Chapter Text
Detroit, Michigan - September 26th, 2010
There are six of them sitting in the rubble of what was once the richest city in the Midwest. It’s five years after the world went to shit. Smoke surrounds them, not only from their fire but also from the QZ rebellion.
It’s weird to think that Detroit used to be the biggest QZ.
The only six people left are sitting around a fire. Each is split into groups of two, and at least they all have someone. And one of them’s pregnant, so soon it could be seven.
They can’t feed a baby, though. Not with the limited food that they have. Not with the slowly depleting resources left in this QZ. Not if they don’t even have the supplies for the birth.
Bobby sits next to his brother, wrapping his leg and scratching the scar on his neck. Charlie isn’t acknowledging him, his eyes facing the night sky.
The other four are doing the same, tending their wounds, looking at the sky, amazed. Without light pollution, they’ve never seen a sky so clear.
“It’s amazing.”
“Huh?”
“The fact that we were able to do this.”
“Stay alive?”
“No.”
Bobby looks across the campfire at Chimney. Question clear on his face, but he doesn’t elaborate.
“Where to next?” Athena looks down at them, her neck hurting from staring at the sky for too long. She’s due in a couple of months, her baby bump is showing more now than ever.
“What do you mean, ‘where to next?’ We just survived this.” Charlie replies to her, still looking up.
“This baby isn’t going to survive here. I need resources, food, diapers, something.”
“We. We need resources.” Michael joins the conversation, sitting beside his wife, a hand on her shoulder in comfort.
“Is there a QZ willing to take in six people, one of them being pregnant?” Kevin looks at his brother and Athena. “I mean, a baby, in this environment.”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“Will we?”
“Yes.” Michael is looking between the three of them, “We will. You three need to stop arguing and work together. And you two.” He points at the other pair of brothers. “Are you guys joining us or not?”
Bobby, while listening to the conversation, with no intention of joining, is startled by the abrupt question. “I mean, sure. It’s not like we have anywhere else to fuckin’ go to.”
Charlie nods next to him.
The six of them gaze around at each other. The only remaining survivors of the Detroit QZ.
“You know,” Chimney says, interrupting the silence, “I think Pennsylvania still has a QZ standing.”
---
“Now, there’s a town a few miles north of here. There’s a woman there who owes me a few favors. Good chance she could get us a car.”
Bobby looks back at Buck in time to see him nod. “Okay.”
“Let’s get a move on.”
By the time they make it out of the city and to the side roads, it’s sunset.
They haven’t talked to each other during the walk, the absence of Athena taking hold of them. The livelyness she has in the group is long lost in the darkness of her death.
But they make it, after the silence and the crunching of boots. The sun was low enough to set a golden glow over the forest. The birds chirp, and then Bobby speaks.
“Now, there we go.” He points at the water tower in the distance. There’s a rail on the side of the road, once used for cars when driving, now just an annoyance that Bobby hops over to get down the hill leading to the forest. “Yeah. It will be faster to go through here.”
He jumps down with a thud, dirt sprays up, and leaves crunch under his feet. He hears a quieter thud behind him as Buck falls to the ground.
“Man-”
“What?” Bobby doesn’t even look back as Buck starts to talk; he gets up and continues to walk down the semi-made path. The dirt on the ground looks worn and walked on, someone’s been here. He’s just hoping that she’s the one.
“Nothing. It’s just, I’ve never seen anything like this, that’s all.” Oh, right. Before Athena died, he mentioned that he’d never been outside the QZ before.
In the back of his mind, the feeling of familiarity is back. The feeling that something just is not right, like an itch on his neck where the scar is.
“You mean the woods?”
“Yeah, never walked through the woods.” Bobby jumps down from a little ledge near a stream of water, the boy is still taking behind him. The silence from Athena’s death is long forgotten. Well, forgotten isn’t the right word.
Just pushed aside.
“It’s kinda cool.” Bobby can hear the smile on the boy's face.
There’s silence for all of two seconds until the kid talks once more. “Why don’t you just take me back to Chimney?”
“If he was up to the task, why’d he drop you off with us?”
“Or maybe he’s better now.”
Bobby sighs but continues walking. “Look, kid, I don’t mean to upset you, but your friends' chances of survival weren’t too high to begin with.”
He doesn’t want to think about the fact that Chimney was friends with him as well, that their history goes back 15 years. That was the last time they ever saw each other was in that room, with Athena.
