Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Brook Nash wakes up at 6:30 a.m. in September 2005 to her brother's bathroom door slamming and her father yelling from downstairs. 

“Bobby!” The girl rolls out of bed and slowly walks downstairs to hear her brother and father fighting. 

“Dad! Why did you yell my name?” 

“You slammed the door. It’s 6:30.” 

She walks into the kitchen, a pink t-shirt on, hair lying on her shoulders. She swats her brother as she walks by him.

“Be nice to Dad, it’s his birthday.”

The boy scoffs. “It’s not like he’ll want to do anything to celebrate it; hell, he’s probably working today and won’t be home till past bed.”

She glares at her brother as she shuts the fridge door and puts the milk on the counter. “He’ll be home tonight. He promised me.”

“Right, Dad?”

For the first time this morning, Bobby Sr. speaks, “I’ll try my hardest to be here tonight.” 

“See, Brook, he can’t promise anything.”

The siblings glare at each other, cereal now split between them. 

The front door slams closed. 

“Uncle Charlie!” 

“Nice to see you both alive and well. What’s my brother been up to on his birthday morning?”

Bobby’s older brother walks into the kitchen, two coffees in hand, gives one to Bobby, who utters a thanks back, walks over to his niece and nephew, ruffles their hair, then sits directly down on the counter.

“Well, he promised Brook that he would be back for dinner to celebrate.” Charlie makes a face quite similar to guilt. “And judging by your face, he won’t be able to make it.”

“We got called for a bigger job today. The pay is nice, not worth skipping out on.”

“But it’s his birthday.”

“Brook.”

“Fine, I’m going back upstairs. Bobby, come with me real quick.”

She puts her bowl of cereal in the sink and walks out of the kitchen silently, not looking anyone in the eye.

“Brook! Wait! Damnit.” Bobby Sr. sighs as his head faces downwards. 

“Just try to be there tonight, Dad. She cares about you a lot, yeah. Appreciate her and what you have. Screw the money.” Bobby Jr. follows out silently after his younger sister. silently 

“Fuck, Bobby, those two kids, you mean the world to them.”

“Not now, Charlie.”

--

“It’s got to be in here somewhere.”

The shutting of a desk drawer alerts Bobby of where his sister is. She’s in their father’s bedroom looking through his closet.

“What are you doing?”

“What- wait, Bobby, oh, I thought it was Dad for a second.”

“Well, you told me to follow you.”

“Right.” She pauses, and Bobby finally notices the cash in her hand and something he can’t make out in the other.

“I mean, I know Dad fucks up at lot but imedatly stealing his money. That’s a new low for you, sis.”

“That’s not what I’m doing. And stop swearing. Mom didn’t like it when we swore.”

“Well, she’s not her anymore, is she?”

“Screw you. And for the record, I’m not stealing just to steal, I’m getting Dad a birthday gift with this money. I’m an honest thief.”

“Yeah, and I’m the president.”

“I’m serious, the watch shop in the city. You know it? It has a place to get watches fixed, I want to fix Dad’s.” 

“I don’t get why you care about him so much.”

Brook turns to her brother, her eyes looking a little red. 

“He’s trying ever since, Mom-”

“-when he killed her.”

“She died in the fire; he didn’t kill her.”

“He started the fucking fire Brook!”

She’s crying by now, tears starting to hit the bills she was holding in her hand.

“I’m trying, okay.” She breathes slowly, trying to calm her emotions. “Uncle Charlie’s also helping us out, so I am, no matter how desperate and delusional, holding onto the hope that our father will go back to how he was before Mom died.”

“Sure. Good luck, sis.” The footsteps of her brother slowly fade out of their father’s bedroom.

“Wait!”

The steps pause outside the door.

“What time do you plan to be home tonight?”

“Why? You know Dad isn’t coming to his birthday bash or whatever the hell you were trying to plan.”

She scoffs, walking closer to her brother and out of her father's room. 

“What if I just want someone to be with me? You and Dad are the two strongest people I’ve met, and this neighborhood could be dangerous as well.”

“Uh uh. You don’t need to convince me to join you. A simple ‘please’ would have worked wonders.”

Brook wiped the single tear sliding down her face. “Thanks, Bobby.”

“Don’t thank me just yet. I didn’t promise I would be nice to Dad, just to you.”

“Please. It’s his birthday.”

Bobby, leaning against the doorframe, tilts his head up so his sister can’t see his eyes start to water.

It's been less than 6 months since the day their mother passed away in the apartment fire. The wound left an everlasting hole in his heart. He was always closer to their mother, she was the one who read to them at night when they were little. When their father used to be a firefighter, working long shifts away from home. 

She was always there for them.

Now it’s just their Dad.

“Fine. Just tonight.”

He walks out the doorway to his room, not facing his sister. Just like her, he has a tear falling down his face. 

--

School is a weird thing. 

Brook doesn’t like to admit it, but kids look at her differently after her mom died. 

Maybe it’s not the fact that her mother died. Maybe it’s how. No matter how much Brook doesn’t want to admit it, it was her father who started the fire. And it wasn’t just her mother who died that day. It was 147 other people, strangers, neighbours, and kids in her school.

Perhaps it was Brook as well. Brook and Bobby a, nd their dad. 

Their family.

Nothing has been the same for them since.

Bobby and their dad won’t stop fighting. Sometimes, it’s about the simplest things, like breakfast. Otherwise, it is about Mom. And about Dad's drinking. 

Uncle Charlie is over more, they never used to see him before. 

Dad and they work in construction now. 

Dad wasn’t allowed to be a firefighter again. They say he’s lucky he’s not in jail. 

Sometimes, Brook wishes he were; that way, Bobby wouldn’t be as angry. 

Bobby used to be a lot kinder, he used to smile. Laugh, even. He helped Brook with her homework while trying to accomplish an AP level course in a month. He would help her cook. They used to make pasta and chicken for their Mom on her birthday every year. They used to share a room in the apartment and talk all night about the simplest things. He was her best friend.

He hasn’t smiled in a while.

He hates going to school and is failing badly enough to be on academic probation. He only eats microwaveable meals. And he doesn’t allow Brook into his room. 

He doesn’t laugh.

The kid sitting next to her looks sick. 

She’s trying to focus on the teacher and the book they’re reading for class, but the kid keeps twitching. He’s pale as well. Well, pale might not be the right word. He is pale, but there’s a hint of orange to him. And he just keeps twitching.

It’s only the bell that strays her thoughts away from the kid. 

“Alright, class, don’t forget to do the reading for Monday. You should have plenty of time to get this done; it’s only two scenes.” 

She scrapes her chair along the floor as she exits the desk. Grabbing the book from her desk and putting it in her backpack, she exited the classroom.

Her brother is there. 

He looks nervous. 

And sad. 

“I feel bad about this morning.”

She stops walking towards him. His words hit her ears like static electricity. She hadn’t heard him speak this softly since Mom died. 

“I want to help with Dad's watch. Don’t use his money; let me pay for it.” Brook, still frozen, gapes as Bobby pulls two twenties out of his back pocket and gives them to her. Her hands clasped around the cash.

“Thank you.” She paused again, shock still fuzzing her brain. “Do you want to come get the watch fixed with me? 

And for the first time in six months, Bobby smiles.

“Sure, I would love that.”

--

The watch shop is tiny but cute. 

Brook seems happier than she has been in the last half of the year. 

And Bobby is trying. He swears. 

It’s just hard sometimes. 

The man at the counter is talking to Brook, trying to get her to tell him the problem with the watch. Bobby doesn’t think she knows it. 

Their Dad hasn’t worn this watch in years, it was a wedding gift. Bobby can’t even remember when it broke. 

“It’s just a loose gear. Give me five minutes.” Bobby sees Brook nod at the man and then go to look out the window, opposite direction from where Bobby is standing. 

He hears another ambulance before he sees it speed past the window. 

There’s been an extra number of sirens today. 

A woman comes running in from the back, shaking Bobby’s train of thought. 

“You need to leave.” 

“What?”

“Do you have somewhere to go? It’s not safe.”

“Yes. Why is it not safe?”

“No time to explain, just please leave.”

Brooks’ eyes are wide with fear as Bobby tries to get her attention. He grabs her shoulder, squeezes it tightly, trying to bring her mind back to the shop. They’re okay. They’re going to be okay. 

The man with the watch comes back into the main room with a box. The woman, who Bobby presumes is his wife, starts saying something to him in Arabic that Bobby can not understand. 

The man holds the box out in front of his wife and turns to face them. “No need to worry about that. The watch is done.”

He can feel Brooks’ relief from just her shoulders. 

“Thank you.” The whisper in how she says it sounds almost desperate. “How much?”

“Twenty.”

“That’s it, I could have sworn-”

“Do you want me to charge you more?”

“No, thank you, we’ll be on our way.” Bobby grabs the box from the man, nods to the wife, keeps his hand on his sister's shoulder, and drags her out of there. 

“Something is going on.” She looked even worse than when she was in the store, her nails slowly being picked away as a nervous habit of hers. 

“No shit. Let's just get home.” 

His left hand clutching the watch and his right hand clutching his sister Bobby walks as calmly as he can onto the bus back home.

--

Their dad doesn’t make it home till 11:45. 

“You promised.”

Both kids are sitting on the couch, Brook is asleep with her head in Bobby’s lap. Bobby’s looking up at him in disappointment. He’s not even angry anymore, just sad.

“She got you a present. Humor her, please, for me. For us.” 

Dad nods as he slowly walks over to the couch. Then he taps Brooks' shoulder lightly. There’s a look of guilt crossing over his face that he quickly tries to get rid of before she wakes up. 

It’s the first time that Bobby has seen his dad look anything other than angry or sad in the last six months.  

“Dad?” His eyes slowly reach his sister as she leaves his lap and looks blearily up at Bobby Sr. “What time is it?” Guilt flashes across their Dad's face for a second time.

Why has he been showing more emotion to Brook in these last two minutes than to Bobby in the last half a year? What did he do wrong?

“11:45, work ran late, I’m sorry.” His sister still smiles at their Dad. To her, all that mattered was that he tried. It could be the older brother in Bobby who doesn’t forgive him.

It’s the son, desperate for attention, that does. 

“I got you a gift.”

“Oh yeah? Where did you get the money for that?”

“Drugs, I sell hardcore drugs.”

“Haha, actually, where?”

“Originally, I was going to steal it from you, but Bobby told me I could take his money instead.” 

Bobby laughs lightly, taking it from his sister to always be brutally honest. “She deserved the money. It wasn’t anything. Really.”

And with that, for the first time since their mother died, Bobby Sr. looks toward his son with something akin to gratefulness. 

“Well, thank you both.”

Brook throws the box the watch came in at their Dad. The smack sound of the box hitting his fist resonates around the quiet room. He slowly opens the lid with a smirk on his face. “What’s this?”

His sister looks giddy with the prospect of surprising their dad for the first time. 

“I went to a place to repair your old watch.”

“Are you sure? It’s still not working.”

“Give me that.”

Bobby looks at his sister's frown turn into laughter as she shoves the box back to their Dad. “Oh my god, Dad, you scared me!” 

Bobby doesn’t think he’s ever seen either of them this happy. 

Of course, that’s when the stupid house phone decides to start buzzing loudly from the kitchen.

“Shit, wait a second kids we’ll finish this right when I get back.”  

The illusion of family shatters in an instant as their dad walks to the kitchen. Brooks’ head falls back onto his lap as he feels a tear hit his knee.

Sometimes he fucking hates his dad. 

He looks distraught as he comes back into the living room. 

“I have to go pick up your Uncle Charlie.” 

“Where is he?”

“Jail.”

“What does he do?”

“Hit a dude that was hitting on a girl that didn’t want it.”

“Good for him, but why tonight?”

