehicle’s right. My fingers around the rifle’s stock were clammy. Around us the silence was eerily perfect, not even a breath of wind was stirring. I sniffed the air for signs of death. My nerves sparked. Instinctively I could sense it. Behind the windscreen I saw nothing but signs of nature’s wrath. Papers littered the dashboard. Cords dangled from the cabin’s ceiling. The driver’s side door was open. A dead figure laid slumped back in his seat, his mouth open and his eye sockets empty. The side of his face and neck and arm had all been gnawed away revealing grotesque clumps of muscle sinew and bone and sunken skin shriveled on a skeletal frame. His fingers had been chewed and some were missing, obviously providing a sumptuous meal for some desert dwelling animals. With a stubborn rusty creak the passenger side door was wrenched open and David stood on the other side staring in. The passenger side of the cabin was empty but covered in brown-black blood. David met my eyes over the dead body. His head ticked aside. I nodded back at him. Sequentially we both made our way to the back of the ambulance. The doors were open. The gurney had spilled out; half was still inside the vehicle. A black body bag lay upon it, strapped down, it was motionless and dusty. Another corpse lay in pieces against the wheels, preventing it from moving. It resembled little more than a rotten rib cage, a skull, and a few jagged bones pouring out of the faded pale blue uniform. Part of a shoe poked out through the sand a few feet away.

“What the hell happened?” I pondered.

-- Edited by Ravynlee on Wednesday 19th of August 2009 12:32:10 PM