“He’s a lot tougher than you think.”
Bobby bites the inside of his cheek to keep him from saying back, ‘I know.’ Because he does know, he’s seen Chim fight, he’s seen him get out of impossible situations.
“It doesn’t matter. ‘Cause I doubt I can get either one of us back in the city in one piece. Trust me. I wish there was some other option.”
He ignores the rapid beating of his heart as he says it and walks until he finds a familiar clearing. A hex fence stares back at him, the barbed wire on top looks old and rusty, and there’s a significant number of vines growing through the holes of the fence.
He walks along the side of the fence until he finds a tree blocking his way and jumps over that. He turns when he can’t hear footsteps behind him.
“Woah, look!” Buck has his hands out to the side of his body in almost a ‘t’ shape. His head is facing down, looking a something, but there’s a blinding smile on his face. “Fireflies. I mean, real fireflies.”
Bobby hops back over the tree and stands near the kid. “Yeah, I see that.”
Buck’s smile falls as Bobby starts to walk away from him again. “Sorry. I lost myself for a sec.” The childish glee dissipates in seconds. Bobby couldn’t imagine Brook ever being this stoic.
On the other side of the tree, there’s a shed that Bobby could probably get to the roof of. He walks around the building in silence, not telling the kid what he is doing. He grabs the plank off the ground and brings it to the side of the building. There’s a generator on the other side that he can climb up onto to reach the roof.
Once he’s up there, he grabs the plank and brings it up to the roof slowly. There’s a building on the other side of the fence, but close enough that the plank can reach across and be used as a bridge.
He places it down and walks across the plank. His eyes face the plank as he’s walking, making sure to not slip off, even if it isn’t a far drop, it would be a pain in the ass to have to climb back onto the roof. So, when it makes it across and sees smoke coming from a building in the distance, his hand comes up, above his eye.
“That you, Hen?”
The kid joins him on the building. “Where do you usually meet her?”
Bobby drops down from the roof of the building onto the ground. “Huh, oh, usually different places.”
“You’ve never been here, have you?”
“I know this is where they live, but no, I ain’t even been here personally.” He doesn’t mention the fact that Hen wouldn’t let him come over. Not when the kids were still living here. Sure, she could trust him, but in this world, kids were a special thing.
“And the smoke, you think it’s her?”
“Sure as hell better be.”
“Well, let’s go check it out then.”
“Alright, come on.”
Bobby walks around the building he just dropped down from, most of the area is overgrown. There’s splintered wood everywhere, with some old oil tanks. Fencing is placed in groups of four to six feet randomly.
“Down here.” His motions for Buck to follow him as he spots a worn path, similar to the one that led them to the fence earlier. The roots from old bushes and trees line the path, and at the end, “watch your step. It’s a good drop.”
He falls about five feet down and ignores the twinge in his knee as he lands. He hears the thud of the kid landing right behind him. Then he hears a hiss.
“Shit, kid, stay back.”
There’s an infection in the area. Of fucking course. Because nothing can be easy for him ever.
His hands reach for the gun connected to the holster on his thigh. There are stairs down to the shed, the infected sounds like he’s in. He’s quiet as he walks down the three steps. It sounds like there’s only one in there. That means he won’t have to waste bullets.
He reaches the bottom step and, ignoring his knees, sprints to the infected with a shiv in his hand. It turns to face him last second, but Bobby already has his arm around the thing's neck, stabbing the shiv right into it. It drops to the floor dead.
He stands up, wipes his hands, and looks around the shed for extra supplies.
He doesn’t see Buck’s excited look.
“C’mon, this way.”
Bobby walks out of the shed and up the stairs of the closest building. The door seems to be in good shape as he tries to open it. The kid is following him from a distance, but he’s not wandering off, which Bobby will count as a win. He can’t have any more kids dying on him.
The door opens with a click, and the first thing Bobby sees is an office. An office in pretty good condition.
The kid follows from behind as he starts to blow air from his lungs in a weird way.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m trying to learn how to whistle.”
“You don’t know how to whistle?”
“Well, does it sound like I know how to whistle?”
Bobby continues to open most of the drawers in the office, checking for any supplies.
“Are you gonna ask why I’m learning to whistle?”
“No, I couldn't care less.”