“It’s Friday. If I don’t get him now, he’ll be in there all weekend.”

“Fine.”

“Bobby.” He pauses, trying to find the next words. “I truly am sorry for having to leave.”

He scoffs at his dad. “It’s not me you need to apologize to.”

His sister has already passed out again on his lap. She still has faith in their dad, but he gave up a year ago. 

“Just go, Dad.”

--

Robert Nash Jr. wakes up at 1:46 am, September 2005 to the TV in the living room showing a national security alert and his sisters head drooling on his lap. 

EMERGENCY ACTION NOTIFICATION is strikingly white at the bottom of a static black screen, the buzzing doesn’t help his head right now, either. 

What is going on?

“Brook, get up.” He’s not gentle waking his sister up, shaking her in a clear haste. 

Where is their dad in a time like this?

Brook blinked her eyes open slowly, “What-”

The deafening sound of an explosion rocks the foundations of the house. Bobby grabs onto his sister, the TV static still playing in the background. A dog starts barking down the street. 

“Bobby?”

“I don’t know.”

For the first time in his life, Robert Nash Jr. is truly terrified.

He wasn’t even this scared when his mother died. 

He flinches at the sound of a gunshot, then another. Brook looks close to tears and clutches onto Bobby's hand.

“Where’s Dad?”

“I don’t know.”

He practically drags his sister to their dad's office. There should be a gun in one of the cabinets. He needs to get that before something can happen to them. It’s their only chance. 

A scream echoes from the distance. 

Brooks grip on his hand keeps tightening. She, while holding his hand, seems to gain more confidence. 

“Let me do it.” She says to him, tears streaming down her face, a stark contrast to the smile that has formed. An act of self-righteousness so unbreakable that Bobby doesn’t have a chance of persuading her otherwise. 

Nails echo through the office, a hand slaps along the glass door, and Bobby hears himself scream before he feels it in his throat. 

It’s not a human that made it to their back porch. 

The safety of the gun was turned off, and the resounding bang deafened him. 

Whatever that monster is, it drops dead to the floor. 

He can’t help not feel relief. Like there’s something in his gut telling him that this is just the beginning, that everything has changed. 

His sister is paler than when Mom died. A cut on her cheek is bleeding, but she seems fine. It wasn’t her who shot the gun. 

And it’s not him she’s looking at. 

Dad.

He’d never felt relief looking at his father before, but at that moment, it was pure elation. Every drop of anxiety and fear leaves his body because right there is his dad. And Bobby trusts that he’ll protect them. 

--

Bobby Nash Sr. leaves his house at 11:56 pm, September 2005. He’d just turned 36, and for his birthday, he’d gotten a watch from his two kids. 

He also got a call that his brother was in a jail cell. 

“Bobby. You have to see that fuckin’ jail, man; the people in there were going crazy. And not like drunk crazy. Some of them were hissing, and I swear on our mother, something was coming out of one's mouth, like a vine or something.”

“How much did you have to drink tonight?”

“Nothing, I swear to you.”

“It sounds like you were on something in that cell.” 

“I wasn’t.”

The radio in the car turned to static as the brothers were talking. Charlie looks at Bobby, confused, he fumbles with the radio. “Did a line go down? We’re not in a dead zone, are we?”

“We shouldn’t be. And no. I’ve driven this route three times already today, nothing's been down.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah.”

A voice suddenly comes through the static; it sounds male and worried, but somehow, it also sounds robotic. Emergency action has been initiated. Stay indoors. Emergency action has been initiated. Stay indoors. 

“Bobby, what is going on?”

For the first time after his wife's death, Bobby Nash is terrified. “I don’t know.”

An explosion lights up the highway they are driving on. The car shakes as Charlie swears and holds onto the door handle. The night sky lights up into an orange cloud, the brightness startling the two brothers. This can’t be happening. This shouldn’t be happening.

With a shake in his voice and a tear rolling down his cheek, he said, “How close do you think that was to your house and the kids?”

That is the last thing he wants to think about in a situation quite as daunting and frightening as this one already. The possibility that the kids could be in danger can cause his thoughts to stray to the point of him not being able to get home to the kids. If he has any chance of seeing them safe and helping them, he needs to get home. 

Because the world just changed forever. 

Nothing is safe anymore. 

The radio is continuing to echo the message, but they are getting closer to the house. Even through the screaming, explosions, and death around them, Bobby can find comfort in that fact. 

The darkness casts a shadow over their neighborhood as the truck pulls into the street. The feeling of unease settles over the brothers' shoulders. A scream comes from a house down the street.

It takes all of three seconds for Bobby to realize it’s his son.

“Charlie?” The words come out like a sob. 

“Bobby, hurry the fuck up. If he’s screaming, he an’t died yet.”

“Right.” He tries to slow his breathing down and keep himself calm. “Right.” He has two children in his house, and something bad is happening to them. He has to save them. Be the dad and save them. 

The truck skids into the driveway, making a loud sound that shatters the eerie mask of silence that followed the scream. 

“Here.” Right as he’s about to get out of the truck, Charlie throws him a gun. It was the one in the front console of the truck. One that he’s kept hidden from everyone. One for emergencies. 

Bobby’s mouth is open in a tiny bit of shock. “Just go.” Charlie all but pushes him out of the car. As he switches to the driver's seat. “I’ll be here to get us out of this fucked up town.”

Sounds come quickly after that. Gunshots down the street, someone down there is also screaming. Another explosion. The sound of a hand hitting his office door. 

The door that leads to the outside. 

Bobby runs faster than he ever has in his entire life. Through the entire house trying to get to his kids. 

He can’t lose them. He can’t.

Bobby Jr. screams again, and it takes everything in Bobby not to flinch at the sound and keep running through his house. The office isn’t that far away. He can see the back of his son as he keeps getting closer.

There’s something else in the house.

A man, but not, there’s blood all over him, and just like Charlie said, there’s some sort of vine thing coming out of his mouth. 

He doesn’t even think before he shoots. 

The thing drops dead to the floor.

He looks up to his kids.

Brook is staring at him with relief in her eyes. She’s bleeding from a cut on her cheek, but she’s happy. Terrified but relieved. His son slowly turns to face him.

It’s the first time Bobby’s ever seen relief on his son's face. 

Or at least, the first time it’s been directed at him. 

He holds onto that as he grabs onto each one of their arms and drags them out of the house. 

“Dad?”

“Not now.”

The gun is shoved into the back of his pants, it’s still hot. 

He just killed a man.

Well, technically, he’s killed before; the apartment fire proves that. But this time, he held the gun in his hands and chose to shoot. 

How can he hold his kids with the same hands that have just killed? 

Charlie is yelling as the three of them get outside. “Get in the car! Now!” 

Both kids look shell-shocked. God, what does it even feel like from their perspective? 

While quickly backing out of the driveway, Charlie turns to look at him. “They’re saying this is all over the city, or at least that’s where it started from.”

Brook looks even more terrified for a second as she joins their conversation. “The city?”

Without looking back, Charlie answers, “That’s why our neighbours were sick; they went to the city a lot.”

Both kids talk at once.

“Is that what they’re calling this, a sickness?”

“But you would have to go a lot, right? To the city?”

Bobby answers his daughter as kindly as he can, “Yeah, it would have to be a lot, sweetheart.”

She nods in contentment, his son looks angrier. 

“I mean, a sickness? That guy tried to kill Brook! He had a fucking vine coming out of his mouth!” 

The rant only stops as they drive by farmer Louis’s house. It’s up in flames. The wooden ceilinis g splintering in places where it has already collapsed. 

“Holy hell.”

“Let’s hope the bastard made it."

The kids have never seen anything like this before, that much Bobby knows. When the apartment burned down, the kids never saw the scale of that building because they had passed out from smoke inhalation before getting out. Bobby had seen the building collapse as flames burned the support beams holding the place together. 

They keep driving, they have to. 

The roads become less congested as they get closer to the city and the highway. Trees are becoming less dense, and houses are becoming farther apart. More things are noticeable. Like the family and broken down car coming up ahead. 

Charlie looks at Bobby the question clear on his face before he says it. “We could help them.”

“No.”

“Bobby, they have a kid.”

“We have two. Keep driving.”

In the corner of his eye, he can see Brook and Bobby looking back at the family as they scream at the passing cars. They look worse and worse as the drive goes on. More and more scared. The realization that they are going to have to choose between themselves and helping others is starting to settle.

“Fuck.”

He looks back at Charlie. “What?”

“Everyone and their mother had the same fucking idea.”

The roads are packed, traffic so heavy they’re not even moving. 

The monster things, however, are, and they’re moving fast. Grabbing people from cars and killing them, it looks like a blood bath. 

“We can’t stay unmoving like this.”

“I know.”

Charlie puts his foot on the gas and moves the truck around the other cars onto the grass. Bobby has never been more thankful for his truck. 

“The city?”

“Right now, it’s our best bet.”

Charlie is speeding through the grass as other cars slowly realize that they can do the same and follow them through the grass to the city. A hand hits the back window of the car as Brook screams. 

It’s one of the monsters. 

This one looks worse than the one at the house though, greener and oranger. It has a vine thing coming out of its mouth, but also its ears and nose. Being this close to one for the first time, Bobby realizes that the vines are moving. Not like blowing in the wind, but they’re alive and reaching out to the people in the car. Almost as if they need to feed on them. Like they need the control. 

“Drive!” He screams at Charlie, trying to get away from the thing holding onto the side of their car. 

They can get to the city without any distractions after that. Who knows what it will look like in the aftermath of whatever the monsters are? 

“Bobby, did you see that thing?”

“Yes, I saw it.”

Charlie’s eyes are wide, but he’s not shaking or stuttering. He’s trying to keep himself composed. It’s terrifying. 

They make it to the gas station, signaling the entrance to the city. “Turn here.”

“Shit, Bobby there are too many people.”

“Wait a second.”

It’s a horrifying sight, dead bodies all around the street. People are screaming and running. Monsters are chasing the people. A bus crashed into the building to the right, a movie theater they used to go to. There’s not much room to get to the next street, but a small gap is all they need.

Which is all they’re going to get. “Charlie, now.”

They drive through the crowd of people and make it past the bus. 

A brief second of elation is all the family gets. 

They didn’t even see the other car coming.

--

Bobby wakes to two pairs of hands shaking him and gunshots going off in the distance.

“Dad?” Brook, who is now all bloody, looks at him with tears in her eyes. 

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Dad. Bobby’s hurt, though.”

His eyes scan the car, which he finally notices is upside down. He spots Bobby, his eyes open but scrunched in pain. He’s holding his leg, which is bent the wrong way. Just the look of it makes Bobby want to throw up. 

“Bobby?”

“Dad?”

It comes out almost as a whimper, as a tear falls from his eye. 

“Brook, is your brother stuck in the back? Could you try and get him out?” She nods, crawling back to his seat, and starts to unbuckle him. 

Bobby kicks the glass next to his face until it shatters, cutting him up a little but also giving them an escape route.

“Dad, he’s too heavy for me to carry.”

Shit, right. 

“Okay, I made an exit through the front, go out and- where is your Uncle Charlie?”

“He’s protecting the car from the monsters.” 

So that’s where the gunshots are coming from. 

“Right, well, try and join him.”

Bobby crawls to the back of the car to grab his son. Glass is everywhere, the dents on the car are visible from the inside, and blood is stained around the entire thing. It’s horrifying to look at, even more horrifying to live, and if Bobby ever gets a second to breathe and think about this entire thing, he might collapse out of exhaustion. 

“Bobby, I’m going to need you to look at me. I’m going to grab you now.”

With a gasp of pain from his son, he lifts him into his arms and carries him out of the car. 

“It hurts.”

“I know, I know. I promise it will all be okay soon.”

