Realistic or Modern 𝗙𝗜𝗥𝗦𝗧 𝗟𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧 — at the end of the world

[Miaow]

NORTHVIEW HIGH
The Infirmary

A Flashback​

The infirmary was quiet. That was a nice change. With all the Samaritans around, getting into fights, tripping over their own feet, getting bitten by a certain rabbit... that place was never quiet. It was the evening, the only patients left were Minnie and Harry.

Minnie curled up on her side, her knees tucked up close to her stomach. Her face was still swollen, black and blue. Her arms were wrapped tight, the bandage covering from her palms to her elbows. Gene had paid her a little visit and done her best to fix her hair but there was still a visible chunk of fringe that was shorter than the rest. With her two options being sleep and watch Mac and Pandora work, she was practically a registered nurse.

"Alright, Harry, it's dinner time..." Pandora smiled, pushing a tray of supplies to his bedside, "Our chef made stew, so you're getting... blended up, mushy stew. Yummy."
"You know it was pretty good when it was solid, so, it can't be that bad as a smoothie."

Minnie pulled her blanket closer to her chin, frowning a little.
"Why do you talk to him?"
"Why not?" Pandora asked as she inserted the feeding tube, "I talk to you, don't I?"
"Yeah, but... can he hear you?"
"I like to think so... There's a few case studies, actually. People woke up from comas and heard everything, they remembered everything their family said." Pandora smiled, "Imagine laying here as long as Harry has with no one to talk to. You'd be bored, right? Plus, it fills the silence."
Minnie shrugged, avoiding eye contact.

"Alright. I gotta get your dinner, so keep an eye on him, yeah? Don't let him go anywhere," Pandora smiled as she removed the feeding tube, setting her tray of equipment aside. Minnie nodded, shifting in her bed to try and get comfy.

God, Pandora was right. The silence in that room was deafening, she didn't like it. It made the ringing in her ears seem louder. She frowned, wincing as she slowly propped herself up on one of her elbows. Her head felt like a bowling ball, a huge weight to prop up on her neck.
"Uhhhh... hi, Harry," She murmured. I think this is worse than when it was quiet...

"Pandora says you can hear this kinda stuff, so... She said I have to stay in here until I can walk back to my room on my own. I can't even walk to the bathroom on my own right now, so, uhh... I guess we're roommates for a bit." She told him, resting her head back down on her pillow.
"Haewon said you got your butt kicked. I was in the room when you came in. You bled a lot," Was this the kind of thing she was supposed to be saying? It felt... mean. She wanted to relate to him. Clearly, she wasn't in the best shape herself, but the memories weren't clear.
"I don't remember what happened to me, but... I'm pretty sure I got my butt kicked, too, so..."

She shivered, trying to pull her blanket even closer to her face.
"Pandora says I'm so cold all the time because I lost a lot of blood... so you must be cold too, right?" She asked, not that he could answer, "Xander said he'd come see me today. He visits every day. He can get you another blanket."

Bullyboy Squad Safton
​

 

[Bullyboy Squad]

NORTHVIEW
Outside
​

There was less cognition to his thoughts so he had no words. Glazed, black eyes staring with disbelief. Tracing the lines of an unforgettable face. Beauty and strength. Almost unchanged. The fractures of hazel through brown irises. A fringe of black lashes like his. And the soft curve of her smile. A smile that cut through all the years. Her name, a trembled endearment on his lips. "Paca…"

Hot tears stung his bloodshot eyes and ran down his dirty face. His legs gave out and Ignacio fell to his knees. Weakly cradling her pelvis to his chest, burrowing his face in her jacket. "Paca." He quietly sobbed, squeezing her narrow frame. If he stopped she would vanish. She'd be gone and he would be alone again. Alone. And nothing would make sense anymore. Don't go.

When he opened his eyes and lifted his gaze again, she was much younger. Smiling down at him, holding her hand out. Long, tan fingers with neat nails curled around his forearm. Ignacio sniffed and rubbed his wet face. His own palm, tiny compared to hers when he reached up. She helped him to his feet. His small knees under shorts were bloody and covered in dirt.

The drone of the spinning wheel of the fallen bike filled the silence. The smell of pine in his nose. He looked up and a fractured ray of early sun caught in his eyes. His eyelids fluttered and closed. Cabrera was no longer clinging to Ally. His body went limp against her after loose tethers of consciousness let him go. He slipped into another dream that was a memory.

MokaChan Togy Safton BeyondDandy NanLia Miaow @SlaughterMelon Crono Aegis Namazu Good_Morels Fluffy-Kat Tool ​

 

[Namazu]

NORTHVIEW
Outside --> Corridors --> Infirmary ​

Caught off-guard by the sudden appearance of a woman he didn’t know near him, Weston silently reprimanded himself for doing such a poor job of keeping alert and his eyes on his surroundings. It was damn hard to, though, when he felt so lightheaded and exhausted and in pain.

Silently relieved that it was not one of the dead, and not someone looking to attack either of them, Weston couldn’t help blink dumbly at the way they grasped at each other and exchanged nicknames, letting go of Ignacio again as the other man fell to embrace the woman. It was cute, heartbreaking, and more than a little emotional. Weston silently swallowed down a swell of something in his chest.

“I’ll let you two have some time, but make sure he gets back inside, please.” Weston commented to the woman, pressing a hand to his side again as he winced. He really shouldn’t - couldn’t - put off getting help any longer. Not like there was anything he could do for Ignacio now that he was passed out. He didn’t have the strength to help carry the man anywhere. Not this time. He’d ask who she was to him later.

“Call for help carrying him if you need it. Just don’t let him get hurt.” Weston grumbled, sounding more than exhausted, as he turned and closed the rest of the distance between himself and the school.

~*~​

The interior of the school was best described as chaos. There were bodies in the halls, blood streaked and splattered against the walls and floors, and debris scattered along the floor. He paused not far from the door and stared for a moment at a small bloody handprint on the wall, about chest-height. He cautiously held his hand just over it, comparing sizes.

Definitely a kid’s hand. Too small. Possibly a girl’s, given how slim it was.

Discarded weapons - even some makeshift ones like the broken leg of a chair - had been left behind when they became unserviceable or when its owner met a worse fate. Weston kicked a few out of the way so they weren’t a tripping hazard, but otherwise his attention was on finding whatever served as the infirmary.

It was odd, being here for the first time and seeing it in this state. He’d never seen it while it was functioning, while people were healthy and whole. Were people here ever happy? He had no real idea. He’d not heard anything of a rebellion here - does that mean they were better off than the prison was? It brought a pang of pain to his chest; Cabrera had worked hard for this place, and now it was in ruins.

As Weston lumbered his way down the hall, a few enforcers paused to stare at him, wide-eyed, and mutter some kind of a greeting. A few “hey boss” comments before they skittered off to go do whatever it was they were supposed to do. Finally, someone pointed him in the right direction of the infirmary.

He didn’t feel like much of a boss of anything right now. If anything, he felt like a failure.

Finally finding the infirmary, Weston paused a few steps away as he saw a young girl sitting on the floor, knees up to her chest. Putting his free hand on the wall, he looked Minnie over. Was she injured? Was there literally a line forming in the hallway, it was that bad? Or just in shock? She didn’t look like she was bleeding. Maybe just in shock. He couldn’t blame her. This was a lot for an adult, but too much for a kid.

“Hey, kid. You’ll be okay.” He lied, trying to sound supportive, as he wobbled into the infirmary.

The room was already in a state of disarray. Weston found a chair and dropped himself into it. It was one one of those cheap plastic classroom chairs, bright red and slightly bucket shaped, just enough to be uncomfortable for a grown man. He silently thanked the universe that the whole chair didn’t simply break when he sat down. That would be just his luck, wouldn’t it?

The nameless man that L.T. had beaten was already here, along with Connor the soldier, and others he didn't know. He assumed the small form on a bed Connor knelt near was Tanner. The kid looked…. Awful. Really, just awful. Weston swallowed and looked away, not wanting to stare and not wanting to ask questions yet. He assumed the kid was dead.

Weston wanted nothing more than to lean back and close his eyes, but he feared he’d pass out if he did. If he passed out, he wasn’t sure he’d wake up again.

“I don’t know any of you, but I’m gonna be bleeding on your floor for a bit. I got shot.” Weston announced, out of fucks to give. “There’s another man being brought here soon who is in far worse condition than I am. He got hit by a truck. I don’t know who he is - probably not one of yours, and not one of mine - but I would appreciate it if you could at least make it so he’s not in pain in his last hour or so, if you can’t fix him.” Weston finally, and slowly, peeled off his leather jacket and let it slump around the chair so he could look down at his side.

His dark t-shirt was shredded along his left side, bloody and tattered, with the handkerchief he was using to stem the flow of blood quite soaked. He looked down, seeing nothing but bloody raw flesh. The whole thing ached and burned in ways he couldn’t begin to describe. The bleeding had certainly slowed, but it was still a messy wound. Thankfully, it looked like a very bad graze that took a chunk out of him rather than lodging a bullet in him - or worse, taking out an organ. Looking down at it made his stomach flip. It wasn’t just the state of the wound itself, but knowing he’d have to take off his shirt and have someone look at it - look at him - and see what he’d been keeping covered all this time to the best of his ability. If there was any of it left, at least. While he sat there half bent over, ash and debris from the forest fire fell from his hair. He was probably one hell of an awful sight.

“Ah, fuck me.” Weston groaned after he coughed, feeling that smoky grit in his lungs. He put the bloodied length of fabric over his side again as he leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling, doing his best not to pass out or cough again. He couldn't help but wonder if the taste of ash and smoke in his mouth was just burned trees, but also burned bodies.

MokaChan Togy Safton BeyondDandy NanLia Miaow Crono Aegis Bullyboy Squad Good_Morels Fluffy-Kat Tool ​

 

[Tool]

NORTHVIEW
Outside, heading in​

Despite being surrounded by living, breathing people who were not actively trying to kill her, Madison felt as alone as she ever did among the dead, even as she scoured the grounds for a ladder. She found several quality DeWalts, and the one she selected stood strong as she climbed up its metal rungs and onto tar and shingle. Rather wisely, Madison lifted the ladder up after her, not trusting anyone on the ground to leave it alone so she could get back down without twisting an ankle. Haewon the Fleet-Footed Gazelle, Demi-Goddess of Sneakers and Big Sister to Minnie Mouse might have been able to get down from the roof without smashing her face flat, but Connor was pretty sure the universe would take the opportunity to serve her some humble pie in the form of a faceplant onto concrete.

The bag full of Madison's specialty guns and ammo was easy to find, and good thing too; the maps, journal, and assorted personal belongings were irreplaceable, and though the woman didn't take the time to itemize each and every item, there would have been no reason for Haewon to fling Madison's journal or her small, pink, stuffed elephant at the walking dead.

Connor was not a subtle woman in either opinion or action, and she'd only become less so as time and circumstance knapped away at the cop she'd been before the end, one shard at a time. Still...... people rarely looked up, even when it was an awfully foolish survival strategy to ignore threats from above, and Connor found herself in the unique position of getting more information about conqueror and conquered without either group being the wiser.

Mostly, the girl stayed put, watching the bikers approach from the distance and listening to the conversations below her, though she did move once, and even laid down flat and admired the enamel-blue sky, so crystal bright as to be nearly painful. It was broiling hot in her leathers on the freaking roof, but when was it ever not hot, and it was beautiful up here.

Quiet.

Still.

What she discovered from the snatches of conversation that floated up to her open ears was, admittedly, not at all what she'd expected based on Beard Guy, Haewon, and Minnie's experiences combined. They'd painted a picture of the Samaritans as brutal, ruthless, vicious, and frankly amoral dictators, conquerors of the worst sort........ but that wasn't what many, many others believed.

Minnie's experience hadn't gone unnoticed, but by the sound of things, the kid had stabbed her attacker to death and Minnie hadn't been punished by "leadership", using the heaviest quotes imaginable, the scars being evidence of her fight rather than being beaten.

Sneakers had called the Samaritans Pervy, disgusting, heartless assholes.

Maybe most of the Northfolk were just..... into that?

By and large, the Samaritans seemed fairly friendly with the Northfolk. There were some prison folk who saw the loss of life in their own as not having been worth protecting what amounted to chattel slaves, but the majority of Samaritans were far more friendly towards the conquered. Madison even heard a couple of hushed, coy flirtations between what the cop would have otherwise taken as enemies.

For someone who regularly railed against bullies in her former life and this one, Connor finding out a community liked the taste of boot on its neck was..... a surprise. Over a bit of time, Madison gathered that Duchess and an Enforcer had been moles, sent ahead to sneak in, soften up the inhabitants of Northview High School for an invasion, let in the Samaritans and..... the play had largely worked. According to those below her, the takeover was without bloodshed, save for a singular, accidental death, and after only a month, a surprising number of Northfolk had gotten a lot cozier with the Samaritans. Better supplies, more crops, farm animals, an expansion of their area.......

Apparently, freedom went for cheap, these days.

But, who was Connor to judge?

The honest, unfiltered chatter beneath Madison's unseen lie-down gave such a drastically different view of the Samaritans than the two girls and Beard Guy that it was starting to give the detective whiplash.

Or maybe that was just her head injury kicking up.

It seemed the leader of the Samaritans in this compound was Ignacio Cabrera, a huge fan of the far, far more brutal King back at the Prison. A few cracks by his own men implied Cabrera had started to go soft. Everyone she heard ranged from enthusiastic supporters of King and his chosen tactics, down to people who simply believed King's ways were the best ones available and Why Not......... though none of those tactics were (supposedly) evidenced at North View High School, by the sound of things.

So..... why would Ignacio, bootlicker to King Douchebag and his Douchebag Ways decide not to implement the methodology he'd found so desirable? Was King even aware that North View High School was being treated so cozily?

Why were the Northfolk people better off with food and supplies after they'd been taken over? Why was the Prison so much worse off than the High School? Didn't the colonized usually fare worse than the colonizers? Wasn't.......wasn't that usually the entire fucking point of an invasion? Why was the Prison sending out warbands to ruthlessly take over communities with kid gloves on?

Madison had encountered honest-to-god Raiders before. This...... was not that. Raiders weren't kind or heaven forbid generous to their prey, and their prey wasn't ever, ever left content. Warlords tended to stick to a methodology.

If Cabrera had managed to take over the High School with only a single, accidental casualty and forged a functional, largely peaceful, largely satisfied community in a matter of weeks rather than months or years, it was damned impressive. Functional slaves or not.

Fewer than five people had expressed outright hatred aloud, and by the sound of things..... they sounded like outliers. There were a few Northfolk who grumbled a bit, but...... by and large, it sounded like this place was fine the way it was. Colonized welcomed colonizer, save a few oddballs who riled against the yoke, namely Sneakers and Minnie and presumably their dad, if he'd been in any position to talk.

And that was another thing - why had Xander blown Duchess away? Madison had assumed it was a man simply having had enough of being under an invader's heel, but that didn't track with how content the Northfolk seemed to be in their situation, and how amicably the Samaritans viewed their slaves. Delusional, maybe? A lover's quarrel? Maybe Xander was someone like Madison herself, unable to accept even the kindest slavery?

Okay, think.

Ignacio was one of King's fanboys. King was, by Madison's measure both a moron and a brutal, ruthless dictator. Hell of a combo on that one. The stuff Beard Guy said about the Prison all tracked with the chitter chatter of little birds. Gladiator death-matches (that more than a few Samaritans here missed), brutal slavery, imprisonment, conscripted soldiers, and way, way worse. If Ignacio was a big o'll fan of that, then.... what had changed to make him so kissy-kissy nice with the North View High School populace? But not in some of their eyes? Why did a few Northfolk here see him as the King's War Dog he seemed otherwise proud to be while many more Northfolk verged on grateful for his presence?

How could there be such a wide, wild difference in the same group of people? Some variation was expected, sure, but there was a hell of a gap between They're fucking evil and the meet-cute happening nearest the western corner-gutter.

Madison didn't doubt the words of Minnie, Haewon and Beard Guy. They'd been too afraid and angry, too sincere to suspect, the haunted cast to their eyes unable to be faked to the eyes of a trained detective with a few years under her belt. Maybe, maybe one of them could have bamboozled her, but all three? No way. They believed what they were saying, and what they were saying wasn't tracking with almost anything else she was hearing now.

Being peacock-proud to be counted among King's War Hounds was a trait shared by a number of the Samaritans on the ground.... and yet. And yet the Northfolk were largely content to be subjugated. Except for those handful Northfolk who viewed the Samaritans as evil incarnate.

What. In. The. Ever. Loving. Fuck. Was. Going. On.

They were all still morons when it came to actual zombie defense and dealing with the dead (see: a fucking helicopter, the arrangement of this school, and the Fallen Angel's own clubhouse), but Madison was finding the lack of common sense to be endemic among her recent acquaintances.

She sighed. Her head ached from the wild contradictions she'd seen and heard, and it was time to rejoin the living.

Ironic that her profound solitude was, in many ways, less profound when among the dead than around the breathing. It was becoming gradually more clear that she was the odd one out among these people, rather than the other way around.

Detective Madison Connor Jones slung her bag over her shoulder, slid the ladder back to the ground, and went hunting for the truth of things.

Unraveling the mystery almost felt like old times.

Namazu Miaow Bullyboy Squad ​

 

[Tool]

NORTHVIEW
Outside/Inside Infirmary​

Madison walked towards the infirmary with her bag in one hand and her helmet in the other, her gaze sliding over the signs of battle and death with a familiarity born of too long in the field. When she saw the kid still outside the infirmary, her features softened and she knelt before the child as she'd done the first time, a lot warmer but none the worse for wear.

"Hey, Minnie. Still no word about your pops?"



Minnie heard footsteps approaching her, lifting her head just a little. She didn't want to look at their face. She didn't want to look like she was looking at their face. She could tell who it was just from their boots. Her dark knight, her biker lady, was back. Their eyes met for a moment. As she asked her question, she shook her head, resting her chin on top of her arms as she looked away. "Haewon said not to go in until she said so." She murmured.



The woman nodded sadly. That tracked. If things had gone badly, the child would have been elsewhere (likely with her dad's body), and if things had gone well, Haewon would have said so and Minnie wouldn't have looked so....... beaten."Can..... can I ask you something about the prison people? If you help me figure them out, I'll go in and see whether or not there is any news about your dad yet, come back and tell you."It was a cheap trick, but Minnie hadn't been keen on answering her questions before, even if it was something Madison figured she'd be doing regardless of whether the kid was loose-lipped or intended to keep her mouth shut. "I'm trying to figure out what kinda people they are. Whether they've been nice or mean to you all. Er..... the people at the school, I mean. I know things are hard for you right now, but...... can you tell me what you think of them?"



Minnie sat up a little straighter at her offer. She was lucky Haewon hadn't heard that. Haewon knew what manipulation sounded like. Minnie, on the other hand, thought this sounded like a sweet deal. She nodded, her posture opening just a little more.

She paused to think at her question, sinking back against the wall. Her mind was so busy, she wasn't even sure where to start. She looked down at her bare arms, hesitating before holding one of them out to her again.

"When they got stitched up, we didn't have any pain medications... It was really hard to sleep after because it hurt so bad," She told her, staring at one of the darker scars on her wrist, "Cabrera made his men go back to the prison to get some so I'd feel better... and he brought Momo, too!"

She tucked her arms behind her knees, picking at a patch of dirt on her hand. God, Momo... She just wanted him to be okay. Even if he never came back, even if he lived in the woods for the rest of his life, as long as he had a life."

But... the man who did... these," She murmured, her eyes glossing over her arms, "Cabrera made him fight my friend, Arthur. When he died and came back... he kept him in the batting cages. He said it was to stop others from doing what he did... but I had to see him every day. Every time I went to work with the rabbits, I had to walk past him."

She swallowed, seeming to try and make herself look as small as possible as she squeezed her knees closer to her torso.

"It hurt me more than it hurt any of the Samaritans. Cabrera didn't care."

She glanced up at Connor. She'd promised she wasn't with either of them, that she wouldn't get in trouble. She averted her gaze. Her eyes glazed over as she stared at... nothing.

"So I killed him. Me and Tanner. We went in the cages when everyone was asleep and killed him."



Connor listened to the girl with her full attention, listening to what was left unsaid as much as what actually escaped the girl's lips. The Enforcer that had met the sharp end of Minnie's blade had been made to...... Fight a guy named Arthur. Presumably to the death, thanks to the zombie that resulted after. Interesting. Apparently, Minnie hadn't killed the guy after all.

The fight that came after tracked with the Gladiator-rings back at the Prison. So..... Not great. Though what Minnie said next swung the pendulum of judgement back in the other direction a bit; he wasn't willing to let a kid suffer. Ignacio forcing his men to fetch medicine from the prison instead of going hunting for it was..... An odd choice and heavily implied that King DID know what was going on out here. Again, a mixed message.

Keeping around the zombie who'd hurt the kid was a bad move. Amateur. Rookie move. It showed a certain immaturity Madison hadn't pegged on Ignacio, as of yet.

Madison's eyebrows shot upwards when she learned that Minnie and Beard Guy's kid had taken out the zombie on their own. When.... Everybody was asleep. That meant doing so wasn't allowed. Also not an awesome sign, but at least more of a neutral one than outright bad.

"Did..... Did your friend Arthur want to fight the guy who hurt you, or was Arthur forced? And.... Can you tell me what happened after you and Tanner killed the zombie? That was real brave of you, by the way. And..... Who's Momo?"



Minnie shook her head.

"Arthur was in trouble for... I don't know... but they were keeping him in the basement with another guy. They made all three of them fight each other. I don't know what happened... but Arthur was okay."

She frowned as she thought about the aftermath of killing that infected. It didn't feel particularly brave. Tanner had done the hard part, she just beat the thing to a pulp, like a kid having a tantrum. That thing had just been a stress toy to her... yet, she didn't feel any better for doing it.

"We weren't allowed to be friends anymore. I wasn't allowed to work on the farm anymore. Cabrera made me do the gross jobs and a Samaritan had to watch me do them." She murmured, "That was why I was outside when... when all the infected came. I was seeing Momo, Cabrera wouldn't let me see him anymore."

Their eyes met again as her new friend mentioned Momo. That was a fun thing to talk about. It wasn't hard to bring herself to think about... until she remembered letting him go.

"My bunny. We keep them for meat, but... they need some adult rabbits for breeding, so Momo gets to stay." She explained, though her eyes seemed to grow wet with tears as she looked away again."When I saw Xander, I put him down so I could help him... I don't know where he is..."



Prisoners were being kept in the basement for the purposes of death-match pitfights?

It was a struggle keeping her face clear and empty of the rage that flared to life, battered but still more than ready for war, and Madison's eyes fell downwards, doing her best to stay loose, stay relaxed. When her gaze lifted back to Minnie's face, Madison saw memories filter behind those young eyes and pass into verbal expression without any hint of editorializing.

Lording over some kid for having the guts to kill the zombie version of her attacker still wasn't great, though god knew it could have been worse. One of life's little tricks: things could always, always get worse. Animal husbandry was something about which Madison knew exactly zip, so whether or not keeping rabbits was a wise choice or a stupid one she had no way to know. Chickens would have seemed a better choice thanks to eggs...... but it's not like Madison knew the first thing about anything farm-y. Singing the Old McDonald song was about the extent of it.

"If Momo's your bunny, I'm sure he's someplace safe. Rabbits are pretty skittish; he's probably around here somewhere, munchin' on some grass." Did rabbits eat grass? Buggs Bunny ate carrots, but that was just....... just...... What did rabbits eat?

Yeah, time to steer away from what, exactly, had happened to the kid's not-food pet. "Alright. Thank you for talking to me, Minnie. I'll go see about your dad, let you know anything I find out." A deal was a deal. She got to her feet and left the kid to sit outside the least safe place in the building.

The infirmary was both less and more bloody than Connor would have imagined, though the sight of a familiar face in a spare chair, politely bleeding off in a corner drew her attention. But..... a promise was a promise. Chestnut eyes roamed around until they spotted the guy she'd peeled off the pavement. Dad. Idiot. Stupid, reckless, selfish....... Madison sighed. On the one hand, nobody was fussing over him with overly-rapid movements and There! Put It There! urgency she'd seen in her few visits to the ER, but it wasn't as though Xander was spokey dokey, either. He still looked like shit, but at least nobody was acting like he was dying, and there weren't any fresh bullet holes in his face so.... he wasn't dead either. How far had things come that bullet holes were her first clue he was alive, rather than the guy's shallow breathing? Pretty damn far.

Weston had arrived on the scene. That meant he'd come from the Prison. The far worse of the two places to be. The place were people died and died and died. The place where gosh and golly a few of the Samaritans here wished they could go and see the pit ...... Though apparently North View High School wasn't without some nice death-for-entertainment.

Apparently football was just too pussy these days - fight-to-the-death, now there was a sport. A little beer, a few bets, some blood in the sand.....

Without entirely intending to do so, Madison's feet stepped towards Weston, and though her hand gripped at her helmet a little tighter (it had, indeed, proven a decent cudgel more than once), her voice was quiet; "Hello, Milo. How's the search for them princesses goin'?"



Weston’s eyes shifted towards Madison as she entered the infirmary, taking a moment to peel his eyes off the ceiling slowly so he didn’t get dizzy. He didn’t move much, content to sit there and focus on breathing until it was his turn to get looked at. He wished he could have offered her a better welcome. A smile, a handshake, a goddamn high-five, anything. All he could do was switch which hand was pressed against his side to shake the feeling back into the one that was growing numb and tired.

“Found my princess.” He responded quietly as he motioned out the door and down the hall with his bloodied left hand towards where Cabrera had just been carried off into another room. He didn’t say it loudly, but he also at this point didn’t give a shit who in the room would hear that. He was too damn tired for games.

“Safe, breathing, not dead, not bit. All the things that mattered. How’s the war on the dead goin’? We win yet? Cause I gotta tell ya-” Weston cut himself off to turn his head and cough into the crook of his arm again, which only made him wince in pain as he groaned and curled forward. “Ugh, fuck. Sorry. I had hoped if I did run into you again, it’d be better circumstances… and maybe with booze to share too.”



The woman looked a little sad. By his answer, it sounded like Weston simply didn't remember the reference they'd once shared; Madison didn't begrudge the man a boyfriend, but from what she'd learned of the prison and the lives people led within its walls, Sweet Rhyme and Pure Reason were utterly absent.

Whatever. It had been a lifetime ago, anyway.

Madison looked at him levelly, then shook her head. "Same here. Can't always get what we want." Benefit of the doubt. Boy oh boy that was a tough one to give.

"I take it you're a Samaritan." Though technically a question, it sure as hell didn't sound like a question.

"That why you made me promise to give you the benefit of the doubt?" There. That one sounded like a question.



He knew that question was coming. It was a long time in the making, presuming the universe allowed it and the stars aligned. Weston sighed, carefully leaning back in his chair again and stretched his legs out, looking up at Madison.

“Yeah. Caught me there on that one. Samaritans are my people. Whatever’s left of ‘em anyway. For better or for worse, I guess.” Weston rubbed at his chin with the back of his hand, letting his eyes drift to somewhere in the middle distance as he thought on his answer. Then his attention drifted back to Madison when he knew what he was going to say.

“I asked you to give me the benefit of the doubt because I wasn’t sure what life was going to turn into. What I was going to turn into. And I wanted this.” He motioned between them with a bloodied hand that shook a little before he pressed it to his side again.

“For you to talk first instead of shoot first. I wanted that because there was always a chance that at least some of us didn’t deserve to be shot on sight. Even if it wasn’t me.” He frowned, studying Madison’s face.

“I still have that book, y’know. Read it twice.”



Madison resisted the urge to scream, to yell at him that perhaps he should have read it a little closer, that he'd read but he hadn't understood if he thought.........

Gods, she wanted to backhand him with her helmet and keep going until his face looked like the one behind her and to her right.

Samaritans are my people.

The shaky hand between the two of them drew her eye, but its weariness moved her not a single inch. "Best way not to get shot by me is not earn the bullet. You played me. Gotta hand it to you, though, you played me good." The betrayal was in there, a warm undercurrent in her tone, blood trickling from the knife in her back even as Weston dripped onto the floor.

"Don't got to worry. I keep my promises."

She was quiet a long moment. "How's safety taste?"



Weston’s face fell when she said he played her, and he honest-to-God looked hurt. He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down a dirty, sweaty neck.

“Like ashes and shit.” He answered plainly, running a hand through his hair. It only made more ashes fall onto his slumped shoulders, like bad dandruff.

“For whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry. I didn’t make it a goal to play you. I didn’t have any fucked-up plans in mind when I asked it. I’m sure Ignacio is doing the best he can here to make this place safe. And I’m-”

What had he been doing that was worth the oxygen that he was taking up? He glanced around the room as if taking stock of his victories, and finding none.

“I’m also trying to figure out how to make life work, without getting shot or shanked in my sleep, and without King deciding to execute me. If you want to kick my ass for it, go right ahead. Just not in here, in front of people who’ve already seen too much, and don’t hurt him.” Weston nodded his head towards Cabrera.

“Care to stick around and help me un-fuck things?”



Madison wasn't able to bring herself to honestly accept Weston's apology as given; the mutual promise she and Weston made to one another so long ago had mattered. It had meant something. She'd promised him the benefit of the doubt, a free pass, and being Number Two of the Samaritans did not hold up Weston's end of the deal.

How many people had suffered thanks to her good deed? Who'd paid the price when she'd saved Weston's life?

The man's seemingly casual request for help took a hell of a lot of gall, and the surprise on Connor's face showed as much. "I'm not aiming to hurt anybody here or kick your ass. Got me pegged wrong if you think I'm the type to go apeshit in a medical ward without good reason. You already got me to give my word you'd get one for free. Came in here to check on the kid's dad because I said I would."

Her eyes gained some flint. "Remarkably, however, I don't take orders from you. You don't get to tell me what to do, ever again. I've heard a few real choice things Samaritans do, especially where you're holed up. You can ask like we was equals, but jus' cause you say something don't make it so. I am not one of your people."

Madison leaned over a little, putting her face level with Weston's own and making sure she could see right through him and vice versa.

"So sure. I can help un-fuck things. And sure. I care. I can't not care. I wouldn't be walking through hell every goddamn day if I didn't give a shit. I got my cause..... but I got a question for you: What specifically do you mean by un-fucked?"

She paused for a moment, dropping her voice soft and low.

"Cause I gotta tell you, Weston, what the Prison does for funsies...... I am not okay with that, my man. If even half of what I heard is true? I'd be inclined to try an' put your king in the ground. Minimum."



Weston couldn’t help but lean back a little, as much as he had physical space for, when Madison leaned down eye-level with him. Not that he feared being struck - she said she wouldn’t, and he took her word for it - but he disliked the way she stared at him. It was a little too close to staring into his soul. A little too much for any one person to have ever seen of him, inside and out. Weston took a breath and, ignoring the anxious sensation to get up and put distance between himself and everyone here, he leaned in real close to Madison. Lowering his voice, he whispered something into her ear, quiet enough only she could hear it.