He opens one drawer to find a pack of bullets that he swiftly puts in his bag.
“Well, I’m learning to whistle because some people used to use it as a language. Isn’t that cool! I found that out through a book I saw once, about a Mexican tribe, and the language was called Kickapoo-”
“Please,” Bobby brings a hand to his head, clearly gaining a headache from the talking. “Stop.”
A piece of paper on the ground catches his eye. A letter, or well, a note. The words aren’t watch, catches his eye, though, it’s Athena’s name written clearly on the note.
Because while Bobby had never been here before, Athena had. She was the one who got to know Hen. Will Hen ask about her? We have to tell her?
He crumples the note and throws it back on the ground.
He can’t afford to think about those things right now.
Walking past the desk and Buck, he exits the office and continues farther into the building. There’s a small hallway filled with junk and a blocked-off door. Then there are stairs. And a small room with another door that leads to the outside.
This house was a bust then.
Bobby opens the door and heads outside, the kid right on his tail.
There’s a clicking noise to the front of them. “Oh, fuck. Kid behind me.”
He holds out an arm to wrap around Buck as he slowly moves through the grass, around a piece of fencing, and face to face with the clicker. “Stay.” He doesn’t even look at the kid as he says it. He just lets go of him and grabs a knife from a pocket on the backpack.
And just like the other infected from earlier, it’s a stab in the neck, then they’re down.
Around the corner from the dead infected, there’s another set of stairs. After that, a gate. A jammed gate.
“Oh shit. It’s jammed from the other side.”
“Here, boost me up.”
Bobby turns to face Buck, and the kid looks determined. “No, that’s not such a good idea.” There’s a piece of wood blocking the top of the gate. It is most likely blocking barbed wire from being seen.
“Well, I can’t boost you up. How else are we gonna open it?”
Bobby looks around the confined area they’ve found themselves in, he knows from Athena that they have to get in there to get to Hen. And Buck, unfortunately, you are right, he wouldn’t be able to lift Bobby around.
With a sigh, Bobby starts to crouch down and cups his hands together. “Alright. Give me your foot.” Buck plants his foot onto Bobby’s hands and starts to reach up to the top of the gate. Bobby starts to stand, lifting the kid as he goes. “Now just open it, nothing else.”
“Sure thing.” Buck grabs onto the wood and swings his legs around the top of the fence. Bobby watches as Buck sits there for a second, taking in the view. Then he slowly descends the fence.
“Careful.”
“Okay.” The kid lands on his two feet with a huff. “Ah, let's see.” He grabs the pipe that was keeping the gate together, bringing it out of the handles. With a laugh, he opens the gate. “Ta-da!”
“Shithead.” He pats the kid on his shoulder. “Good job.”
“Thank you.”
The area they just entered is much more open than the one they just came from. It’s almost like a full street, there are cars lined up on either side, and a couple of stores. Despite all that, Bobby would never have guessed people used to live here.
“So, let’s say we get this car from a buddy of yours, then what?”
“Well, then we go find Charlie.”
“Chimney said he’s your brother?”
“And more importantly, he was a Firefly. He’d know where to take you.”
“Oh, okay.” If Bobby listened carefully, he could have heard the slightest hint of sadness in the kid’s voice.
“He lives far from here, which is why we need the car.”
The place that has the best equipment seems to be the garden near the end of the street. Bobby slowly walks that way, his knee tingling every few minutes, a reminder of his age, as well as his ability.
“Hey, look gnomes!” The kid is squatting down, looking at them in amazement.
“Yeah, those are gnomes.” Jesus, he forgot how much this kid hasn’t seen.
“Man, I had a book on the history of myths. I always thought these were super cute. Not fairies though, they creep me out.”
Not knowing what to say to that, Bobby continues to walk around the garden looking for tools.
It doesn’t take long for him to sweep through the last remaining shops and sheds. The place had already been run through, either by raiders or Hen. Soon, the last shop that needed to be checked was an old pizza place.
Bobby enters and looks around, surprised. The place seems to be in relatively good condition, there’s one table that seems to have been used regularly even after the breakout started, and the oven looks like it has been used in the last ten years. Hen didn’t seem like the person to use this stuff, though.
So who did?
“Oh, look at that!” Buck snaps Bobby out of his thoughts. He walks around to the front of the shop to see the kid focusing on the arcade game in the corner. It less dust and vines on it than the rest of the street.