His son looks younger than he has in years.

“I’m going to get us to safety.” He isn’t only looking at Bobby while he says that; he’s looking at Brook as well. Brook, who should have been with Charlie. 

“Where’s Charlie?”

“I’m here.” 

He turns and sees his brother stuck on the other side of the car, gun in hand, shooting at the monsters coming too close to the car. He doesn’t seem that injured, just a little cut up. “I’m okay, just get them to safety.” 

Bobby nods at his brother, and with his son in his arms and daughter clinging to his side, he runs into the side alley. 

“Those people are on fire.”

“Brook, don’t look. It will be okay.”

“Dad.”

“Just don’t.”

The alley isn’t safe from the monsters either, they’re everywhere. Eating everyone. The ones in the alley didn’t notice them for a while to disrcated by the people on the ground. But the closer they get to them, the more noise they are making. 

It wasn’t long before one of them spots them.

With a hiss and a gurgle of some sort, the thing comes running at them. Bobby Jr. can’t run, his leg is the wrong way, and Brook isn’t fast enough to outrun a grown man or whatever this thing used to be. 

So, with his choices limited, he picks Brook up and runs as fast as he can down the alley with a child in each arm. 

There’s an old diner that he can cut through up ahead, and if he gets to the other side, it should be woods. They should be safer out there. They need to be safer out there. Because Bobby needs a doctor and they need a form of transportation, and Bobby would like this whole thing to have been a really bad fucking dream. 

The thing is still chasing them as they enter the diner. It’s fast, and there’s no slowing it down. 

“Dad, what happened to Charlie?”

“He’ll be fine, Uncle Charlie; he’s strong.” He doesn’t mention that he’s not that fast, and that part scares Bobby the most. He can’t worry them more than they have to be worried. 

A crash reverberates throughout the dinner as the monster leaps over the counter and lands on his back, still chasing them. At least they’re not that smart.

“It hurts.”

“I know, Bobby, I know, we’ll get you to a hospital soon.” He can’t say the wwordpromise anymore because he can’t promise anything. The whole world has flipped on its head.

The diner door slams as the three of them exit from the side and out to the woods. 

There’s a clear dirt path from when others used to walk it, back when the world was normal. 

Yesterday.

His legs were starting to hurt; holding two kids while running from a monster is not easy work. This entire thing isn’t easy work. The guns, the running, the carrying, the fucking hill he needs to run up.

He can tell he’s slowing down, and the monster is speeding up.

There’s a gunshot. Both kids scream. The monster falls to the floor. 

Bobby looks around for Charlie.

Instead, he finds a guy from the military. 

This guy can help them; that’s what they’re supposed to do. 

“It’s okay, guys, we’re safe.” He holds them closer. “We’re safe.”

“Hey!” The soldier has his gun pointed at them.

“We need help, we’re not sick!” He puts the gun down and turns to use his radio. 

“Dad, what’s happening?” 

Bobby Jr. looks up for the first time; he’s paler than before, and his leg is starting to look red. They need to get him to a hospital. 

Before Bobby can reply to his son, the soldier turns back to them. 

“Are you sure?” He pauses, still talking on the radio. “There are two kids.”

“Please,” Bobby has never sounded this desperate; he’s practically begging, “my son, his leg, it’s broken pretty badly, he needs help.” 

“Dad, what about Uncle Charlie?”

“It’s okay, Brook, we’ll go back and get him after we’re safe.” He doesn’t want to say that Charlie might already be dead. That a gun can only do so much. 

“Yes, sir.” The soldier points the gun back up at the family. His entire face is covered; it’s almost cowardly. 

“Please, we’ve just been through hell.”

The gun rises even higher.

“Oh.”

Bobby, as quickly as he can, turns and tries to cover his kids, then the soldier fires.

Pain blooms at his side as a bullet grazes his stomach. He hears his kids scream as he drops them in shock and rolls down the hill he ran up no longer than two minutes ago. 

The soldier walks slowly closer to him, gun trained on his head. 

“Please.” It’s barely audible, but the soldier hears it anyway and hesitates just for a second. 

A shot rings out.

The soldier falls to the floor. 

Charlie, with a different gun in hand, runs over to him with fear on his face. 

“Oh no...”

Cold flows through Bobby like his blood isn’t there; he turns swiftly and sees his kids. 

Brook is gasping, blood spreading around her abdomen. Bobby is already dead.

“No.”

He crawls over to Brook, he can’t bear to see his son. “No, no, no.” 

He lifts her slowly into his arms. She screams.

“Come on, baby girl, come on.”

She’s still gasping and crying. More blood is spilling from the hole in her stomach. 

The blood is getting on his hands.

“I know it hurts, but you have to fight, okay, baby, fight.” 

“Bobby-” Charlie sounds sick behind him.

He only looks at him for a second.

He spots his dead son in the corner of his eye, blood coming from the head, neck, and heart. His leg still bent the wrong way. His eyes are dead. He can’t look and turns back to Brook.

Brook's eyes match her brother's. 

“No, no, no, please no, anything but this. Come on, baby girl, please.” 

He holds her even closer in his arms and rocks her. His eyes find Charlie's filled ones. 

“Oh, god.”

--

Two doctors and a TV host sit around a table in September of 1968. 

There’s a click of a camera rolling, a nod from the director, and a hush from the audience as they start to talk. 

“And what’s your biggest worry?” The host is sitting with his legs crossed, twirling a pen in his hand. “A virus?”

The first doctor, the one with glasses, nods. “Yes, through air travel.”

The host nods like he’s trying to understand. “You mean people on planes.”

The doctor nods again as the host continues to speak. “You wrote about that in your book.”

“Yes. Say a new virus was discovered in Madagascar; with planes, it could be in Chicago in a matter of weeks. And we could end up in a global pandemic. Pan, meaning all. The whole world all sick, all at once.”

The host clicked his pen a couple of times, a nervous habit the second doctor seemed to have noticed. “And Doctor Neuman, you’re also an epidemiologist. I presume the prospect of a global pandemic keeps you up at night as well.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.” The second doctor shakes his head to emphasize his point. 

“Alright then, that’s our show.” The audience laughs all at once, a robotic sound that makes the Second Doctor wince.

“No, mankind has been at war with the virus from the start. Sometimes, millions of people die, like in an actual war. But in the end, we always win.”

The host looks more lost than he usually is. “But you- just to be clear, you believe microorganisms pose a threat.” 

“In the most dire terms.”

The host points his pen at the doctor. “Bacteria?”

“No.”

The host smirks, trying to gain control of the room. “You like saying no.”

“Yes.”

The robotic audience laughs. Almost as a taunt.

The host continues like nothing happened. “Not bacteria. Not viruses. So?”

“Fungus.” 

The audience laughs again. But the doctor is not discouraged.

“Yes, that’s the usual reaction. Fungi seem harmless enough. Many species know otherwise. Because some fungi seek not to kill but to control. Let me ask you, where do we get LSD from?”

The host has a drop of sweat appearing on his hairline. “Where do you get it from?” The audience laughs. He turns and smirks at them.

“It comes from ergot, a fungus. Psilocybin? Also, a fungus. Viruses can make us ill, but fungi can alter our very minds.” He pauses for a second and looks the host in the eyes. “There’s a fungus that can infect insects. Gets inside an ant, for example, and travels through its circulatory system to the ant's brain, and then floods it with hallucinogens, thus bending the ant’s mind to its will. The fungus starts to direct the ants' behavior, telling them where to go and what to do, like a puppeteer with a marionette. And it gets worse. The fungus needs food to live, so it devours its host from within, replacing the ant's flesh with its own, but it doesn’t let the victim die.”

The audience is silent.

The doctor keeps talking.

“No, it keeps his puppet alive by preventing decomposition. How? Where do we get penicillin from?”

The host talks for the first time in the last couple of minutes. “Fungus.”

The doctor points, nods, and smiles. The first doctor sighs deeply and shakes his head. 

The host smirks a little. “Dr. Schoenheiss, you’re in distress.”

The doctor in the glasses looks at the camera. “Fungal infection of this kind is real, but not in humans.”

The second doctor laughs for a second. “True, fungi cannot survive if their host's internal temperature is over 94 degrees. Currently, there are no reasons for fungi to evolve to be able to withstand higher temperatures. But what if that were to change? What if, for instance, the world were to get slightly warmer?”

The hosts’ eyebrows dip in confusion.

“Well, now there’s a reason to evolve. One gene mutates, and an ascomycete, candida, ergot, cordyceps, aspergillus, any one of them could become capable of burrowing into our brains and taking control of not millions of us, but billions of us. Billions of puppets with poisoned minds, permanently fixed on one unifying goal: to spread the infection to every last human alive by any means necessary.”

The hosts’ pen has stopped clicking.

“And there are no treatments for this. No preventatives, no cures. They don’t exist, it’s not even possible to make them.”

With a tremble in his lips, the host speaks. “So, if that happens?”

The second doctor looks him right in the eyes, and with a slow nod, he says, 

“We lose.”

The host clicks his pen once and takes a deep breath. “Alright, we’ll be back.”

The camera clicks as it shuts off.

The audience doesn’t make a sound.

Chapter Text

Twenty Years Later - Summer 2025

Bobby Nash jolts awake with a gasp in his shitty apartment in the post apocalyptic world. 

His eyes hurt, his chest hurt, and his back hurt. Nothing feels good. 

Right now, the most irritating thing in the world wasn’t the zombies or the government (or lack thereof) but the knocking on the shitty apartment door. So he rubs his eyes and slowly sits up. 

The table next to his bed holds his gun, which he grabs as he walks to the door. He puts the gun into the holster as he leans on the door frame connecting the bedroom to the rest of the house. 

He’s getting too old for this. 

He leaves the door frame and slowly walks over to the front door. 

It could be anyone knocking: Chimney, Athena, Kevin, even fucking Dennis, if he was bold enough. There is only one person on that list that he would let in, though. And it better be her. 

He reaches the door and takes a second to open all the locks. He clasps his fingers around the handle and twists to see Athena’s cold eyes meet his. She’s bleeding. 

He holds the door open wider as she walks in, head held high, like she owns the room. She’s not fully wrong, she does own half. “How was your morning?”

Her voice is rough, like her throat is injured. 

Bobby shuts the door behind him. 

Athena grabs the vodka bottle sitting on the table in the makeshift living room and pours herself a shot. “I still don’t understand how you made it through the zombie bullshit without drinking.”

Bobby scoffs, annoyed, and walks back around the kitchen counter. The silence is old-fashioned. 

“Well,” Athena downs the shot, “I have some interesting news for you.” She puts the glass back on the table.

Bobby ignores her. Turns the sink on and wets a hand towel. “Where were you, Athena?”

She pours herself another shot. “West end district.” Bobby makes a frustrated noise and slams his fist against the counter. Athena meets his eyes, anger starting to pool in hers. “Hey, we had a drop to make.”

Bobby shuts the sink off, walks around the counter, and gets closer to Athena. “We.” He says the plural like a statement. “We had a drop to make.” Athena downs the second shot. 

She grabs the towel from Bobby’s hand and brings it up to the cuts along her face. “Yeah, well, you wanted to be left alone, remember?”

He walks back to the kitchen area, more frustrated than before. “So, let me guess. The deal went south, and the client went off with our pills.” He can’t even look at her. 

He tells himself it’s not guilt for not being there, that’s not the reason he’s angry. “Is that about right?” 

Athena laughs harshly as Bobby turns back around to face her. “The deal went off without a hitch.” She pulls out green rectangles from her pocket. “Got us enough ration cards to easily last a couple of months.”

Bobby glares at her with an annoyed expression, and like he’s stating the obvious, he asks, “Do you wanna explain this then?” He brings his hand and circles it around his face to mimic her.