When he was done, Weston leaned back slightly and turned his head so he could stare at Madison, dead-serious expression on his face. Lines crossed his forehead as he furrowed his brow. How long had it been since they last seen each other? Just a few months? Somehow, he looked years older instead. Older, more tired, less light in his eyes. Not that there often was much to begin with.

“I just want to get shit done and clean this place up. I’m here to help, not bark orders.” Weston leaned back in his chair and gestured vaguely around the room, voice not quite as quiet now as he spoke of getting Northview mopped up and functional after this horde.

They’d need all hands on deck for this.



Madison straightened and looked down at Weston like he'd grown a second head. That..... was a very easy question to answer, unless there was something very grand going on, but as she looked at his face curl in on itself on consternation, she realized the underpinning to his words, the implication below their mere presence in the world.

A sigh from the center of the fucking earth breathed through its core, up through molten lava and tectonic plates that had not yet noticed the wink of mankind standing upon them, bubbling past dirt and stone, and rising through Madison's boots right up to her throat and escaping those exhausted lips with all the gravitas the journey had wrought.

"Fine. I'll be 'round. Come find me later. Or I'll find you. Whatever. We'll talk."

With that, Connor left the bleeding men and women behind her and returned to the hallway outside, crouching to be more on Minnie's level but not kneeling as she'd done before. Her knees hurt. Everything hurt. "I think Xander looks a little better than he did when we first brought him in, but they're still working in there. I'd try to be patient...... but they're not acting like he's......."

Okay, no. Try for comforting. They're not acting like he's dying right this second wasn't comforting. Do better.

"Heeee..... He looks a little better, and nobody's panicking around him so...... that's a good sign." She hoped.



Minnie flinched as she heard the infirmary door open, a slurry of emotions coursing through her. What if Xander was dead? What if he was dying?

What if Connor was coming to tell her her new family, the dad she'd never had, was gone?

She watched her crouch down, hanging on her every word. Xander wasn't dead. He was... better. Well, a little better, but that was still better. She nodded, managing a small but hopeful smile.

"Did Haewon look worried?" She asked. If Haewon was worried then Minnie knew she needed to be worried. Haewon never looked visibly worried. She had an impressive poker face, that face being disdain and disgust. She looked angry most of the time, probably because she was angry most of the time.



The naked emotions on Minnie Mouse's face tugged at Madison's heartstrings, but she kept any wilty feelings from her face parts and did her best to try for mitigated encouragement. When a thready, hopeful, young voice asked whether or not Haewon looked worried, Connor didn't have a chance to mitigate the honesty that tumbled forth.

"Haew- oh, Sneakers? She just looked aggravated. I.... uh.... I honestly don't know her well enough to be able to say whether it was aggravated and worried or just plain, original-flavor pissed. I mean......annoyed. I mean....."

Was that comforting? Was that a win? Madison had no idea. Too late to take it back, now.

"She wasn't panicking over your dad, at least. Nobody was." Madison got back to the vertical, so jingle-jangle tired that she wasn't as steady on her feet as she should have been. Three days awake? It was hard to tell, any more.

"I'll be around, but I've..... I've got to sit down for a while, somewhere. I'll try to dream good dreams for your dad, okay? You come find me if you need me; I'll stay in this building."

Namazu Miaow ​

 

[Good_Morels]

NORTHVIEW - outskirts​

Infirmary


Following orders was easy because he didn't have to think.

His head could stay empty as they walked down blood slick halls of dead soldiers. Blood spatters stuck to the walls as opposed to kids drawings couldn't make him sick if he wasn't thinking about it. He could ignore the growing sense of uselessness in the face of death. Wes hung like an anchor from his side. Kit would've called him dead if he didn't feel him breathing.

'I wish I could help you.' The thought broke free of his haze, but he shook it off. Somebody better would help him.

The infirmary was far from empty, but thankfully the doctor seemed to know what he was doing.
At least, Kit hoped it was a doctor and not some stupid fuck like he was.

He laid Wes down where he could, pat his shoulder, and mumbled a "you're gonna be ok" as a goodbye. It was a lie he told pretty often these days, last thing most soldiers heard. Some nights he wondered if he would go to hell for that, but he wasn't too worried.

Hell couldn't be much worse than this.

"Stryker, sir, I'm here to help until they pull me somewhere else." He raised his voice to introduce himself to the doctor that was present as he scanned the room for whoever needed him the most.

The soldier from the road was present, good to see him. He was still actively bleeding out though, less great.

He approached him quickly, thankful that he still had his medical bag on him. Figuring out where they kept supplies wasn't exactly a priority right now.

"Hey bud, how about we get that bullet hole patched up?" It was more of an order than an offer. He reached for the man's shirt to look at the injury.



[/B]

MokaChan Togy Safton BeyondDandy NanLia Miaow @SlaughterMelon Crono Aegis Namazu Fluffy-Kat Tool
​

 

[NanLia]

Northview Infirmary



Alejandra didn’t have words for what she witnessed next, her brother's soft mournful uttering of her name before he collapsed to his knees and buried his face against her stomach; not something he’d done since their childhood and even then only when he’d become so distraught he couldn’t face the world.

Instinctively, she wrapped her arms around his head, holding him tightly, as she once had. “It’s okay Chico,” she murmured, even if he couldn’t hear her over the din around them. “I’ve got you.”

She gave a stiff nod to the stranger who had been helping him as he moved on, appreciative she didn’t have to explain herself, that they should share this moment. Ally looked down as Ignacio moved, but the moment her eyes fell on his face she knew he was lost. “Hey!” She hollard, holding his head up. “Ignacio! Hey!” It was too late, succumbing to his injuries she watched him pass out. She struggled to keep him from hitting the ground too hard, fists gripping his dirty shirt, stretching it as he fell back.

“You!” Ally shouted at the man who’d called him boss. “Help me!” Once again the people here seemed unbothered by her presence and even now responding to her barking orders as the burly man arrived at her side moments after she’d called to him and hefted her brother over his shoulders.

“This way.” Was all he uttered as he headed into the school where she hoped there was help for him. She loped alongside the man, clearing her thoughts of what she knew thus far. Whoever this was was subservient to her brother. This school had been overtaken by a group named the Samaritans by violence and made their slaves. If what the soldier they had transported here said was true, then her brother was in shit, no matter what group he was with.

“Are you Samaritans?” She asked, keeping her eyes ahead as they continued, not wanting to betray any of her own thoughts or feelings. “Or Northview?” She had to guess what this community named itself and simply recalled the name affixed to the sign above the front doors.

The man’s movements didn’t falter. “Samaritans.” And she nodded her acknowledgement. The Oppressors.

It was hard to swallow - the acknowledgement that somehow her brother ended up among those she’d been warned about; and not only that, had somehow climbed the ranks. She didn’t want to imagine what he had to do to get here, but here he was. She certainly couldn’t judge; she’d stood aside while the club did what they needed to do to survive, even if it made her skin crawl and bile roil in her stomach.

Within the infirmary was further chaos - not really a surprise considering how the rest of the school appeared. People ran around shouting and helping where they could and when Ignacio was settled onto a bed, he was soon being taken care of. She kept a short distance aside - enough to keep out of the way of the medical staff but close enough to keep watch. Bullet was no different. The dog had faithfully followed her at her heels and now sat at the doorway, keeping an eye on everyone in the room.




​

Safton Tool BeyondDandy Bullyboy Squad Togy Miaow Good_Morels Fluffy-Kat Crono Namazu MokaChan
​

 

[Namazu]

NORTHVIEW
Infirmary​

Weston had been staring up at the ceiling again, slouched in his chair, and trying to not faint or pass out when an unfamiliar face and voice approached. His mind was elsewhere to such a degree that he barely reacted until the stranger reached for him.

He flinched and grabbed Kit by the wrist, stopping him from even touching him before he realized what he was doing. Surprised at himself, he let go immediately.

"Shit. Sorry. I didn't-" Weston took a breath, blinking and actually looking at Kit this time, mind fully on the present and aware now.

"Sorry." He repeated, peeling himself off the chair with a groan and taking a step forward towards one of the open beds. It was one not full of blood and dirt, so he assumed it would be good enough. All of this reminded him how much he hated going to doctors and hospitals back in the old days.

"I tried to take a look at what the damage was, but its a fuckin' mess. I'm not dead yet so I assume that's a good sign." He looked Kit up and down, hesitating a moment before he took a breath and grabbed the bottom hem of his dirty, sweaty, and bloody t-shirt. It would hurt to get this thing off, and truthfully? He'd feel a little better if it was the Samaritan doctor doing this, and not a stranger.

Hissing from pain as he moved, Weston peeled off his shirt and let it drop to the floor. Underneath was an array of tattoos over his chest and stomach that matched the full sleeves that had already been on display. It was a mixture of a bit of everything: Norse imagery, Christian themes, flowers, stars, skulls, and biker-related images that were all rather predictable for a guy like him. They were well done, professionally inked, and well healed - things from well before the dead started shambling.

There was, unfortunately, one tattoo among the mix that was probably more eye-catching than the rest. Or what was left of it anyway.

On the left side of Weston's torso, just below the bottom of his ribcage and beneath a smear of blood, partially shredded away in a line of raw and torn flesh was a black-inked swastika. It had been about the size of the palm of his hand, but now the image was broken by the fact a bullet had grazed his torso badly. Near the top of the tattoo was what might have been the start of another tattoo intended to cover it up - something outlined, like a bird, maybe an eagle. It was unfinished and did little to hide what was truly there.

The bullet hadn't hit any organs, passing through flesh and muscle for a nasty graze.

Weston looked away, not making eye contact with Kit now that he was shirtless.

"Hopefully its something that can be patched up." He offered quietly.

Kit paused, but he understood. It was hard to let somebody else touch you, especially out here where everyone wanted you dead. He should've smiled, said something like "it's alright", but he couldn't find it in him to care.

He followed the soldier to the bed and opened his med kit while he took his shirt off. He only gave the soldier's body a quick glance to find the wound, hardly registering the existence of tattoos as he grabbed his isopropyl alcohol.

He whistled and chuckled a bit. "You look like a damn alleyway, man. Shame to tear it up." He grinned as he said it, not bothering to clarify that he thought the tattoos were cool. Maybe later, when he was healed.

"This is gonna sting." He warned as he wet a bit of gauze and started cleaning the wound. He held him down with one hand on his chest to make sure he didn't move as he cleaned the wound.

He wiped away the last of the blood and froze as he uncovered the tattoo.

He didn't like nazis. Of course he didn't like nazis, nobody did, but something about the sight of it made his blood boil.

'Rory... Those fuckers beat Rory...'

He dropped the gauze.

'Rory.. I met him after the war. I'm not... This isn't...'

He turned pale and started to shake, feeling sick to his stomach, cold and clammy but with a burning rage.

"Where'd ya get that?" He asked, his voice a low growl that wavered. He tapped on the tattoo, just to be sure the stranger heard him.

The haze of confusion frightened him. He didn't know who this was, where he was, or what was happening. When did he start having flashbacks? How much of that was real? Most importantly...

Who was this fucking guy?

Stretching out on the bed on his back, it surprised Weston just how much of a relief it was to finally lay down. The tension in his neck, shoulders, and back made him ache on top of all the other pains he had. No doubt he'd be aching for days after this.

He wasn't entirely sure what looking like an alleyway meant. Good? Bad? A complete mess? Anything was on the table, but he was too exhausted to ask. He kept his eyes on Kit, watching him work - and it was a good thing he did, too.

The exact moment that Kit saw it, the thing he'd kept hidden since he went to prison, Weston saw it on his face - saw the way he went pale as a ghost. Of course he'd ask, no matter how much Weston wished he wouldn't.

"A real long time ago, back when I was different. I'm not like that anymore." He sounded well beyond defensive with his answer.

"It was when I was nineteen. Back home. I was a fucking dumbass who didn't know better."

Kit didn't move, watching the blood trickle out of the wound. That wasn't what he really cared about, not really. He believed in people growing and changing, sure, but he didn't give a rat's ass if it was the same fucker that almost killed his boyfriend.

"Were you in a gang?" He asked quietly, hazel eyes like corroded daggers as his gaze flicked to the injured man's face.

Weston hesitated, studying Kit's face. It wasn't something he talked about much with anyone, let alone a stranger while he was already injured and in a precarious spot.

"Yeah, I was. Basically born into it. I ain't from around here though - we were in West Virginia." It was a simple, detail-light answer. Without knowing who this guy was, he was loathe to share more.

Kit grit his teeth and his brow furrowed before he gave a dark laugh.

"Your guys broke my boyfriend's ribs. Almost killed him. Maybe did. I never saw him again." He growled, a sick grin on his face. He poured the rest of the alcohol into the wound.

"He didn't do a damn thing to you, and you fuckers decided to try and kill him for knowing me."

He wanted to choke him, take the exacto knife in his pack and split his stomach the rest of the way open, maybe rip that wound open further with his fingers. But he didn't.

"Jesus fuck-!" Weston yelped out as the isopropyl alcohol poured right over, into and around his wound. It burned so strongly and so bad he couldn't help but draw his knees up and curl inwards as he turned onto his good side to get away from the pain. Not that it did him a lot of good - all he did was wind up rolling right off the bed and onto the floor with a thud and clatter.

On his hands and knees, one hand holding his side near the wound, Weston scooted up against the wall, knees up. He had a knife in his boot within easy reach, in case he needed it.

"Are you fucking insane? I don't know you, I don't know your boyfriend, I didn't do shit to either of you!" It was his assumption, anyway... he could be wrong. But he was pretty sure, this time, he didn't have anything to do with it.

"The only reason I'm in this goddamn state was because I was in prison! When the fuck would I find time to-" He grimaced, hissing in pain between his teeth. The entire left side of his body felt like it was on fire.

"I don't give a shit why you're here, it was years ago, Pennsylvania." He snapped back as he grabbed his exacto knife out of his kit.

"You fucks didn't know us then either, didn't fucking stop you, did it?" He yelled back as he took a few steps towards him. He paused, realizing he wasn't alone here. More aptly, there was a kid in the corner.

"I hope that gunshot fucking kills you." He snarled and spit in Weston's general direction before grabbing his gear and stalking out of the room.

"I've never been to fucking Pennsylvania!" Weston snarled back, pissed off and aching more now. He flinched as he was spit at, expecting something worse.

"Some fucking medic you are!" Weston glared at the back of the man as he stalked out, while he remained on the floor, curled up and feeling very defeated.

Safton Tool BeyondDandy Bullyboy Squad Togy Miaow Good_Morels Fluffy-Kat NanLia Crono MokaChan ​

 

[BeyondDandy]

NORTHVIEW
Infirmary > School Corridor
​

The group finally managed to find Wess a bed, laying him gently as the room filled with wounded individuals seeking aid. Everyone there was drenched in blood, most of it dry from the long wait times and lack of helping hands. They looked like they had just gone through war and the smell was lingered was indescribable. Casey thought he’d escape the stench of dead when he crossed into the school, but this smell burned deeper in the nose. The walk to the infirmary gave him clarity of the situation at hand and the guilt hurt his chest noticing the small children in that room. The halls were filled with injured people and unfortunates who couldn’t escape the wave of death the club brought to their doorstep. He damned Hank for making them do this. Despite the club’s effort to stop it, the carnage was in their hands and at some point they would have to pay for it. The universe would ensure that.

“You’ll be alright brother,” Casey expressed with a soft grin, giving his unconscious club member a pat on the shoulder as one of the doctors arrived to help. Casey was told to move aside and leave the room if he didn’t need any medical assistance. He looked around to find Kit had scurried off to support the rest of the medical staff and Ally was nowhere to be found - Casey could have sworn she was just in the room with them. He moved about the infirmary, stepping over people as he transferred back into the hallway. He searched for his wife and spotted Bullet’s tail as it vanished into a room around the corner. He followed the trail, hearing commotion behind him in Kit’s voice. He looked over his shoulder to see his friend stomping out of the infirmary, clearly frustrated. “Shit” Casey muttered to himself as he turned back and started towards his friend as the door closed behind Bullet.

“Hey, what happened? Is Wess okay?” Casey asked as he approached his doctor - peeking into the infirmary to see Wess’ condition hadn’t changed but noticing the man that put him there curled up on the floor. Concerned for his club member’s state of mind, Casey guided Kit away from the infirmary a bit so he could cool off. Kit suffered from post traumatic stress disorder, forgetting who he was and where he was. Like in the van, he’d trail off back to war and relive memories from his past - usually dark ones that filled him with pain. Casey didn’t understand it or try to, each member of the club danced with their own demons. He however sympathized with Kit. As one of the youngest members of their club, the things the man had to do as an Angel had triggered a lot of these memories. Watching him struggle to know who he was reminded Casey of himself.

Leaning into the man, Casey tried to calm Kit down. “It’s alright Kit. Keep your cool. As soon as the rest of our guys arrive and Wess wakes up, we’ll get out of here. We don’t owe these people anything,” he lied to himself. He looked around the hallways for a second. “Why don’t you go look for Madison? I'll get Ally and start prepping the van.” With a nod, he patted the side of his man’s arm with reassurance and headed towards the room Bullet had gone through. He knocked on the door gently before going into the room. Who he saw he couldn’t believe.

​

Namazu
Tool
NanLia
Fluffy-Kat
Good_Morels

 

[Tool]

NORTHVIEW
Inside, Cabrera's Room​

TW: Past Murder

Madison made her way through Northview High with her bag in one hand, her helmet in the other, dizzy from lack of rest but unwilling to let go without speaking to the top Samaritan stationed at their newest outpost. Nothing in this place made sense, from either moral or pragmatic grounds..... and who better to uncover the truth than the one for whom the buck summarily stopped?

The clack of a motorcycle helmet knocking against the opened door wasn't quiet, but there didn't seem to be anyone around to police who did and didn't have access to the Big Man On Campus. It was as much to announce her presence as to rouse the man from half-lidded rest.

Her face as composed and stoic as it ever was, Connor kicked the doorjamb up so the door would shut behind her. Just in case things got messy.

"Afternoon."

Brown eyes drifted over the room that had once held children, learning about Shakespeare or the quadratic equation or wherever. Fancy digs, but that tracked easily enough, even if these Samaritans were more careless than wise.



The sound stole his attention. He couldn't quite place it. But it wasn't Paca. As soon as he saw the leather-clad figure with short hair he knew it wasn't his sister. Or anyone else he knew. It punched through the fuzzy mind and forced his body to sit up against the pain.

Ignacio watched with two-colored eyes. One hand ready to grope for a sidearm he didn't realize was not there. Then he saw it. Her. He realized. He knew that person… With his lips parting and the vague memory replaying before his eyes, he muttered. "It's you."



Madison stepped into the room, having gone at her leathers with some wet wipes (hooray for luxury) and if not totally clean, at least not caked with yuck as she'd been the first time they'd met. She walked with the coiled, quiet confidence of someone who'd once been afraid and who'd become someone different. It was the dry, scaled slither of something in the desert sands, the regard of someone who took everything in and judged it against some invisible, internal system.

"Yeah. It's me."

Ignacio looked like a drunken goat had personally dragged him through a pile of crap....... though there were those who'd looked considerably worse, and she probably looked like shit, too. These days, looking like a million bucks was a red flag more often than not.

"I don't get it. When I don't get something, feels like an itch I can't scratch. You weren't busy. Figured I'd ask you direct: What are you doing here?"



The leather biker was not a man. It was a woman with short hair and blunt questions. Still alerted, Ignacio properly sat up. Gritting his teeth at the pain radiating from his leg and hurt ass, he shuffled to lean his back to the wall.

"You're an Angel."

He scanned her face. His own was wiped clean by his sister but she couldn't clear the spreading bruise around the side of his head and eye. Or erase the scratch marks.

He gazed, thinking. What was the question again?



Connor waited for the man to rearrange himself, noting the pains in his face and how he had to scoot this way or that, mentally and unintentionally mapping the injuries she'd seen him with earlier onto the way he moved now. It wasn't a compulsion born of any particular medical interest, but rather the matching up of injuries on a victim's corpse. Old habits died and came back different.

Ignacio's words made Madison blink a few times in rapid succession. At first, she took him literally; he had to have been on the really good drugs to mistake her (of all people) for an Ang-ohhh, there it was, that other penny, dropping into her lap.

The dark circles around her eyes combined with the black fringe of her lashes to make her look like she'd gotten a couple of shiners. Connor needed rest, for the injury on the back of her skull if nothing else, but there was still unfinished business, still ends staying stubbornly loose despite her best efforts to puzzle things out. One of these days she was going to bite the dust and they'd find nothing but loose ends under her leathers.

Her smile tugged at one end of her lips, giving an open parenthesis without much in the way of humor in its equations.

"I used to be. Long way from here. Old chapter fell. Came looking for another. Don't know if I still count as an Angel, out here. Don't know if I rightly want to. Haven't made up my mind."

Madison was in no hurry and was of a mind to take her own time with answering wide-ranging questions..... And she hadn't realized the guy had jumped off his train of thought and was currently staring at the rail-side posies, figuratively speaking. As a result, she stayed quiet to see if Ignacio had anything else to say or ask.



So she wasn't part of the Casey's gang. Or was now. Maybe. She wasn't sure. That put her in a weird place between people Cabrera would somewhat trust and those he would never drop his guard around. Funny. How nobody even knew he had it on almost all the damn time. In a way. Way that nobody knew existed.

His head swam with disjointed thoughts. Why the woman was here. Did she want to thank him for jumping over her back then? Or waited to hear him thank her for carrying his half dead ass to safety? She asked a question, didn't she...


"I saw what you did for Haewon." The stunt on her bike. "She's a good kid. Thank you."



This time, Madison caught that Ignacio was struggling, thanks to either drugs or head injury (had he gotten one of those? She wasn't sure).

"She was someone who needed help." Connor explained simply. "That's what you're supposed to do when someone's in trouble. Especially a kid."

After a moment of trying to figure out a better way to ask, Madison tried again.

"I'd asked you why you're here. Not why are in this room, why are you here, at this school? If you want to answer 'why are you here' as in why do you live, I guess that works too. "

She lifted her helmet to gesture at his body and bed, and then she took a step forward.

"See, I've been checking around. The Samaritans at the prison do some real fucked up shit. Gladiator death matches for entertainment. Brutal slavery. Conscript soldiers by force or the threat of it to their loved ones. Treating the ones on the bottom of the totem pole like absolute dogshit. Warbands to raid surrounding communities, take an' take, bring back slaves. An' worse. Run by a guy who calls himself King. Piece of work that one. Why, they even took the time to get a helicopter working down there at the prison. As though that was something t'be proud of. As though it was an accomplishment rather than one of the stupidest ideas I've heard in a long time. An' I heard me some doozies lately. But I digress."

She took another step.

"Word on the street says you're a big big fan. Huge fan. Hound of War for your King, long may he fuckin' rein, all that shit...... But then I look around at this place and yeah, you 'parently have gladiator death matches so that's just a carpet of red flags for the quality of your character, but then you go giving a shit about whether some kid lives or dies at the hands of the dead. You bring back meds and a bunny for some other kid. Seems like people here are better off than before you invaded. 'Cept the ones that ain't and are afraid of you and yours. Hate your guts so hard you lucky you don't got indigestion. You claimed this place in the name of the Crown, big fan of King. But then you try to fling yourself in front of me, some rando in a fight you knew wasn't one of yours."

She shook her head and came a step closer still, though still out of reach of the man in the bed, her voice quiet.

"Douchebags, real tried and true douchebags, guys like your King.... They don't give two shits who they hurt. They care about power. Power and personal glory. They're good 'bout using fear, intimidation, torture, murder to get what they want. But they're shit about building communities. Communities that last. That care. Real communities. So I got me to wondering: what's a War Dog to the Crown doin' invading some other place and yeah, doin' some serious douchebag things....... But then treatin' King's newest slaves so good. You like King, think he do a bang up job, why aren't you following the script of your idol? What made you go off book?"

Madison let that sink in. "Doesn't fit. Don't make sense. I'd bet all the little plastic toys in China that King don't give a tinker's dam about what happens to those around him. But you do, and either he's way more clever than he's acted so far..... Or the King don't know how good people got it out here. How many people ain't afraid. Of you. So..... Why? Why risk goin' off script?"

She paused again, for the final time; "What are you doing here?"



Gradually, his body began to tense and his ribcage tightened. Her approach, alarming. Her words like little spikes and an occasional dagger. Slicing and stabbing his worn, chipped armor. Cabrera was tired. He was tired of this life. Tired of fighting blind, unsure if the goal he was fighting towards still existed.

Her voice melted into memories that flashed before him like a movie.

The sounds. The steps. The harsh voices. His body braced when rough fingers dove into his matted hair and jerked his head back, exposing his throat. His adam's apple bobbed uncontrollably and his gaze darted between unfamiliar faces.

Looming and leering over him, mouths twisted with foreign tongue. Their yelling rang in his ears. Their eyes bore into him, gleaming with hostility and contempt. Making him feel even more naked. Like they tried to strip his very soul.

"Where you come, Americana?" The man holding him snarled, his stinking breath hot on Ignacio's face. "Where your base? Why are you here?!

Why go off the script?

Cabrera swallowed against bile rising in his throat, holding her gaze with some trouble when everything was still blurry. "Guess I'm just getting soft."

Grunting and huffing loudly through his nose he moved, getting to the edge of the bed. He grabbed the frame to help him stand up. So fucking weak. Fucking pathetic. His body swayed but he straightened up. Once facing the woman, holding onto the wall for support, he finally responded. "I don't fucking know what I'm doing here anymore. But if you're trying to figure out if I'm a good guy? I'm not. Nobody is in this fucked up world."



Madison didn't move to help the guy stand. It wasn't her place and there was still an undercurrent of danger between them, he still an unknown element. Contradictory. There wasn't pity or wibble-worthy sympathy in her gaze, but there wasn't any hint of contempt, either. She was simply..... watching. Taking measure.

"That's where you're wrong."

The girl looked down at bag and helmet, glancing towards the windows that should have looked out onto kids playing dodgeball. "Y'know I was a cop before all this. Detective, actually. Worked this case one time where our perp would catch little girls. Black and brown and homeless an' poor ones, ones hard to catch on the rolls. Ones not in school, easy to miss. He'd catch them and take them to this special tree. Carve up and take off all the soft parts with a pair of scissors, then bury them deep."

"Some of 'em were still alive, the techs said, when they felt shovelfulls of dirt, hitting them in the face."

"Anyway, he'd bury the scissors, too. Leave them to rust away alongside the girl, and then....... a couple years go by, he'd get himself a new pair of scissors, do it again. There were so many pairs of rusty scissors down there, I couldn't cut paper with anything but an exacto knife. Heard the sound of scissors going snip-snip in my dreams for weeks. Still do, sometimes."

Her eyes never left Ignacio, leaning against the wall and wobbly-kneed against a stiff breeze.

"I've seen evil men. Real, actual, tangible evil. Rot, down deep. Saw a lot of good people, too. Plenty with the capacity for self-sacrifice, doin' things to their own detriment and self-preservation for a cause, a stranger, a friend, a loved one. Seen bad guys decide to be better. Become better. Took a lot of guts, those guys. Sometimes a little help, too."

She shook her head ruefully. "Honestly, it kind of drives me nuts, seein' these compounds these places where people decide to play warlord or white-nationalist dickwad or cult leader or slaver now. Like we don't have literal monsters out there. Like white zombies matter more 'n black ones. Like there aren't just two camps: team pulse and team not. Drives me crazy, seeing people choosing to make the same mistakes. Forgetting that we all belong to one another. Like now is when you're makin' the big play to be a big o'll bag of floppy-ass dicks, like you got nothin' better to do..... like there aren't things worth fighting for. Paper names and fantasies, distracting 'em from what's really important. Idiots, every last one of 'em. Dangerous idiots, some of them, but still morons."

Madison visibly relaxed, letting out a chuckle and adjusting the weight of her bag on her shoulders and she scratched at the back of her neck with the hand that held the helmet. "Damn but I get talky after I don't get to, 'nymore."

She shook her head and refocused on the man in front of her, her demeanor that of a person rather than judge, a woman rather than rattler.

"We all choose who we want to be. Who we become. An' it ain't no super cool club name or some Crown who's gonna decide it for you. You let them decide, you're still making a choice. You figure out you wanna be more than a bad guy goin' soft in a fucked up world....... you let me know."

"Way you got on that mounted gun, way you put your ass between a stranger an' harm, figure you got a shiny-finey spine somewhere in there, so you ever want to put it to better use, look me up. I'll be 'round. World's changing all the time. Only thing that matters is who is doin' the changing and why."

With that, Madison turned to leave.



Cabrera shifted his weight to the unhurt leg but that's where his injured asscheek strained. Sore all over, his jaw set, trying to focus. On her face, her body language, and mainly on her words.

A cop. That explained a lot.

Her story didn't scare him. He's seen things done to kids, even babies, throughout his military career. But still the honest description made him feel nauseous. There was a moral to this story, of course there was. And it wasn't about the psycho. It was her proving Cabrera had a choice. Yes he fucking had it. She didn't even know half of the choices he made and why! She didn't even-

His breaths amplified in the quiet room when she was done and turned her back to him. Gritting his teeth he uttered. "You're naive."



Madison paused, her bag against the middle of her back, her curled fingers pale around the handle, other hand holding the helmet loose. Her head turned somewhat, putting her in three-quarters profile against a white board that had long since gone matte with disuse.

Her voice was conversational, even quiet. "Am I? Maybe. Life without any new regrets to my name. Death without fear....... I'll take that trade. Sure."



"Turn off the lights for long enough and humanity starts regressing." He was still wearing the bulletproof vest and the torn fabric beneath it. His bare biceps flexed as he pushed himself off the wall and took a few careful steps towards her.

"You really thought they would embrace each other cause boo hoo real monsters out there? Look around you. You been out there, haven't you? Average men and women become predators just to survive, to protect their flock. Men like these?" He vaguely gestures at the door. "They'd be like fucking animals on the loose. Raping and killing and taking all they wanted if someone didn't keep them in line. No matter what your fantasy about humanity is, the reality is most of them that made it? They don't choose to be good people. My choice?"

He bared his teeth and took another step with the socks-covered feet without focusing on how he's putting them. "To stand in between them and the vulner-" He stepped wrong on the hurt leg and lost balance, clattering face down with a pained yelp trapped in his throat.



Madison turned all the way around when it became clear that the guy wanted to talk, to justify to her (or more likely himself) the decisions he'd made. Right about when he was declaring his intention to stand betwixt the men he led and the vulnerable (which was a choice but perhaps not the wisest one), something went wrong feet-wards and down he went in a clattering pile of too many elbows and knees.

Without thinking about it, Madison slung her bag around and let it drop to the floor, walked to where Ignacio could have sliced through her Achilles heel if he'd had a blade and necessary leverage, and bent down, hand out, arm extended. Far be it for her to intrude upon the very manliest of speeches, but it wasn't going to have quite the same punch if announced to linoleum that had seen more spitballs than faces.