“What, did you play this before?”
“Nah, but I knew someone who could tell you everything about this game. There’s this character called Angel Kives who’d, what was it, she’d punch a hole through your stomach before kicking your head off.”
“Well, I was never a big fan of these things.”
“I wish I could play it.” The kid gazes at the game longingly with a hint of sadness. Like, there’s a story behind the game that even Bobby doesn’t know.
Bobby moves to exit the restaurant. The kid moves away from the game and follows him. As Bobby opens the door to bring them back out onto the main street, he catches the kid giving the game one last glance.
Just how important is that game to him?
The second they make it outside, Buck runs to the store across from the pizza place.
“Woah! Look at this place!”
Before Bobby walks in, he looks at the sign on the door, which is an old record shop.
The kid is already looking through the shelves by the time Bobby closes the door behind him. “Man, this is kinda sad.”
“What is?”
“All this music, just sitting here. No one is around to listen to it.” He pauses, fingers tracing the outline of a record. “I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem right.”
They leave the shop quickly after that.
There’s an alley next to the record store, it’s the only place they haven’t walked down at this point. The only thing that might not be a dead end. The only problem, he can see the clicker standing at the end of it from where he is standing.
Another problem, he made too much noise walking down the beginning part of the alley, so he’s walking straight towards them.
Well, it was.
An explosion deafens Bobby as he brings his arms up to shield himself. “Jesus!”
The gutted remains of the clicker are mushed around the alley, blood has painted the walls red.
“Woah, what-what the hell was that?” He looks back at Buck in alarm, he has fully forgotten the kid was with him. His eyes scan the kid's body, but he doesn’t seem to be injured, doesn’t even have a speck of blood on his clothes.
“That, that would be one of Hens’ traps.”
“Your friend is a bit paranoid, maybe?”
“That is putting it lightly.”
Bobby gathers himself best he can; the ringing in his ears has yet to stop, but his vision has cleared, and that has to be enough for now.
“So, what’s the deal with your friend anyway?”
“Well, she helped us smuggle stuff into the city. She knows how to find things.”
“Well, let’s hope we don’t get blown up trying to find her.”
“Just watch your step, you will be fine.”
They keep walking down the back alleyway. He points out another trap to Buck: the wiring is the same as the last one. If someone touches the wire, they blow up. Simple as that.
There’s a body a little farther down the way, unlike the others, this one wasn’t shot to death, nor was he exploded.
“Jeez, is Hen good with a bow?”
“I reckon she is.”
Near the end of the alley where the path gets blocked off by trucks and larger objects, there is a ladder on the ground, clearly used and well-loved.
“C’mere.” Bobby lifts the ladder and puts it onto the truck, blocking their way. “We can use this to get over.”
Bobby climbs up the ladder to find a chair and the bow that was shooting the arrows. This spot seemed to have been used as a lookout. “Hey, look at that.”
The bow is in nice condition as well. Bobby flexes the string as if to test it and hums in acknowledgement.
“Let me use that. I’m pretty good shot with that thing. Fedra school said I could shoot one of those like I had learned in a past life.”
Bobby places the bow on the side of his backpack, strapping it in place. “How ‘bout we leave this kinda stuff to me, okay?”
“Well, we could both be armed, cover each other.”
“I don’t think so.” Bobby steps onto another plank connecting two buildings. This one looks a little more worn than the one used earlier, as if the person guarding the alley walked across it a lot.
There’s a ladder against the wall of the building that the plank is connected to. Bobby doesn’t wait for Buck to show up behind him before he reaches for the ladder and starts to climb.
From the roof, there’s a spot for them to climb down. It’s a bit of a jump, but it doesn’t look like it hurt the kid or anything.
“Now listen. Hen ain’t exactly the most stable of individuals. So when we get there, you let me do the talking, you understand?”
“I understand.”
Bobby starts climbing up another roof as if they were a hill for them to climb. “We gotta be clear on this. She doesn’t take kindly to strangers.”
“Alright.”
“Hen’s a good person, she just definitely needs time warming up to you, that’s all.” He hops down a roof and climbs down another ladder.
There seems to be a clearing up ahead, fewer buildings to climb. Bobby’s thankful for that because his knee is getting worse and worse. The only way through to the clearing seems to be a gate, at which there are two explosive wires attached in the middle.
“Buck?”