“I was on my way back and got jumped by these two assholes. Alright? And yeah, they got a few good hits in.” Bobby paces back and forth across the kitchen. Just his posture looks stressed, let alone the rest of him. “Look, I managed.”

“Give me that.” He grabs the rag from her hands, puts his hand on her face, and lifts her chin to face his eyes. Slowly, he puts the rag back on her face, the caress is more careful than a man like Bobby has any right to be. “Are these assholes still with us?” 

Trying to jerk out of his grasp, Athena scoffs out a laugh. “That’s the first funny thing you’ve said all day.” 

He pulls her back and keeps fixing her wounds. “Look, it doesn’t matter who they were, but who they were working for.”

That grabs Bobby’s attention. “Oh?”

She pulls away from him then. “Dennis fucking sent them.”

His eyes widen the slightest bit. “Our Dennis?”

“He knows that we’re after him.”

Bobby starts to walk back to the kitchen in disbelief. He throws the rag back into the sink, the blood stains not of importance. 

“He figures he’s gonna get us first.” Athena walks closer to him as she says it, masking the tone in her voice. 

“That son of a bitch, he’s smart.”

“No, he’s not smart enough. I know where he’s hiding.”

“Where?” 

Athena smirks, knowing she has the upper hand with the information she’s holding over Bobby. He can’t do anything brash until she tells him. It’s a good thing they’re partners because it’s times like these that Bobby wants to harm her. Jokingly, of course. Maybe.

“The old warehouse in area five.”

“We can meet there in an hour.”

“You have somewhere to be?”

“Charlie has been MIA for three weeks. I’m going to see if he’s sent a message.”

“That’s going to cost ration cards.” Athena frowns, uncertainty on her face.

“I know. I have a plan to get more.”

“Okay.”

“Okay? You’re not going to argue about this.”

“Bobby, no matter how stupid it may be, I trust you. Either with food or my life.” She grabs the towel from the sink and throws it at him.

“Dick.” She laughs and goes to the bedroom as Bobby brings the rag back to the sink and leaves the apartment. 

The door shuts with a click behind him. His boots make a crunching sound against the carpet on the floor as he walks down the stairs of the apartment and outside. The radio isn’t to far away from the apartments but he still has to pass a shit ton of security to get there. 

He rounds the corner to the next block when he hears the speakers he hears every morning. 

Jason Choi, violation of EMC 342.3, unauthorized exit from a Quarantine Zone

Maria Elisiano, violation of EMC 342.7, unauthorized entry into a Quarantine Zone

The woman talking through the speaker continues spewing the crimes of the people they’re hanging as he continues to walk. He wishes public hangings shocked him, but twenty years of them have become numbing. 

The building he needs to get to is close. He can see the line of people standing outside of it from here. 

“-Selected for outside work duty.”

“It’s such crap. Soldiers are supposed to handle the outside.” 

The couple standing next to himise arguing too loudly for Bobby to be comfortable near them. Especially this close to the hangings and FEDRA eyes. He slowly walks to the other side of the street so as not to be caught with them. 

The breakfast line for breakfast hasn’t opened yet. They must be low on food. 

He hears a guy in the line yell. “Hey! How much longer?” 

The dumbass is going to get himself killed. 

A person walking past him also heard about the low rations and is not happy about it. Not that there’s anything to be happy about. Nothing in the QZ is worth wasting joy over. 

The scar on his neck aches as he walks past a group of soldiers crowding around four people on their knees. 

The soldier beckoned one uncooperative guy to his knees with the slamming of her gun against his thigh. 

He can hear the cries of, “I didn’t do anything wrong!” from a half a block away. 

And the soldiers shouts of, “put your fucking hands on your head!”

He’s getting farther away from the group when he hears the gunshots go off. 

One of them must have been infected, then.

This place is cruel. There’s no getting out.

He reaches the building that he needs to get to and walks past the people flipping him off in line. The door is stuck open as he slides right through and up to the stairs where even more people are waiting for the man controlling the radio tower. 

A man has the guts to yell at him, as a woman glares as he walks into the man's office. 

Bobby throws the ration cards on the table for the man. “Any wordfromf Charlie?” 

The man shakes his head as he lights a cigarette. “Nothin'?”

Bobby needs there to be something, though; there has to be. “Is there any chance it’s comin’ in at night? You’re sleepin’, and you miss it?”

The man takes a longer puff of air and puts the cigarette under the desk. “When I’m sleeping, Gabriela listens, or my son. The smart one, not the other one, god bless him.” The man chuckles at himself slightly.

“If there were any signs of Charlie, we’d know.”

“Are you checking the tower?” It’s out of desperation that Bobby asks everything he can. 

“Every day. They gave him your message. That I haven’t seen or heard from him since, and that’s it.”

Maybe it’s because of how stressed Bobby looks. The man adds, “It hasn’t been that long.”

“It’s been three weeks.” Like the man doesn’t get the point of this conversation, Bobby adds more. “It’s never taken him more than a day to respond.” 

Gravely, the man nods. “I’m sure he’s okay.” The cigarette gets placed right back into his mouth. 

Getting frustrated, Bobby pulls a map from his back pocket. “Show me where the tower is.”

The man looks confused. “You can’t be serious.” The cigarette is out of his mouth again. Bobby just stares at him. “Bobby, it’s in Wyoming. All this open country?” He flings his hands around the map, spreading cigarette ash everywhere.

He looks at Bobby. “I mean, you’re a capable guy.” He doesn’t say it like praise. He says that because he fully believes it. “But there are worse things out there than infected.”

He points a hand at the radio. “I hear everything on here. There are raiders, slavers-”

The rebuttal is quick. “But you’re sure Charlie is okay?”

The question brings the man to silence. With a sigh he grabs a pencil from his desk and points on the map.

“It’s the Cody Tower. Q-Bar 4, but I don’t exactly know where-” Bobby snatches up the map and walks out of the room. 

The man puts his lips back on the cigarette.

Bobby continues back down the stairs and past the line to finally meet Athena near the zone crossing. The crossing is only used to see if people were infected, or to try and catch Fireflies. So, mostly unnecessary. 

He spots Athena standing to the side of the watch tower, running along the side of the crossing. He hands her back the ration cards he didn’t use. “No sign of him.”

She sighs harshly and puts the cards back into her pocket. “We’ll figure it out; we always do.” She inspects the crossing and hands Bobby an ID. “Just play it cool.”

They start to walk up closer to the gate, and a guard blocks their way. “Let me see your IDs.”

Bobby grabs Athena’s and his and gives them to the guard. “Here.” 

The guard quickly scans them, almost carelessly, and hands them back to the duo with a nod. “What’s your business here?”

“Just seeing a friend; it’s our day off.” 

“Alright, move through.”

They don’t even make it two steps through the gate before an explosion wrecks the crossing. 

Athena covers her head as debris flies everywhere, grabs Bobby, and runs back near the street. 

“Shit.” 

They shut the gate and made it impossible to reach the other side. Everything around that area is fully on fire as well. The military is yelling the word ‘Fireflies’ over and over as they are trying to shoot at someone. 

“This way!” Athena yells over the shooting, waving her hand and pointing in a direction for Bobby to follow. They sneak into the closest building. 

The door slams shut behind them as Athena takes a deep breath, and Bobby brings his hands to his knees. “Fuck.” 

Bobby nobs the blood rolling down his face; he must have gotten cut by the shrapnel. “Yeah.” 

“So much for the easy route, then.”

“We’re gonna have to go around the outside.”

They start walking through the building they snuck into. People are lying on the floor, either sleeping or dead. Blood is everywhere, and an average of one light works per hallway. 

Another man meets them at the end of the third hallway they’ve walked down. Athena nods like she knows him. “How’s the east tunnel looking?”

“It’s clear, I just used it, no patrols. Where are you off to?”

“We’re paying Dennis a visit.”

“You too?”

Athena looks back at Bobby,  questions written on her face. “Us too?”

Bobby intervenes. “Who else is looking for him?”

The man seems hesitant to answer. “Uh, Chimney, he’s been asking around trying to find him.”

“Chimney? What could the Fireflies need with Dennis?”

Bobby doesn’t want to voice it, but he thinks it might be the same thing they need from him. 

The man shrugs as he drops them off in a room at the back of the building. Athena grabs his shoulder. “Thanks, and stay out of trouble. The military is about to come out in full force. There was a bombing at the zone crossing.” She hands him a ration card.

Another person is waiting for them in the brightly lit room. “How’s it going?” 

“Shit’s stirring up out there. How’s it looking over here?” 

“It’s been quiet. No signs of military or infection.”

“Always good news.”

Athena walks over to the bookshelf in the corner of the room. There are scuff marks on both ends aand onthe floor surrounding it. She clasps her hand along a handle-like ridge on one side and tests out moving it. “Stable enough. Bobby, come help me out with this.”

He walks over to the opposite side of the shelf. “You pull, I push?”

She smirks slightly and nods as the two of them move the shelf out of the way, revealing a hole hidden behind it that a person can get through. The tunnel is dark and old, splinters hanging out of the sides, and the bricks lining the walls are losing color with age. Not to mention the drop is about ten feet.

The thud when he lands sends a shock through his legs and up to his chest. He’s getting too old for tasks like this.

“God, this place reeks.” Athena grabs her weapons and backpack from the workbench in the corner of the tunnel. She hands Bobby a nice pistol from the pile of guns near the ammo crates. 

“Home, sweet home.” Bobby laughs sarcastically as he places the pistol in the holster on the side of his leg. The one gun should be all they need for an easy hit on Dennis. 

He goes and grabs the small cardboard box of ammo for the gun, only to notice there’s not much left. With new supply shipments coming in monthly and the Fireflies becoming a weekly disturbance, it’s taken a heavy toll on their armory. 

He quirks an eyebrow at Athena in question. “Make your shots count.” She says it almost sarcastically, with a shrug of her shoulders. Then, she walks to a larger brick wall. “You wanna boost me up?”

Bobby walks closer to the wall and kneels, puts his hands together as she steps on them, and slowly lifts her to the top of the wall. He reaches his hand out to her as she grabs him and lessens the weight of pulling himself up the wall. 

They both nod to each other in thanks. 

There’s a dinner at the top of the wall connecting them to a place outside the QZ walls, which they can use to cut to the other side of the crossing zone that just exploded. 

“Be careful.” 

Bobby smirks as he starts to walk out of the diner. “When am I not?”

“Do you want me to answer that, or was it rhetorical, because I am keeping a list?”

“It was rhetorical.”

The outside was a lot prettier than the polluted QZ that most of the people left alive in Boston and the surrounding cities lived in. Overgrown with plants and wildlife, it was something that a person would find beautiful if it wasn’t for the old car the roots had grown over. 

Because while nature had taken the earth back, there were still plenty of reminders of humans. 

“Ain’t been out here in a while.” Bobby sighs as he stretches his arms over his head and his legs against the half-collapsed fire hydrant. 

“It’s almost like we’re on a date.” Athena walks past him, sadness and boredom stuck inside her brain. 

“Well, I am the romantic type.”

“You got your ways.”

They walk a little down an old but recently used dirt path leading them to a brick building with a hole in the side. A ladder reaches from the ground to the midpoint of the hole on the floor next to it. Bobby carries the ladder to the hole and sets it down.

He points to her and mock-bows as she walks to the ladder and up it for the first time in a month or so. 

“Lady’s first.”

“Lady? You must be thinking of someone else?” 

“It’s all relative.” He says it with a grin and a wink to Athena. 

He follows her up the ladder and into the building. 

At first, the building wasn’t that bad: there were no infected, no people, and nothing that could cause harm. There was even extra ammo and old but not expired food. 