The woman's face remained neutral, non-judgmental, bearing neither smirk nor pity.



Ignacio forced himself up on a shaky arm and shot a glance up, seeing her hand open to him. Not as embarrassed as he was irrationally pissed at his body for not complying, the man clasped his arm to hers. His hand clenched over her forearm, and he pulled. To haul himself up.

His heavy frame lifted with his good leg boosting him up. Too fast. Not prepared. Too weak. He lost footing and went back down, his firm grip jerking her figure down over him.

Her chest hit his chest, knocking the air out of him. Cheek brushing cheek, bodies pressed flush for the moment as he took a sharp breath. Pain radiating through the back of his skull. The space between them reduced to nothing. His body on low burn, feeling the kick of adrenaline that anticipated a struggle. But with all cognitive reasoning briefly switched off, his instinct was to catch and hold. To protect. His arm was hooked around her waist, against her lower spine. Right hand curled around the back of her neck.

Suddenly aware of the soft end of curly black hair under his fingers. Shape of another body fit secured within the borders of his orbit. Coherency shattered after he hit his head, again, so he didn't think much of it when he broke hazy eye contact. Settling his gaze instead on the curve of her lips.



The jerk downwards to land atop a body was far more familiar to Madison as a zed-head move than any expression of tenderness by one of the living; being dragged down by a swarm wasn't an automatic death sentence thanks to her getup, but it was a harrowing experience every time it happened, demanding both luck and skill to wait for somebody in the drooling peanut gallery to slip up and allow her enough freedom of movement to continue the fight proper.

An arm went around her waist above the swell of her ass and a hand cupped the back of her neck to draw her close, and if Ignacio was admiring the gentle curl of her lips, Connor was dropping her helmet and bringing her forearm between their faces to give Ignacio something to bite onto while the hand opposite pulled one of the smaller blades at her side and brought it up in a swift motion towards his temple to......

Madison didn't drop the blade, but she did scramble off the man and onto her feet. Her movements had been swift and automatic, born out of hours and hours of repetition every day for..... too long...... and the guy was damn lucky she'd gone and cleaned off her gear so she hadn't given him a nice mouth-full of zombie guts. As it was, Ignacio could enjoy the taste of lavender-scented wet-wipes, kills 99% of bacteria on contact!

The adrenaline flooding her system anew was gonna give her a coronary one of these days. Since Ignacio was facing up, Madison locked eyes with the moron on the ground. "Yeah..... stand between the animals you brought here and the people you sic'd them on. Not a great plan. Since you're already down there, cram a cork in that man-ologue of yours."

"These people were surviving without you. Are they better defended now? Maybe. Did they get some fancy animals? Yeah. Are they better off? No. Nobody in human history ever lived a better life by having a boot on their neck and getting told that it was for their own good. Right now, they're gettin' along fine with your gang, but sooner or later some of them are gonna remember what freedom felt like. Or, the guy you work for, y'know, the Conquering Bandit King and his army of invading dickbags? The one you like sooooo much? He's gonna come see how the place he sent you to invade is doing. How exactly do you think that one's gonna go? Hell, two Samaritans are probably on their way to see 'im right now, with the corpse of that mole lady you sent ahead to soften this place up before forcing yourself inside the gates."

As she spoke, Connor sheathed the blade and bent down to hike her hands beneath the Great and Fearless Leader's armpits because oooooooo he just had to give a big speech while on his goddamn feet instead of from bed like a normal fuckin' human being.



Her initial reaction woke him up. But she got off him before he could try and intercept the blade. That he'd use on the enemy. She was the enemy. No she wasn't, he didn't know if she was. But in that moment she was the threat. Her words smacked him in the face like a wet whip. Making it harder to focus. She had a blade in hand. She almost used it on him.

Cabrera tried to speak but all that came out was a gravely cough. The man struck him hard across the cheek. Pain exploded through his face and he tasted fresh copper in his mouth. They kept yelling at him but Ignacio didn't know. He didn't know how he got there and why. His mind was blank, paralyzed by temporary amnesia.

"Think you can come and do what you want?! Think you Americana can come take our home?!"

Ignacio gasped when the assaulter yanked his head back harder and pressed a blade to his windpipe. "N-no wait!"

Fucking wake up!

His muscles tightened and he forced himself to sit up on shaking arms. When she tried to grab him he jerked one out to shove her away. Shallow breaths heaved his kevlar-covered torso, ejecting a guttural snarl. "Get out." The scowl made his red eye look like a demon. "Get the fuck out!" His hand shot up to point at the door.



When the man swept up his hands and waved away her help, ordering her to get the fuck out without actually answering anything she'd had to say, his gaze filling with pointed rage, Connor did step away, crouching down to rest her elbows on her knees, but she met his gaze with her own. She was level, steady, aggravated to shit but sure as hell unafraid. She held up three, leather-clad fingers.

"Third time in as many days somebody in a position of power over others tries to order me around, like their mere presence entitles them to authority over my soul. I'm not one of King's subjects, I'm not one some civilian you and your buddies bullied into ruling, and I sure as shit don't take orders from someone who don't got the sense god gave a goose."

The woman's hands dropped and she shook her head



Ignacio felt nauseous, like back then. Hurt. Trapped in restraints. Out of control. The fear that drenched him in cold sweat was concealed by the angry expression. What exactly was showing on his face he couldn't say. Unfocused, a little wild. Like an animal backed into a corner. She didn't know- She didn't have a fucking clue. She didn't know.

"Get the fuck out of my room!" The changed pitch in his tone betrayed the pump of his heartbeat. Forcing joints to move like a rusted machine, he slammed his palm to the closest furniture and started climbing up to his feet.



Madison paused a moment, then made magic jazz-hands as she got to her feet.

"See? I choose what I do. My soul is my own. Remarkable, right?"

The woman shrugged, and picked up her bag from the floor, wavering for a moment before a hard blink restored her vision and made the world stop quivering. Too long. Too long on her feet, too long without rest or food or water. Shit. It looked like the Top Dog was going to get his wish after all. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet though still quite audible in the smallish space.

"Humans are not all predators and rapists and murderers and ultraviolent psychotics. To my understanding, the people living in this High School weren't. I came in here to offer to help you. Help you be better than King's war dog. Help you keep the people you invaded safe from your boss. You wanna double down, lick the boot of some warlord, believe humanity is past saving, past being worth fighting for? That's on you. I choose to believe differently. If that makes me some naive, delusional sucker...... I'd still rather be that than what you're choosing to remain."

The girl walked to the door, then looked back at the man who'd chosen to back the wrong side and was, despite potential, still choosing to do so.

"Without any hope that things can get better, life is pointless and evolution is overrated. See you around, Pecs for Brains." With that, Madison left Ignacio and his deluxe accommodations behind her, looking for somewhere she might catch a wink or two without getting knifed.

Bullyboy Squad​

 

[Namazu]

NORTHVIEW
School Library​

Weston didn't wait long before he gathered up his shirt and coat and stormed out of the infirmary. He didn't know these people, didn't trust them, and figured they didn't trust him either. Not before this, and certainly not now. He didn't know exactly what he planned to do next, but he knew he wanted distance between himself and everyone else.

The day had been too much for him. Too much stress, too much adrenaline, too much on the line. And Weston was fucking exhausted. Carrying his shirt and jacket slung over over shoulder and rifle over the other, Weston trudged grim-face down the hallway, taking stock of what he saw as he passed. People were slowly doing what they could to try and clean up. Bodies being hauled out, debris being tossed or at least moved out of the way. There were also plenty of people just finding quiet corners to sit down and breathe and rest. In several classrooms Weston passed, he found people sitting alone, in pairs, or in small groups - either talking in hushed tones with each other or just staring off into space. He couldn't blame them, it was pretty much what he'd set off to do.

Weston pushed open a door to what he thought was going to be just another classroom, but stopped short when he saw it was the school's library.

It was an interior room of the school, windowless and surprisingly untouched. The shelves were still upright and full of books, tables right-side-up, and chairs intact. The computers had been largely unplugged and piled up onto a table in one corner to make room to use the long tables for other things. Even the carpet was generally blood-free here.

Figuring it was the best bit of solitude he was going to get here, Weston left the door open behind him as he wandered in and took stock of the room. Safe, no dead, no bodies, no Northfolk. Silent, save for his own ragged breathing.

Sliding his rifle and clothes off his shoulders, he approached a cozy reading nook at the side of the room, where he could have a clear line of sight of the doorway without being too obvious to anyone who came in. More than that, he was lured in by the sight of four oversized fluffy-looking bean-bag chairs.

Weston couldn't remember the last time he sat in one of these, and God did they ever look inviting. Setting his gear off to the side against a squat little table in the middle of it all (which absolutely looked like something a student made in shop class), Weston very carefully lowered himself into the beanbag chair.

"Oh fuck." Weston sighed out, sinking back into it and resting his head back, closing his eyes. Yes, he grunted and winced as he had lowered himself, but the feeling of being cradled in something soft was beyond heavenly right now.

He absolutely needed one of these back at the prison.



Connor was furious again, and she was getting awful tired of it.

Helmet in hand, her precious bag in the other, Madison made her way to the school library. She made it a point, these days, to stop by any one she was near, both to find something to ease the storms that seemed to ever-rage beneath her skin and because it was the next best thing to human contact. Books, Madison had discovered, were like friends, with the added bonus of never dying or being assholes. The woman desperately needed sleep, and she'd started to notice the little hallucinations along the edge of her vision that meant she was inching towards passing out altogether.

So..... library. There were worse places.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

It was a pleasure to burn.

Yeah...... there were worse places, and it was Madison's terrible, terrible exhaustion that made her miss the shirtless guy in the corner, enjoying a beanbag. Anger and frustration still ran round-robin around her mind, and she knew she needed to decompress at least a little before attempting to sleep.



Weston cracked open one eye as he heard the sounds of footsteps entering the library. Maybe it shouldn't have surprised him that it was Madison, maybe it should have. He silently watched her for a moment, wondering what he could even say. Finally he cleared his throat.

"Once more in a library, huh? Well. The room's clear. Barely touched, too. Good a place as any to rest up. Probably better than the... last one." His voice trailed off, not really wanting to go there again, back to their first encounter way back however many months ago.



Madison startled as she turned, but it had been a voice rather than the shuffle of movement or sound that might indicate an enemy, so the auto-generated response to draw was tempered by reality.....and in truth, she just wasn't at her best any more. Too long without food or rest would eventually take down even the strongest human being, an immunity she envied the dead.

"Fu-.... fuckin' hell."

After taking a deep breath, free of the odor of rot or putrescence, the woman forced herself to relax.

"Low bar. And yeah. Got too ratched-up to sleep, like a genius. Serves me right to go try an' talk to the boss of this place befo-"

Wait, why was Weston shirtless in a beanbag chair? In the library? Also, still bleeding?

After a long moment, Connor decided it was best to be doubly sure: "Look.... Don't take this the wrong way, but I gotta know: you real?"



He tried really, really hard not to, but Weston couldn't help but laugh.

"Lady, I'm as real as the pain I just sat through. Fuckin' medic from those guys on bikes just poured a whole goddamn bottle of rubbin' alcohol right on my wound, spit on me, and walked off." He propped his elbow on the edge of the beanbag chair and rested his head against his hand.

"I swear I think I felt my balls climb up into my body for a second there." He sighed. "Still burns but its slowly going away. Bleeding has mostly stopped. Raw as fuckin' hamburger though and this shit hurts. I ducked out before anyone wanted to make a scene."



Madison nodded tiredly, a small smile playing on her lips. "Fallen Angels. Motorcycle gang's called the Fallen Angels. Some of them seem okay, others are real pieces of work. Shame, too."

A limp hand gestured towards his body. "Take it they took offense at your décor?"

With a turn on her heels, Connor started walking towards her..... friend? Nah, didn't know him well enough for that, and the shit he'd pulled on her still made her feel like a fool. More than usual. Well, he was an acquaintance, at least. It was something.



Weston froze. His breath caught in his throat and he swore his heart stopped for a moment.

Fallen Angels?

"What?" It explained why their so-called medic was such a nasty piece of shit. And now his heart was racing.

"Jesus fucking Christ - they're Fallen Angels?" Weston was already trying to climb out of his chair, which took some effort and grunting, but he managed to get out and up again. He hurried towards the library door, glancing up and down the hall to make sure nobody was watching or listening, and closing the windowless door quick as he could without making any noise.

"All of 'em? Who's the fucking leader? Christ, fuck, I-" Weston paced from the door back to the beanbag chairs.

"I need to tell Ignacio. We're not-" He paused a moment, realization crossing his face as he looked to Madison.

"Are you one of them?"



Madison felt a little drunk as Weston hoisted himself out of his chair, and walked past her to the door and closed it like this was some Grand Revelation. She closed her eyes so she didn't get dizzy with all his pacing.

"Ignacio Cabrera? The Samaritan guy in charge of here? I'm sure he knows; that was the Vice President's girlfriend or wife he was huggin' on earlier. Curly haired chick? Dog?" Connor shook her head. "Don't remember her name."

"And...... I don't know anymore. I used to be, I guess? Chapter full of old guys in a podunk nothin' town called Elkin. It fell to the dead pretty early on, so I made my way out here, maybe try and find...... Fuck, I don't know. People I could trust? A crew?"

A shrug carried the weight of the world on her shoulders. "Fallen Angel chapter out here is........ not great. Not roasting cool-ranch-babies awful, but....... still. Not great. Startin' to think I'd be better off solo. Wait, why?"



Weston gritted his teeth at that news. He didn't blame Ignacio - he'd never told the man what all had happened - but it made things so much more complicated. His jaw worked as he paced, rubbing his hand against the back of his neck in thought. He was irritated enough a vein in his neck bulged.

"Those fuckers-" He needed to get ahold of himself before he did anything stupid, because right now, he really felt like picking up that rifle, stepping out, and blowing some people away.

"You need to be very careful around them, you hear me? It was a chapter of Fallen Angels that hit my place, shortly after all the shit went to hell and dead started walkin'."

Weston stepped up closer to Madison and lowered his voice - not trying to get into her space to scare her, but because he was on edge and needed her to understand the gravity and seriousness of this.

"They killed the man I loved, the only family I ever had, and they laughed while they did it. Because it was fun to them."



Madison didn't give ground or back up, even when Weston stepped into her personal space and spoke to her, deadly serious. Her eyes did widen a little at the news, and the clicking of gears in her brain was nearly audible at close distance. Right now, she was a 15 watt bulb, but she was doing her best.

A Fallen Angels chapter went to a White Supremacist group and murdered every-fuck-body and enjoyed doing so. It.... wasn't exactly burning-down-an-orphanage levels of terrible, not evildoers going out of their way to slaughter innocents, but still. Not great.

Madison remembered the assumption Weston had made when she'd come upon him in the infirmary, how he'd been worried she'd just shoot anyone with the Samaritans, just like that, not in an active firefight, but because of what group to which they pledged their allegiance. Weston wasn't entirely wrong; someone who was ride-or-die for an awful group of people didn't rise in her estimation, but the woman tried to do what was right.

Some days, it was a struggle.

"I'm already careful around them. Their President's a scrumsucker. He's already on my personal shit list. Vice's an arrogant prick, but I don't think he's a total loss. Came to warn them about zombies and got my bike nicked and a maybe-concussion for my trouble. Still hurts like a bitch. They've even got a prisoner they're keeping for collateral. That makes 'em dip pretty hard in my eyes, but then..... it's not like the High School people here are any better off."

Her head turned a little, looking upwards into Weston's agitated eyes.

"You get a look at their faces?"



Weston nodded, swallowing several times. It helped that Madison didn't immediately jump to their defense or make excuses, but instead shared her read on the group. It was a good thing she wasn't in tight with them.

"I did, yeah. Got their faces burned into my brain. I see that shit at night, when I close my eyes, more often than I'd like to admit." Weston backed away, suddenly realizing he was probably out of line getting up in her space like this. He found a table to lean against instead, hand reaching up to cover the dog tags that hung around his neck.

"They're big. Lots of chapters." Weston toyed with the metal tags, staring at the door in thought.

"I think I was the only one that lived. They left me because they thought I was dead already. Took our shit and ran off, after they threw a goddamn grenade at us and opened fire. When I came-to, there wasn't anything left. They killed teenagers too. Goddamn kids. It wasn't the first time I saw somebody dead get right back up again, but it was the first-" He stopped himself, surprised at how his voice cracked with emotion.

"It was the first time it was somebody I knew. And you know what I had to do? I fucking stayed there and I had to finish off what was left of my chapter, my family, by myself. They got up, growlin' and bitin', and I had to put 'em back down again. Like we hadn't just been fightin' side-by-side with each other hours earlier. I had to..." He trailed off, looking away.

"They gutted Dave. I almost let him bite me. Sometimes I wonder if I should have." He added quietly.

"I ain't worn my old patch since then. Couldn't bring myself to do it."



Madison listened, and though the tale of camp raids was a tale as old as time, the pain that bloomed in Weston's gaze, the tension in his shoulders, the ghosts that reached out from memory to drag him down until there was nothing left..... it all hurt to see, even if he'd (unintentionally) played her for a sucker. Putting down zombies who'd once been loved ones also wasn't terribly uncommon, though a tiny, sweet girl looked briefly out from Madison's honey-brown eyes, reminding her of the rocks in her own ruck.

"I....... I've never been in love. Not like that. But I've killed monsters who wore the faces of people I cared about. And.... No. You shouldn't have."

The woman put her helmet down on the counter and deposited the bag of stuff beside it.

"Honor the fallen by.... Never mind. Talk too much."

She patted the counter on the librarian side. "Sit. I got a sewing kit. Put some buttons on that wound before I can't uncross my eyes."



Weston nodded - he really needed that wound dealt with, and even if Madison was pissed at him, she at least wasn't ready to stab him. With a grunt, he hopped himself up on the counter. He eyed her bag wearily.

"I hope you don't literally mean buttons." He glanced down, and a shiver ran through him. He'd received stitches before, but it was always from a nurse, with anesthetic. This time? He was going raw.

Unbuckling his belt, he slid it out of the loops of his jeans and folded it in half.

"To bite on."



A shake of her head accompanied the sound of generalized rummaging, followed by a small, travel-sized sewing kit and a container of ultra-glide dental floss. At least it wasn't peppermint.

"Not that far gone. I was trying for humor."

When Madison sank into the black rolly chair, she let out a noise of supreme satisfaction. Then, she went to work on the duct-tape along the seam of her gloves to her jacket. It came loose with a bit of picking, and then some unraveling. The right glove was first, and when exposed to air for the first time in over a day, Madison's hand flexed a little, curling the fingers in and out and enjoying the feel of cool air. Her fingertips were wrinkly from all the time she'd spent in her leathers, and she'd gained a few new nicks in the pale of her skin. She was halfway picking through the next set of duct-tape when she spoke anew.

"Why do you want King dead? You're his number two, you gunning for the throne? I'm...... I'm too tired to judge. Just want the truth."



Weston chewed on his bottom lip as he thought about how to put it all into words, how to answer Madison's question about what he had whispered to her earlier, while fiddling with the belt between his hands. He knew exactly what the answer was, but it wasn't easy to say out loud.

"Because... he's turning me into a monster again. I don't want to go down that path." His fist tightened around his belt.

"I don't want a goddamn throne and I sure as shit don't want to be on it. I don't want people looking over their shoulders all the time, wondering who is going to stab them in the back next. I don't know what the people here have told you, but its probably all true. It wasn't, at first. You know how I landed this spot? I stood up for the folks that King's men were trying to steamroll over. Every time his men started to swing their dicks around, I went to King and said, 'hey, you keep doing this, you'll piss off the people that are actually doing the work of keeping this place running. Do you want that?' And people respected me for it. Listened. Ain't sure anyone actually liked me but not being hated was nice."

Weston let his shoulders sag. He still hadn't had a chance to clean himself up, so that spot where Kit had rubbed him down with alcohol was the cleanest patch of skin on him. Everything else was sweaty, dirty, bloody, or a combination of the above.

"And somewhere along the line, I just... I dunno. Things got too fucked up. I got fucked up. I've killed people because he ordered me to, and some part of my brain made it make sense, and so I did it... because I was too afraid to keep standing up and saying no."



Glove number two came off, and Madison shed her outermost leather jacket like a snake shrugging off something unneeded. The padding on top of more leather stayed on, but it was clearer with the outermost protection gone the actual lines of her body beneath the armaments of war. After knuckling at the corners of her eyes and giving herself a solid slap in the face that seemed both casual and necessary, she spent the next minute or two listening and threading a needle with a length of white floss.

What was the point of having a voice at all if you stayed silent when you shouldn't have?

Even so, fear was a powerful motivator, and Weston was a man accustomed to justifying his actions to himself; he couldn't have grown up among white supremacists otherwise.

"Talked to the head War Dog of this place. Ignacio Cabrera. Don't think he liked me much, but according to him, the Samaritans, the ones here and presumably back at the prison are a bunch of raping, murderous animals. Now.... I'm aware that the ratio of actual homicidal psychotics to the general population of human beings is pretty low. I should know. But...... What I've heard of the Samaritans; the slavery, the torture, the death pits, pillaging, all that, it would attract the type."

She looked up at the man and nodded. "Bite down."

Carefully, the girl began pinching two sides of flesh together and....... Playing seamstress. She'd gotten enough stitches in her day to make a fair approximation, doing one at a time, tying it off, snipping away the excess, and repeating the process. That's why she kept the kit and the floss (along with proper dental hygiene).

"So you want to kill a King and presumably live. Or you want me to do so. Don't answer now, obviously, but here's things to think about: Does he ever go outside? He guarded? Got a taster for his food? If you kill him, somebody worse gonna try for the crown? Normally, I'd say kill him quick and clean, double tap to the brain. Presumably he's not bulletproof. But..... If Ignacio is right about the makeup of the Samaritans, then there should be a lot of dead bodies when the dust settles. Because that is what you do with raping, homicidal psychotics in the apocalypse. You..... You do realize that, right?"

Connor leaned back and cracked her neck, gesturing at the belt. "Breathe. Take a minute. I'm going to. About half done, by the way."

She took a glance at the guy's back and amended the estimation. "Half done on this side."



Obediently, Weston put the length of his leather belt between his teeth and bit down. Boy, was he ever glad he did that. The man was no stranger to being in pain, having had his fair share of beatings and injuries in his life, but the sharp burn of a needle through skin - without any numbing at all, not even alcohol to bury it with - was a new kind of awful. Especially on skin that was already tender. The noise that escaped him through leather and clenched jaw was most definitely one of pain. He grabbed on to the edges of the desk and squeezed, bending his legs around the desk and doing his best to keep himself in place and still as stone. Whether or not he was over-reacting to just stitches was debatable, but he was not having a good day.

Her comment about talking to Ignacio had his interest, but he didn't have the brain cells to ask. Not until Madison told him to take a minute to breathe and he spat the belt off. He sucked in a breath and held it for a moment, squeezing his eyes shut and cussing under his breath.

"Yeah? Sounds like he covered it all. Don't forget the whorehouse. Though the gal that runs it, she's good people, I think. Like me. Just trying to keep her head above water. I like her. I don't want her getting hurt." He let out a heavy breath, not daring to glance down at Madison's handiwork yet.

"Ignacio is a good man, I think. Possibly better than me. Tries to be, anyway. I don't want him getting hurt either." He sucked in another breath, exhaling slowly.

"That's the shit I worry about. All the people that are gonna wind up bodies in the end."



Madison shook her head. "No, no, focus. I'm real glad you think the guy who led the invasion of this place is tits along with the Madam of the pussy palace back at home base, but that's not the point. Not my point. I'm saying..... What am I saying..... Fuck me..... "

The girl breathed in and out for a moment and tried again.

"You said you wanted King dead. Cool. Great. From what I hear, a slug to the face couldn't happen to a nicer, more deserving asshole. What I'm asking you is about his habits. Food. Outside time. Guards. Anybody you know willing to die to protect your King. Anybody you know willing to die to kill him. Does he sleep deep inside the building. Does his bedroom have windows. Does he keep innocent people around him. Are we talking dagger in the night, a thousand swords at dawn, a poisoned Pepsi, a LAW to his kingly bed. Fuck, I got a handbook of homemade explosives I've found real helpful. You got options. But if your King dies, you sure you can handle what comes next? You called the Samaritans your people for better and for worse."



Weston rubbed his forehead. Thinking was hard when everything hurt. He was tired of thinking. Hell, he was just plain tired.

"Eats alone, unless someone is specifically invited to join him. Takes the best food for himself, pretends shit hasn't gone to hell while everyone else eats whatever can of slop they get. Rarely outside, from what I've seen. Always surrounded by guards. Two at the door to his room, minimum, others in the room with him. Never alone. Plenty of fuckheads willing to kill for him, and die for him. Ain't sure how many people would be willing to die to kill him though. Has his own room, sleeps there. Probably makes use of the whores, but I'm not sure which. We, uh... we might have shared the same girl for awhile, maybe, but she's gone now. Accidental. Head injury."

Weston grimaced at himself as he rattled all this off. Not only was he a scumbag, murderer, and coward, now he was a traitor too. He half expected an enforcer to burst into the room, mid-sentence, and blow him away.

"Gettin' to him is damn near impossible. I doubt I could aim and squeeze a trigger fast enough to take him out before getting killed myself." Weston shook his head.

"Shit's already starting to unravel at the prison. People are getting fed up. Making waves. King's trying to stamp it out. Shit's real tense lately."



Madison didn't notice the grimace of shame, instead rubbing at the space above her left eyebrow, taking in everything Weston was saying and grinding it all fine enough to make coffee with a little hot water. When she was able to focus without black pollywoggles peeking around the edges of her vision, she continued.

"Okay first off, not ever going outside is real fucked up for a guy who was in prison but not for funsies. Bite down."

The woman was quiet for some time, needle sliding into and out of the necessary parts, doing her best to ignore the tension in Weston's body and the way his skin was blanching white up to the wrist while he gripped at whatever he could reach and tried not to scream. Successfully, for the most part, Madison had to admit. Small, strangled, pain-noises didn't count.

"I'd say good option one is a Barrett sniper rifle. Fifty caliber. It'll punch through a car no problem, easy-peasy range is about a city block. Find a good spot and hunker down for between one and three days, wait for the guy to be somewhere visible. Like a window. Not easy to find, but it'll absolutely take out a cement wall or two, plus whoever happens to be around. Thing will bring down a fighter jet if it's fired right. Have to find an armory of whatever kind."

Madison finished the front side of Weston's injury, then leaned on the counter and shut her eyes.

"Decent option two is to find a police station that got some sweet, sweet federal army overstock. SWAT's got vehicles they used overseas. If you're willing to drive reckless, it's real easy to make a new door through a wall, have somebody on turret duty. Bigger cities won't have anything like that left lying around, but you'd be amazed how many tiny nothing towns got police stations kitted out like they were gonna go to war with the ruskies any minute. You'd also be surprised how much folks panic when you drive through a wall with what amounts to a low-grade tank. King might think he's hot shit, but I promise you his guards are not secret service agents. They are not trained to cope with shit like that. To say nothing of tear gas, grenade launchers, battering rams, etcetera."

She breathed in, then out.

"So.... So I'm not gonna be awake much longer, I don't think." Madison opened her eyes and looked over at Weston, apologetically.

A finger gestured vaguely towards YA Fiction J-M.

"I see a hand. Like a giant hand through the ceiling, making a fist on the floor. I'm aware it's not there. Just looks like it. I think..... I think I've been awake too long. Turn around."



Dreading the return of the needle to sharp skin but wanting to get this over with, Weston bit down on his belt again and held on to the desk for sheer life. It hurt his hands and wrists to squeeze so hard, but it was what he needed to do to stay still.

As Madison spoke of her ideas - sniper rifles and mini-tanks - Weston gave her a look and grunted out a muffled "Fuck" between the leather of his belt. Those ideas sounded insane.... insanely effective. He had no idea where to find that stuff though. Not yet.

But he knew who might.

Madison's comment about seeing a giant fucking fist absolutely made him look up and over, as if he'd see the same thing. He did not. He took the belt out from between his teeth briefly as he carefully shuffled on the desk, turning around to put his back towards Madison.

"I get it. I'm exhausted too." He paused, belt inches from his mouth again.

"I'm seeing shit too. Not just today. For the past... month or so... sometimes I think I'll see Dave standing somewhere just out of the corner of my eye. I turn, and he's gone. Not all the time, just sometimes. I figure shit's getting to me." He admitted quietly, shoving the belt back between his teeth and grunting to confirm he was ready for more stitches.



Madison nodded, not registering that Weston couldn't see her doing so with his eyes facing forward.

"Yeah. I see ghosts sometimes, too. Helps keep me on the path. This though, this is just me bein' awake too many days in a row." Her smile was a grim one, and it showed in her voice. "Never failed a giant hand"

As she began pinching and sewing on Weston's back, the stitching now was somewhat sloppy; though she still tried her best, Connor's visual perspective was starting to skew, Weston's tatts becoming a grey, smushy blur.

"If the tank's the way to go, then you'll still need to..... To make sure King's somewhere near where the vehicle goes in. Same floor, I mean. Also means.... Also means doing your best to keep any innocent people outta the way. Downstairs, maybe, if you cleared out the sub-basement, or..... Or outside."

In. Out. Jesus.

"Othshn..... Other option is split it in half. Rescue mission to get people out, sly. Followed by burninin...... Followed by burning his court to the ground. Then you don't gotta be.... Careful."

Madison shook her head roughly and poked her own finger with the needle until a drop of crimson welled like a bubble.

"Listen. Listen. I. Know you chosea side. We ain't nothin..... But push me under th'drsk would ya? Mmnot dying in a fighting pit. I'll go crazy if I en.... If I end up in one of them, again, and they do'em. Here. Wanna...... Wanna die with m'head on right, if I can. Undertssand?"



The tank sounded like a terrible idea - a last resort only if they were willing to lose the prison along with everything else. The risk of collateral damage was too high.

When he heard Madison's words start to slur, Weston glanced over his shoulder at her and momentarily removed the belt from between his teeth.

"You're not gonna die on me, are you? Just exhausted? And yeah, I'll slide you under the desk and hide you. I get it."



"Yeah. No. Someday. Not today. Prolly."

Madison's exhaustion went down to her bones, seeping into every part of her and leeching color from the world. So much for needing to find a new story to fill the absence inside her, so much for needing to unwind before her body simply gave up the fight and took what it demanded from her waking mind. She'd given advice, the most straightforward ways to kill a King with the highest chances of success, considering there was no way to get in close..... And she'd added a name to her shit list. If Weston failed or fell, maybe she'd make King her own business.

A final snip and the stitching was done, a little loosey goosey at that last. Everything was a watery smear in her vision, and the world kept wanting to tip widdershins. Sliding from the chair to the floor was easy, if ungraceful, ending with the woman on her hands and knees and the chair rolling to a stop against the back file cabinets. If she lifted a hand, Madison suspected she'd kiss floor with her chin, so pointing at her stuff was right out.