“Yeah?”
“You see the bottle on the floor right there?” Bobby points to the pile of glass and wood near an empty truck. “Grab me one.”
“Okay?”
The kid tosses him the bottle, then Bobby throws it at the explosive.
“Oh shit! Those things are kinda awesome.” Buck ducks for cover from the explosion, but Bobby can see the small smile on his face.
“Well,” Bobby wipes his hands against his jeans, “that’s one way to do it.”
They make it through the gate and into another compact alley. At the end of it is a door. Bobby enters first and looks around the small room he just entered. Nothing seems out of the ordinary; it’s a small office, there’s some old paper, but that’s about it.
The only way to move on is through he door closest to the desk.
Bobby pushes it open, slowly but not cautiously. “Buck, come on, just-”
He sees the hanging fridge fall before he fully registers what happened. Then his foot is getting pulled out from under him. Shit, it’s stuck around a rope.
His body goes flying up, the pulley system launching his body about five feet in the air upside down, hanging by his feet.
“Bobby!”
“God-”
“I got you.”
“Godamnit, Hen.”
He can kind of see Buck running at him with his hands out. He feels the hands steady him, so he stops swinging back a fourth.
“What just happened?” Buck lets go of him and takes a step back.
“It another one of Hen’s stupid ass traps.” He tries to point to the fridge lying on the ground. “There, that fridge, it looks like it’s the counterweight.”
Buck walks over to it casually, he takes the knife out his his pocket and unfolds it. “Okay.”
Bobby can only watch as the kid climbs onto the fridge. “Cut the rope, and it’ll bring me down.”
“On it.” He can hear the kid breathing heavily from twenty feet away.
He’s sitting there for about a minute, feeling the blood rush to his head, when he sees someone running from past the building. Someone who is, clearly not, Hen.
“Bobby?” Buck stops cutting the rope to look at Bobby, concern evident on his face.
Stretching his arm behind him, he reaches for the gun in his back holster. “Shit, here they come.” His best bet is to be used as bait, try to get them to go for him, and not the kid.
He shoots the first couple, trying not to waste a lot of ammo. He can hear the kid screaming in the back. “Just keep cutting the rope!” He shoots a couple more, there are about five dead around his hanging body.
“Buck, how are we looking?” He tries not to sound stressed talking to the kid, but his vision is starting to wane, and his ankle is becoming numb.
“I’m going as fast as I can.”
One of the infected gets close enough to start grabbing him. “Oh fuck.” His arm is holding the thing back by its neck. Using as much strength as he can to push it away before shooting it in the head, and watching its body go limp. “Buck!”
“I need a bit more time.”
A clicker runs right as him as he wastes five bullets trying to kill the thing.
“Anytime now, Buck.” He can see the kid trying his damndest to cut the rope, but it’s just not working. And before he can try and get him to stop, the kid tries to jump on the fridge to get the rope to come off. It takes no genius to tell that the fridge was about to tip when it did.
“Fuck!” Bobby’s body goes flying up into the air, then it settles about ten feet off the ground. The kid goes rolling off the fridge and onto the ground. “You alright?’
“Yeah.” Bobby can see Buck wince as he gets up, but nothing looks seriously injured.
“C’mon, you can do it.” He doesn’t want to pass out on this kid.
“Okay…”
He can hear and see more infected coming at the two of them. It’s more dangerous now with Buck being on the ground, he could be killed.
“It’s not cutting!” The kid looks panicked, for the second time Bobby’s known him, he looks terrified.
He still can’t place why Buck looking terrified seems familiar to him. Why does he almost recognize the face?
One of the infected runs for him instead of Bobby. Shit. There’s not much ammo, and he can’t miss. There’s not much of an opportunity to shoot it. “Son of a bitch.”
There’s black around the edges of his vision. He fires anyway, hitting the infected square in the back.
Buck falls in shock as the infected staggers and collapses. He runs back over to the fridge and whacks at the rope until Bobby sees it detach from the fridge, then he falls.
With a thud, his body hits the ground. Pain erupts in his back. He tries to stagger up.
“Bobby! Watch out!”
Then an infected is coming right at him.
His body lands right back onto the ground with the thing flailing on top of him. Bobby has his hands around its chest, holding it above his body.
This might be it, he thinks as he stares into the bloody face of a monster.
Then a machete nails the infected in the face.