“This used to be a Firefly house,” Bobby says as he walks into a bedroom with lines of mattresses, graffiti, and a couple of old circular necklaces scattered across the floor. There’s an old stuffed bear in the corner. 

And a blood stain. 

“What do you think happened to them?” Athena trails behind, glancing into the room with a melancholy look. 

“Dead, most likely.” The two leave the room and shut the door behind them. 

The click they heard wasn’t from the door.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Booby reaches for his gun on his leg. The clicks sound like they are getting closer to them, but they’re timed far enough apart for them to assume there’s only one. Hopefully.

Athena walks into the hallway connecting the bedroom to the rest of the house. Her gun is drawn, and her shoulders are tense, but she doesn’t look scared. 

“Clear.”

Bobby walks in after her, uncrouched with his gun back to his side. The infected are still there, but at least they have a little bit of room. They need to get downstairs to the basement to reach another underground tunnel. 

“I thought they cleaned this place out last week.” Bobby walks into their next room first as they continue to clear out the room, alternating who checks first each time. 

“They did. Maybe after their idea, the clicker smelled them?” 

“That’s not possible.”

“Well, neither was a zombie apocalypse. Yet here we are.”

The clicking sounds get closer to the duo as they clear out the last upper-floor rooms. The sound of feet clicking against the floor is heard as they walk past the final door before the stairs. Both of their guns are drawn and ready to shoot. 

Athena opens the door quickly and quietly. She brings her finger up to her lips as if to say ‘be silent.’ Bobby nods and rolls his eyes at her. They’ve been doing this for twenty years by now.

The clicker is standing alone in the middle of an empty room.  

The fungus looks like a brain coming from everywhere above his nose, covering the rest of his face. There are blood stains all over its body, and the person who this used to be must have died wearing a t-shirt because there are remnants of it covering the top half of the monster. 

It lets out a screech as it turns its head around to face them. 

Athena raises her gun and shoots the thing in the head twice. 

It drops to the floor with a gurgle and a twitch as it spasms for a few seconds before becoming still. 

With its mouth open, you can see some stuffing from a child's toy, possibly the teddy bear from earlier. 

And to think that thing used to be a human. 

“Well, that was anticlimactic.”

“Bobby, shut the fuck up.”

He laughs and lifts his hands in an innocent gesture. 

They continue walking down the stairs, guns back away. The old house looks worse as they get farther and farther from the entrance. Wooden panels are hanging low enough that they have to duck under them, and nails from the floor stick out high enough that they have to step around them. The tunnel is close enough that they aren’t too worried about their safety. 

They sneak behind a cabinet leading to the tunnel, they have to cross when they hear a voice. 

“Help me.”

Bobby jumps a little and grabs Athena, pulling her back behind him. 

She pushes him out of the way and looks at the man on the floor. “Watch it, watch it.” The first time she says it, she makes eye contact with Bobby; the second time, she pulls her gun out and points it at the man.

He’s pinned under another cabinet, his leg broken, and blood pouring from a spot on his hand. 

A bit mark. 

“I got bit.” He gasps and reaches out to them, “Don’t leave me to turn…please.”

Athena shoots him in the head without a second thought. 

He slumps back down.

“Let’s go. We have somewhere to be.” 

They make it through the rest of the buildings with relative ease, and there are no Infected. The only trouble they find on the way to the entrance of Dennis’s warehouse is a hole blocking the easy way out of the building. 

It doesn’t take long for them to make it to the door connecting the world beyond the QZ and the warehouses. 

Athena knocks three times, a code of sorts. 

A kid opens the door, he’s barely as tall as the handle. 

“Hey, little man, do you mind seeing if the coast is clear?” The boy nods as Athena shows him two ration cards.

The door swings back shut. 

“So?” Bobby looks at Athena as he says it. Something is rubbing at the back of his mind. There is no way this is going to be an easy raid. “You know Dennis is expecting us, right?”

“Well then, that will just make this more interesting.”

“You’re a sadist.”

She smirks as the door opens and the boy nods at them, putting his hand out for the ration cards.

A small shopping district awaits them on the other side. Athena walks in with confidence, nodding at a few people she recognizes and Bobby doesn’t. 

He doesn’t come to this area of the QZ very often. 

They walk past a man selling dogs, someone selling weapons, and a woman who is trading weed for guns. 

They walk onto a broken-down bus connecting the districts, a man stands up in front of Bobby with a bat raised. “What’s your business here?”

Athen, who had not been visible until then, interrupts. “Careful, he’s with me.” 

The guy laughs and lets them through. “Sorry, Athena, I didn’t realize you two were together.”

“Yeah, no one ever knows. I wear the pants in this relationship.”

He laughs harder and pats Athena on the back as she walks through. Bobby is waiting on the other end, a small smile plastered onto his face. She is stronger than he is, and he knows that well. 

“Bobby, I have something I need to get quickly.”

“I’ll be right here.”

She nods and walks to a shop selling ammo. Bobby walks closer to the wanted posters put up by FEDRA. They’re mostly of Chimney and Kevin. Even one of Athena here and there. 

Another man is walking closer to Bobby as he is waiting for Athena to buy the ammo. 

He looks innocent at first glance, but Bobby can see a pendant under his shirt, and that never means good news.

The man has a cigarette in his mouth and offers one to Bobby. “You lost?”

Bobby grits his teeth. The balls this man has. “If you tell me to ‘look for the light,’ I’m going to crack your skull open.”

The man laughs nervously and slowly starts backing away, keeping his eyes on Bobby. 

That’s when Athena comes back from the shop with the ammo they need for Dennis. 

“Firefly?”

“Yeah, you ready?”

“This should be easy. Here.” She throws him a box of ammo and starts walking farther through the market. 

They stop at an alleyway with a man who just nods and points down it. Athena hands him a ration card. They continue to walk until they come across a group of guards around an entryway to the warehouse. There are only about six of them. 

The group leader walks up to them, followed by the other five men. “You need to let us through.”

“You need to turn around and go back if you know what’s good for you.” They say it almost at the same time. Bobby hasn’t said anything yet; it’s too tense, and he needs to be on standby if one starts to shoot without warning. 

“Our beef isn’t with you, we want Dennis.” 

The five men start to raise their guns and point them at the duo. “You need to turn the fuck around.”

“I’m not going anywhere without Dennis.” Bobby draws his gun with the same precision as the men on the opposite side of him. 

“Bitch, I will shoot both knee caps unless you turn around and get your dumbass out of here.”

Bobby’s gun is raised higher, Athena is looking more agitated by the second, and Bobby can see her hand reach for the gun behind her back. 

“Fuck this.”

She quickly grabs the gun from her back, unclicks the safety, and shoots him in the head. 

It doesn’t take long for the two of them to dispose of the rest of them from there.

In fact, by the time they kill the other five men and make it to where Dennis is hiding, it’s only been about ten minutes. 

“He’s in the office. Probably hiding, knowing him.”

Athena kicks the door down to find an empty room with another door. Bobby points at it and then opens it to be immediately welcomed with gunfire. 

“Get back! Get the fuck back!” That’s Dennis’ voice, alright. He’s standing alone behind a desk, shaking. He’s terrified because he knows he screwed them over.

“Dennis,” Athena walks in front of the door, her hands up, “we just want to talk.” 

“We ain’t got nothing to talk about.” His pupils are wide, and there’s a stutter in his voice. He fires again just as Athena goes back to the side of the door. “Go fuck yourselves!” He throws the gun at the two of them and runs out a side door of the office. 

“Shit.”

“He’s running!”

They quickly follow him out the side door into an alley connecting other warehouses and factories. It takes them about two buildings to find him alone in an alley with a dead end. He’s shaking the metal gate that would bring him to the street. “Shit, shit, shit.” He sighs heavily and stops shaking, knowing he’s been caught. 

“Hello, Dennis.”

“Athena. Bobby.” He walks away from the gate and turns to face them, a faux smile on his cheekbones. “No hard feelings, right?”

Athena bends down and grabs a metal pipe lying on the floor. “No, none at all.” It almost makes Bobby laugh.

“Alright…” Dennis tries to run for it and makes it all of two feet before Athena hits him in the knee with the pipe.

“Ah! Goddamnit!” Dennis falls to the floor, clutching his knee. Bobby thinks he heard a crack when Athena hit him.

“We missed you.” Athena squats down to Dennis’s level. 

While looking Athena in the eyes Dennis says, “Look, whatever you heard, it ain’t true, okay?” 

“The guns? You wanna tell us where the guns are?”

His voice is raspy because of the pain he is in, and he’s shaking his head like a lunatic, but he answers her. “Yeah, sure, but… It’s complicated, alright.” 

Bobby, for the first time during the interrogation, leaves the wall he is leaning on. 

“Look, alright, just hear me out on this.” Bobby stomps on Dennis’s face. Athena gets up from her squat and lets Bobby bend down to look at Dennis.

“Fuck…”

Bobby grabs one of Dennis’s arms and pulls it out straight on the ground. “Stop! Stop!” He’s trying to move around and get out of Bobby’s hold on him. 

Athena walks back from behind him and spits at the floor near his face. “Quit your squirmin.’ You were saying?”

With his head parallel to the floor and the spot between his nose and eyebrows bleeding heavily from when Bobby stomped on him, he finally tells the truth. “I sold ‘em.”

Athena looks shocked for the first time all day. “Excuse me?”

“Look, I needed the money. I owed someone-”

“You owed us. I’d say you bet on the wrong horse.”

“I just need more time. Give me a week.”

Athena laughs once, coldly, and stares at him. “You know, I might have done that if you hadn’t tried to fucking kill me.”

“C’mon, it wasn’t like-”

“Who has our guns?”

“I can’t.”

Bobby and Athena look at each other in disbelief. Who could be this important? 

“Just give me a couple of days-” 

Bobby tightens his hand around Dennis’s arms, grabs the elbow, and twists upward till he hears a pop. 

Dennis screams and turns on his side to face the duo. The arm lies limply at his side, his forearm facing the wrong direction. Bobby stands up as Athena bends down closer. 

“Who has our guns?”

Dennis is crying as he answers them. “It was the Fireflies. I owed the Fireflies.”

Bobby and Athena look at each other again. So much for avoiding them. “What?”

Dennis has stopped crying and looks almost hopeful as he speaks. “Look, they’re basically all dead. We can just go in there and finish ‘em off. We get the guns.” He’s nodding as he says this, the blood from his nose running down his face and into his teeth, making him look crazier than he already is. “Whadaya say?”

For the final time, Athena looks at Bobby in disbelief, This man is truly an idiot. She sighs harder than before. “That sounds like a stupid idea.”

Her gun goes off. Dennis’s body lies limp on the floor.

Bobby runs his hand through his hair. “Well, what now?”

“We're going to get our merchandise back.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. We explain it to them?” She looks desperate. “Look, let's go find a Firefly.”

“You don’t need to look very far.” 

Bobby hears his footsteps before he sees him. Chimney. The leader of the Fireflies in the Boston QZ. 

And he’s holding his bleeding stomach. 

“There you go, King Firefly.”

He looks exhausted and battle-worn but asks, “Why are you here?”

Athena answers, “Business. You aren’t looking so hot.”

Chimney looks back for a second, almost like he’s looking for something. “Where’s Dennis?” 

Athena points to the floor and moves out of the way so Chimney can see him.

Chimney shakes his head in disbelief and looks up at the sky. “I needed him alive.”

“The guns he gave you. They weren’t his to sell. I want them back.”

“Doesn’t work like that, Athena.”

“The hell it doesn’t.”

“I paid for those guns.” Chimney walks closer to them with a slight limp. “You wan’t them back?” He looks dead serious when he asks this. “You’re gonna have to earn ‘em.” 

Athena looks back at Bobby, who looks contemplative. “How many cards are you talking about?”