"Bag. Helm-et."

It was a pleasure to burn.

The stories Madison had only recently discovered reached out for her as she fell into the warm dark, collapsing onto her side as her eyes rolled to white and fluttered shut. She'd gotten most of the way under the desk, but only most.



Weston cringed as he heard Madison hit the floor with a thump, but he was in no shape to be quick enough to catch her. Hopefully she'd understand - and thankfully the library was carpeted.

Bag, helmet, tuck under desk. That he could manage. His side still ached and burned, but at least he no longer bled and was stiched up. He could handle wrapping himself up with gauze or something later, on his own.

Sliding off the desk, careful not to step on the woman, he put his belt back on and buckled it. Kneeling down slowly, careful not to pop those all-important and hard-earned stitches, he scooted Madison further under the desk until she was out of sight. Her bag and helmet were slid in next, both within easy reach.

Once he got back up to his feet with a grunt, he glanced around, and spotted exactly what he needed. A book cart, and some empty cardboard boxes. He pushed all of this in front of the desk so that Madison was both well-hidden and barricaded, at least a little. From the outside it looked like someone just haphazardly shoved stuff out of the way - not like someone's hidey-hole sleeping cubby.

Satisfied with his work, Weston slid his shirt and jacket back on. Time to go find a way to clean up, find a certain someone, and then get some sleep. He was getting close to passing out too.

Tool BeyondDandy Bullyboy Squad NanLia Safton Togy Miaow Good_Morels Fluffy-Kat Crono MokaChan ​

 

[Miaow]

Northview High
Cabrera's Room, Noon

A collab with NanLia ​

Haewon scrubbed at the flesh of her hands under the cold rain water spurting from the tap, trying to get the rest of Xander's blood from under her fingernails. God, he better be grateful for all she'd done, even if all she'd been doing was following Mac's orders...

She looked over her shoulder, watching Minnie sitting at his side. He looked pathetic on that bed, and that made Haewon angry. He wasn't meant to be pathetic, he and Nari were strong so she and Minnie could be weak. She shook her hands over the sink, splattering water onto the porcelain before wiping them on a towel.

"Minnie, I'm gonna get some air," She told her, resting a hand on her shoulder. Minnie simply nodded, only glancing at her sister, afraid if she looked away from Xander for too long, he'd somehow stop breathing.
"Get someone to check that cut on your face, yeah?" She instructed, cupping her sister's cheek in her hand. She could feel the tension in every muscle in her sister's body. She sighed, taking a slightly closer look at the gash just below her eye, three perfect imprints of where the infected's fingernails had scraped at her flesh.
"It's not that deep. No stitches, I promise," Haewon assured her, ruffling her hair as she turned to leave.

She shut the infirmary door behind her, her face instantly sinking now she was out of view.
"Fuck..." She whispered, wiping her face with her sleeve, then her hands. Everything felt dirty, her skin itched but there was nothing there for her to scratch. She just needed to be alone.
She headed to the next room over, shoving the door open with her shoulder as she wiped her face once more. As she lowered her arm, she was met with... Cabrera.
Of course he gets a private fucking room.
Next to him was a woman far too pretty to be related to him. There was no way the same genes that made Ignacio could make someone like that, too.
"Shit-- Sorry, thought this was empty," She murmured, instinctively turning to leave... but, she paused. Her sister had cut his face up real good. She felt a little bad about it... even though he totally deserved it. She turned half-way back, hands in her pockets.
"He good?"

Alejandra glanced up as the door opened; she hadn’t been paying attention to her surroundings. After hours on the road and the emotional distress of finding her brother, of all people, amidst a literal war zone. She’d been in her thoughts, lost in guilt. She had given up the idea of finding her family … well, her brothers, though she cursed herself as she admitted into the void that she hadn’t even searched.

The world had turned to shit and she had made zero effort to find her kin. Some dark god now thought it amusing to send her to her brother, possibly too late. She looked over the girl … no, young woman, as she scrubbed at her face and apologized before asking about her brother.

“So the docs say.” Ally glanced at Bullet, the dog still comfortably nestled by the door. She’d regarded the girl as she entered and hadn’t thought her a threat. What kind of fucked up person do I need to be to think a kid is a threat?

“Who is he to you?” She wasn’t certain why the question popped out, too tired to consider the reasoning behind it beyond the fact that she was curious.

That was a hard question. A dictator, an asshole, someone who changed her life and not for the better, an absolute piece of s--
She snapped herself out of her spiraling thoughts. This woman was sat with him for a reason, the look of concern in her eyes told her she... liked Cabrera.

"Just a leader, I suppose," She murmured, "I don't know him that well."
She shoved her hands in her pockets, glancing down at the dog. Minnie's gonna be pissed if I don't tell her there's a dog in the building...
"What about you?" She asked, tearing her eyes away from her furry companion. Focus on the dying guy, not the fluffy dog in the corner.

Alejandra’s brow furrowed as the young woman hesitated to answer. “A friend.” She responded quickly, sitting back in her chair and crossing her legs, taking the weight off her prosthetic. Something was off with the girl, almost as though she had an ulterior motive. If she hadn’t seemed so surprised at finding her and Ignacio in the room alone, she would have thought she as looking for him.

“You’re with the school,” A statement, not a question. “It’s been good here? Nice?”

Haewon paused at her question. Fuck no. How the hell was she meant to tell Cabrera's new friend all the warcrimes he'd committed?
"Well... we have more food, medications... we've got farm animals, now," She eventually answered, standing awkwardly by the door. This was far easier to say to Madison, she didn't know who Cabrera was, but this woman was meant to be his friend.
"But... he took my mother away. Sent her to the prison, didn't say why. He didn't even let us say goodbye, she was just gone."

Ally kept her face impassive as the young woman commented about her mother being sent away for ‘no reason’. “No reason, or not a reason told to you…” She thought aloud, Ally doubted greatly that Ignacio would have done it without purpose and less so to be cruel, though that certainly wasn’t the image the Samaritans were painting themselves in the short time she’d known they existed.

From the tone she was hearing, Ally knew there was more but, whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be shared with her. “If you’d like, I can tell him you visited; let you know when he wakes up.”

"Don't bother," Haewon murmured, pulling her hands from her pockets and crossing her arms across her abdomen. There were so many words she wanted to say. Oh, and that cut on his face? My sister gave him that, and I'm fucking proud of it.
"We're not exactly on good terms."

She let out a soft sigh. Why was it so difficult to tell this woman the truth?
"My, uhh--" She began. God, she hadn't actually called Xander dad before, but her sister's dad seemed even weirder. Sure, they did actually have two different dads, but-- Why did it matter? This woman didn't need to know the ins-and-outs of their family dynamics.
"My dad is next door. One of his men beat him close to death," She told her, nodding towards Cabrera, "My sister saw it. Cabrera held her back, stopped her from helping."

Alejandra nodded slowly as the young woman spoke, framing her brother as a criminal and abuser; something she simply couldn’t believe. “That the same man who shot the blonde woman in cold blood?”

She sighed softly and shook her head. “Don’t answer, I already know.” Ally pinched the bridge of her nose, exhaustion getting the better of her. “There are two sides to everything. Two sets of truths, two sets of lies, two perspectives and I don’t doubt that you have your own biases - I do too.” She paused, regarding the young woman before speaking firmly. “So how about you tell me your side, your truth. I’m asking - I want to know. What happened here?”

Cold blood?! That fucker shot Jose, that certainly wasn't cold blood. Sure, he wasn't looking exactly well, even through the scope of a rifle, but maybe Xander hadn't known that...

As she was invited to tell her side of the story, she took a deep breath. It was a long story, and none of it made Cabrera look very good.
"The day they arrived, they shot a girl, around my age, and locked her friend in the basement for fighting back. She saw her brother or something with your friend," She explained, nodding towards Cabrera, "she ran for him, they said she had a bomb and shot her in front of everyone."

"Then, one of his men came into my room. He was a fucking pervert, 'nuff said. He beat my sister, cut her up, she almost bled out. We had no meds, she had to get stitched up awake, she felt all of it. He put her attacker in some sort of gladiator pit with two of our own, let them kick his ass for everyone's entertainment. That's what they do for fun, back at the prison, make their criminals kill eachother for everyone to watch." She murmured.
"He brought us crops, animals, medications, sure, but that's what he does. He fucks your life up then gives you a lollipop and a pat on the head to make it all okay."

"This horde had nothing to do with us. Someone sent a drone for him, tried to kill him while we were distracted by the infected. Makes me think if he'd never brought his men here, none of this would've happened."

Alejandra listened to the girl as she shared her story, what she witnessed, and what she and her sister had suffered. She couldn’t understand why her brother had garnered himself a very poor reputation if he were the leader and the one responsible for the Samaritans who had created the misery here.

However, there was nothing said that he’d done himself but he had been held responsible for the actions of others. Ally nodded slowly. “Thank you for sharing.” She wasn’t certain what else to say, truthfully, and she was suddenly thankful to hear a soft knock on the door behind the girl.

It opened and peaking in cautiously was her husband. She glanced back at the girl and offered a gentle smile. “Do you need anything else?”

Safton Bullyboy Squad BeyondDandy​

 

[Namazu]

NORTHVIEW
Cabrera's Room​

Today was one of the longest damned days Weston had had in months, he was exhausted, and it showed on his face. He was finally stitched up, thanks to Connor, even if it was just with dental floss, and had found some water to clean himself up with. Not as good as a shower back at the prison, but he'd been able to dunk his head into some water, wash his face, get the ash out of his hair, and wipe down everywhere else. It was good enough not to feel filthy anymore.

Now that he was standing in front of Cabrera's closed door, he was also suddenly anxious. Holding in a breath for a moment, he let it out, and turned the handle to peek into the room. He didn't know if Ignacio was awake or not, and didn't want to disturb him with a knock if he wasn't.

"Ignacio?" He asked quietly, peering around the room.

Ignacio peeled the velcro straps open. Finally. He freed himself from the tight vest and his rib cage expanded with a deep breath. Made him cough. He didn't have to wear the vest around the school grounds for weeks. Not until today. It felt like the world ended all over again. He couldn't stop his head from spinning with the flashbacks. Some from the bloody dawn they suffered through, others from the past. From the time when he… He shut his eyes tight. "Just stop." His words like a soft plea before his volume hinted command. "Stop."

The door opened and the battered male froze, staring at the entrance. Until he saw the familiar face. Cabrera smiled and set the vest aside. "Come on in." He invited and tore the tattered shirt off his back. His flesh was all bruised and his whole body ached and yearned for a quick end from the suffering. But he wouldn't let it. Not now when he found his sister. Not now when there was a glimmer of hope that…

"You're okay?" He asked, tossing the sweat-drenched fabric to the floor on the side of the desk. There was a chair and a large bowl of water ready along with a bunch of items for cleaning. The cut on the side of his face was all stitched up but he looked a little like the Frankenstein's monster.

Weston grimaced when he saw how bruised and battered Ignacio's back looked. It looked painful, no doubt it felt worse. He slipped inside and closed the door behind himself quietly.

"I'm okay. Ain't great, but I'm okay. I'll live." He answered with a nod, taking several steps forward to Ignacio's side. He hesitated a moment, unsure if he should, but then gave in. He reached down and gently ran a thumb along the side of Ignacio's face, under the stitches and careful not to touch them.

"That should heal up decent." He let his hand linger a moment.

"I got patched up too. I should be done bleedin' all over your carpet. Presuming I don't bust the dental floss holding me together. It ain't a bad wound though. Might get a neat scar out of it." He offered Ignacio a small grin.

"You did good out there."

Cabrera frowned at the news. Dental floss? He looked down at the man and noticed the ripped side of his shirt. He was going to ask but paused, shivering at the featherlight touch. He held Weston's gaze once their eyes met. The other man's words failed to encompass the magnitude of what both of them went through. Yet they held a special meaning.

"I did what I could. What felt right. I knew you'd come." Late or not, he didn't believe Weston would leave him to die, all of them.

Taking a seat on the bed next to Ignacio, Weston's hand fell from the man's face and he leaned against one arm, looking Ignacio over - as if he needed more mental confirmation the man was okay. He winced a bit as he moved.

"Good. I was worried that I wouldn't get here in time... that you'd think I wasn't coming. I got here as fast as I could. I swear, every damn thing that could go wrong, did." He motioned vaguely towards the wall, indicating the world outside.

"Not a damn soul on the road - we manage to hit someone on a bike anyway. Forest fire. Dead fuckers on fire and still moving. I think that soldier we picked up mentally checked out on us." He frowned down at the floor.

"One of our own Goddamn guys fucking shot me." He motioned to his side, where his shirt was torn.

He glanced over to Ignacio, offering him a tired smile. "Worth it though. And I'm sorry."

Hint of unwanted surprise crossed Cabrera's face. One of their own? It worried Ignacio. It began to draw him closer and closer to the conclusion he tried to reject all this time. One that he didn't want to act on.

Ignacio grabbed the other's shoulder and squeezed it. His two-colored eyes glinted affection. "Thank you..." But his mind drifted away from the intimate moment and he stood up with some trouble. "You said that King didn't let you take the chopper…?"

Ignacio stood in front of the other as he opened his belt and pants. Nothing sexual in his actions, no shame either when he dragged down the boxers. Exposing not just his private parts but the bandage on his ass and another one wrapped around his thigh.

Weston nodded, welcoming the squeeze. He reached up and put his hand over Ignacio's for a moment.

"Yeah. As soon as I got your call, I went right to King and asked for it. I don't know if it would have helped, but at least some of us would have gotten here faster. And he flat out immediately said no." He snorted. "I don't know what fucking good that thing does if we can't ever use it. But he made me bring Gunderson... and said if-" He faltered, watching Ignacio drop his pants, immediately furrowing at the bandages.

"... He said if Gunderson dies, so do I. And what the hell happened to you?"

Cabrera swallowed hard. He knew why King said no to the helicopter. But he hated the fact the man sent the pilot here. Marine or not, Gunderson was a liability out there if they had to keep making sure he's not dying. And it angered him that his leader threatened the Second in Command like that. But he couldn't let personal feelings get in the way of his mission.

"Shrapnel in my ass." He scoffed to himself. "And I got shot in that whole damn chaos back at the beginning when I ran for the car to block the gate."

Cabrera took a seat in the chair like an old man and grabbed the sponge floating in the water bowl. Looking a bit lost in thought.

Weston tsk'd and shook his head, pushing himself off the bed, tugging that sponge right out of Ignacio's hand. "Nope. Let me help. Take a break." He moved to stand behind Ignacio, dunking the sponge in the water before sliding it over the man's shoulders first.

"Shrapnel... the crater out front? I was wondering what the hell happened here." His brow furrowed as he gently helped scrub Ignacio clean, starting with his shoulders and arms - gentle enough not to hurt anything, but firm enough to clean up the sweat, dirt, and blood from the fight.

"Who shot you? Was it an accident?"

Ignacio looked up when the other man stopped right behind him, his half-singed hairdo brushing Weston's belly. He welcomed the help and looked back to the mirror that was propped on the desk against the wall. He watched how Weston's palm guided the soft, wet sponge around his soiled skin. Some moisture trickled down the defined muscle of his torso and relaxed stomach.

"Yeah." He bit back a grunt when the other pressed a tender spot, tensing up. "There was an explosion." He didn't want to hide it from Weston. The truth about the drone. But he was going to get his facts straight first before sharing details with either of the two highest ranked men in Lincoln.

"Of course. Why would any of them want to…" His brows furrowed. He knew why. And he hated it. The lingering thought at the back of his head. He was going soft. He was letting his secret hopes and wishes get the better of him. And the men like these saw it for what it was in their world - a weakness.

Weston lightened up when he saw Ignacio tense on the sore spot. "Sorry," he murmured, moving on. Another dip into the water and a squeeze to the sponge, he was back at it, this time at the back of Ignacio's neck, then down his back, with a murmur to lean forward.

"Christ, an explosion. Lucky you only got shrapnel." He sighed at the question about why anyone would want to shoot him.

"Well, seeing as how I got shot by one of our own, I guess its a question we're asking now." He leaned down, guiding the sponge down Ignacio's back. "Maybe I'm just paranoid." He dunked the sponge into the water again.

"On top of all that shit, we got another problem. Or if its not a problem yet, its gonna be soon. Those bikers that showed up out of nowhere?" He scowled even at the thought of them, squeezing the sponge extra-hard before moving on to Ignacio's sides.

"They're Fallen Angels. I have no idea if they're here by chance, or if they're here for me. Either way, we gotta get rid of those fuckers. We can't trust 'em."

Ignacio gazed at their reflection and his heartbeat fluttered with a memory. Of an aching body soothed by tender touch. Words of crude affection spoken in a half tone only for his ears.

The name of his sister's club snapped him out of it. He stared at Weston with his mouth hanging open. He knew the man was a biker in the past but….did that have something to do with this attitude and assumptions? Were their gangs rivals?

"No man…they just saw we're in trouble. They didn't even know who we were, just a fucking zombie siege around the school." He swallowed against a lump forming in his throat. "We can trust them, man. The VP is here as their leader. We can trust him."

Weston raised his eyebrow at that answer, and at that quick and easy trust placed in them. Dunking the sponge into the water again, he squeezed it - extra hard - and let out a frustrated huff.

"Look. I know I never talk about this. About life before, or about what I did those few weeks after I bounced out of Lincoln at the start of things." He swallowed, avoiding looking in the mirror, or at Ignacio. He never talked about this, because it was hard.

"I went back to my family for awhile. My club. My...." He paused, not even sure what to call Dave.

"Back to what little family I had, and the person I loved. A group of Fallen Angels came through and killed them all. I almost didn't come back from that. So what reason do I have to trust them now? What stops them from just doing it again?"

Ignacio watched the other intently. First in the mirror but eventually he turned to Weston and reached up to him. "Hey… look at me…" He put his palm against the other's cheek and cupped the side of the man's face. His expression laced with resolve.

"Me. I stop them. You are with me now. And they wouldn't touch people close to me or my men. Because-" He took a shaky breath. "They're my family." He let his hand lower, to give the man some space to process. "Casey is my brother in law. His wife is my sister. I'm sorry their allies hurt you, Weston... But these men and women here won't. They wouldn't."

Weston finally turned his eyes directly to Ignacio, looking down at him as he reached up to his face. The news made him raise an eyebrow, and the surprise was plain on his face. He didn't look angry about it though.

"Oh." It took Weston a moment to process that.

"Fuck." Weston let out a breath and leaned against the chair, closing his eyes and leaning over it a bit. The touch to his face was welcome, and helped, but it didn't quell that quiet anger inside him.

"I'm trusting you on this one, so please don't let me down. Just don't act surprised if I can't stick around in the same room with them, alright?" He rested his free hand on the man's shoulder and gave him a squeeze.

"But if I find out any one of them in this chapter was actually there... actually participated themselves... had something to do with it... for your sake, I'll tell you first, but I can't let it go unanswered for. It wasn't any of the guys we met out on the road, but I have no idea how many they have with them." Weston opened his eyes and took the sponge out of the water. He leaned forward to run it along Ignacio's chest.

"I'm glad your sister's safe. I was wondering who that was, but I wasn't going to interrupt." He leaned down a little closer to Ignacio. Despite the heaviness of the conversation, a little grin played on his face.

"Did you tell her that? That I'm with you?"

Ignacio quietly exhaled with relief. The other didn't suddenly turn into a ball of venom and hate. It was going to be okay. The curl of Weston's toothy smile and the question did pick up Ignacio's heart rate though. He shuddered when some water dripped down too low, tickling him.

"I…she knows everybody here is with me." He hesitated. "But I didn't tell her I'm fucking my boss." He grabbed the other man's hand against his sternum. Holding it. "Listen man…" What was he going to say? The truth? Maybe. Partially. "I ain't a husband material, yunno that right? I ain't doing the whole love thing, either." He licked his lips, calm gaze fixed on Weston's eyes. "There's no promises here. Just body and mind I want to share when I'm around. With you."

Briefly, a look of some hurt crossed Weston's face, but he did his best to hide it as quickly as he could. He nodded at Ignacio's words.

"Right, that makes sense. Besides, no sense in promising anything when we could all just die tomorrow or something, y'know?" He reached over to dip the sponge into the water again so that he'd have an excuse to look away while he was processing those words. He wasn't angry, and wasn't actually surprised. He just needed a moment.

"Sorry for how we left things, before you came here." Flicking dirty-ish water into the bucket, he continued his way down Ignacio's stomach - but not too low. Now was definitely not the time for that.

"Before this shit happened, were things going ok here?"

He caught that. The hurt. No matter how brief and small, he saw it. And his currently oversensitive heart bled a little. He hated himself for a second there for saying it. He just wanted to lay the man in the sheets and hold him. They both needed it. But he couldn't lie. Give false hopes. Not to Weston.

"Yeah." He cleared his throat, feeling it going dry. "It was a small patch of paradise in the world covered in shit." He grunted and stood up, supporting to the desk. "Utopia." He turned his back to Weston. So the man could help clean his back. "Some stupid idyllic idea I had. Doubt that King would be happy if he learnt…" Ignacio knew his lover wouldn't betray him.

Weston stood up straight and let Ignacio stand, remaining close in case he waivered or needed a hand, though he looked like he didn't. Another dunk into the water, which was dark with grime, and he stepped close again to wash Ignacio's back.

"It don't sound stupid to me, Ignacio. Sounds a hell of a lot better than livin' in a prison, surrounded by people who'd probably shank the guy next to 'em for an extra can of stale food." He snorted a bit at the comment about King.

"What King don't know ain't gonna hurt him none. Lemme know how you want me to spin this one when he asks me, and that's what I'll tell him." The ease with which he was willing to lie to their leader should maybe have been a concern, but he said it easily when it was to Cabrera. His motions slowed eventually, and he looked up, across the room to the mirror to watch Ignacio's face.

"I ain't lookin' forward to going back there, to tell you the truth. We'll be going back short a few people too. Listen." He took in a breath, tossing the sponge into the water. It definitely helped, but he wondered if the water was dirty enough at this point he was just pushing grime around.

"When I do get back, I'll radio you. If you don't hear from me regularly, I need you to assume something happened to me, and that it probably wasn't an accident or a biter."

Ignacio stared into the other man's eyes once they met in the silver luster. The tone, the insinuation, all burned in his chest and throat with low anger. He turned to face the other. Naked, injured, and frank.

"You ain't going back alone man." Plus, Cabrera knew Marcus wouldn't kill Weston unless he had to. If he did with no reason he could lose Ignacio. And only the two of them knew what it would be like for Marcus.

"The dream is over. Time to wake up." No more paradise... He put his hand to the other's throat. Tenderly dragging his thumb against the side of it. "But now it's time to sleep." He awkwardly chuckled and let go. "The bed is big. If you want to stay…" He suggested, glancing sideways while grabbing a fresh shirt and underwear from the drawer.

"Really?" Weston didn't even try and hide the surprise in his voice. "I mean, I'm glad you're coming back, but that dream doesn't have to be over. Not for good." He tipped his head to the side, enjoying the touch.

At the invitation, his attention drifted over to the bed. Damn, did it ever look big and inviting and comfortable - and he was exhausted. This sure beat sleeping on the floor.

"Yeah, of course I will. I hope you don't mind if I pass out immediately. I don't even know how I'm still standing." Weston circled around to the other side of the bed, sliding his dirty shirt off. He was cleaned up underneath - and he wasn't lying about the fact he was stitched up with literal dental floss. The wound was cleaned up, no longer bleeding, and sewn up, and it was clear that one awful tattoo of his was going to have a bad scar through it. Doubtful it was something he'd be upset about. A pair of dog tags dangled around his neck; something he hadn't been wearing the last time he shared such closeness with Ignacio.

Kicking his boots off and ditching his jeans, Weston was eager to slide into one side of a clean bed - and as soon as he was in it, he carefully rolled onto his back and stretched out with a relieved groan.

"No wonder this was utopia. Goddamn this is comfortable."

Bullyboy Squad BeyondDandy Tool NanLia Safton Togy Miaow Good_Morels Fluffy-Kat Crono MokaChan ​

 

[smookie]

NORTHVIEW
Outside
​

Embraced by the eerily quiet night, the Harleys rolled back into the Northview grounds, grumbling low. Their long shadows moved along the darkened campus. The school's facade loomed over the site. Its windows gleamed the silver glow, dipping the whole place in an unsettling atmosphere. Jenkins' eyes scanned the dimly lit surroundings, catching glints of scattered bullet shells amongst the ocean of bodies. Blood and guts. His skin crawled at the idea of various diseases buried in that filth. Fucking disgusting.

Fish chose a spot to park and Elvis promptly killed the engine with a flick of his wrist. His movements were urgent as he took off the helmet and climbed off the machine, but his steps were deliberately cautious as he hurried to the side. He needed to piss. And he needed a smoke. He wasn't sure what he needed more but once a few yards away, facing a bunch of ruined plants, he unzipped and relieved himself. His chest expanded and dropped with a shaky breath as he looked around. It was so quiet now save for the rustle of his stream and the soft wind in his damp hair. He hated the firefight noise but he was more unsettled by silence.

Hearing his brothers talking with some locals he glanced over shoulder. Was Casey there? Jenkins wasn't the one telling Pres that the guy was gone if that was the case. Fuck it. He didn't sign up for this bullshit…

Looking back down to put himself away his gaze paused on the two dots in the shadow of the shrubs. Unnatural. Jenkins froze, the hairs on his neck standing on end. The dots rapidly moved, turning bright red. The man recoiled from place with a shriek and tripped back. With his privates still exposed he clattered to his ass in the dirt.

MokaChan Togy Safton BeyondDandy NanLia Miaow @SlaughterMelon Crono Aegis Namazu Good_Morels Fluffy-Kat Tool ​

 

[Good_Morels]

NORTHVIEW -​

Kit was shaking, his skin wet with a cold sweat. "He fuckin.. he.. his guys.." he mumbled, his voice shaking. "He was there, I'm damn sure of it, he put Rory in the hospital" His wind-tangled hair fell in front of his face as he followed Casey's lead, hardly aware of his own footsteps. He swallowed hard, trying to get a hold of himself. "Wess's ok, one of the better doctors has him." He managed to mumble. "I.. Casey what happened? That man in the van, both of them, were they real? Both soldiers, we kicked one out he- God was he alive? Did we kill him?" His voice wavered as he begged the older man for answers, scanning his face for some kind of sign.

He nodded slowly as Casey gave him orders. Orders he could follow, he didn't have to think. He could save that for later when he could drown the confusion and regret in smoke. He rubbed his face and nodded again. "Yeah.. I.. I'll find Madison. New girl, right?"

With Casey's confirmation he grabbed his bag and started wandering the halls, trying not to think about where the hell he was or what was going on.

He didn't find her, not through mumbled questions of if anyone had seen her or with his own tear glazed eyes. The school seemed like an endless labyrinth, taunting him with his inability to do anything at all. He couldn't escape from the buzzing in his head.

Why did I do that? Who is that guy? Why did I leave? I'm supposed to help people. Where am I? Where's Fish? Where's Madison? Did I even see a swastika or did I imagine that too? Who was in the van? Where's Madison? What the fuck happened? What's wrong with me? Where's my bike?

He settled in the hallway outside of the library, slumping against the wall and curling into a pathetic, shaking ball. God was he tired. How long had he been awake now? A day? A week? Maybe years. Maybe he'd never slept in his life. Maybe he was still asleep, trapped in some kind of comatose limbo, forced to grapple with his demons for the rest of his miserable life. Maybe he was already dead, maybe this was hell.

That made the most sense.

He rested his head on his knees, a dark fog threatening to overtake him. He didn't want to sleep, God forbid he just fell into a deeper layer of this twisted inferno. He forced himself to stay awake as long as he could. Exhaustion took him anyways, forcing him into a restless torpor, ghosts of his past staring through him with cloudy, soulless eyes.





[/B]

MokaChan Togy Safton BeyondDandy NanLia Miaow @SlaughterMelon Crono Aegis Namazu Fluffy-Kat Tool [/SIZE
]​

 

[Aegis]

Northview
Classroom​

It took a while for Connor to glue himself together after the total shattering his heart endured at the sight of Tanner so broken in a hospital bed. People came in and out screaming and crying-- their own dead and wounded in tow. Selfishly, the noise kept pressing at Connor's despair and it grinded his gears; in this moment of agony, he wanted nothing more than to be alone. Each word from someone else a blow on a thinning patience that was being illogically tested against the wildly uncontrolled fear and anxiety tearing him apart from the inside, and his pulse began to speed up at the thought of some Samaritan coming in here and separating them. No. They wouldn't be separated like that ever again. The slurry of rage and paranoia dripped through the cracks in his better judgement. Wordless, Connor kicked his knees beneath him and rose to his feet-- pulling the rifle closer to his chest as if to cradle it.

The Soldier's hands sunk to grab hold of the handle on the side of the gurney as his boots kicked at the locks on the wheels. They wouldn't go far-- that would be too dangerous for Tanner in his condition, but he needed to go somewhere quiet and he couldn't stand to not keep watch over his boy. Wheels began to groan and squeak from the sudden and forceful movement of Connor's retreat toward the door as the two made their exit into the hallway. Of course, there were even more people out here-- each trying to get their own grasp on the situation. A scowl crept across the man's face as his eyes twitched in a self-indulgent annoyance. He scanned the hallway and found a suitable room just a few doors down from the infirmary; at least, suitable in distance-- Connor had no idea if it was inhabited or not.

The foot of the gurney squeaked ahead of the charge as Connor shrank the distance between them and the door, but he dare not burst in without securing it first. Reluctantly, Connor withdrew his grip from Tanner's resting place, and shouldered his rifle while popping open the cracked door with his foot. The room was hardly furnished save a chair and a teacher's desk, but it was flooded with cardboard boxes and other things that implied it was some kind of storage room. Connor gave a sharp whistle to get the attention of anything inside, but the tension in his arms dispersed after half a minute of silence; there were certainly no infected in there, and if there were people...

They were probably just scared, but they were gonna have to find a new hiding spot.

Satisfied, Connor whipped around and pulled Tanner's gurney through the doorway as they slinked into the back corner of the room near a window and a box of what seemed to be erasers. The hustle and urgency of the outer world seemed to vanish as The Soldier found relief in this stolen solitude. He had Tanner-- injured as he was, and that was a bit of a relief; now, he just had to keep him alive. Connor wouldn't let his boy die... no matter WHAT.

Connor found his gaze drawn to the nearby window. It was glazed with dust that stole its purpose by obscuring the glass and drowning its reflective sheen. A man's silhouette could barely be registered through the grime, and something about that called out to the Soldier. The Man reached out and swept free a portion of the glass with his palm only to reveal the bloodied, grizzled beard and face of someone he didn't recognize. He had been under some impression that he hadn't been taking care of himself as much as he needed to, but the results were a terrible sight to see now: cracked lips, sunken and dark eye sockets, knotted hair, and viscera caked to his hunger-sharpened features. The Soldier's eyes exuded a fatigue that was contradicted by the sharp and jumpy pupils of a man fueled by adrenaline on behalf of the fear ruling his life.

How had Chloe--

How did he look?

Suddenly, he was flooded with a handful of memories over the last few weeks from an outside perspective-- how wild and mad he must've looked.

Connor's hand sunk into a nearby box and retrieved a pair of scissors with which he used to violently cut chunks from his beard with amateur movements of his fingers-- the finished spots plagued with uneven blotches of beard as he yanked up his hair and did his best to trim it at a similar length. The Soldier had very little experience having given only a few playful haircuts to his buddies before they got their hair buzzed and the evidence of his work was erased, but this seemed like it was going somewhere. He grabbed a knife from inside the construction belt and began to closely shave his face. There were some grey hairs mixed in-- from stress he imagined, as they fell toward the ground, and as he glided it along his jaw, the blade caught in his skin and dug into it eliciting a stream of blood that began to collect and drip from his chin. Frustration welled from within his stomach stoked by the entire situation he found himself in, and a sudden strength gripped at the hilt of the knife as he considered ripping it across his face in a brute force attempt to finish shaving.

'FUCK IT! FUCK IT!'

His mind screamed in response to the sudden pain and mental overload. Yet, a few deep breaths saw him continue the shave normally.

It took about an hour of concentrated effort, but he got to a point he thought was decent enough. Collecting a pan of water and rag that had been on Tanner's bed, he wiped down the grime across his body to excavate the man beneath.



Well, that wasn't too bad.

Connor turned his attention back to the boy and began to drag the rag across Tanner's face in order to clean him up. His eyes resting on the kid with an uncertainty as to his purpose present in them, and that confused him. What did Tanner mean to him? He obviously cared for him, but what was this desperation he felt? Connor wished he could say it was paternal instinct, but it was much more twisted and selfish than that-- he just couldn't place it.

After cleaning him up, Connor sat and waited-- rifle sat in his lap as he faced the door, for the next person to enter the room. They wouldn't take either of them, and if they tried then they would be in for a bad time.

Togy BeyondDandy NanLia Miaow Bullyboy Squad Crono Good_Morels Tool Namazu Fluffy-Kat Safton smookie ​

 

[NanLia]

Flashback
Alejandra & Casey, feat. Cabrera - Part I​

The old classroom carried an atmosphere of silent sobriety. No more chaos. Just the scarily quiet aftermath. Away from the cries of the wounded, it was almost peaceful. The space in the middle was dominated by a large, makeshift table with an assortment of scarred maps and notes-filled notebooks. Meticulously organized. Except for a few items that were knocked off the table and left scattered on the floor.

The side was arranged into a private area, a bedroom. It seemed Spartan in its simplicity. Tidy, just like Ignacio's room back in the family house. The stillness was heavy around the large, comfortable bed where they left him. Battered and bloodied, his body a stark contrast to the fairly clean room. He looked vulnerable. Lifeless, if not for the steady rise and fall of his vest-covered torso. Skin marred by the brutality of the fight. And by the newfound emotion that left wet trails down his soiled cheeks.

White cotton of the fresh bandages peeked from the tears in his soiled pants. Knuckles scratched, forearm scraped. Large bruise extended from his temple to the corner of his bloody eye. Shallow, long cut was sliced down his jaw and nicked his neck. He reeked of dirt, sweat, and burnt hair. Some was missing on the side of his head. One hell of a sight. But he was right there next to them. Alive.

Casey let himself in, holding the door open for Haewon to leave the room. He shut the door quietly behind her, letting the silence settle back into the classroom. Casey faced Ally and the surprise that lay still before the both of them. “How did he get here?” He asked his wife as he approached her side, looking her over in hopes of deciphering what was going on. They had not seen Cabrera for years and suddenly there he was, as though fate dropped him in their laps. “Is he one of them?” He added to his inquiry, questioning the man’s affiliation with the Samaritans.

Alejandra watched silently as the young woman departed and Casey closed the door behind her. She sighed heavily as he asked questions she didn’t have an answer to. Slowly, she shook her head, looking back at her brother asleep in the bed. “He is, a leader, best I can tell.” The news wasn’t great. “I thought he was still overseas, I didn’t think he’d made it back. Last I heard he was coming home and then…”

She paused, too many emotions welling up within: pain, regret, but most of all: guilt. “I should have gone to the base. I should have looked for him.”

Ignacio’s affiliation with the Samaritans would prove to be problematic. It was becoming clear that Hank had some knowledge of the Samaritan’s existence and used the horde as an opportunity to ruin their expansion - presumably under Edgar Clay’s instruction. There were a lot of speculations running through Casey’s mind, but if this particular one was true his father almost killed Ally’s brother.

Biting his tongue, he watched his wife struggle to see Ignacio in this state. He could sense her guilt and sadness with the change in her tone and vulnerable body language. He tried to comfort her, rubbing her shoulders to help her avoid self-harm.

“There’s nothing you could of done back then,” he put it simply, not wanting to say more than he needed. It was not often that Ally showed signs of weakness, but when she did Casey told her he would always be there. The pair had each other above everyone else and this was no different.

He looked back at the wounded soldier. “We could bring him back with us,” Casey proposed, looking back at Ally for a response.

Alejandra took a moment to appreciate the simple but effective comfort Casey offered. She trusted him in all things, especially with her family and being vulnerable, even for a few minutes, was enough to regain some of her self-control.

She inhaled deeply and sighed. “I don’t know that we can, not yet, at least.” She smiled sadly at Ignacio before looking up at Casey, pensively. “There is more going on here - he’s been roped in somehow and I don’t think it’ll be as simple as him leaving with us, as much as I wish it to be.” She doubted greatly the men and women who called her brother “Boss” would let them load him into a van and leave.

“I doubt he’s doing this of his own free will - from what I’ve heard from that girl; the people at this school hold him responsible for the actions of others, but so far as I can tell, he hasn’t done anything wrong himself.” She paused, considering her next words carefully. “And what if Hank knows who he’s been working with?”

Ally may not have been a patched club member but she saw and heard enough to see the grander scope. The horde had been a threat to their own home, for certain, but it never had to have been lead here…

“I’ll deal with Hank,” Casey said coldly, face growing irritable at the thought of his father’s actions against these poor people of Northview. He was willing to put his members' live’s on the line to satisfy the needs of another person. No matter how powerful, that should have never happened but it did.

Casey comprehended the need for allies in the new world. The club relied on these relationships for food, water, medicine and survival. Unfortunately, these relationships were a double-edged sword. With every ally came an enemy. At this moment, King and the Samaritans were their enemy and Hank just prevented their expansion as instructed.

Grabbing a nearby stool, Casey shifted to sit next to Ally. He grabbed her hand to comfort her some more as they watched Ignacio lay there unconscious.

Casey exhaled deeply as he prepared to light some truth on how the club found themselves in the middle of this mess. “A week ago Hank and I paid a visit to Edgar Clay. He informed us about the Samaritan force at the prison in Lincoln. They uncovered the Samaritan’s expansion here to this school and wanted the club to put a stop to it. We haven’t had a chance to discuss it with the rest of the club with everything that has been going on, so Hank took it upon himself to use the horde….” Casey paused, rubbing his face with his free hand.

“I didn’t know he would be here, Ally,” he pleaded.

Alejandra felt a ball of cold steel form in the pit of her stomach. She’d known something wasn’t right about that horde. She’d known that Hank and Casey had known something about this place and exactly why Hank had wanted the horde led here. She hadn’t wanted to admit it; she wanted to overlook it, as she had with everything else the club had done over the years. She wasn’t a member. She couldn’t stop them if she wanted to… but did she try?

Over the years being with Casey it had been easier to ignore what the club did, mainly because it was a drop in the bucket to whatever else was happening in the world. But this? Now? She knew she couldn’t continue to stand and watch and live with herself. There were children here! She wanted to scream, but the last thing either of them needed was a fight in front of strangers, much less those who likely understood that the horde wasn’t an accident.

She squeezed Casey’s hand, giving a stiff nod but saying nothing.

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​

​

 

[Miaow]

Northview High
The Infirmary
​

As the infirmary door opened, Minnie didn't move. It had been at least an hour since her father had gone inside and, without Madison to keep her mind busy there wasn't much else to think about. She just kept imagining the various scenarios in which Xander could have found himself. Maybe he'd died the moment he'd hit the table and Haewon just hadn't built up the courage to tell her, yet... that one seemed stuck at the forefront of her mind. Sure, she had other ideas... maybe he'd jumped to his feet and was doing jumping jacks and running laps of the infirmary! No, that one was stupid. She knew the former was much more likely... but it made her feel sick. Xander running laps was much nicer to think about.

Her head rested on her knees, her eyes barely open. She hadn't slept the night before, then she'd spent most of the morning in a vent, she wasn't exactly feeling energized. The adrenaline had worn off, she was exhausted. So many people had walked out of that infirmary that weren't Xander or Haewon or Mac. Every time someone new walked past, her energy drained just that bit more. Why wasn't it Haewon? What was going on in there?! She'd given up on even looking.

"Minnie?"
Her head shot up. Haewon stood in the doorway. She'd tried her best to clean the blood from her clothes and hands before confronting her sister, though the wet patches of watered-down gore on her shirt gave her away.
"Is Xander okay?!" Minnie demanded, pressing against the floor to stand. Instead, Haewon dropped to her level.
She nodded and Minnie's eyes lit up, but Haewon's face didn't change. She knelt in front of her, one arm draped across her knee.
"He's stable... but that doesn't mean he'll stay that way," She explained. Her chest hurt, tearing her sister down like that... but she couldn't let her get her hopes up, only for him to die anyway.
"He's got a pretty bad head injury, he's not awake yet... Mac isn't sure when he'll wake up."
"But... he will wake up, right?" Minnie asked, slowly lowering her knees from her chest. Her eyes met with Haewon's, pleading with her to say yes. Just. Say. Yes.
"We don't know, yet..."

Minnie swallowed. It felt like her throat was closing up. She took a shakey breath, staring down at her hands. Her brain simply couldn't process her words. If Harry of all people could wake up, then surely Xander could as well. Xander was way stronger, he had a wife, he had to wake up. Haewon shuffled forward, sitting cross-legged in front of her. She reached out, taking her hand.
"Minnie... no matter what's happened, the two of us have always made it through--"
"It's not the two of us anymore," Minnie interrupted her, her eyes unmoving from her hands. Haewon hesitated... before nodding.
"I know--"
"I don't care if the two of us make it. It doesn't matter. Not without them." Minnie's eyes finally flicked up, meeting with her sister's.

Anger bubbled inside Haewon. She swallowed the lump in her throat, reaching out and cupping each side of her sister's face. She had a stern look in her eye, her grip firm, yet careful enough to not hurt her.
"Listen to me. We've come this far and we've lived. After everything we've been through, we lived, because we were careful and we were smart. We thought before we acted. He has not seen what we've seen. He chose to do what he did, and he didn't think about us when he did it. Don't let that man's decision ruin you."

Minnie's vision blurred, a thin layer of tears distorting the light entering her pupil. No, she was wrong. She had to be wrong. Xander had to have a reason for what he did, she knew he did. She swallowed.
"Can I go see him?"
Haewon let go, letting her hands drop into her lap.
"Yeah," She murmured, watching her sister get to her feet, leaving her in the hallway.

Safton Tool NanLia
​

 

[Miaow]

Northview High
The Infirmary
​

Haewon slowly opened the infirmary door, avoiding waking any of the various patients with the creaking of the hinges. The sun was setting and, with a rude awakening that morning, most of the people in there were ready for an early night. She scanned the room. Pandora had tucked Xander into a corner of the room, giving him some privacy now he was stable. The more emergent conditions were in the centre of the room, medics leaning over them, doing their best to keep their hearts beating and their chest rising and falling...

Haewon squeezed past them, heading to the corner. Her sister sat in an office chair, her hand in Xander's. Her face was blank, numb. Her mind was busy but nothing was clear, she wasn't sure what she was thinking. She swallowed, staring at Xander's face. He didn't really look like him anymore. If it weren't for her recognizing his clothes, she probably would have walked straight past him. Haewon pulled up a chair, drawing the privacy curtains closed.

She rested a hand on her shoulder as she took a seat. She felt like there was nothing she could say. What was she meant to say?
"So... where did you go last night?"
Minnie glanced over at her, swallowing.
"You won't be mad?"
Haewon shook her head.
"I went to see Momo..." She admitted, still holding Xander's hand, "Cabrera said I couldn't, so..."
Haewon exhaled, leaning back in her seat.
"Look... don't tell Xander, but... I'm a little proud... BUT, if you're gonna go around breaking rules, you have to tell me first."
"You would've stopped me..."
"Me? Sneaking out is what I do best," Haewon smirked, messing up the back of Minnie's hair, "I would've gotten Cabrera to ground me just so I'd be sneaking out, too." She chuckled.
Minnie managed a smile, leaning back in her seat. She yawned, hiding her face in the crook of her elbow.
"Did you sleep at all last night?" Haewon asked, to which Minnie shook her head.
Haewon sighed, getting to her feet. "Alright, let's get you to bed..."
"No... Xander stayed for me. I have to stay for him," Minnie murmured, not taking her eyes of off him. Haewon looked her up and down. There was no use arguing with her, especially after the day they'd had. Haewon wasn't sure she had the energy to reason with her, anyway. She ruffled her little sister's hair.
"Alright, alright... I'll get us some blankets... but if you go anywhere, tell Pandora, okay?" She told her sternly, leaning down and pressing a kiss to her forehead. As Minnie nodded, she headed for the door, leaving the curtains closed.

There was a steady, quiet hum of noise in the infirmary. The groaning of the injured, the quiet voices of the medics, the snoring of the few patients that had managed to get some sleep... Minnie's bare foot bounced against the ground as she watched Xander breathe. Maybe if she looked away, if she closed her eyes, he'd stop... She fought against tiredness, her eyelids heavy. She couldn't close her eyes...

She took a shakey breath, shuffling her chair closer to Xander's bed. She gently brought his hand closer to her face, holding it between both of her hands. She glanced over her shoulder, watching the shadows from beneath the privacy screen. Pandora was still up and about. She leaned in to Xander's ear, keeping her voice low...
"Xander... I don't know if you can hear me, but, you're in lots of trouble. I don't know what the Samaritans are going to do to you, but... don't wake up," She swallowed a lump in her throat, holding the back of his hand against her cheek.
"Me and Haewon will think of a plan... so don't wake up until we figure out what to do, okay?" She told him, feeling her eyes well with tears. God, she'd cried so much that day, more than she had in months.

She sat back in her seat, gently setting his hand down on the mattress. She glanced back at the privacy screen... it was still quiet, she could still hear the faint clacking of Pandora's surgical tools. She quickly kicked her one remaining shoe off of her foot. She got to her feet, carefully hoisting herself up onto the edge of Xander's bed. Squeezing herself between his arm and torso. She rested her head on his chest... she could feel his lungs filling with each breath. She could feel his heart beating under her palm. She felt her eyelids begin to droop...

Safton
​

 

[Aegis]

NORTHVIEW
(With expert writing from Tool )​

Madison’s journey from the arms of Morpheous back into the waking world was not an especially smooth one, jerking her consciousness in staccato bursts, away from ephemeral horrors and into more tangible ones, but when she managed to wake at last, she found herself in her under-desk nook, her vulnerable side surrounded by carts and boxes to disguise her presence. Weston had made good and hidden her from easy view. Small miracles. Getting up was an uncomfortable series of pops and groaning muscles, bruises settling in to roost and the exertion of the last few days making itself known, but it meant she was still alive, still kicking. How long had it been since she’d given in to her exhaustion? Madison wasn’t sure. Hours bled by and one day was swallowed by the next, and it didn’t much matter. No more school years or summer vacations, no more family road trips or paid time off.


After a brief visit to the school library bathroom, the woman found herself wandering the halls of Northview, taking stock of the place and its people, both native and very much not. The buildings had power. That in itself was a somewhat larger miracle. If she could find a length of wire, a wooden dowel rod, and a few power tools, maybe she could finally start making the chainmail that had remained on her to-do for months. Still, that was a project for later. Connor’s time on the roof had shown an invaded people largely grateful to their invaders. It was a cognitive disconnect in Northview’s inhabitants that she still had trouble understanding, and like most things that didn’t make sense, she was driven to pick. To dig.


A quiet series of knocks on one door after the next had opened onto (usually) empty ex-classrooms.One had been occupied by an older couple, and Madison made a little small talk to find out more about them and the horde more broadly. They were Northfolk (Northview-ians?), and mostly glad to be alive. Their views on the Samaritans were a mix of diplomatic answers that didn’t say much of anything and gratitude for the protection they provided. As Connor had managed a little sleep and had better control of her flapping gums, she resisted the urge to grill them on their loss of freedom and the rumors she’d heard of how, exactly, the occupying force treated their hosts. Gladiatorial death-matches spoke volumes, no matter how many rabbits the Samaritans had deigned to bring to their ‘annexed’ compound. Madison wished the couple well and kept going.


Knock knock, open, empty, next. It was obvious the loss of life in this place had been considerable, and Madison wasn’t expecting to find many left in isolated rooms like these. So, when she knocked on a very particular classroom door, she didn’t bother waiting for a ‘come in’. If someone wanted privacy, they could lock the door or jam a chair beneath the handle. Thankfully, she didn’t ‘cop-knock’ - her gloved knuckles rapping against wood was a relatively tame sound, even if she twisted the knob and swung the door open only moments later.


Madison kept her bag slung over her shoulders and her helmet in one hand. Though bits and pieces of her armor were in the bag, she was still covered from toe to tip, twin hatchets hanging by her sides, her sawed-off on her back, and a pair of .22’s on thigh-holsters. Ever ready for war. Chestnut hair curled around her ears and brushed the back of her neck, though she kept it short enough not to provide for an easy handhold by groping fingers, and her deep brown eyes looked nearly black in the light, long days carving dark hollows beneath an otherwise expressive gaze.


“Oh. Hello.”


The door punctuated the awkward greeting with a creak fit only for the horror movie-like circumstances they found themselves enveloped by. Connor sat directly across from the entrance with the barrel of his rifle aimed off to the side of it in a nonchalant but direct warning to advance no further, yet The Soldier made no sudden jerks to shoulder his rifle toward the woman who entered. Blue eyes sat obscured by a darkened haze that seemed to seep from somewhere deep inside the man’s tired soul before they bobbed up and down like a machine powering on, “Oh… hello.”


His words were flat, distracted– as he straightened his posture in the chair and loosened his grip on the rifle. Black hair settled in uneven strands over his forehead and Connor brought his left hand from the barrel of the weapon up to run his thumb along the fresh gash across his shaved chin, “How… are you doing okay?”


The idle aura of the man seemed to disappear as her presence animated him– his jeans and t-shirt poorly accentuated by a construction belt repurposed as mag pouches. Connor shot his gaze over to Tanner who lay unconscious on the gurney next to him; a cracked window allowing through a breeze into the otherwise suffocating room. Dusty boxes of useless school supplies littered what looked to be a storeroom, and the vacant atmosphere of the place was a perfect snapshot for a dystopian painting if there was yet a hand to capture the moment. His mind had been entirely occupied by the state of Tanner, but also what he had heard of the boy; even worse, he had also been considering who he was to Tanner, really. The whole situation felt so concrete and final, but he wanted so desperately to kick and scream and pull against the shackles of reality. He wanted to resist– to scream out until his throat bled from the strain. He wanted to blame it on something– someone, even if it was himself. Connor’s stomach churned with an untameable anxiety while his mind swarmed with a tenebrous darkness that stifled his every decision and left him spiraling into a panic that would see him lashing out at the world. In the end, he knew that wasn’t healthy. He knew he had to be patient. He knew he couldn’t allow it to hurt the ones he loved.


There was so much going on in his mind that it was hard to run down one problem and begin to solve it, and every drop of that vast ocean of internal pain was on display across the inches of his face as his eyes scanned the corners of the room in jumpy purposelessness before settling again on the armed woman.



Madison caught the guy’s regard and her face gained a whiff of sympathy around its edges. That…. That mixture of despair and desperation was an expression she’d caught in her share of mirrors over the years, even if its frequency had proportionally lessened the more purpose and retribution flowed molten in her veins. Whatever he was going through, it was grinding him down to a raw nerve, though the question made her blink. The Gurney Guardian spoke as though they’d met, as though he knew her from somewhere, but from Madison’s end, he was wholly unfamiliar. Had he been on the field of battle? Watching from inside the school or the trucks? Hiding somewhere out of sight? Not with that gun and that posture. The relaxed familiarity with which he held his weapon said warrior. Fighter.


“I’m alright. You?” Admittedly, Connor hadn’t ever expected to be in the awkward ‘where the hell do I know you from’ situation in which people had once periodically found themselves. Not now, in the fuckin’ apocalypse, and not ever again. This was supposed to be a feeling relegated to the produce section of a Piggy Wiggly, mentally groping for any scrap of recognition after having been greeted by a colleague or acquaintance, commenting on the price of pears and hoping in vain for a flash of inspiration. Right up there with tentatively waving back to someone who hadn’t actually been waving to her at all, there were some things Madison had been glad to see vanish with the rising of the dead, and her general social inadequacy was unquestionably one of them.


If this guy asked her about her last case or mentioned her precinct, she might have to shoot him on principle.


Okay. Great. Come on, it couldn’t be that hard. The willowy mess in the bed drew her attention, though it rubber banded back to the man in short order. The injured teen was in a bad way, but he wasn’t getting back up groaning, and for the moment, that was about as good as one could get. Okay….. Dark hair, dark blue eyes, fresh gash along one cheek…….Wait…… Connor abandoned subtlety and held out her arm, hand sideways, fingers together, thumb proudly upright, underlining the man’s eyes with her index finger and obscuring everything from mid-nose downwards.


There it was! It was that guy! The Find Tanner (Taylor?) Guy! The You Should Run Guy! Beard, without the beard!


“You shaved.” Connor pointed out, helpfully. Thank goodness she’d been here, otherwise he might never have known. Crackerjack detective work, moron.


With a shake of her head, the hunter dropped her hand and shifted her weight to one leg, leaving the other to loosen and bend a little, going from ready to relaxed in the time it took her breath to pass her lips in an exasperated sigh.


“Takes me a minute, but I get there eventually.” After briefly lifting her hand, palm out, making the universal I-mean-you-no-harm gesture, she took a step or two towards the prone form of the man’s charge, her eyes tracing injuries with the eye of law enforcement rather than medicine. Madison didn’t know metacarpal from metamucil, but she knew blunt force trauma when she saw it. Whatever had happened, the teen had taken it smack on the chin….. and everywhere else. Still, his breathing was steady, albeit somewhat shallow, but what the hell did she know?


“I’m glad he lived.” The words were quiet; the mangled body mirroring the pain in Guardian’s face demanding a little solemnity. It had become less strange seeing the injured mend away from the antiseptic professionalism of medicine in the World Before, but Madison still noticed the absence of sound the most. No beeps or wooshes or drip-drips that indicated things were happening and people were being actively (or even passively) cared for, just the sound of suffering in patients and loved ones alike or, worse, an awful quiet.


The sound of waiting.


Connor looked thoughtful, then appeared to make a decision. Being the one helpless and hovering over the wounded was no easier than being the one on the table, and she could spare some time. It hadn’t been in the middle of the zombie uprising, but Madison remembered what it was like being the one waiting, more than once, and treating other humans with a modicum of dignity cost nothing and was…..the right thing to do. She turned from the gurney entirely and looked around before walking towards an unused desk in the far corner, out of the way. Without hesitation, Connor plucked it from the ground and carried it one-handed to somewhere nearish the man to settle it as softly as she could manage. Her rear end sank into orange plastic that she could have sworn she left in her teenage years, silently grateful that Northview was a high school and not an elementary school. These seats were small enough already.


Still wordless, Madison put her helmet on the floor, slipped her bag from her shoulders, and unzipped it to withdraw a teal, sporty-curvy water bottle with a nipple-style top and a black filter doohickey visibly jutting down into the bottle proper. A sticker with the name Nicole in purple, swirly letters stood resolutely down one side, the ‘i’ dotted by a little heart. It was a water bottle that looked like it had seen the inside of a pilates class. American consumerist materialism had its upsides. Next, gloved fingers rummeraged a bit and withdrew a couple of generic-brand protein bars and held them one bar per hand, before the woman spoke as though an invitation had already been extended and politely accepted by all involved.


“You want white-chocolate-peanut-butter or berry blast?”


The Soldier watched The Woman as she closed the distance between them with the laser focus of a hawk– his neck turning to watch her every move; the bounce of his head following any sudden steps of movements she may have made intentionally or unintentionally. His grip on the weapon was as nonchalant as ever and in reality he didn’t believe the woman to be a threat, but then again he had been wrong to seek out and trust in the past with the Samaritans. Of course, not that the trust part of that was ever more than a tiny fraction of the time before the flame of human connection was snuffed out by the tyranny in the prison walls.


The breath he drew in was long– like a sigh, before he spoke, “I’ve been better. Then again, I think we all have.”


It was a diplomatic admission to what was obvious at just a glance, but anyone willing to spill their heart to a stranger at the drop of a hat in this world would be more a cause for concern than a time-lipped agonizer in his opinion. Connor’s finger jumped toward the trigger as she fixated on Tanner for a moment. However, the panic-induced caution was short lived as he studied her expression, somewhat somber and empathetic. She turned to face him and did some shit with her hands that looked like she was trying her best to imagine crushing him between her fingers before she exclaimed that he had, in fact, shaved.


“Uh, yeah,” Connor ran his left hand further along the ridges of his face, “that much of a difference, huh?”


Was it really? The Soldier’s lips curled in thought before he settled his gaze on the woman, “Figured it was time to start taking care of myself more. It was getting out of hand.”


Again, she looked over to Tanner– maybe finding the right words to convey how she was feeling about the matter, “Thanks. I’m glad too…”


The words felt real, but they were clouded by a hint of doubt placed there by the girl from earlier. Tanner had left those kids and– regardless of his feelings on the subject, it didn’t seem like it was something that was going to be able to be swept under the rug around here. Perhaps, it was a good thing. The Boy could come back with him to the prison, but if Connor was honest with himself it was clear that this place was better off at least in the atmosphere department. At least, it probably was when it wasn’t masquerading as a mausoleum. Shame spread in his eyes as he cast them away from the woman– a hint that perhaps he didn’t believe it fully.


It seemed to him that the girl from before knew or saw something he didn’t, or maybe he had but he had been too blind to see it. This self-admission punctuated the silence further as the woman brought over a chair eliciting a frown from the man, but he supposed thoughtful company was better than the loud and brash goings-ons of the outside. The clatter of her helmet– a familiar sound, drew his attention in further as she began to retrieve items from inside a bag: an out of place bottle, some protein bars.


Then, the question. It struck him off guard and he couldn’t exactly place why, “Uh, Berry Blast. I don’t like peanut butter.”


It seemed almost childish to be in any way picky in this horror story of a world, but having the opportunity to choose was refreshing in and of itself; an act from a different time and meant for a world where the hardest choices one had to make on the regular was whether they wanted McDonalds or KFC. A chuckle escaped from The Soldier as he reached out and took the candy bar of his choice, “By the way, I realized I haven’t introduced myself. My name’s Connor.”



Connor, the real/i] Connor, the tried and true original flavor Connor was halfway through peeling the wrapping off her protein bar when this guy popped off with her name. Undisguised surprise made her mouth drop open and she even managed to sputter a bit. "Fuck what now? B-but….."


She shook her head and a rueful chuckle welled up from somewhere deep in her belly. "Well I'll be dipped in shit.My name's Connor, too."


Her humor was short lived as she realized the implications. There could only be one. Yelling the same name in the middle of a battle was a non-starter. Fight him for the privilege? Nah. See how old he was and go by 'I got here first' rules? Naw. Connor was probably his first name, and that felt like a better claim than using her preferred middle in order to avoid the nickname Maddie. Thoughts were a river behind her eyes and a rapid-fire series of expressions passed across her face in a few heartbeats. Good humored camaraderie at finding someone with the same name tumbled into deadpan realization that only one of them could reasonably use it, which fell heel over head into foul-tempered rejection at the very notion of Maddie and, finally, went ker-splat against weary resignation.


Madison succumbed to the inevitable, figuratively sucking on an aspirin every inch of the way.


“You…. You can call me Madison.” The woman sighed.

“I’ll go by Madison.” The woman chewed vengefully, furiously, and took a long, hard look at the freshly shaven man before her. Scars that crawled up his arms and disappeared beneath the sleeves of his t-shirt made the skin look a bit like melting wax, and they didn’t have the pale, washed out look of decade-old injuries. From the beginning of the end, maybe? If they’d been acquired during the twilight of society’s fall, Connor……that Connor…… was lucky to be alive. If it had been as bad a burn as it looked, the guy’s nerves were probably more than a little numb in places. That could work to his benefit but definitely had its downsides.


As her brown eyes lifted from the rapidly diminishing approximation of a peanut butter bar, Madison made no effort to hide the curiosity and evaluation from her face. He’d spoken about being a conscript when they’d met the first time, and some of his words floated back to her now, sharpening her gaze further and bringing conclusions she’d missed back around for another look. The Samaritans had forced this man to fight, presumably to the death, and he’d won. They’d threatened the kid, and he’d done everything in his power to keep the teen alive and find the boy once he’d been in range, was protecting Tanner even now. Then again, Guardian had told her flat out that he’d had his moments in order to survive. Those words did a lot of heavy lifting in this world, and Madison needed to know whether those rocks weighed in his ruck. Doing bad things should matter, should be painful to the soul.


Some kinds of guilt broke people…….. and some kinds acted like signposts, marking in vivid detail places to go no further, showing lines that should never be crossed again, no matter how good the cause might seem. As Madison’s gaze bored into the man’s soul and weighed his heart against a feather, searching for ghosts as best as she was able and doing her best to find the tone of his pain, seeking what tuning fork might seal it tight or crack it wide. Madison carried ghosts of her own, clattering against her skin. If eyes were the window to the soul, then Madison’s was recognizably a haunted one. Maybe they were all haunted houses. An absence of ghosts when the dead still walked was a matter of either luck or psychopathy.


“You go an’ carry the name Connor for both of us.” He’d better be worth it.


Maddie. God, that was cringe-worthy.


With a final bite or two, Madison polished off the sweetened paste masquerading as food and looked over at the teen. No way Guardian was going anywhere, anytime soon. Not willingly, at any rate.


Connor peeled open the wrapper of his treat with a bit of a playful smile beginning to emerge from the situation, and as he chomped down through the bar his mouth salivated at the artificially flavored berry his brain had been trained to love before the fall. It was a greedy affair as he wolfed down the bar in three ravenous bites punctuated by the rapid gnashing and swallowing required of a protein bar. Yet, as he looked up to thank the woman, her gaze was set upon him with shock and seemingly some disdain. The Soldier paused mid-chew as he looked to the empty wrapper in his hand. Had it been poisoned? Was this all just some buttering up before she took him out? His eyes flared back with the fierce flame of subdued animosity almost instinctively, but then she spoke.