Chimney shakes his head and purses his lips. “I’m not talking about ration cards. I don’t give a damn about them. I need something smuggled out of the city. You do that- I’ll give you your guns back and then some.”

Athena looks disbelieving at Chimeny. Bobby walks closer to him. “How do we know you got ‘em? Way I hear it, militaries been wiping you guys out.”

Chimney’s exhaustion comes back in full force. He closes his eyes for a second and presses harder on the wound on his stomach. “You’re right about that.”

He nods to himself for a second, thinking. “I’ll show you the weapons.”

The group suddenly hears more footsteps and a radio. The military is here. 

Chimney looks back at the duo. “I need to move, so what’s it gonna be?”

Athena follows first. “I wanna see those guns.”

Bobby just follows the two of them up the ladder of the building onto the roof of the warehouse. From here, he can see smoke coming out of a building a few blocks away. “Is that your people?”

Chimney nods solemnly. “What’s left of them. Why do you think I’m turning to you guys?”

They continue to walk across the roofs of the QZ when Bobby asks a question that has been on his mind from the moment Chimney showed up. “So why now?”

“We’ve been quiet. We’re trying to leave the city, but they need a scapegoat for all their problems. It can’t look like there are more people than just Fireflies who hate them. They’ve been the ones starting most of the fights recently. Trying to rile us up.”

They enter a building through a broken window. “Looks like they did.”

Chimney jumps down to the lowest floor first. “We’ve been trying to defend ourselves.” 

They walk to a heavy sliding door as Bobby watches Chimney hold his still heavily bleeding stomach. “Bobby, help me with this.” Chimney’s hand is on the door, and looking at him expectantly. They get the door open and continue walking.

The group takes out a squad of soldiers as they try to cross a bridge. The chimney looks worse as they move forward.

By the time they reach the other side of the bridge, Athena looks fed up with all the walking and no explanation as to where they’re going.

“Where are we going, Chimney?”

“This way.” Still not an answer, but he’s gasping at his stomach and turning even paler than he was a minute ago. “It’s not far now.”

Bobby follows him into the next building as the intercom overhead starts to initiate curfew. “Just what the hell are we smuggling?”

“You’ll see.”

They walk up the stairs of the building and reach a locked door. Chimney inserts the key and slowly opens the door. 

The second the door is open, he falls to the floor, clutching his side.

“Woah, woah, woah. Come on now, let’s get you up.” He reaches a hand out to help the other man up.

“Get the fuck away from him.” 

“Hey, hey, hey.” Athena reaches for the person Bobby didn’t even know was behind him. 

It’s a boy, probably a young teenager, and he has a knife out, pointing it at Bobby.

Chimney looks up as he hears the voice. “Let him go.” He says it almost as a whisper. Getting paler the more he speaks. Athena lets the boy go harshly, still staring him down. 

Who is this kid? Bobby has never seen him before, but he looks oddly familiar. Lik, he knows someone related to him.

“You’re recruitin’ kinda young, aren’t ya?”

Trying to get off the floor, Chimney answers. “He’s not one of mine.”

He falls right back down as the boy scurries over to try and help him. “Shit. What happened?” The boy fully helps Chimney up and brings him to a table.

Chimney tries to look a little less depressed for the first time Bobby has known him. “Don’t worry, kid, this is all fixable.” He points back at the two of them. “I got us help. But I can’t come with you.”

The boy tries to argue with Chimney. “Well, I’m staying then. I need to be here with you.”

“Evan, we won’t get another shot at this.” The boy looks startled by something for a quick second. That’s when Bobby decides to join their conversation because it sounds a lot like-

“Hey- We’re smuggling him?”

Chapter Text

Chimney looks helpless. He’s pale, exhausted, and helpless. 

If Bobby can recall correctly, the boy's name is Evan. He keeps casting worried glances at the hole in Chimney’s stomach. It’s not looking good for him. 

“A crew of Fireflies will meet you at the capital building.” The boy seems almost lost. Bobby doesn’t know how he’s going to be able to get a kid to the Capitol. They would have to sneak out of the QZ and go through the city.

Athena is the one who voices his concerns. “That’s not exactly close.”

“You’re capable.” The confidence that comes out of Chimney’s mouth can only be there from years of knowing the duo. “You hand him off, come back, the weapons are yours. Double what Dennis owed you.”

Athena doesn’t trust Chimney, she’s squinting at him with a slight glare. “Speaking of which - where are they?” 

“Back at our camp.” 

The duo scoffs simultaneously. Of course, they’re not here. “We’re not smuggling shit until we see them.”

Chimney nods like he expected that and points at Athena. “You’ll follow me. You can verify the weapons, and I can get patched up.” He pauses, thinking, then points at the boy. “But he’s not crossing that part of town.” 

Bobby doesn’t like where this is going. “-Bobby can watch him.”

“Woah, I don’t think that’s the best idea-”

“-Bullshit, I’m not going with him!”

The boy and Bobby look at each other in mutual disgust. 

“Evan-”

“How do you know them?”

Chimney is closer and closer to passing out with each question he answers. Bobby can’t tell if the boy, Evan, is oblivious to this or just doesn’t care.

“We used to all be close, especially me and his brother.” He takes a deep breath like he’s remembering something. Athena and Bobby have also stopped looking restless. They both know who he’s talking about. “And a couple others.” 

There’s a wave of sadness passing through the room; even Evan looks like he feels it. No matter if he can tell who they’re talking about or not. 

He probably wouldn’t know them anyway. Bobby thinks with a grim expression plastered onto his face. They lost a lot of people traveling to Boston from Minnesota. 

Chimney continues to talk after the awkward pause that filled the room. “Either way, I knew if I was ever really in need, I could count on them.” 

Bobby rolls his eyes. “If I remember correctly, Athena and I left the six of you when you wanted to start your militia group.”

“Yeah, well, now there are three of us, including your brother.”

“And he left.”

“He left you, too.”

Bobby doesn’t want to think about that. He doesn’t want to think about the fact that Charlie hasn’t been in contact with him for weeks. He doesn’t want to think about the fact that they split ways over ten years ago, and he’s forgetting what he looks like. Or the fact that their original group has been slowly dying over the last ten years. He didn’t even know one of them had died. Not until Chimney just said who’s left. 

The chimney looks solemn. “He was a good man.”

“He still is. They all were.” 

Athena, still looking anxious and sad, interrupts them. “Look, just take him to the north tunnel and wait for me there. I’ll go check and make sure he isn’t lying to us.” Bobby nods in acknowledgement but looks at the other man.

“We do this for you. Not only do I want the weapons back. I want a car battery.”

“Deal.”

He shakes the man’s hand that isn’t holding his bleeding stomach. It’s the first time they have shaken hands in over ten years. It’s weird how time flies like that. Bobby laughs in disbelief. “Jesus Christ.”

Athena puts a hand on his shoulder in comfort. “He’s just cargo, Bobby. We’ve smuggled worse farther and for less.” 

Bobby can hear the boy ask Chimney something, and he shuts it down quickly. Bobby walks back close to them as Chimney says, “You’ll be fine.” And lightly shoves the boy towards them. 

He nods at Athena as she goes to help Chimney. “Don’t take long.” He looks at the kid again. “You, stay close.” 

Bobby pushes the door open and goes out first; the kid follows right behind him.

He misses Chimney’s look of despair as he sees the boy leave. 

The door shuts behind them.

“Buck.”

“What?”

“Chimney called me Evan, but I like to be called Buck.”

“Where did you get that nickname?”

“None of your business, Pops.” 

“Well, don’t lag, let's go.”

Bobby turns away from the boy and starts walking through the back alley. There are bodies on the floor, soldiers that Fireflies killed, defending their base. And the PA system overhead is blaring about the curfew. They were supposed to be inside after 6 pm, but it’s 7.

“So that’s what all the shooting was?” The kid is looking at the dead bodies with wide eyes. “What happened?”

“Fireflies.” He bends down to check their bodies for ammo and anything valuable. “This will happen to us if we don’t move soon.”

“You sure know how to sugarcoat stuff for a kid. Don’t you, Pops?” 

“If you’re alive, you’re old enough.” 

“Well, you’re the pro; I’m just following you.”

They continue down the alley to a fence. You can see the street on the other side, and the soldiers can see you. They quickly ducked under and passed the fence. They walk through an alley and make it to the north tunnel connecting to a building. 

“Do you use this tunnel to smuggle things?”

“Yup.”

“Like…illegal things?” 

“Sometimes.”

“You ever smuggle a kid before?”

“No, that’s a first.” They continue down the dark hallway with the locked doors and weary people. Bobby asks the question that’s been on his mind for a while. “So, what’s the deal with you and Chimney anyway?” 

“I don’t know, he’s my friend, I guess.”

“Your friend, huh? He’s the leader of the Fireflies, and you’re what? Twelve.”

“He knew people close to me, he promised them he would take care of me. And I’m fourteen, not that it matters or anything.”

“So where are these people now?” 

“Where is anyone's family? They’ve been dead a long, long time.”

“So, instead of staying in school, you decided to run off and join the Fireflies, is that it?”

Buck’s frown deepens, like he knows what Bobby isn’t asking by that question. “Look, I’m not supposed to tell you why you’re smuggling me if that’s what you’re getting at.”

Bobby laughs harshly. “You wanna know somethin'? The best part about my job is that fact that I don’t gotta know why. I could honestly give two shits about why I’m smuggling you.” 

“Well, great.”

“We’re here.”

“Here?”

Bobby puts a key in the last door at the end of the hallway they’ve been walking down for the last five minutes. The door swings open with a depressing noise. “This is it.”

He walks from the door to the couch in the middle of the room. Buck is standing, confused, but Bobby couldn't care less. He throws his bag on the floor and lies on the couch.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Sleeping.”

“Wrong. I’m killing time.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?”

“I’m sure you’ll figure that out.”

Buck walks past the couch when he notices something. “Your watch is broken.”

Bobby takes a deep breath. Closes his eyes and tries not to feel the pang in his heart. 

It’s dark outside when Bobby wakes up, his back aching from the couch he slept on. And his body is sore from the fight yesterday. His mind is reeling when he remembers the boy about three seconds later. 

“You mumble in your sleep.” The boy interrupts his thoughts quickly. Rain patters against the window he is staring at. “I hate bad dreams. And rain, well, not rain, but lightning.”

“Yeah, me too.” Bobby sits up on the couch. He puts his head in his hands and rubs his eyes. He stands slowly and goes over to Buck. He is still looking out the window in wonder.

“You know, I’ve never been this close.” Bobby looks at him in question. “To the outside.” Bobby walks over to the lamp on the table and turns it on. “I mean, look how dark it is out there. FEDRA never even showed us pictures of it.” 

Buck leaves the seat and walks closer to Bobby. “It can’t be as bad out there as it is in here, can it?” 

Bobby lets out a harsh breath. “What on earth do the Fireflies want with you?” He doesn’t answer Buck's question. 

The apartment door squeaks open, and both of their eyes turn to face it. 

Athena slides in, damp from the rain. “Sorry, I’m late. Soldiers fucking everywhere.” 

Buck interrupts before Bobby can say anything.“How’s Chimney?”

Athena walks closer to the two in the middle. “He’ll make it.” The way she says it is almost reassuring. 

She turns to face only Bobby. “I saw the merchandise. It’s a lot.” She points at Buck with a raised eyebrow. “You wanna do this?” 

“Yeah, I need that battery.”

“Then let's go.” 

The trio walks into the other room of Athena and Bobby’s apartment. 

This room has more windows than the other one. The rain becoming more visible and the darkness more daunting. 

Athena is looking out the window closest to the wall when Bobby walks over to her from behind Buck. “You don’t think this is weird? Them. Making us do their smuggling.” 