It didn’t much seem to matter to him how they went about their names. It could be confusing at times– sure, but regardless of the logical implications of having the same name it seemed like there was a deeper, emotional reason that this was an issue. Well, that’s weird, “Yeah, imagine that! Small world– smaller now, I guess.”


Connor was cautious in deciding whether or not he should press the subject and her apparent appallment at this coincidence. Connor– female Connor, seemed to mull something over with a deep consideration billowing from beneath her features before she spoke again. Madison. It was a good name. Solid name. Perhaps, though, looking at her obvious pain– it was a name with baggage attached to it. The words seemed stuck in her teeth as she chewed with a malice before she seemed to reassign her attention to him once more. Particularly, her eyes seemed to travel up his scarred arms.


The Man seemed to wither a bit at her inspection of that particular wound, and he tightened his posture to obscure his arms as much as possible with the weapon now being held against his chest and his torso somewhat curled forward to cover the tops of his arms. From an outside perspective, it may have simply looked like he was leaning forward in interest, but his eyes spoke of some internalized shame related to them. He took the opportunity to look her over from his newfound perspective. Madison seemed ready to fight– more ready than most, clothed in leather armor, clad with holsters filled with lethal purpose, draped with more intimate instruments of battle, little nicks and scars from past conflicts carpeting her roughened figure; The image of a warrior by all rights. Connor had seen her fight her way in here, and it was a brutal spectacle of viscera and death.


Connor was gripped, suddenly. Madison’s eyes snatched hold of him like chains from hell with enough figurative force to cause the hairs on his neck to rise– their gazes locked in twin judgment of one another. Her inspection made his blood run like ice for just a moment before he returned the favor and burrowed into her; it was clear there was pain, emptiness, regrets that kept bubbling to the surface as she looked. Hers was a graveyard of bad memories that jutted up with etched gravestones as reminders on the landscape of her mind. It was pain– plain and simple.


Connor’s soul was sealed shut as if to keep the horrors behind it at bay. At least, it was until she knocked the glass free with her sudden and potent intent. Through the window was a tale of empty hospital rooms, smokey and burnt streets, the smell of copper, recoil through his shoulder, a forest of arms stretched up from the ground– their fingers twisting like limbs from a tree. Some begged for help and others were already cold and still. The Soldier’s eyes seemed to twitch in microexpressions of stress that seeped down to his now-quivering lips. If Madison’s eyes were the somber quiet of an abandoned home, then Connor’s eyes were the insistent screams of a damned man that was the fleshy cage for his own personal hell that seemed to burn through his mind in rivers of molten self-hatred.


Connor snapped the connection away as he averted his gaze, “Thanks, Madison it is, then.”


“So, what did you come here for,” Not to be too blunt but this situation had Connor’s guts churning, “I can’t imagine you just came by to say ‘hi’.”




It was Connor who broke the gossamer threads connecting one gaze to the other, his eyes dropping down and away, unwilling to let Madison in any further than she’d already barged. The details were obviously unknown, she wasn’t psychic, but whatever had caused the pain in Guardian’s eyes, it was still fresh, still raw, still bleeding. A bubble of poison was lodged deep within guilt-ridden pupils, and without being lanced, it might eventually kill the guy. That…. That was the kind of guilt that left broken people in its wake, she was pretty sure. For the first time, she wondered if Connor’s attachment to Tanner was less a father-figure protecting a stray and more of a drowning man grasping at the nearest life preserver to keep his head above black, churning waters. Madison’s perception of Connor shifted somewhat away from Guardian and towards Penitent, someone desperately searching for a north star to guide his way, trying to make up for whatever had happened to fill him to the brim with guilt, maybe cover that hole on the inside.


Madison nodded to herself. For now at least, Connor was someone to protect, and damned if that list wasn’t getting longer by the hour.


Why was she here, talking to him and breaking bread? Madison took the final bite of peanut butterish and tried to put words to her current wanderings in Northview. The voraciousness with which he’d devoured berry blast hadn’t gone unnoticed, and while Madison had enough to spare, there was no reason to be stingy. As she answered, she fingered through her magazines until the glint of fuschia drew her eye. Not for individual sale, and she thought berry blast was the inferior flavor anyhow..


“Didn’t come here looking for you specifically. Been walking around this place, gettin’ the lay of the land. The people. A few say the Samaritans stationed here are a bunch of flaming douchebags, and a lot of their tendencies make me inclined to agree; slavery, death-as-entertainment, threats of rape and murder, maybe a taste of both……. they sound like Raiders. Marauders. But then, plenty of….. North-view-ians? Northfolk. Plenty other Northfolk are grateful for the Samaritans. S’rare to find ONE slave who’s grateful for the yoke, much less however many there are in this place. Those don’t…. they don’t fit. That’s some major cognitive dissonance, an’ I don’t know from which end.”


The bright foil wrapping of one berrytastic bar followed another until she’d gathered three. It seemed to be a satisfactory number, as she set her bag down on the floor and slid the bars on the desk within easy reach of her namesake. “Help yourself. Don’t care much for the flavor, and you look hungry.”


There wasn’t any shadow of guile in her voice, her tone without any obvious asterisks and all the weight of someone offering a dining companion a bite of their own dish.


“Anyhow, I met the top dog of this place. Cabrera. As it turns out, he tried to protect me out in the field. Somebody tried to assassinate him with some kinda drone-ordinance, and I was in the blast radius. Fuck, he brought back medicine from the prison for one of the kids….. and he’s the leader of the shitwaffles in this compound. Doesn’t track. I….. I don’t think he’s decided who he wants to be, but it looks like he’s aiming to double down on shitwaffle.”


She shook her head. “Hell if I know why.”

Madison hesitated before continuing.


“You…. you mentioned the second in command of the Samaritans. I’ve…. met…. Weston before. I don’t know him well, but well enough to know that beneath the bullshit, he’s a good guy. Or at least, he wanted to be one. Not that you asked about any of that, but it is why I’m wandering around more or less at random. I’m trying to understand. Why are the slaves here so fond of their masters? Why in blue blazes does Weston think Cabrera is a good man? The Samaritans have only been here a month. What the hell happened to soften up these people so quick? From what I hear, Northfolk weren’t starving or dying left and right pre-invasion. What gave ‘em such a hard-on for a boot on their necks? Something ain’t right an’ I aim to find out why. I……. I can’t not try to figure it out. I got problems.”

“Obviously.”

Madison hated talking so much. She popped the nipple on her water bottle, sucked on it for a few vigorous swallows, and offered it to the Penitent Man.


“Copped a seat instead of grilling you on the Samaritans because I got a look at you, an’…. you look like you could use simpler company. Hell, it looks like you could use some honest sleep and a real meal. Being nice, seeing how the kid’s doing, offering you a couple bites to eat, none of that costs me anything an’ it’s the decent thing to do. And yeah. You look really different without the beard. Clean shaven is better.”




Connor dared to cast a glance back toward Madison in order to test the waters between them again. For a moment, things had gotten too intense to willingly bear, and now her face softened with a different kind of emotion than before. Almost a kind of pity, empathy, or something in a similar family to that kind of feeling that he was unable to place; regardless, a realization was made on her part. It almost made him angry. Who is he to be pitied? Yet, that temporary slip of thought gave out very quickly to the rapid flash of his abused figure in the frame of the window he had cleaned earlier. A sudden, objective look at himself began to discover just how bad things probably looked from the outside as if the pain he had been bottling up was a leak in the iron of his heart that had rusted through and developed into a tidal wave.


The Soldier swallowed down the heavy blockage of emotions that was blocking his throat as he straightened his posture once more, and in a show of trust he lowered his rifle to the ground and propped it against the side of the chair from the stock, “I think that the– uh, ‘Northfolk’ are scared. Too scared of the dead. CABRERA told me that this was a quiet, peaceful place for Tanner back when he… STOLE him from me. Asshole acted like he was doing me a favor by separating us– told me that if behaved then I would be able to come here and see him again. He’s got some kind of fuckin’ HERO COMPLEX or something; he acts like being a ‘Samaritan’ actually makes him a savior. You’re right, he’s bipolar about how he does things, I don’t know what he wants.”


Connor’s voice was raw and gravelly from the low rumble and roar of disdain present in his words, “I want him gone. I want them all gone.”


Yet, as his unfiltered emotions spilled from behind the dam of his consciousness, he saw a flash of the past, heard the screams, tasted the blood. Connor seemed to physically recoil a bit as he considered the amount of killing his declaration would realistically require, and it began to dawn on him the changes he had endured from the hollowed-out man he had been on the road prior to this, the same man that brutalized another in the cage. A part of him– some small part, wanted to be done with the fighting, but it wasn’t in the cards.


“Anyway, The Northfolk,” Connor’s voice softened as if releasing an unbearable tension, “I think they’re grateful to see more guns, more muscle. They think they wants gun here– and order, but trust me they don’t. The dead are a constant danger, and while they weren’t struggling before– they’re arguably feeling safer now. Just– they’re not free.”


Madison had been rooting through her bag for a while now, and Connor waited patiently for her to respond before continuing, “Weston is a pretty good guy from what I can tell. I don’t need any convincing there.”


There was a silence as she forked over a few more protein bars to Connor’s surprise. His stomach growled out with a vengeance as he reached out, but his fingers froze to a halt just shy of them. The Soldier looked back across his shoulder to Tanner. For a moment, there was a motionless silence before he took the protein bars and stood from his chair. Connor took a few slow steps until he found himself at his charge’s bedside where he placed down two of the bars.


“Well, I appreciate it– the compliment and the food.”




Interestingly, Madison didn’t pity hardly anybody on earth, and neither Connor nor his charge were among that number. Pity implied a position above, looking with empathy upon those below, and Madison only ever walked beside, not above. Or at least, those few upon which she did look down on were scum she had no qualms over murdering, and she did not pity them. They had earned a complete absence of mercy, and without mercy, pity meant astonishingly little. No, this wasn’t pity, but sympathy could wear the same clothes and appear similar upon casual viewing. Connor was in a world of hurt, no less than the boy beside him, and if it was all on the inside, it wasn’t any less damaging. Possibly more, if anything. There were no self-correcting systems for injuries to the soul, no blood to clot and no immune system to fight away rot.


She watched him reach for the food, hesitate, and bring two out of the three servings to the as-yet-unconscious boy. The growl of his stomach had been loud enough to hear even from where she was sitting. A bob of her head was an acknowledgement of Connor’s gratitude, and the approving murmur that escaped from between her lips was little more than a whisper to herself; “Be as unto a shield before the weary and the wanting.”

Madison shifted in her seat and withdrew two more bars, her last two, and tossed them into the man’s chair, her voice resuming its normal volume. “I’ll be going out hunting later. Plenty more where that came from.”


It was not a wholly accurate statement. Protein bars were non-perishable and more nutritionally complete than most of what was easily found, but this was not a time of want, if one were willing to walk into the dead to find what was needed. Madison probably wouldn’t find those, but she’d find something. It would be enough.


“The fear of the dead thing, hooray for people with guns…… that’s what I’m afraid of. It’s the only thing that makes sense so far, but if that’s the only reason, then these people are in way more danger than they think. Sooner or later, someone gonna figure out they don’t like the taste of boot, and things will go downhill, fast. From what I understand, King is the head of that particular dragon, and everything I’ve heard about who he is and what he chooses to prioritize, the guy’s a two-bit sociopath with more want for power and control than brains between his ears. A wannabe warlord with all the cruelty and none of the smarts to make that actually work long-term. Him, I want dead. Everybody else’ll be on a case by case basis.” Casual talk of murder didn't seem to phase the woman in the slightest.

She shrugged and a dry smile tugged at her lips.


“If Cabrera’s a shit human with a hero complex, it would explain some things. Someone who don’t have any idea what heroes do, trying his best to imitate when the mood strikes rather than….. y’know…… actually being heroic. It's a damn shame.”


Interestingly, Connor's show of trust went unnoticed, largely because of his actions thus far. He was already in the Probably Not A Shitstain category and halfway into the Protect If Possible category.


“Cabrera already got his share of enemies. That's what an assassination attempt means, by definition. An’ it was a fancy attempt in the middle of a zombie horde attack? That's too coincidental. Someone has it out bad for Cabrera in particular or the Samaritans more broadly, or I guess both. I can't say I disapprove, ‘cept they don't seem to give a shit who th’ hurt along the way. That I will not abide. I've been talkin to people, an’ Northfolk were so caught off guard by the horde ‘cause that fence’s supposed to be electrified. It wasn't. Means there was an inside guy….. or someone real skilled got in on the sly an’ turned off the juice. Or it's all one biiiiiig coincidence, but I don't buy it. Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. Read that in a book once, but it ain't wrong.”


Gloved hands curled around her elbows and her gaze grew distant, aimlessly drifting towards the window. “Once upon a time, I was a detective. I really fuckin wish there weren't crime scenes ‘nymore.”


A sigh, oh but Madison had a language of sighs, a veritable glossary of emotion with nothing but breath as its medium, and Madison's weary gaze turned on the Penitent Man. “So what's your story? You don't gotta say, obviously. Jus’ tell me to pound sand an’ I'll leave you to yer vigil. You're real comfortable with guns, you know a thing or two about order…… Military? Merc? One of th’ boys in blue? Be kinda refreshing to meet another badge, out here.”


In truth, each one of those had the potential to carry some real downsides, but it would at least give her a basic framework, a context around which to measure the man further.





Madison’s pleasure at his decisions didn’t go unnoticed as he watched her throw more and more food at him. A part of him felt a bit guilty at robbing this woman of what was likely her hard-earned rations, and this prompted him to approach his chair and pick up one of the two bars she had thrown. Connor walked over to her and cautiously reached out to take her hand– his other one up in the universal sign of ‘I mean no harm’, and replaced one of the bars in her hand before closing her knuckles around it, “I appreciate it, and I’ll take what we need but nothing more. Keep some for yourself– you might need it.”


Satisfied, Connor retreated to his seat and began to partake of one of the other bars as she carried on in mostly agreement of what he had said including her own thoughts on the matter. It didn’t go unnoticed, the comfort with which she spoke about murder, yet Connor could understand. In this world, one had to be prepared to do what was necessary when it was necessary; his current internal hesitations on the matter were an objective issue, in reality. Madison then went on to a subject that garnered all of his attention: an insider trying to get the Samaritans. Was it a disgruntled member of the Northfolk? Maybe. Was it an internal job? Likely.


There were far too many leaders in the Samaritans and even in his short time at the prison he could begin to see overlap– or more aptly overreach, from certain groups into another. Tensions were high, but King seemed to keep things in relative order with his iron fist. Now, however, out here far beyond where King could reach in any reasonable amount of time– positions were a profitable, risky game for the cunning. Was this a matter of rebellion? Was this a grab for power?


Madison had his brain churning for a moment as the pace of his chewing slowed to the crawl of his thoughts, but he only had assumptions to go off of and he was no Detective like his counterpart. Connor spoke out, “Well, whatever it is, it caught a lot of people in the crossfire. This was a bold move, and I don’t think it worked out. I mean, let’s face it– if the person who did it was still in here by the time the horde broke in then they’d be stuck here too.”


There were obviously a dozen other ways to explain that one away, but it was a valid basis to approach the possibility of who it was, at least. Then, a sigh.


A tension snapped at Connor’s heart again as she pursed her lips to speak. Who was he?


“I… was a soldier– like you guessed,” That’s all there was to it every time Connor said something about it, “nothing special…”


It was vague. Everybody who asked received the same vague answer with the exception of the Marine from the Infirmary, and even then he needed a serious head injury to even talk about it. Regardless, he found it hard to imagine that people wouldn’t ask around about the delusional state he found himself in during that… fire. The thought caused The Soldier to grip at his scarred arms with little more than a dull buzz in a few spots where his fingers lay, “National Guard. Indiana. I was in Indianapolis Week One of the Outbreak– back when we still had things under relative control.”


In that single sentence, he had willingly and in good health revealed more to Madison about his past than he had to anyone EVER since it had happened. Connor drew in a breath and exhaled it just as quickly as the air shook from the trembling of his will, “We… yeah. There for a while. Month and some change before–”


Connor stopped talking as he bore a hole into the ground between the feet for a moment. Without breath. Without blinking. Without even the slightest of movement.


“’Heroes’, they called us,” The Soldier snorted in disdain at the word, “we rode into town on our Humvees, with our big guns, with all our men, helicopters, and an active duty unit from the south. Cheers. They cheered. How they howled in triumph when we rode by in our steel coffins!”


Connor straightened up as his head rocked back over his shoulders allowing his eyes to face toward the ceiling with a stressful grin tearing across his lips. There was a certain mania to his words as he spoke, “I remember smoke. The smoke choked us as we drove in a convoy through the city limits. Man, the moment you entered you could feel it in your spine– it was just a DIFFERENT beast. They–”


The Soldier choked as he spoke with an almost airy distance, “They were so… fast back then. Back when they were fresh. I remember we were the head of the convoy and my driver hit one, and we thought it was just a normal person. My TC got out– this was before he shot himself, and went over to check on her. She just sprung up and–”


Connor’s head fell forward as if his muscles held no support for it at all as his arms shot into a position of sheer muscle memory across the phantom top and grip of what would’ve been an M240B. CHUT CHUT CHUT CHUT CHUT! Connor abridged the hushed sound of a machine gun as he mimicked the swing of the turret with his arms, “Sawed her in half but she kept coming…”


CHUT CHUT CHUT CHUT CHUT!


Connor was swinging the turret toward his side now when all of the dead came rushing from out of the alleys.


CHUT CHUT CHUT CHUT CHUT!


“They were all over us, man. Climbed into the turret of one of the trucks behind me. Cracked one of our windows– it was time to go! We drove off and…”


CHUT CHUT CHUT CHUT CHUT!

“I was still shooting– we got separated from the rest of the convoy…”


Connor’s voice shook as he swiveled around to look behind his seat as if he could see the chaos behind him like it was yesterday– a single tear rolling down his cheek from the corner of his right eye. For a pregnant moment, The Soldier remained in that position occasionally flinching as if the shock of a car had just rolled over a bump in the road.


“Sorry,” Connor collected himself and turned back around– sweat now pouring down from his hairline, “I didn’t mean to just dump all that on you.”


In truth, he didn’t know why he said it to her, but it must’ve had something to do with the damage she did to his mental walls just moments prior. Yet, now that he had popped the cork on the topic, he felt almost compelled to say more– to finish the story, yet he stopped for her sake and what she may think of him by the end.




As Madison spoke, she realized there was another possibility to the cracking open of Northview to the hungry dead, one that she hadn’t heretofore considered - with the use of exploding, flying, homemade assassin drones….. maybe someone could had shorted out the fence at a distance. Madison also had to accept that the people she’d heard from and spoken to might simply have been wrong; nobody said the compound had maintained the electric fence. Unfortunately, they’d already started burying the bodies. There was no way to cross check against the survivors to see who was missing. Unless something grand happened, exactly who was to blame for letting in the dead would probably remain unknown.


She accepted the returned bar, going ahead and indulging in peanut buttery goodness (Goodness? What passed for taste, anyway….). Two protein bars wasn't a heavy meal, but Madison couldn’t go forever on just hate and retribution. A girl had to eat sometime. Seeing the shiny wrapper glint in the light was heartening, a spot of color in a lonely, grim world. And to think there was a time when organic, no-preservative food was a premium trait instead of a complete liability.


Connor’s answer, at first vague and then more detailed, made things click into place. National Guard didn’t have an easy time of it, and Indianapolis was not a podunk nowhere town; things had gotten bad fast in big cities, to Madison’s admittedly limited understanding. If he’d been on the ground, trying to contain things while the rest of the population had their heads up their collective asses…….. That would explain at least some of the silent screaming behind blue eyes. Rough fingers touched at the scars that only served to reinforce the man’s words, and Madison watched and listened with neither judgment nor pity as Connor’s mind dipped below the water line to gaze into briny depths and describe the monsters that swam beneath his churning feet, waiting to drag him down and under.


Saying anything might break the spell that kept Connor talking, and though watching terrible things in her imagination thanks to the man’s retelling wasn’t fun, that sort of personal hell couldn’t be kept private forever. If she could be willing to receive the wash of caustic memory stuck between his ears, then perhaps it might be lanced, even if only a little. It was worth it. What had he been ordered to do? ‘I was just following orders’ would never be enough to wash away guilt in a decent human, and Connor seemed to be hauling a lot of it.


Unfortunately, offering comfort or succor from mental anguish was not Madison’s strong suit. What could she possibly say after Connor exposed some profoundly private pain, and perhaps not wholly on purpose? The expression on his face was that of a crushed animal, helpless to escape the trap into which he’d unintentionally walked and she had unintentionally led with her otherwise innocuous question, and she was a poor medic for this sort of pain. The woman had the emotional subtlety of a pickled radish.


Right. Great. Say something. Say anything.


“Nothing to apologize for. You ever cross a line or need to say sorry, I guarantee you’ll know. I ain’t shy. Me, I….. I got lucky. My father passed away, so I was on family leave, getting his stuff in order when things went to shit. There were rumors but…. I was still in a nothing town. Killed a fair number of infected, but….. I could’ve done more. I-I should’ve done more. Being on the front lines in a big city…. Hell doesn’t cover it.” Indeed, the little Madison knew of the armed forces and its attempt to get things under control wasn’t encouraging, and being in a bustling metropolitan area would make things infinitely worse. No human alive had enjoyed a good time during the fall, but Madison was well aware she’d had it comparatively easy. Some memorable experimentation with a wheat combine alongside a few momentary survivors aside (it had been a bad idea), the fall hadn’t been a street-by-street, swarming gauntlet. There simply weren’t enough residents for that.


A forest of hands and teeth would come later.


“You said you got separated from the rest of your convoy? You don’t gotta continue if you don’t want, but….. I never got to talk to someone who was in an actual city during the worst of it. I….. I don’t mind listening, and I’ll keep it to myself. It’s okay.”


The curlique of her lips gained a brief, wan smile, devoid of mirth but not of common decency.


“One Connor to another.”




Connor waited in silence as she digested whatever it was he had just said. It all felt more like raw emotion spilling forward from his mouth as opposed to any coherent thought that he had weighed out in his head, so when she began to comfort him it was like a carpet bombing of nerve-deep explosions that crossed through his entire body instead of a rational, mental acceptance of what was being said. The Soldier felt weight relieve itself from his being as he spoke– his shoulders slack from the partial confession, and as he set eyes on his peanut-butter fiending friend he knew that this was the time to release it all for better or worse.


Connor set his eyes upon her– a sharp intensity in them as if to test her mettle as she had done to him before. If she was even half as empathetic as she suggested, this was going to be an experience for her as much as it was for him. The Man took a deep breath to settle his nerves before he continued, “Okay. I’ll keep that in mind– going too far, I mean.”


His fists balled in a vain attempt to hold back the anxiety in his bones, “We got separated from the convoy and then…”


What followed was a no-stone-unturned retelling of everything Connor had gone through in Indianapolis (as detailed in numerous flashbacks). His lips seemed to crack and bleed from the poison flowing through the cold haunt of his past as his legs began to bounce in an effort to counteract the anxiety now streaking across his face, but still the story continued, “So, after that, after we shot all those people mixed in with the infected at the retirement home– he shot himself leaving a note that said the only person who could help us was God. Shortly after, I was put in charge.”


His story seemed to be plagued by a certain lack of coherence that routinely saw him doubling back to reveal another minor detail perhaps spurred forward in his mind by an associated thought or feeling. Every time he spilled a profuse amount of apologies as he interrupted the flow, “I was on this bridge and there were hundreds of them crossing under us. Hundreds. Some of them walked, but some just stood there with their arms outstretched waiting for one of us to fall or to give into the maddening drone of their moans and throw ourselves from our perch. I hear them in my sleep– my fucking sleep. The shrill tones of HUNDREDS of their guttural wails. They don't stop. They never stopped. It was so hot that day and you could smell their rotting flesh wafting from beneath the overpass…”


Connor wrapped back around as he leaned forward onto his legs with his elbows propped atop his knees resting his knuckles under his chin. It was a pose the detective would recognize as a self-soothing technique officers would try to get suspects to mimic during an interrogation as it subconsciously made confessing easier; meaning that prior to this moment The Soldier didn’t see much wrong with what had transpired. He blew out all the air from his lungs as they quaked in trepidation at what was to come, “I took over my truck as Sergeant, and we set off to the hospital– couple a’ bandits set up shop there.”


Connor’s eyes shook as they filled with tears under the squeeze of his heart in retelling this story, “Then, the truck fucking blew up man. Just BOOOOOM! That was it. Next thing I know, my driver is on fire and scratching down at me from his seat above– gnashing his teeth as those stalky fingers tore out at me just out of reach. A seatbelt was the only thing that kept me alive there– a seatbelt. It was right then that this happened–”


The Soldier gestured to his burns, “Windshield blew out and my arms were dangling over the flaming engine. God, I remember how it ate at my flesh, how my hands slipped free skin from bone as I tried to pick up my friends, how the aching never went away.”


Never went away. Connor massaged his arms with his fingers as he bones wailed out beneath the dull buzzing skin, “After that day, nothing was the same. I broke down. The leadership was either all dead or as spent as myself, and it was all little more than pretending to be a uniform force. We paraded down the streets with all those civilian volunteers and they died. We died. Ammo was wasted– God, ammo we needed for later on but we just didn’t know it yet.”


Connor’s eyes sank as if torn down to prostration before Madison, “We ran out of food. By this time, we had about a hundred people under our care. Civilians. All walks of life. Ever heard that the only thing between people and anarchy is three square meals a day? It’s true. There was a skeleton crew left by this point– including myself, and then the riot started.”


The Soldier looked up to the woman with a previously unseen coldness about him as if he had shut down in order to relay this part of the story, “We had a few tents set up around what had been City Hall at that time. There were chain link fences, C-wire, sandbags, trenches, you name it. After about a month there, we were pretty dug in– safe enough from the outside when it was AT MOST a few dozen slackjaws, but we weren’t ready for anything from the inside. These people were scared, ya know?”


Connor conveyed this part as if it were a nonchalant, universal fact as he slung his hands up in near-exasperation, “They were just scared, but– God… so were we. So were we.”


A spaciness infected his demeanor as he raised what was a mock rifle into his shoulder– his fingers curled around the barrel and pistol grip of the M4, “‘STOP! RETURN INSIDE! FINAL WARNING!’ we shouted. Of course, there had been no other warnings before this, but then again they had just come out. The building was all boarded up, multiple layers of fallback– they might’ve been okay for a while if they had just stayed put. How could they, though?”


Connor leveled his gaze with Madison as he swung the M4 toward her, “We were leaving them.”


Those words alone slammed against the atmosphere of the room like a hammer. It was then that she began to see the true nature of his agony– the black, briny depths of the ocean of self-hatred that swam through his veins, “We had the trucks all loaded, and I guess a couple of them noticed and they came out to ask what it was we thought we were doing after keeping them there for a month. I mean, we got our orders: ‘Shelter and aid civilians until evacuation arrives.’ Well, fucking NEWFLASH, the choppers stopped coming a week ago, and HQ stopped responding last night! We had little ammo, no food, barely any fuel. Face it, we couldn’t help these people anymore. Should’ve let them go when the birds stopped coming.”


The Soldier let the M4’s muzzle fall toward the floor for a moment as he maintained a perfect phantom shooting posture, “Like I said, the fences were good for a few dozen, but god there had to be the better part of a couple hundred. The metal wailed and creaked, and we knew it was time to leave. We threw what we had on trucks as they screamed at us. Screamed and cursed us! You see, they were all trapped behind a chain link fence just around the outside of the building and we had that thing… padlocked. Just five more minutes, and we could’ve been gone.”


Connor’s weapon rose once more, “Then, some jackass came forward with a brick and he just started hitting and hitting and hitting the lock. All the commotion was drawing more and more of the infected outside, and we didn’t know what to do. We didn’t! The chain under the padlock gave out, and all the people we had kept safe came rushing out straight for our trucks, all our equipment, and what was left of the food. Truthfully, there was a little animosity between us and them. Everything we had endured we put up with for THEM. All the friends we lost. All the suffering. Sleepless nights. THE SIGHT OF DOZENS OF BODIES BLEEDING AND BROKEN! THAT WAS ALL THEM!”


There was a faint fury in the Man’s voice as he growled, “... at least, that’s how I felt at the time. I don’t even remember who shot first, but when it came down to us or them– it was us. Every time. The dozen and so guys left with me– we all opened fire, just let loose a hail of bullets on these people, man. Fathers, sons, daughters, wives, lawyers, firefighters, police officers, whatever. All reduced to a cooling corpse in the lawn of some bureaucratic center because we had failed them. We did, and this was the ultimate culmination of that failure.”


Connor was silent and still– save the rocking of mock recoil in his shoulder as he put on display the carnage which he had unleashed on these defenseless, scared people. Tears ran freely from his eyes, but the flat expression on his face was of the most disjointed caliber imaginable.


“For a moment, the world went silent. It was just a field of bodies and smoke and fear.”


Connor choked on his words.


“All THAT commotion riled up the infected outside. They busted through the gate right next to us that we had been planning to leave from, and they just set themselves upon us man. We were shooting– shooting like mad. The fence tumbled down and they were all around us. Just a circle of guys spraying what precious little lead we had into an endless hurricane of flesh-hungry corpses. They dropped and dropped and finally they hit our first few guys and they disappeared in the crowd!”


“Just keep shooting,” I shouted, “don’t give up!”


God, there were too many of them now. Connor stumbled backward over the arm of one of the people he had just shot moments prior as the ozone smell of smokeless powder assaulted his nose and drove his endorphins up to their maximum level. The Soldier heart slammed adrenaline through his limbs as he leveled his eyes ahead of him once more to the stalking, stumbling mass of cannibals before him and fired wildly, ineffectively into their ranks.


“Fuck,” One of his fellow Soldiers screamed as they were pulled leg-first into advancing army– blood showering like a sprinkler from his insertion, “HELP ME!”


Fingers around his ankle. The Sergeant spun around to see the very woman he had stumbled over had reanimated from the stomach shot he had given her as she sunk her teeth into his boot and ripped free a mouthful of fabric, “FUCK!”


Connor whipped around and blew her skull out through her ear with a swift trigger-pull on his M4. It was then– when death had finally grazed him, that he began to look around at the situation. The Soldiers were being taken apart one by one as they retreated into the ever-reviving field of bodies left between them and the City Hall building they had fortified for just such an occasion. It was almost karmic how they had sealed their own fate. The field outside had become a concert of gunfire, screams, and moans. All of it screaming out a song of hopelessness, and that was one thing The Sergeant wasn’t going to be here to see the conclusion of.


The fighting had attracted most of them to the front, so while everyone else was distracted– he ran. Connor hit a little side door, blew free the lock from the fence, and ran. He ran. Ran hard. Ran as fast and as far as he could while the screams of his men disappeared beneath a crushing blanket of the dead. Ran. He ran. Ran so far.