“Chimney wanted to do it himself. We weren’t his first choice. Or his second, for that matter.” She paused, a haunted look coming across her eyes. “He lost a lot of men - beggars can’t be choosers.” 

Bobby doesn’t want to think about the fact that some of those men used to be his friends. 

“Let’s just hope there’s someone alive to pay us.”

“Someone’ll be around.” 

Athena walks around the room and pushes the bookcase across the wall to reveal a hole. 

“So cool.” She looks at the boy, and a small smile graces her face. Something Bobby hasn’t seen in a while. In the last couple of hours, he’s gotten to know the kid, he keeps forgetting that the boy never left a FEDRA facility. Stuff they’ve been doing for the past 20 years seems magical to Buck. 

Through the hole, there’s a small elevator shaft that only needs a generator to work. It doesn’t take long, and they quickly get moving down. 

On the way down, Bobby asks Athena, “Who’s coming to meet us at the drop zone?” 

At this, she seems impressed. “He said that there’s going to be Fireflies from other cities there.” She looks towards Buck. “The boy must be important.” He scoffs and looks down at his shoes. “What’s the deal with you anyway? You some big-wigs son or something?”

“Or something.” He says it with a small frown on his face. “How long is this going to take?”

“If all goes according to plan, you should be there in a couple of hours.” 

This is when Bobby butts into their conversation. “Buck, once we get past the gate, I need you to listen to me carefully. Follow our lead and stay close.”

“Sure thing, Pops.” 

“Please. Stop calling me that.” 

“Whatever you say, Pops.” 

Bobby groans in annoyance. And continues down the tunnel where the elevator drops them. It’s dark and dripping with some type of liquid from the ceiling. Bobby doesn’t want to question if it’s water from the rain or something else. After a couple of minutes of walking, his flashlight starts to pick up a glare from the metallic ladder up ahead. 

He points at it, and the other two nod. Slowly, he makes it up. 

The second he reaches the top of the ladder, Bobby sees lights from guards at the top of the watch tower. But none are pointed at them, so he looks down at the other two and says, “Alright, we're good. You guys can come up.”

The rain surrounds them harshly, their only aid is the darkness that comes with the fact that it’s nearing midnight. Guards flank the walls surrounding the QZ. He can hear some sort of military vehicle pass above them. 

The boy looks around in amazement. “Holy shit. I’m actually outside.” His smile is the biggest Bobby has seen on anyone in the last twenty years. He doesn’t understand why the kid is acting like this until he remembers that he was born after the world shut down. This kid has never left the mile-long square hellhole that is the Boston QZ. 

They come across an old truck that has been covered by the mud surrounding it. With doors broken and the top open, it is the perfect spot for them to sneak through without being seen. Bobby tells them just that, and they slowly climb their way up the truck and out the other side.

With a quick look one way confirming it’s clear, Bobby steps out of the truck. 

The bud of a gun hits his temple hard. He falls to the ground instantly, mud getting soaked through his jeans. 

The soldier raises her gun at the other two. “Don’t do anything stupid.”  Buck and Athena walk out of the truck with their hands up. The boy looks down right terrified. Athena looks more annoyed than anything else. “Move!” The soldier keeps her gun pointed at the two of them. Bobby is still seeing bright spots in the corners of his vision.

“On the ground, turn around, on your knees.” Buck goes right next to Bobby, and Athena follows suit. 

With the gun still pointed at them, the soldier grabs a scanner from her pocket. “Put your hands on your knees.” She clicks a button on the top of her radio. “This is Ramirez at Sector Twelve, requesting pick up for three stragglers.” 

She puts the scanner next to Athena’s neck, and with a click, the needle goes in before the screen turns green. “The first one is clear.” She pulls the radio up to talk into it again. 

Muttering to herself as she walks over to Bobby, she places the scanner on his neck. The same thing happens again before she makes it to Buck.

Bobby can tell that the boy is restless. He seems to be playing with something in his pocket. The guard brings the scanner down to his neck, and the second the click happens, Buck grabs the thing from his pocket and stabs her with it. Because that thing was a knife. Of course, the kid had a knife on them. 

The woman screams in pain and points her gun straight at Buck.

It takes Bobby less than two seconds to tackle her and start punching. 

“Yes, sir.” The soldier points the gun back up at the family. His entire face is covered; it’s almost cowardly. 

“Please, we’ve just been through hell.”

He can’t get the image of that day out of his head. 

The gun rises even higher. “Oh.”

Bobby, as quickly as he can, turns and tries to cover his kids, then the soldier fires.

He won’t let her do the same to Buck. 

Cold flows through Bobby like his blood isn’t there; he turns swiftly and sees his kids. 

Brook is gasping, blood spreading around her abdomen. Bobby is already dead.

With a final punch, the woman falls limp, dead, on the cold, muddy ground. Bobby can’t help but feel a tiny bit of pride and retribution. 

“Oh, oh, fuck.” Buck looks shell-shocked. He’s backing away, scooting more, like, from Bobby with a terrified look in his eyes. It’s almost like before that moment, he didn’t realize Bobby was capable of killing someone. He couldn’t imagine Bobby Jr. or Brook looking at him like that. 

“I thought we where just gonna hold them up or something.” Buck’s wheezing as he says it, he head between his muddy knees. His knife is still in his hand. 

“Bobby!” Swiftly, he turns his head to Athena, who is holding the scanner with wide eyes. Looking at Buck like she’s just seen a ghost. The screen is red.

“Jesus Christ.” He doesn’t even look at the kid on the ground. “Chimney set us up? Why the hell are we smuggling an infected boy?” 

Buck shakes his head with delirium. “I’m not sick.” 

“No?” Bobby throws the scanner right next to the kid. “So this was lying?” 

Tears are gathering in the kids' eyes. He’s shaking. “I can explain.” He holds out a hand in a way that signals them to pause. 

Athena pulls her gun out of her holster and points it at him. “You better explain fast.” 

Buck rolls up his sleeve to show a bite; it’s scarred over and blistered to all hell. But it’s real. “Look at this!” 

Bobby starts to walk away, shaking his head. “I don’t care how you got infected-”

“It’s three weeks old.”

Athena lowers the gun, disbelieving. “No, everyone turns within two days.” She quickly shakes off the disbelief and brings the gun right back up. “So you stop bullshitting.”

“It’s three weeks. I swear.” He looks between the duo, trying to find a reason to get them to believe him. “Why would Chimney set you up?”

Athena, seeming to believe it, lowers her gun again. Bobby looks at her disapprovingly. “I ain’t buying it.”

His eyes go wide as a car coming their way illuminates his face. 

The pickup that the woman asked for. Fuck.

Chapter Text

Jakarta, Indonesia - September 24th, 2005

A woman sits at a diner table with glasses perched on her nose and a careful expression as she reads the latest newspaper. A group of factory workers has gone missing, gone without a trace. 

Apparently, it was a group working with flour, making bread, pancake mix, and cake batter. The perfect place for diseases to run rampant. Something she knew all too well. 

That’s why it doesn’t surprise her when a man dressed in military garb walks into the diner, his eyes set right on her. 14 people missing, no bodies found. Being the only medical mycologist in 100 miles, this was bound to come to her. 

The other people in the diner turn to stare at her and the man. Smoke rising from cigarettes. Papers no longer flipping, and questions stirring in their eyes. 

She puts down her fork, looks the man in his eye, stands up, and walks out of the restaurant. 

There’s a van waiting outside for her. A man is already sitting in the front of the vehicle, a stoic look on his face. The soldier who grabbed her from the restaurant takes a seat next to her. “I truly am sorry about your lunch.” 

She clutches her purse harder against her chest. “No need. I was just finishing.” She had just gotten the food. Hadn’t even had the first bite. 

Uncomfortable, she asks a question. “Excuse me, sir. Have I committed a crime?” She hopes she has. Anything would be better than walking into the possibility of what she could only imagine is connected to that news story she read in the paper. 

The man laughs like she told a funny joke. “No,” her gut clenches, and she clings onto her purse, “of course not.” 

A mistake then? “Do you have the right person-”

“You are Ibu Ratna, Professor of Mycology, University of Indonesia. We have the right person.” 

She so desperately wishes they didn’t.

The car pulls up to a building she doesn’t recognize. The doors unlock with a click, and the soldier holds her hand to help her out. She takes it with a cautious look. The man lets go of her hand the second she’s out of the car.

The other soldier joins him, and the two of them open the doors to the building and start walking through the building at a pace she can’t quite keep up with. The walk is silent, she doesn’t get a chance to ask any questions.

Everyone is looking as they pass. 

After about three minutes of silence and footsteps, they reach a door at the end of a long hallway. Another soldier guarding the door scans his key card against the panel.

On the inside is a lab, where about four scientists reside at their desks and stand up as she passes. 

While walking through the soldier regards her for the first time in five minutes. “Ibu Ratna, would you please examine the prepared specimen?”

Another doctor walks up next to the soldier and points to the microscope on the lab table. “You may notice-” 

The soldier hits the doctor on her arm to shut her up. “She will draw her conclusions.” 

The woman nods as the doctor walks away. She turns away from the soldier and looks down at the microscope. Pulling the chair closer to her and the table, she sits, takes her glasses off, and puts her eye to the ocular lens. 

It only takes one look for her to turn back to the soldier. “This is ophiocordyceps. Why did you use chlorazol to prepare this slide?”

The soldier responds immediately. “Because this is the preparation used for samples taken from a human.”

She shakes her head in disbelief and stands up. “Cordyceps cannot survive in humans.” 

The man nods in acknowledgement, his eyes are wide and terrified. 

The move out of the lab to another door. The air is tense as they walk, the weight of what they might have discovered clinging to them. 

She gets into a hazmat suit before she enters the examination. They still don’t know if what they found could be contagious or not. As she opens the door to the lab, a voice over the intercom distracts her. “If you feel sick, please exit quickly.” 

She swallows harshly and wanders over to the dead body on the table. 

The first thing she notices is the fact that it’s a woman. The second thing she notices is the bullet in her head. There’s blood wiped around her nose and mouth. As she goes to look at the subject's face, the soldier interrupts her over the intercom. “The bottom of her left leg.” 

As she is walking down, she sees it. A bite mark from human teeth. 

It’s veiny, puffed up against her skin, and a little green. 

She grabs a scalpel from the table next to the bed. She cuts straight through the bite, expecting blood. She finds a white pile of something under her leg. Fungus. That’s not possible. Her eyes go wide, and she looks up at the soldier in the observation room. 

“Is this bite mark really from a human?”

It’s the silence that makes her more scared. Her hands are shaking as he nods. They stare at each other from across the glass. 

She goes back to the table and grabs the surgical clamps. Walking back up to the subject's face. She holds her cheeks between her hands and pulls open the mouth of the subject. She puts the clamps as far as she can get them into the woman's throat. Then she pulls.

A vine emerges from the woman's throat. 

She brings the clamp closer to see it, the vines reach for her. It’s alive, it shouldn’t be alive, that’s not possible. 

She drops the clamp on the floor and runs out of the room.

Taking off the hazmat suit is a struggle because she is shaking so badly. The zipper gets stuck about three times, and walking out of the room is daunting because walking out of the room makes it real. Makes the impossible possible. 

There’s a couch in the meeting room. It’s puke-yellow, too similar to the bite mark on the subject's leg. Her hands lay tucked between her legs. Her shoulders are hunched in uncertainty. She’s rubbing her hands together anxiously when the soldier comes over to where she’s sitting with tea. 

The cup shakes her hand when she asks the man, “When did this happen?” She desperately hopes it’s not related to the article she read not two hours ago. 

“Approximately thirty hours ago.” 

“Where?”

“A flour and grain factory on the west side of the city.” 

Fuck. Her mouth is open in disbelief as she tries to find the words. “A perfect substrate.” Almost too perfect. “And then?” 