His plate carrier weighed two tons. His helmet straps dug into his chin as sweat poured into the horizontal creases it made in his face. Connor ran until he found himself in a plaza that had swept free just days prior– corpses littering it like a carpet. Then, he ran more. Ran screaming his silent agony from his mind. Ran until his legs were rebelling against even another step, but still he ran. Ran until he found that car with two infected beating on the window. He stopped.


POP POP POP!


Connor breathed forward three mock gunshots in the space between him and Madison, “Hey kid, what’s your name? Tanner? Good to meet you, Tanner.”


The Soldier sat frozen in place from that moment– the tears spilling from a gathering point at his chin. His body shook, knees bounced, sweat stained the armpits of his shirt. That was Connor laid bare.




Madison listened as the words flowed. There were so many of them, flowing like blood from a fissure in the man’s soul, enough to drench a life for the next dozen decades and follow the man to his grave, until it was his turn to get back up and shamble. An ocean of mistakes and a carpet of nothing but bad choices. The stories only ever got worse, and Madison realized Connor and the rest of his squad had been going on the hope, a soldier’s hope, that their CO’s somewhere up the line knew what was going on, that they’d somehow see the board better and be able to guide the sorry grunts on the ground into doing if not the good thing, certainly the right thing. The necessary thing. It was part of the Soldier’s Bargain - do what you’re told and trust that your orders were what had to happen. Trust that somebody, anybody, in the chain of command knew what the hell they were doing.


How had it felt when his CO had taken the coward’s way out and leadership had been pinned on Connor’s chest in turn, and he’d had to reckon with the reality of the situation into which he’d been ignobly placed: they were winging it? By the look on Connor’s face, that rictus of pain and a self-loathing so deep it went right past disgust and into contempt……not well. Madison’s own eyes shed a few sympathetic tears, for both the people he’d failed to protect and for the soldiers themselves. Civilians, too, had their own unspoken compact with the military and badges alike, and though that compact had eroded over the years as corruption, racism (and all the other isms), and shitty military campaigns had exposed truths various uniforms would rather have kept private, when the chips were down and things got bad, civvies still looked towards the uniforms to keep them safe.


The fire explained the man’s arms, and with how bad things were, he was beyond lucky to have survived with that much intact. The pain must have been beyond the bounds of language, words inadequate for the task of conveying its magnitude……. it was a wonder Connor hadn’t gone mad.


And yet, the words kept coming, kept gushing forth in time with the beating of his heart. An arterial bleed. When he was done, would he try and eat a bullet, the pressure relieved enough at last to seek the mercy of oblivion? Honestly, at this point Madison wasn’t sure. If Tanner perished, she was pretty sure Connor would, too, though she did not yet wholly understand the full context of why.


Fear, so much fear, fear enough to choke on, its presence in the room so tangible that the detective could almost smell it, sickly-sweet and sour. Mentally, Madison dialed the age of her namesake down by a few pegs. It was hard to tell these days, rough living was for everybody and that aged some worse than others, and with the beard it had been harder to tell….. but as the tale continued and fear led inexorably towards wanting, needing someone to blame, Madison realized the man was in his twenties, not thirties. The fall had been two years ago. He’d been little more than Haewon’s age when all this had started, and he’d been put in charge so soon after. No one to look to, no one to consult. That much responsibility on his broad shoulders without the benefit of having any idea what he was doing.


She flinched as Connor turned the gun on her, seeing what was coming with all the precognitive lucidity of a moviegoer yelling at the screen not to go down there, not to go alone, didn’t they know what was out there? Memories of her own came back unbidden; without the corpses staying where they should have lain, it had been impossible to tell, but the fall of City Hall had repeated its broad strokes in townships and neighborhoods across her path. Madison had been able to tell something was off, something wasn’t right, but not precisely what. Dead-heads in military gear, civilian zombies in dozens stages of decomposition, but still heavily favoring a single time-of-death over another. Like finding the ending to a hundred unfinished novels all in one place, questions that had nagged at the back of her skull were answered at last. Close the book. Connor had company in the knee-jerk choices he’d made. Lots and lots of company.


Rat-tat-tat and he’d run. Madison couldn’t really blame him; when her Uncle Bill had yelled at her to do so, Larry busily gnawing on Bill’s shoulder, she’d done the same. Run until the burn in her lungs forced her to stop. And then…… a child’s pair of eyes mutely asking for help, hers far younger than his had been, his appearing far sooner than hers…… but still, the coincidence of their names and twin experiences was an eerie echo across the two Connors that made one of them. Hopefully Connor’s charge would meet a kinder fate than hers, though that was an emotional hole of Madison’s own making that she could not bear to gaze into for too long.


In the end, Connor sat, trembling from toe to tip, tears freely flowing down his cheeks without whiskers to catch them on their way down, shaking hard enough to rattle the man into pieces, the memories in his gaze eating him whole……. and Madison couldn’t say the emotional self-flagellation was entirely unwarranted. Her gaze slid towards Tanner and she amended the rest of Connor’s story onto the end; traveling with the teenager for however long, being captured by the Samaritans, having Tanner’s life held over him, being made to play soldier for another group who didn’t seem to know what they were doing any better than the first, except now the cruelty was purposeful, the malice on full display at all times.


Madison got to her feet and looked down into a face that was the very personification of the phrase ‘What have I done?’ For an endless moment, Madison wasn’t sure whether she was going to slap him, shoot him, or grab him by the collar of his shirt and yell into his face on behalf of all those he’d wronged, how it was his fuckin’ job to not let fear call all the shots..….. but as gaze locked onto gaze, Madison recognized she didn’t have to. He was doling out plenty of punishment onto himself already. Her hands unclenched and she stepped forwards and to one side, one arm looping around Connor’s shoulders and giving him a tug towards the solidity of her body.


What the hell else was she supposed to do?


An unjust man was an abomination to the righteous, and a just man was an abomination to the wicked, and Connor, this Connor, found himself in the unenviable position of being both, or at least having earned in equal measure from column A and from column B.


“Idiot.”


Okay, great. Maybe add some more on that. Not exactly the pinnacle of empathy there. Try harder. Do better. Be better. A fellow human being was in pain, and he was paying his dues.


“I’ve gotchyou.”


Better, but not enough.

“I’ve got you.” Madison murmured a second time, enunciating more properly.


No, repeats didn’t count. For chrissakes, he was a grown-ass man, do more. Tell him anybody would have done the same? No, that wouldn’t help if their positions were reversed. Hey man, we all make mistakes, an’ some of those oopsies cost lives. No, still not. The woman was silent for nearly a minute, simply letting her presence do some of the heavy lifting. If shared joy was increased, then shared pain was lessened, even if only for a little while, and Connor had shared a torrent.


“What’s done is done.” Okay, while technically true, that wasn’t enough. Fuckit. Madison took a deep breath.


“Look….. I need you to listen to me an’ listen good. Yeah, you did those people wrong. Killed them, second degree. Failed them. The way….. The way to make….. The way to make them stop…. Stop reaching for you, is to make what they went through matter. Take…. Take it from personal experience. There are moments when we all become someone else, someone other than who we wanna be, and decent people spend the rest of their lives looking back at those moments in shame. That’s…… that’s just part of the gig, man. We don’t get offered any other ones.”

“You….. you are so much more than the worst things you’ve ever done, Connor.”


Her fingers tightened around his shoulder, and she did her best to put words to the fury that burned in her. “All those I failed, I use their faces an’ voices to drive me forwards….. Because I didn’t just fail them. They were taken. My enemies won….. and I do my best to make sure they don’t win again. In the name of all those I…… In the name of the fallen. I let those faces make me angry, and it….. I-I don’t get afraid much, anymore.”


There was a hesitation before she continued, but the man needed to hear the words before knowing them might become needful, if he had any hope of surviving them. Madison’s voice grew thick with emotion, but she managed not to shed any more tears than she’d already given. “You got Tanner. An’ I’m happy for you. Happy for him. Just…. Just remember it ain’t just about Tanner; it’s about all of them. Every damned kid left in this sorry world. I….. I had my own charge, once. Didn’t end well. But…. I…… I owe it to her to keep going. Keep fighting. She deserves that much, from me. I fucked up, and I owe her my best.”


A tired shadow threaded through her words, and her leather fingertips brushed at the wet on Connor’s face, first one side and then the other, before tipping his chin upwards and searching his gaze; “Understand?”


The questionmark was mostly ornamental. If Tanner died, either Connor would remember and understand the truth of it, or he’d likely follow the kid to the grave. God she hoped he’d come to understand.




Connor sat rocking forward and back in the rickety chair that formed the foundation of his reality right now and huffed and tried to blink away the tears of the emotional barrage he had just let loose on Madison. For a moment longer than he’d have liked, they sat in total silence save his sniveling and the low creak of wood as he shook, and all the while Madison's face twisted in a hundred different avenues of thought– weighing him against his past actions. There was fear, rage, sympathy, and acceptance in her eyes. Those moments were some of the longest in his life until– finally, she stood.


The sudden movement made The Soldier flinch as she made a rapid advance toward him. He made no effort to shield himself from whatever was coming and simply sat– waiting, still for her final judgment. A wrap, a tug. Madison pulled him into her embrace and they sat there leeching some kind of comfort from one another. After a moment, she spoke and at first it was the stiff, uncertain assurances of someone who had no idea what to say. How could she? Connor had unleashed something so dark and deeply personal that it must’ve made any response feel like trying to cut the wire on a bomb with only a few seconds left until detonation. Perhaps, she felt like that’s exactly what he was, a bomb, waiting to go off and either end himself or everyone around him. No. The thought of hurting others for no reason made his stomach churn with the same previous bile, but himself…


Madison’s words began to flow through the darkness in his mind– an unexpected light in the hardships of remembering. Connor’s gaze cut upward through the embrace of the woman, and finally those honey-sweet poured forth and began to wash away the grime that had choked his heart for so long:


‘You….. you are so much more than the worst things you’ve ever done, Connor.’


His puffy, red eyes began to overflow for one final time as he turned his face into Madison’s shirt– right about at stomach level, and reached his arms around her back to snatch fistfuls of fabric to hold onto. Connor leaned forward into Madison and he began to sob. This was not the uncontrolled stress response of earlier but the concentrated act of releasing all the stored pressure in his soul. So he wailed. Cried. Ugly. Tears that had been waiting years and years to come forward finally showered like a spring rain on the desolate fields of his heart. So, he drank down her wisdom so it could flow through his eyes in this cleansing storm.


“I understand.”


Somewhere in that moment, The Soldier died; His pitiful, disfigured corpse left in the vanquished memories of a burnt-out city. In his place, a Liberated Man was born in the cradling arms of a hierophant. It didn’t escape his notice that Madison hinted toward a similar experience she had gone through, but Connor’s emotional well had been dried in this herculean task undertaken by the two of them. The Liberated Man swore that he would ask her about that sometime if for no other reason than a vague hope that he could repay her even an ounce of the kindness that he had been shown here; if only to relieve her of a shred of the anguish she had helped shear from his very being.


The tears dried after a few minutes, and he lifted his face from her stomach– releasing her from his grasp, “Thank you. Thank you! Thank you–”


It felt inadequate, or maybe a little too much. He didn’t know.




It took everything Madison had to stay still as Connor buried his face in her torso and cried, his entire body shaking with deep, wracking sobs. Emotional closeness wasn’t something that came easy, and though she was glad to be here for the man, glad he was able to lance some of the pain that had started to go foul, she wasn’t wholly sure how to react. The isolation of over a year had taken its toll on an already fairly solitary individual, and Madison was overly aware of her elbows. One hand made small circles between the man’s shoulderblades as he wept, her voice making small murmuring noises one might make for a child or a frightened animal, because that’s what she’d seen done and it felt appropriate enough.


Boy, but she was trying hard and it was too damn early in the day to be this tired.


Flippant sarcasm was easy. Battle was easy….. easier than this, at any rate. Did he understand? She hoped so.


When Connor released Madison from his desperate grasp, her expression was a frappe of awkwardness, genuine care, understanding, and a certain unflappable acceptance that was her hallmark. The rage inside her was quiet, the stillness in her heart a blessed, precious, fragile thing. Moments like this one, moments where the anger was only a whiff behind locked doors, were becoming rarer as time went on.


Thank you, Connor said, pouring gratitude onto her and over her in a way she hadn’t really earned. A baptism of gratitude, just as he’d been baptized in his own tears. Shit. She needed to say something. You’re welcome? No problem? Anytime? Please try not to kill people who hadn’t rightly earned the privilege in the future? Like some of the tropes the woman unintentionally personified, Madison fell back on comfortable silence. She and Joe Friday, doing their collective best to keep a level head and be a rock.


She nodded, and gave the man a genuine pat on the shoulder, bending at the waist as she returned to the desk and lifting both helmet and bag into her hands. This time, her words were more sure, words that needed no chewing or mulling over. Doubtless, this was a notion she’d told herself a thousand times.


“Do me a favor. Mark the lines you crossed in your mind and never cross them again. You have a soul. It’s damaged and stained, but it’s there. It’s yours. Don’t let anything take it from you. Not again. Show that kid what it means to be a good man, as much as you’re able. Not enough of ‘em around, these days.”


There was little doubt that the death of hope was of far greater weight to the woman than the death of her body; even zombies couldn’t eat the former, not unless they were allowed to do so, and she’d be damned if this was the last generation. Madison had embraced life without fear so that she might have death without any new regrets. It wasn’t a choice she’d foister upon anybody else, but basic decency was a minimum bar.


“I’ll…… I’ll be around for a little while.”


A hand made sure she didn’t have any trace of her former wibbles on her own face, and her smile was closed-lipped and somewhat sloppy.


“See you around, Connor.”




Connor suddenly felt tired after everything as Madison pulled away and collected her things, “I will. I promise I'll do my best. I– thank you.”


He gave her a weak smile, “I'll be here too. See ya, Madison.”


As she left the room, sleep began to pull him into its soothing embrace.

Miaow Bullyboy Squad Namazu Safton NanLia Good_Morels Not Meat Crono BeyondDandy Fluffy-Kat​

 

[Bullyboy Squad]

INFIRMARY
next morning after the horde
collab with Miaow
​

The infirmary hummed with silence. Broken only by the occasional rustle of sheets and the muted groans of the injured. Ignacio entered the room, inhaling the scent of antiseptics. He nodded to the guard standing beside the door. Each step accompanied by a distinct tap of the crutch against the linoleum floor. Similar noise that Buster made when walking, except that Cabrera used only one support. Pale and bruised, he looked weak.

Ignacio's gaze fell upon his wounded men. He didn't bring words of comfort but he knew his presence was enough to elevate morale at least a little. As he approached the small hospital bed, the sight of the unconscious man he was having so many plans towards struck him deep.

"Hey." He spoke in a half-tone. His free hand clasped over a large jacket. "I brought you something." He held it out to the younger one.

Minnie rested her arms on the edge of Xander's bed, her hand in his as she rested her head in the crook of her elbow. She wasn't sure how Xander had stayed with her so often when she was in the infirmary, she'd slept terribly the night before. She was half asleep as the door creaked opened.

She flinched as Cabrera piped up, rubbing her eye with her palm as she slowly sat up. She glanced at his face, then the jacket as he held it out to her. She hesitated before taking it, resting it on her lap.
"Thanks..." She murmured, looking back at Xander. She wrapped it around her shoulders, trying to keep herself warm.

"Sorry I cut your face," She muttered like a schoolgirl in trouble.

A line of black thread went down the side of his face, entwined with the edges of the closed gash. Cabrera scanned her expression before his gaze drifted to the swollen face of the unconscious male. "Yeah. I know. I'm sorry for a lot of things, kiddo. Things I couldn't…can't change." He swallowed thickly, remembering Dutchess' falling body. It was odd to think he would never see her again.

"I heard it's just a matter of time before he wakes up." He offered with the weakest smile. He knew King would expect the man to die in the pit for what he did. And Ignacio wasn't sure what he could do to save Font's life. He knew the man simply lost his mind. He wasn't a bad guy. But he had to pay for what he did…

Minnie held Xander's hand tight as Cabrera spoke. His apology didn't mean much to her while she didn't know if Xander was going to pull through. Even if it was just a matter of time before he woke up.
"Even if he lives, you're going to kill him, aren't you?" She asked, looking up at him. There was no way, in the state that Xander was in, that he'd survive in the pit, and Minnie knew that.

Ignacio looked the girl in the eyes with one of his dark from blood. He held her gaze in silence before looking at the man. "He will be punished for what he did." His chest expanded with a deep breath as he sighed. "I don't know yet what the punishment will be.”

Minnie swallowed.
"But you're in charge here. It's your choice," She told him, her naivety rearing it's head. Xander surely must have had a good reason... she just didn't know what it was.

Cabrera gazed into her eyes when admitting. "I have to follow my boss' orders. But I am not afraid to ask him to change them if it can save Xander." He promised.

Why? Why did he have to follow his boss' orders? She took a shakey breath, looking at her father's motionless body.
"Just tell him he died. Tell him that man killed him. He can hide in the basement, where Arthur was," She suggested, keeping her voice low. Faking someone's death wouldn't work if the whole infirmary knew about their plan.

Cabrera's brows furrowed. It was...it was a plan. Maybe he could do it. But he doubted it could actually work. Wesley would demand to see the body. Cabrera slowly nodded. "It's an idea. I'll see if I can make it happen, Minnie. But...no matter what happens, you need to understand that. Xander made a choice. We all make our choices and then we are held accountable for them.”

For a moment, Minnie felt a little relief. He was going to try her plan... but as he continued, she felt her face grow hot, her eyes welling with warm tears until her vision was distorted. She wasn't even sure who she was mad at... He was right, Xander had made a choice, but why? Why had he done it? She couldn't understand it. She knew it was selfish, but, why had he done it knowing he had a family? Knowing how much it'd hurt her? What about Nari? She may never see him alive again... but it was hard to be mad at someone who was unconscious. No amount of asking would make him answer her. She was angry but she knew if she said too much, she'd end up a puddle of tears on the infirmary floor.
"If you'd never come here, he'd still be okay.”

MokaChan Togy Safton BeyondDandy NanLia Miaow @SlaughterMelon Crono Aegis Namazu Good_Morels Fluffy-Kat Tool ​

 

[Safton]

​

Northview High School - Infirmary

Collab Post w/ Miaow
​

Xander looked out of the window toward the school’s courtyard, his eyes watching these people that he was responsible for moving between their activities with something resembling contentment. The Samaritans were nowhere to be seen. The fence was intact. It was… idyllic. He felt a hand on his shoulder, turning.

Nari filled his view and they smiled at one another. Neither spoke. Nothing needed to be said as sunlight streamed through the window, illuminating her in a radiant glow. Xander lifted a calloused palm to gently brush a stray lock of black hair back behind her ear.

Nari took his hand, her smile widening.

And then she was gone.

***​

Nari was gone. That was the first thought that shot through Xander’s mind upon waking. She was taken… but the pressure on his hand remained. He blinked away the grogginess in his eyes, gritting his teeth at the pounding pain behind them: the discomfort that made him feel like his skull had been split open. He glanced down at the bed he was laying in, taking stock of his surroundings.

He was alive and in the infirmary. He couldn’t be certain how long either of those things would remain true given what he had done. It didn’t matter, though… what did matter was the reason for the warm, gentle pressure on his hand. Minnie sat in a chair next to his bed, a chair she had clearly pulled as close as physically possible to him. Her upper body was leaning over to rest on the edge of his cot where she was now dozing, clutching his hand all the while. She seemed to be – thankfully – in one piece. He smiled at the sight, his vision growing blurry with tears and his throat tightening.

It wasn’t lost on Xander that he had spent more than a few nights in the same position at her side while she recovered. They were family, in all the ways that mattered. It had broken him the moment he saw that bloodstained sneaker outside followed soon after by Haewon disappearing outside, the moment he realized he had failed his most important job: keeping his family safe at any cost. Now that he knew he was wrong, he felt like he’d been given a second lease on life… but for what? There was a good chance that Cabrera – if he was even still alive – was going to walk through that door any second now to finish what the other Samaritan had started. His life was forfeit. But until then… he would take what time he had.

Xander slowly, discreetly lifted his free arm to wipe his tears away with the back of his hand. After taking a deep breath to compose himself, he spoke up – his voice a raspy croak. “Hey, there, lovebug. You okay?”

Minnie's black hair was dusted with cobwebs from her adventures in the vents, giving the illusion the stress of the previous day had aged her 50 years. Her eyes were closed, occasionally twitching as she dreamed... Her back rose and fell softly with each breath.

As a familiar, though raspy voice echoed in her ears, her eyes opened slowly. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision. She couldn't help but wonder whether her dreams were leaking into reality. She had the same, recurring dream most nights. They were playing boardgames in their makeshift apartment, using random junk to replace the pieces that had been lost throughout the years. Haewon was always the penny she'd found exploring the old canteen, and Minnie was a thumbtack shaped like a star. Xander had never asked her that in her dream before, though, because of course she was okay. Why wouldn't she be?

She reached up to rub the sleep from her eye, squinting at Xander... and he was looking back at her. Her eyes widened.

"XANDER!" She grinned, practically leaping onto his bed. She rested her head on his chest, squeezing him as tight as her arms would let her, but carefully avoiding his swollen face.

Haewon jumped from the office chair she'd been asleep in, the wheels rolling backwards and bumping into the privacy screen. Oh God, he was having a seizure, he was bleeding from his eyeballs, he was eating her sister-- Oh, he was awake. That was probably the last thing Haewon had expected. Her chest heaved, watching the two embrace.

Xander grunted as Minnie leapt onto the cot fully with him, squeezing him with a strength no girl her age should rightly possess. The air was forced from his lungs and the bruises on his body protested… but he didn’t dare stop her. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her, holding her close.

Movement out of the corner of his eye, along with the sound of a small collision, drew his attention immediately. Xander glanced over Minnie’s head to spot Haewon in the corner, rising from a rolling chair. “Hey,” he said, offering her a small smile. “Is everything okay? How long was I…?” his voice trailed off as he slackened his grip on Minnie, patting her shoulder.

Haewon took a deep breath, tucking her hands into her pockets and attempting to relax her shoulders...

"A day or so," She responded, "Not long."

"Too long!" Minnie retorted, listening to his heart through his chest. It felt so good to feel him hugging her back. She didn't want to let go...

"Do you remember what happened?" Haewon asked, standing at the edge of his bed.

Xander caressed Minnie's hair idly, frowning as he found cobwebs and picked them out. He paused at Haewon's question. Did he remember? Honestly, it would be easier if he didn't. The memory flashed through his mind of the Samaritan's weight on top of him, the blows raining down... and before that, the smoking gun in his hand as he watched Dutchess crumple to the ground in a heap.

Haewon took a breath. Somehow, his lack of response angered her more, but she refused to show it in front of her sister. She was content lying on Xander's chest, but Haewon couldn't help but think of what was going to happen next. She let out a soft sigh, crossing her arms."I'll get Pandora," she murmured, ducking out through the privacy screen.

Minnie sat up a little, meeting Xander's eye. "Are you feeling okay?" She asked with a small frown. The image of his head bouncing against the concrete echoed within her mind.

Xander saw the flash of annoyance in Haewon's eyes. It was one he had become very familiar, very early on as a teacher... yet somehow Haewon's mastery of the expression put all others to shame. When she rolled her eyes, it managed to cut like a knife. He resisted the urge to let out a heavy sight after she left, turning to Minnie after her question with a small smile. "Yeah, lovebug. I'm fine," he reassured her, even though his skull felt like it had been cracked open with a rock hammer and then welded back together with a blowtorch.

Minnie smiled at his response. Maybe he really was okay... maybe he'd kick butt in the pit. Maybe they'd be okay after all. She took a shaky breath. "We have to figure out what to do," she murmured, slowly resting her head back onto his chest... until she had an idea. "What if we sneak out!" she whispered, her head shooting back up, "We find somewhere else to hide until you feel better, me and Haewon will find us food, then we can break Nari out of the prison! O-Or we can steal a radio and tell her our plan, and she can sneak out and meet us there!"

Xander smiled at Minnie as she spoke, wanting to hug her and hold her tight. He didn't doubt for a second that she meant every word of what she said... which made this part that much harder. "I wish it were that simple, Minnie," he murmured, giving her shoulder a soft squeeze. "But I'm in no condition to 'sneak' anywhere... and I don't want you and your sis getting hurt on my account."

Xander swallowed hard, leaving the subtext unspoken: Not anymore than you already have. "You just focus on staying safe and looking out for each other, okay?" he said, hoping that she wouldn't read through the lines of that simple request and understand... because there was a good chance he wouldn't be around to look out for them anymore.

Minnie frowned a little at his response... There had to be some way of getting out of this mess. "Haewon knows how to drive! We can steal a Samaritan truck, then you don't have to sneak as far... and we'll keep moving so they don't catch up," she mused, continuing to keep her voice down.

She swallowed, his words finally processing in her brain. She wanted to ignore him and keep scheming their escape... but it sounded like Xander didn't want to escape. She rested her head on his chest, staring at the wall as she thought. "Don't go..."

Xander's jaw clenched as his sentiment finally seemed to resonate with Minnie. He lifted his arm, letting his hand rest on the back of her head while stroking her hair. His eyes stung at the sound of her voice. It was a desperate plea with him and he had no words that could or would comfort her in that moment -- not without lying to her. But he couldn't stand the idea of not trying.

He composed himself before speaking, injecting every bit of determination that he could muster into his tone. "I'll do everything I can to stay with you, Minnie. You, your sister, Nari... you guys are my life. You know that, right?"

Minnie didn't want to let go of him. She didn't know how much longer she'd be able to hug him whenever she wanted. In any other circumstance, his fingers playing with her hair would make her feel good, like she could fall asleep in his arms... but the uncertainty made her stomach twist into knots.

"I talked to Cabrera... he said he might help. I said we should tell his boss you died and hide you in the basement," she explained, smiling a little at the absurdity of her own idea, "I'll bring you strawberries, like I did for Arthur. We can make the old bathroom into a bedroom..."

Xander tensed slightly as Minnie mentioned having talked to Cabrera. While he had come to accept the Samaritan's presence at the School as a necessity for the time being in the weeks prior -- and even perhaps developed a bit of an understanding with the man -- the truth was that he still didn't trust him. And he certainly didn't trust him enough to have the girls visiting him, alone, to negotiate on his behalf. Cabrera was... somewhere between reasonable and unpredictable at best when things were running smoothly. Now that Xander had shot one of his "associates"? He seriously doubted the guy would be in the mood to do him any favors. As for whether Ignacio would sink to the level of harming the girls to get back at him? That remained to be seen.

Still, his expression softened and he couldn't help but give Minnie a smile as she described another one of her... ambitious plans to keep him safe. The mention of bringing him strawberries had him wanting to hold her close and never let her go. He let out a small sigh, ruffling Minnie's hair slightly. "That sounds great, lovebug. I can tell you've put a lot of thought into this. But I don't want you and Haewon going near Cabrera if you can avoid it, okay? Not even for me. Can you promise me that?" He offered her his pinkie finger.

Minnie looked up as he warned her, taking a moment to ponder his request... Cabrera was half the reason they were in this mess. It was him who was reporting back to King, if he could just... tweak the truth, then they'd be rosy. She nodded in response. "Okay," she murmured, looping her pinkie finger with his with a smile.

As the privacy curtain was pulled apart, she peered over her shoulder. There stood Pandora, her eye-bags looking much larger than normal. Surprisingly, a horde of zombies was a breeding ground for injuries and she hadn't particularly slept. However, she still smiled at Xander. "Good morning!" She chirped, pulling a pair of gloves over her hands.

Haewon ushered her sister over from the edge of the curtain. "Let's give them some privacy, yeah?" she suggested. There was no telling what grossness was gonna come out of that man's face. Minnie gave him one last squeeze before clambering off of the bed.

"Take care, you two," Xander murmured, offering them a gentle smile. "I'll see you soon." With that, he turned toward Pandora, giving her a small nod as she closed the curtain around them.

Bullyboy Squad Aegis Tool Togy NanLia Namazu BeyondDandy Fluffy-Kat Good_Morels MokaChan
​

 

[Tool]

NORTHVIEW
Outside, by the fence and wrecked car​

Madison wasn't a forensic tech, but the knowledge of years on the force guided her gaze from the back of the school, chain glinting like an accusation on the bloodied ground. Why in the world had this door been chained, only to be unchained during the scuffle? There wasn't any other plausible reason to have an unused chain on the floor, so close to the back door. A failed, panicked attempt to close the door would have had a broom, a crowbar, a riffle, a length of pipe, anything that might reasonably be used as a weapon used in a pinch to try and brace the door. A length of chain was not easily counted among the number of impromptu weapons. Right? Probably right. That's what she dealt with these days: probabilities.

What little human movement changed in tone and timbre as she went outside. People were messing around with the dead, stripping what was useful off and carrying the corpses.....somewhere. Thankfully, nobody seemed too keen to strike up a conversation and Madison was able to leave Northview behind her and head towards the fence. The rupture that had so profoundly damaged the compound and allowed the hungry to gush unimpeded onto occupied ground was definitely something to see.

Alright, think. Search. The answers were here, waiting to speak to her. It would just take time and persistence.

Movement out of the corner of her eye was noticed and dismissed. It didn't have the gait of the dead, and whomever was coming this way could wait their damn turn. Clever fingers ran across the breach proper, noting how the metal had been bent and at what angle, how Northview had all but fallen. Possibilities came to mind and were dismissed as other clues were discovered, each potentiality including more and more of what she saw.



Cabrera was catching up, finally got his bearings to check on his men and on the situation. It looked grim. Most of the women and children were told to stay inside to not walk around the grime, rot and horror. But a few of uninjured men reluctantly began to rob the dead before collecting bodies in a pile. It would take hours if not days to finish the task as the whole school grounds were strewn with the corpses. And it already took a lot of energy to get rid of those spilled in the Northview hallways.

Cabrera tossed aside his crutch, frustrated it got stuck in the sand or decomposing flesh one too many times. He slowly limped his way around the fence, spotting the female from a distance. The leather biker with an attitude. Throwing accusations before waving the bait. Be a decent human being, it’s not too late. She didn’t know shit about him.

“Looking for something?” Cabrera’s voice was firm. Tone more confident than the day before when she cornered him in his quarters.



Madison nodded distractedly, her eyes still focused on the task before her. "Yeah."

Her dark gaze kept looking for scratches or other signs of a bre- there. It had gotten partially buried during the stampede in here, but no zombie had gnawed through steel. Madison spoke more completely as she rose to her feet and turned to face her questioner, a length of chain dangling from between her palms.

"Wondering why someone would bust the chai- Oh. It's you." Regional Manager of Idiots Inc. Hooray for her.

She sighed and started again. "Wondering why someone would let in the dead." Gloved hands lifted the chain in explanation, then let it drop to her side to knock against her thigh before turning her attention back to the dirt.

"This compound wasn't set up smart for defense, but even so, it shouldn't 've fallen so quick from so many angles. That means the dead had help. Car's here to try'n close the gate back up, but that still leav....." Madison's voice dropped and a satisfied smile spread across her lips.

"Ha. Gotcha."

This time, when she got to her feet, she was brushing dirt from the top loop of what had once been a padlock. The locking mechanism was probably somewhere else in this mess, but if it had been unlocked, the two halves would still have been attached. "Catch."

Madison tossed the broken lock in the man's direction before gesturing at the felled gate with her thumb. "Thought as much. Somebody got it out for this place. Or you. Or both."

An incisive gaze took him in from boots to hairline. He looked a little better than he had yesterday, but still like he'd lost a bet with a donkey's rear end.

"Look...... I..... I saw you hugging real sweet on one of the Fallen Angels yesterday. Sister, ex-wife, whatever. None of my beeswax. You.... You be careful, understand? Most of the rank and file seem okay, but the dudes in charge? They ain't friends. Watch your six."



Cabrera felt wet grit and cool metal in his hands. Giving it a quick once over before tossing the thing aside like trash. His gaze was sharper than the night before, locked with the woman’s eyes in a similar fashion. His cheek tugged up even if bitterness flashed in his shiny eyes.

“Since when do you care about my safety, lady? I thought you already had a strong opinion about who I am.” What I am.



Madison blinked.

"I think you're about as smart as a julienned carrot."

A shrug encompassed many things in the rise and fall of armored shoulders. "You think I'm a naïve moron, I think you got more pecs than good sense an' your spine could use some polish. Even so, you got potential, whether or not you decide to double down in your own crap an' call it pudding."

She shook her head and looked at the fence, then let herself take in the carpet of bodies between the fence and the school. "Doesn't matter anyhow what I do or don't care 'bout your safety in particular."

"If the horde was led to within a singed cunthair of this school as a personal hit against you or against a Samaritan stronghold in general and the flying murder-bot-assassin was just a bonus....... Lots of people died."

A bit of flint entered her gaze, making it hard and sharp enough to cut glass; "People who use zombies as mass weapons go on my shit list. Call it a personal line. S'why I told you to watch your six around the Fallen Angels. Whatever you think of them, whoever they are to you, their top dog is dangerous. Dangerous an' sloppy."



Ignacio’s expression shifted to something more solemn, a spark of anger lighting up his dark eyes. Ignacio knew it wasn't on him. The rational part of his brain knew it was a staged hit and only half of it had his name on it. For reasons once again beyond his direct control. But he wasn't shying away from the blame. He already carried one hell of a burden on his two fucking shoulders. He had to carry more? Fine. He came this far, he wasn't going to give up. With his sister alive, with her believing he was still the same man she knew… That was enough to propel the newfound strength.

Cabrera gauged the woman’s changed stance and wondered if she would stick around long enough to ever become his ally.

“Thanks, Detective.” He looked at the gate and involuntarily shivered. The memory of the bullet knocking him off his feet and the biters surrounding him, still shone bright in his mind.

“Anything else you want to say to me?”



Surprise flickered across her delicate features before settling into tired solemnity. Detective.

Now that was a title she hadn't heard someone call her in a long, long time. She tried it on, felt how it settled on her shoulders, an old coat she hadn't worn in what felt like forever. Not much of a detective these days, though she did notice the lack of surprise on Cabrera's face at the implication that someone inside the compound had let in the shuffling masses. Also absent was any reaction to her warning about the Fallen Angels........ or any follow-up questions to either of those statements.

That heavily implied Cabrera already knew both of those little tidbits. There wasn't any curiosity in those brown eyes, only a smoldering anger in his gloomy gaze.

Well then.

"Like what? No offense, but you're the one that came up to me, remember?"



Ignacio shifted to keep more weight on the unhurt leg. The pain helped. Like a little alert in his brain reminding him to remain cautious.

“True. But you're the one spreading your wisdom all around.” He rolled one shoulder and cracked his neck.

“What’s your plan now? Doesn't sound like you belong with the Angels. And sure as hell you don't belong with us.” He watched her face intently. He knew the type. That woman. She could be a problem…



Madison cocked a brow at the injured man and decided on direct (when had she ever been anything but?)

"Call it a personal failing. I see someone do a foolish thing, I call it out. They can keep doin' it, but at least the truth is where it needs to be. But... I'm not up on what people know or don't anyhow. Case in point, sounds like you already knew what the Angels tried to do and that somebody let the dead in." She shrugged. "I'm not in anybody's loop. And..... You're not wrong."

One hand limply gestured towards the school and the bikes neatly lined up in glimmering, chrome rows.

"I'm not going to follow a mass-murdering dickhead, no questions asked, whether or not his plan went off without a hitch. That's not a line I'm willing to cross. Got enough stain on my soul to go grabbing for more willingly. I was hoping the Fallen Angels would be........ home. But you're right about that: I don't belong."

The nod of her head towards Cabrera preceded the verbal shift to the Samaritans themselves. "An' you're right on your account, too. You want to serve the crown and not its people, go all in on conquest...... S'not the place for me either. You wouldn't want me."

She sighed and looked out towards the burnt, smoking remnants of the forest, and when her face tipped towards Ignacio once more, dozens upon dozens of crossroads shone in the hollows of her eyes.

"I'll go back out there. I've spent almost all my time since the Fall on my own, hunting the dead. Won't be nothin new. Every zed-head I kill is one less infected down the line. Who knows. Maybe I'll get lucky, find someplace that could use protecting. Maybe I won't. Either way, I got a cause worth livin' for."



Ignacio followed her gaze to the charred landscape in the distance. Silent. Then he met her eyes when she searched his and he slowly nodded to her plans. After a few more heartbeats he confirmed.

“I don’t want you.”

Cabrera gauged her expression before adding. “You could destroy everything I worked for. Or die trying.” He inhaled deeply before letting out a sigh. “And I don't want to see either.”

He turned to face the forests again. “I think we could work well together. Complement each other.” His lips tugged in the corner of his mouth in a rueful smile and he tossed a sideways glance at her. “In another life.”



Madison Jones let out a bark of laughter, and she shook her head. "Man, the ego on you, they must be able to see it from orbit, but alright. I'll bite. Been looking for why Weston got such a high opinion of you, so I'm willin' to give the obvious question an honest shot: what exactly have you been working for that you didn't take?"

As far as Madison could see, the only thing Ignacio Cabrera had 'worked' for was the infiltration and then takeover of an otherwise peaceful community with the oldest shakedown there was. Gladiatorial death matches that were worse than a town-square lynching. Keeping the people of this place (and others besides) as slaves. And, as a special, sparkly bonus, leading what he himself had called dangerous animals. Beyond fighting the dead when they came knocking, which was not evidence of strong moral character, Cabrera had shown her little more than a brave man with a very inflated sense of self-importance that managed to sink to moral cowardice. He'd saved Haewon's life....... and so far, that was about all the guy had to his name.

It wasn't enough.

This was the sort of man who smacked his kids around to teach them how hard the world was gonna be, to toughen them up and make them 'strong'. He had no idea what genuine strength was, and it wasn't found in people like Cabrera or in people like herself.

"I'll even give ya a gold star for yer sticker book if you're specific. I'm genuinely asking."



Cabrera’s gaze cruised along the forests as he gave it a moment. To think. “The winter is coming. It's going to snow soon.” He turned to face her. “You should go South before it starts.”

The man paused and sized her up and down like an opponent or a new partner. “Come visit next year before the first snow.” If the new glint in his eyes could betray him, the woman would know his secrets. “And I'll show you everything I've been working towards.”



This time, the laugh was a decidedly unladylike snort and Madison picked up her bag, slinging it over her shoulder as she spoke.

"Well aren't you just a mystery stuffed in a baked enigma and smothered in secret sauce. I'll bet you think that sounded enticing and dramatic." Madison's free hand made a brief jazz dance on the word 'dramatic', and she said the word in an unintentional parody of a voiceover, overly enunciated and with all the faux gravitas as a 90's action movie trailer.

"Grow up, y'pansy. Got better things to do than check up on some jackass conquistador who's tryin' for coy. Go sit on a pineapple an' give it a twirl."

She began to walk away, then paused and put her face in profile and spoke over her shoulder. "Tell you what, though. I hear through the grapevine your Big Plans involve shitting on these people any more than you already have? You an' I are gonna throw down, and it ain't gonna be in no Pit."

Facts in place, Madison went towards the bikes to load up before heading out. She had half a mind to ask Haewon and Minnie if they wanted to come with....... except that she'd seen their faces around Xander. They wouldn't leave him behind, no matter how much it might be the wise thing to do, and she couldn't rightly blame them. Same went for Connor. Both Tanner and Xander were hurt badly enough that moving them would probably prove fatal.

It was time to say farewell to the few acquaintances she'd made and go and do what she was meant to, and possibly look into the problem with Kings........

Bullyboy Squad​

 

[Namazu]

FLASHBACK - NORTHVIEW
Somewhere Outside​

Fish swore he could still hear the rumble of engines even after they were all parked and turned off. It paired well with the never-ending moan and shuffle of the dead that never seemed to leave his head. He steered the rest of the Fallen Angels that were with him towards the school, finding a clear path up to the building where they could park for the rest of the day and until the next. The yard leading up to the school still had all the signs of the carnage that had happened earlier in the day - the ground was stained and the air still stunk - but it looked like some bodies had been moved. Probably those of the recently-living, not the-long dead.

Now things were silent and still. Like a graveyard - the phrase intrusively came to Fish’s mind as he shut off his bike and kicked down the kickstand. He didn’t get off the bike right away; instead, he leaned one elbow against the handlebar, put his forehead in his hand, closed his eyes, and let out one very long breath he hadn't realized he was holding. His other arm dangled over the handlebars as he took a moment to himself. They had been riding all damn day with almost zero break, essentially eating and drinking only what they had on themselves and could get to with minimal slowing down or stopping. Fish apparently had done the opposite of what Jenkins did and had drank very little throughout the day, feeling like he sweat it all out in the end. That now meant he had a headache and felt ill, but at least he wasn’t rushing off to go piss somewhere.

Fish opened his eyes finally, trying not to stare too long at any of the carnage around them, and slid off his bike. All his joints protested and popped as he moved, though it felt good to stand again. Reaching into his bike’s bag, he pulled out a water bottle and quickly uncapped it, taking a few long drinks of the warmish water as he watched the others dismount and stretch. He kept most of his attention on Beau… and the body on the back of Beau’s bike.

“You wanna go pick a spot, or do you want to take a break first, Beau?”

Beau rolled to a stop not far off, his engine still purring as he stared blankly towards the halo his headlight cast. His head was foggy with shock, like the whole damn night and day had been a shitty dream.

He wasn't hungry or thirsty, but he probably would be later. The sickness in his stomach was vague enough to ignore for now.

In a similar vein, he ignored Jenkins cries of terror, but finally turned his bike off. "I'll pick a spot and come find you when I do." He decided, languidly sliding off of his bike and kicking up the kick stand. He opened his mouth to ask Fish to do the talking for him as to if they could borrow and shovel and where to get one, but the words didn't come. He shut it again and went wandering, stepping over bodies like fallen logs as he searched for a decent spot.

Fish gave Beau a nod, understanding why the man decided to walk off and do this on his own. It concerned him a little - he was probably in no shape to be alert enough to fight off anything that might try and lunge at him. But, judging by the look of things? There might not be anything left to do any lunging.

"Somebody watch her, don't let anyone move her from that bike." Fish ordered everyone nearby, whether they listened or not.

"Piss more quietly!" He called back to Jenkins - not worried about the man's outburst, seeing no staggering dead going for him - before muttering a quiet 'Christ' under his breath.

Stalking off, he kept his eyes out for anything moving in a threatening manner, but there was nothing but dead bodies and his clubmates out here at this point. He was hoping to find a maintenance shed or something. He halfway circled the school before he found what he was looking for - some kind of shed, its doors open and more bodies littering the ground. The floor here was strewn with hay for some reason - did this place have animals at some point?

Fish scored big a second time, finding exactly what he was looking for: propped up in the corner of the shed, next to a rake and a few other tools, was a shovel. Two of them, actually. He grabbed both, resting them on his shoulder as he trudged back to the bikes.

Beau wandered for a while, not due to distance but just because he was moving at a snails pace. He wonders if that was what Em felt like before Fish put a bullet through her. Like wading through a thick bog that tugged at his clothes, threatening to pull him under the muck.

The only thing stopping it was the fact Beau was still moving. Slowly as he was, he was moving. He wasn't even sure why he was doing that.

Fish asked him to? That's a stupid reason to walk.

Regardless, he found himself standing under a big oak tree, one that didn't have too many bodies around it even though the trunk itself was marked with stray bullets.

This was as good of a spot as any. Em liked trees. He walked back to his bike and rolled it over to the tree before flicking his headlight back on, creating a yellow halo to spotlight the gravesite. With that done, he wandered back to Fish.

"I found a spot" he rumbled in a similar tone to the growl of an alligator beneath the bayou.

"Yeah? Good - lead on. I got us shovels." Fish responded, as if the tools he was holding weren't damn obvious already. Turning towards the rest of the group, Fish let out a whistle to grab everyone's attention. He thumbed back towards the direction Beau had come back from - presumably towards where his chosen location was.

"We have one of our own to bury. Come help, pay your respects, or both." Even though Emily wasn't a patched member, she was as good as one of their own at this point. Beau loved her, and in Fish's mind, that was damn plenty.

"Someone go inside, let Casey and Ally know what we're doing. And, unless Beau objects, I suppose that invitation is open to anyone else here that wants to pay their respects...?" Fish trailed off, glancing to Beau for confirmation and agreement.

Beau started back towards the tree, but stopped as Fish whistled. He stared at the tree for a little too long before glancing at the school and slowly turning back towards the group.

He didn't object to the invitation, to be honest he couldn't find it in him to care. He just didn't want them to look at him. Em deserved to be mourned, but he didn't deserve anyone's pity.

"That's fine." He rumbled after a long pause. He waited a minute before continuing to lead Fish to the spot illuminated by his bike.

"It'll be a pain to dig, but Em likes trees." He commented quietly as he took a shovel from Fish. "Back before all this mess, she said she wanted a natural burial, whatever that is, with me beside her. I said our nature trees could grow up 'n hold hands. She laughed and said it was something else that made it natural, not havin' a tree on top. I can't remember."

"Well, a natural burial is what she's gettin'." Fish replied as he glanced from the body on the back of the bike then to the patch of bare ground they had to work with. Shovel in hand, he scraped a line in the grassy dirt about where the top of the grave would start. Dragging the shovel in the dirt to create a rough outline, he counted out enough steps to make the hole long enough to fit Emily in. It was a good thing she wasn't real big or tall, though out of respect he did outline a plot a bit larger than really needed.

With a rough guideline for digging notched into the dirt, he shoved his shovel into the ground and pushed it in with his foot.

"I think it's got something to do with burying someone in a wooden box, not something made of lots of metal, dunno. Maybe not embalming the body either, but I'm not real sure, so don't quote me on that." He tossed aside a shovel-full of dirt and went in for a second one. This would take awhile, and he was exhausted, but he knew he had to.

Beau followed his example, pushing the shovel into the rooted dirt with a grunt. "I don't-" he started to say he didn't care, but he would've been lying. If he cared about anything at all, it was what Emily wanted.

He made good progress before speaking again, breaking the last of the roots so the dig would be easier. He broke the silence with a low chuckle. "She woulda shot us if she saw what we were doing. We woulda been dead before we could explain ourselves. I ever tell you about...." He trailed off, feeling water in his eyes. He shook his head, choking back a sob. Not now, not in fronta people.

"Nevermind. It ain't important."

Fish dug out a few shovelfuls of dirt in silence, not wanting to interrupt when Beau tried to talk, and not wanting to disrupt the silence when he couldn't. He couldn't think of what to say. The weight of what they were doing hung heavy in the air, and Fish stopped mid-shovel, foot pressing the shovel's edge into the dirt.

"But it is important, Beau. You loved her, yeah? Well... I think that's why whatever you were gonna say was important. Emily was important." He shoved the shovel in the rest of the way.

"You don't gotta say it now if you can't, you can always tell me later. Or if not me, somebody else. Or tell it to the tree." He motioned with one hand to the nearby tree.

"I do that sometimes. Talk to things, instead of people." He rubbed his arm over his forehead before shoving the shovel into the dirt again.

"Don't care if people overhear me or think I'm nuts. Sometimes, you just gotta say stuff out loud to make it real." Fish knelt down at the edge of the growing grave, reaching in to pull up a large rock buried in the dirt. It took some prying and tugging, but he got it out. Once he pulled it up, he sat it off to the side. It might make a good grave marker.

"Say it out loud. Make it real. Don't forget her. You're lucky, y'know? You loved her, and she loved you back." He scratched at the back of his neck, not looking up at Beau.

"Not everyone gets that. I know I didn't."

The words Emily was important finally broke him. It was a silent break, the tears just started falling as his shoulders shook with silent sobs. He didn't stop digging, even as the shovel shook in his hands.

"I know. Makes it worse. I had somethin' real good and fucked it up. I made her cry. She thought I was cheatin' on her and I couldn't tell her otherwise. I think she knew, honestly. She saw me come home all beaten up sometimes. easier to think I was cheatin' than hurting people. Funny, you'd think... I dunno. I shoulda left the angels then. Shit felt so much more real back then, like consequences mattered. If i'd known..." He trailed off again.

"... I hated seein' you like that." He added after a long moment. "Em did too. Made me jealous actually, she wanted to help you so bad. Wanted to put you in the kids room until you got back on your feet. Can you imagine that? Both of us leavin' and tryin' to be homemakers instead?...." He gave another sad chuckle.

" I ain't.... I ain't proud of this branch." He added after a long moment. "Couple years ago I woulda torn those boys a new one, how they handled that woman. I saw it. Pretended I didn't."

The very idea that Beau and Emily had discussed helping him like that was such a surprise, Fish couldn't even come up with words at first. He blinked down at the dirt, thinking about what Beau had said.

"I appreciate the two of you thinking about me when you didn't have to. I dunno if I would have even accepted the help.... Sometimes people need to hit rock bottom before they'll accept they have a problem." He reached down, taking a handful of dirt. It was soft and a bit moist. Not too wet and heavy, not sandy and hard to work with. It wasn't the first grave he'd dug, so he had some practice at this already. He rubbed the dirt between his fingers, letting it crumble and fall.

"I don't got a kids' room to offer, but I'd like to return the favor. My trailer's open anytime you need it." He looked up at Beau as he climbed to his feet again, wiping his hands off on his jeans.

"I hate seeing you like this. Been there, done that, shit'll kill you if you don't kill yourself first. If you ever wonder why I'm not always looking you in the eye when we talk, it isn't because I don't like you. I like you plenty. Its cause you remind me too much of myself back then... and that version of me, I can't stand." Fish pushed the shovel into the dirt again.

"I was a fuckin' asshole and piece of shit back then. I would have fit in with this bunch great then, the way things are going now." He muttered.

"Appreciate her. I never brought it up because I was scared of you hurtin' her" Beau admitted, pushing the shovel into the dirt once more. "I got a lot of regrets, Fish. I shoulda brought it up, maybe I coulda stopped what happened." He mumbled. He was quiet as Fish spoke, looking down at the ground.

"I'm already gone, man." He mumbled. "Have been since she walked out. I try not to be too much a burden but... I been hurt lately.. frustrated. Y'know Jenkins knows just howta piss me off."

He shoveled the dirt out of the hole. "You were a real piece of work, I'll say that much. Nasty thing, comparin' us while I'm digging my wife's grave. Real mean." He offered a small smirk at his own teasing before it fell.

"I don't think I'll be 'round much longer Fish. Me 'n her, we talked about dyin'. I told her I wouldn't last the year if she went first, I'd die of a broken heart. I'm already overdue."

Fish pushed his shovel into the dirt so hard he may have just thrown it in, and let out a sigh.

"I'm not going to let you do that, Beau." He didn't explain what that was. "I'll be keeping an eye on your ass so you don't do something reckless. I don't want you to give up, not after you got this far."

Beau didn't look at him. "I ain't gonna do it myself. That's a sin." He insisted, ironic considering their cricunstances.

"I can feel it comin'. Like a storm. I can smell the ozone." he explained vaguely. "There ain't no point worryin' about it, you can blow as hard as you want, you ain't gonna turn that storm around."

"I'm still not going to let it happen." Fish huffed, dead-set in this goal regardless of what Beau was saying.... even if he knew exactly what the man was feeling. He was quiet for a bit before he added: "I wouldn't have hurt Emily. I'm sorry you thought that. I guess I deserved it. Sorry."

Beau appreciated the change in conversation, hoping Fish would let it go sooner or later. There were bigger issues to deal with.

" S'alright. Like I said, I regret not offerin' now. I trust you." Beau hopped into the hole, finding it too deep to dig comfortably from outside it now. "You reckon they got a ruler? She needs the whole six feet"

"A ruler? Probably, its a school - but we'll eyeball it. Listen, I'm six-two, so I'll be the yard stick. If I can stand in it, its deep enough. How's that sound?" Fish took a seat at the edge of the grave and slid himself in, taking the shovel with him.

Beau looked back towards him with wet eyes as he kept digging. "You promise? She needs the whole six."

"Cross my cold, empty, dead heart Beau." Fish grinned at him.

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

Once the grave was dug plenty deep enough, with Fish standing in it to prove it was at least six feet deep if not a smidge more, Fish sat the shovel at the top of the ground and climbed his way out - using a root poking out of the edge of the grave to hoist himself up. Once on the surface again, he leaned down and offered Beau his hand to help him out.

"C'mon. Y'wanna take a breather for a moment before we lower her in? I'll help you. S'a two person job, I think."

Beau made absolute sure that it was at least six feet before putting his shovel down as well and pulling himself out too. He sat on the edge of the grave a moment, his feet dangling inside of it.

"Yeah." He agreed quietly. The digging had him working up a sweat, his mouth about as dry as he'd ever felt it. His head was starting to hurt to match, a pounding ache that slowly spread through his body. He told himself he wasn't thirsty anyways. He didn't want to drink or eat or anything to be honest.

It was another long moment before he forced himself up and went digging through his saddlebags for a water bottle, taking care not to shift his dead wife around too much.

"Sorry darlin', I gotta get something in me so I can bury you." He explained to the corpse in a hushed tone.

Fish kept a close eye on Beau as the man climbed out and grabbed some water. He too was worn out, inside and out, and took a seat underneath the tree. Tilting his head back, he stared up at the dimming sky through the leaves. Fish sat there in silence for a bit.

"What was her favorite color?" He asked Beau, still looking up at the leaves.

Beau went and sat beside him, facing the tree so he didn't have to look at his wife's corpse while he drank. "Purple. Like lavender." he said after a few thirsty gulps. He coughed when he finished the water and chuckled. "I was expecting it to burn. Funny."

Frowning at the comment about burning, Fish shook his head a little. He knew that feeling too. Taking his attention off the leaves and the sky, he glanced around, looking for anything lavender - or even remotely purple. There wasn't anything he was noticing. Figures.

"Maybe the school has something purple we can add. We can use that rock I pulled out to mark it. I know its not fancy, but.... its something?"

"She wouldn't want plastic or anythin'. She cared a lot about the environment 'n all that." Beau commented before taking another big swing of his drink, finished the bottle and crumbled it before putting it in his pocket.

"Rock works, I'd rather she had something... She woulda liked to paint it." He frowned. "Maybe... Nah that's stupid."

"What, painting the rock? That isn't stupid. I bet the school has some kinda paint. Y'could do that. I'm sure they won't be bothered about parting with a bit of paint for a good cause." Fish shifted in his seat, bending his knees and wrapping his arms around his legs, watching Beau.

"Got an idea what to paint on it?"

"Flowers, n her name and such." Beau suggested solemnly. "The important stuff, so people know about her."

He finished his water and stood back up. "Feels wrong not giving her a proper funeral."

"Mh, yeah, I know what you mean... but isn't this what matters? The folks that loved her are here." He motioned to Beau. "I think she'd be happy you're still here, looking out for her. Regardless of what happened before. All that stuff, its water under the bridge now, y'know?"

Fish climbed to his feet with a grunt, stretching his legs and rolling a shoulder. He was still sore all over.

"Lucky for you, you got an artist as a buddy." Fish thumbed at himself, rolling the shovel out of the way with his boot. "Stay here, I'm gonna head inside and see if I can find some paint that ain't dry."

Good_Morels Bullyboy Squad Safton NanLia Tool BeyondDandy Miaow Fluffy-Kat Crono MokaChan Togy Not Meat ​

 

[Bullyboy Squad]

ROOF, TWO DAYS AFTER THE HORDE
collab with Miaow
​

In the cold bleed of dawn, Ignacio felt every day his age and much older. The early sun stung his two-colored eyes so he put on his military sunglasses. Standing on the rooftop of the highest building he watched the scenery. Silent woodlands bristled with the fresh rainwater. Destruction before them. Starting beyond the gates and scattering into the courtyard. Gore and mud covered the gardens and animal pens. Toxic waste sipped into soil and sunk into wells and crops.

It burned. It burned in his chest. Not just grief for everything that was lost, for who he couldn't save, for what he would never rebuild. But anger. That someone betrayed them. Betrayed all of them to punish him.

Haewon had spent the night with her sister. She'd tried her best to convince her to go sleep in a real bad, that Xander would be okay if she left him for just one night... but nothing she could say or do would convince her. She'd slept, or tried to sleep, in an old office chair. She wasn't sure she'd gotten a single wink.

She pushed the door open, headed onto the roof. She needed some goddamn fresh air. She'd tried to go out a side door towards the crops, maybe she could pinch a strawberry or two for her breakfast... but the stench hit her before the door was even in sight. She huffed. It stank on the roof, too, but at least her shoes would stay clean.

As she headed for the edge, she saw him. Goddamnit, she couldn't get a single moment of privacy in this fucking school. She stuffed her hands into her pockets, the wet, morning air a little cold.
"I'll come back later," She murmured, turning on her heel.

Cabrera wasn't easy to startle but he was on edge so his shoulders tensed up at the voice behind him. His ears still didn't work as they should. Sure he had his ear pro when slamming the .50s in the biters and when the bomb went off, but it wasn't enough. Turning to Haewon he slowly exhaled a quivering breath. "You're welcome to stay, girl." He cleared his throat. "I don't remember if I said it already but, thank you.”

Haewon paused at the door as he piped up, letting out a soft sigh. She was going to have to talk to him. She turned back around, skulking her way over to the edge of the roof like a teenager in trouble.
"For what?" She murmured, peering over the edge. It looked like hell down there, a sea of gore and sewage at least knee-deep in places. She paused, hesitating before speaking once more.
"I didn't do it for you. My sister was in there. She would've watched you die," She told him, disdain in her voice.

Cabrera turned back to the view and let out a deeper sigh. "It's okay. Whatever your reasons, I would be dead if you didn't help me. So thank you." No more light blue jeans and white shirts. Cabrera was once more wearing a black t-shirt under vest. Camo pants with holster straps on right thigh. Double buckle of utility belt peeked from unzipped, military styled jacket tugged by the gust of wind that ruffled his raven hair. Just like Minnie had a different hairstyle after the incident back then, Ignacio was missing some hair on the back-side of his head now. Scratches littered his hands and the back of his neck. Large bruise on the side of his head spread towards eye shielded by black sunnies.

Haewon leaned on the edge of the roof, scanning the ground below them. No sign of Momo... no sign of any bunnies at all, for that matter. Well, any live ones. She ran a hand through her hair. Xander better survive this, she couldn't deal with her sister mourning a dad and a rabbit.
"So I guess you owe me one, then.”

He glanced over, scanning her face before admitting. "I owe you one." Personally. Ignacio. He owed the girl. If she wanted that favor to stretch to King's Right Hand Man, that wouldn't work.

Her eyes met his. She had her demands already planned out in her mind, no matter what his response had been.
"I want my family to have protection. I want someone to be there to make sure nobody touches Xander. He's a fucking idiot for what he did, but he doesn't deserve to die for it.”

He held her gaze with his covered by black tint. "As long as Xander is in the infirmary he's protected just like others by the guard posted outside. If you want I can put him inside the room instead but I don't think anyone would touch Font. I already talked to the one who attacked him and he understands his place." He says firmly even thought the talk the two had didn't go as smooth as he made it sound…

Haewon sighed. Of course he wouldn't do anything, whether he owed her or not. She looked back over the school, doing another sweep of the landscape with her eyes.
"Fine, then I want to use the radio." If she wasn't getting anything out of her first demand, then it was time for plan B.
"Nari needs to know what happened.”

Cabrera slowly nodded to himself. His gaze drew towards the distant trees as he thought about it. "You sure about that? Her knowing won't change a thing. Except for her worrying while she's away from him.”

Haewon gritted her teeth. Stubborn asshole. He couldn't even keep his word. He owed her but only on his terms.
"What exactly were you expecting me to ask for? A lollipop? A hug?!”

He frowns when looking over. "To let you go. To leave with my men. Something along these lines." He turned to go for the exit. "It's your call. You want to radio her, let's do it.”

Haewon stood up straight, staying by the edge of the roof.
"Would you leave if I asked?”

He laughed at that when turning to her. "Seriously? On her side there's a radio guy listening to everything. I want to at least know what he will know after what you talk over our channel. It might get to my boss. And no matter what you think about me? He's not such a nice guy like me.”

Haewon rolled her eyes as he laughed.
"You can't even listen right!" She retorted. She'd wanted to know whether he'd pack up his shit and leave the school if she said 'pretty please!'
The words 'good guy' stung her ears, her chest burning with a rage that could melt her ribcage and let itself loose on the world. She leaned back against the edge of the roof, taking a deep, soothing breath.
"My mother was an alcoholic. My dad left with Minnie was born, she wasn't his. Our mother would get drunk and throw things at us, yell at us, beat us. She was smart, too. She aimed for the parts our school uniforms would cover." She told him, her voice flat, unemotional.
"But every so often, she'd sober up. She'd shower us with new toys and clothes, order in our favourite food, kiss and hug us and tell us how sorry she was... so we kept lying. We'd just wait it out until she sobered up again... She reminds me of you." She growled, her knuckles growing white as she gripped onto the edge of the roof.
"You came here, you killed Miyu, you imprisoned Arthur, you took Nari away, your men tried to rape me and almost killed my sister. Then, you brought your medicines and crops and fucking rabbits and expected us to forget." She pushed against the roof, headed for the exit... but, she stopped just inches from him.
"No matter how much you give us, you'll still be just another abusive piece of shit," She said in his ear, punctuating each word as she lowered her voice.
"I don't want you and your men to leave. This is your mess. Fucking clean it."She slammed her shoulder into his on her way into the stairwell.

Cabrera almost lost his balance when she began to speak directly into his ear. The one that was bleeding the other day and still oversensitive. He braced against the spikes her words stabbed into his skull and gritted his teeth when watching her go.

Ignacio knew it all along. But people lately reminded him with passion. That for them he was 'just another abusive piece of shit'.

Looking around the once thriving school grounds, at the muck and human remains, Cabrera realized what he had to do. It was time.

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