“A normal woman, suddenly violent. Attacked four coworkers, bit three of them. They locked her in a bathroom. The police came, and she tried to attack them. They shot her.”

She shakes her head. This should not be possible. “What happened to the people she bit?” 

“They were taken for observation.” Okay, that’s good. That means they have them, so this might not be able to spread. “A few hours later, it became necessary, according to procedure, to execute them.” She blinks a lot, then leans back against the couch. 

“Who bit her?” 

There’s silence before the soldier answers. “We don’t know.” 

“So they’re still out there.” It’s a terrifying detail, and then she remembers the rest of the article. “Are any other workers missing?”

“Fourteen.” 

The cup in her hand shakes violently. Not wanting to spill, she places it down on the table in front of her. She holds her hands in a deadlock in front of her, not to let the man see them shaking. 

“Ibu Ratna, we brought you here to help keep this from spreading.” She closes her eyes. “We need a vaccine or a medicine.” 

She looks the soldier dead in the eyes, her body has stopped shaking. She leans forward. “I have spent my life studying these things. So please, listen to me carefully. There is no medicine. There is no vaccine.”

For the first time, the soldier looks caught off guard. With wide eyes, he stutters out his question. “So what do we do?” 

“Bomb.” She swallows heavily. “Start bombing. Bomb this city and everyone in it.”

The soldiers’ eyes are wide. His jaw is tense. 

She looks away from him. Her eyes are tearful, and she wipes her nose. “Excuse me, if someone could please drive me home? I would like to be with my family.” 

She closes her eyes as a single tear slips out. 

--

As it turns out, avoiding a vehicle is easy if you can find a place where it can’t fit. Like the pipe the trio runs through, it brings them a quarter mile or so out of the QZ. There shouldn’t be soldiers looking for them out here. 

Athena breathes a sigh of relief as they make it out of the pipe and back into the rain. “Alright, they’re gone.” She kneels next to Buck as he breathes heavily into his hands. “Look - what was the plan? Let’s say we deliver you to the Fireflies, then what?” 

“Chimney, he said, they have their little quarantine zone. They have doctors there trying to find a cure.” 

Bobby soffs at the Buck. “Yeah, we’ve heard that before, right, Athena?” He’s angry, hurt. Chimney has tried to figure out a cure before. It never works out well. 

Buck keeps on talking to Athena. “And that,” he shakes his head like he’s not believing what he’s saying, “whatever happened to me is the cure to finding a vaccine.” 

“Oh Jesus.” Bobby holds his head up to the sky. 

“It’s what he said.” The kid says it in a weak, small voice, almost scared of their reaction. 

“Oh, I’m sure he did.” 

Buck abruptly stands up and walks towards Bobby. “Hey, fuck you man, I didn’t ask for this.” 

“Me neither.” He looks at Athena. “What the hell are we doing here?” 

“What if it’s true?” 

Bobby points at her. “I can’t believe-”

“What if, Bobby? I mean, we’ve come this far, let’s just finish it.” 

“Do I need to remind you what is out there?”

Athena looks back at Buck. “I get it.” She continues walking, and Buck gets up and follows. Bobby stands alone, watching them walk away, and feels the rain hitting his body.

“This way.” Athena is pointing to a building that is still standing. “We can rest here for an hour or so and still make it to the capital by sunrise.” 

“We hope,” Bobby mutters to himself as he walks to join the two. Anything can happen now that they’re out of the QZ. 

It’s a short walk to the building that is safe enough to rest in. Athena and Bobby have been there before, on other smuggling gigs. There’s moss covering the floor that is comfortable enough to sleep on. Not that either of them will sleep, but the kid might. 

And he does, after about two seconds, he passes out, using his backpack as a pillow. 

“Are we going to wait an hour?” Bobby turns to Athena. 

“What do you mean by that?” 

“The kid needs more than an hour of sleep.”

“He’s infected. He could turn any second.” 

“But what if he’s not lying?”

“What if it’s been three weeks?” 

“Then we have a fucking mircale on our hands, but if it’s not.” Bobby’s eyes turn back to the kid. “We can wait till the rain stops.”

“What?” Athena asks, confused, and she’s also looking at the boy. He seems so peaceful sleeping, like an actual child, not the person he is when he’s awake. Not the traumatized person he’s grown to be.

“You’re right.” Bobby sighs as he says it. “The kid won’t be able to keep up with us. Especially in the rain. I don’t want to kill him, we need the payment from Chimney. So we’ll wait till the rain stops. If that takes longer than an hour, well, we’re here longer than an hour.” 

“Okay.” And they wait.

Wait for the boy to turn, wait for the rain to stop. Whichever comes first. 

That ends up being to rain. After about three hours, the rain stops. It’s still dark out, but they can’t hear the constant patter of rain against the walls. 

The boy starts turning over, and they see his eyes start to stir. The two of them are tense, waiting for him to awake. 

He rolls over so as not to face them, they can see his arm move to rub his eyes. Slowly, he sits up and turns to face them. 

His eyes widen as he sees them. “Morning.” As he stands up, Bobby brings his gun up, following his movements. He stops, eyes wide in fear. His butt falls right back onto the moss. “Do I look like I’m infected?”

“Show us your arm.” Bobby still has his gun facing the boy. 

Buck rolls up his sleeve slowly. The scar is there, but it’s not new. There’s no hue of yellow or green surrounding it, and it’s not that veiny. “Yeah, it’s not getting worse, is it?” 

Bobby and Athena turn to face each other. He should have turned by now. He should be a fucking zombie with fungus shooting out of his mouth. But no, he’s here, alive and conscious. 

And he’s annoying. “If we’re out in the open city, why aren’t we getting swarmed?” 

“Don’t worry about that.”

“Well, I’m gonna.” 

Athena looks between the two. “What was Chimney doing with an infected?” They know why he kept him, but not how they met.

“I’m not infected.”

“And he didn’t shoot you?”

“Not.”

“Why does he believe you’re the cure?”

“Because, I didn’t turn into a fucking monster.” 

“I have to shit, can I please?” 

Like the first time, as he stands up to go shit, Bobby also starts to stand up with his gun in his hand. And like last time, Athena stops them before it gets out of hand. “Fine. Back there. You can find a spot.” 

She points to the door near the end of the room they’re in. “And here.” She throws the boy an old newspaper. “Tear out a few pages.” 

As the boy walks to the door, he stops abruptly. “There’s not gonna be anything bad in there?”

“Just you.” Bobby smirks and sits back down as he says it. 

The boy disappears around the corner. “Oh, funny.” 

Athena looks down at Bobby’s hands, clutching the gun. They are shaking and bloody. It must have happened when he punched the soldier. “Broken?” She holds out her hands and takes his. 

While he lets it happen, he doesn’t look at her. “Maybe a hairline. It will heal fast.” He can almost feel her eyes pointed at him. 

She puts her head in her hands in frustration and swiftly looks back up. “He made it through the fuckin’ night, Bobby.”

“It doesn’t matter.” As he says this, he turns to look at her. It’s a lot easier to make eye contact when they aren’t talking about him. “It’s gonna happen sooner or later. Alright? We’re still close to the wall. We sneak him back to the QZ. We can find a different way to get the battery.” 

“This is our best shot.” Bobby looks away from her again. “If we take him back to the QZ, someone is gonna notice his arm, they’re gonna scan him, then they’re gonna kill him.”

“Well, better than us!” Bobby looks apologetic for yelling at her. “Just,” he puts a hand on her leg. “You have to stop talking about this kid like he’s got some sort of life in front of him.” 

Just after he says that, the kid walks back into the room. He throws the rest of the newspaper back at Athena. Then he goes to sit back where he was sleeping. 

Athena grabs the newspaper and puts it back into her bag. “You hungry? You can share some of ours.” 

Looking grateful, Buck denies Athena. “Thanks. Chimney set me up with my own.” 

Bobby is ignoring them, trying to tear his beef jerky with broken knuckles. His hands have yet to stop shaking. The boy pulls out a sandwich and starts eating that. Athena takes some of Bobby’s jerky and continues to watch Buck. “Is that chicken?” 

“Yeah. Chimney said they get it from smugglers.” He pauses, taps the sandwich once. “Guess not, you guys.” 

Athena snaps, standing up from her seat, and walks over to the boy. She kneels next to him. “Listen to me, and don’t lie to me, or we’ll take you back.” 

Bobby stands up and joins them. “You take me back, you don’t get your battery.”

She laughs. “So you heard that.” Buck nods. “Then you probably heard he wants to shoot you.” She points a finger at Bobby and the gun resting on his waist. Buck stops looking smug as he looks at Bobby, who is staring at him with a blank expression. 

Athena gets right in his view of Bobby. “I’m gonna talk to you like you’re an adult, okay? Bobby and I aren’t good people. We’re doing this for us, because apparently, you’re worth something. So, if you’re lying to us.” She points to Bobby one last time. “He will put a bullet in your head, no questions or guilt required.” 

“I’m not lying.”

Athena stands up and walks next to Bobby. “Okay.” 

Bobby sighs. “If he so much as twitches.”

Suddenly, there’s a gag, as both Bobby and Athena turn to see Buck twitching. 

“Don’t.” 

He stops immediately. Rubbing his neck in uncertainty. “Okay.”

Athena looks back at Bobby, her eyes asking a million questions. “Okay?”

He looks resigned and disbelieving but agrees. “Okay.” 

She grabs her bag, newspaper, and gun, packs them all up, as Bobby does the same. The kid, getting the memo, also starts to pack up. “Can I have a gun?” 

“No.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Okay, Jesus, fine. I’ll have to throw my fuckin’ sandwich at them.”

Bobby starts to unbar the door, his hands still shaking as he does so. Shooting might be difficult today. He gets the door open and walks outside. It’s still dark, and from the position of the moon in the sky, it’s about four am. 

Athena follows suit with Buck right on her tail. His eyes lit up in amazement. While it’s not the prettiest sight. To someone who’s never been outside the QZ, this looks like heaven. It’s like something out of a movie, there are destroyed buildings, broken roads, but the sight that takes his attention is the skyscraper that has leaned onto the one next to it. 

Bobby, either not noticing Buck’s amazement or not caring, interrupts his train of thought. “We should get movin’.”

The start to walk through the deserted city. Buck’s head is turning every which way. “It’s like a fucked-up moon.” He wonders out loud in amazement. “Is this where they bombed?”

“Yeah. They hit most of the big cities like this. They had to slow the spread somehow. Worked here, but it didn’t most places.” The look Athena gives the crater as she is explaining it to Buck is almost haunted. 

They walk away silently.

They don’t walk that long before they reach a building that cuts off the road they are on. Athena looks at the building and a Buck. “So, the state house is across there. It’s about a ten-minute walk if you go straight.”

Bobby looks at Athena. “So? Long way or short way?”

“I mean, it’s the long way or the ‘we’re fuckin’ dead’ way.” 

“Well, I vote long way based on that very limited information.” Both of them look at the kid, then at each other. 

“We have to check it from the hotel first.” Athena nods at Bobby. 

“Okay.” 

The group takes a left and continues walking through the destruction. Cars are piled up around them and become more common as they slowly reach the highway. Miles of cars lined up along the road tell the story of people trying to escape the day of the outbreak. 

“Where the fuck are they already?” 

Athena, though walking ahead of Buck, looks back at him. “You’ll know it when they’re close.” 

“I didn’t know it last time.”

Interested but not interrupting, Bobby walks at a slower pace behind them. Athena does ask what he’s wondering, though. “How did you get bitten anyway?” 

“You know the old mall in the QZ?” 

“The one that’s boarded off and sealed up, and no one's supposed to go in, ever? That one?” 

“Whatever. I snuck in.” Buck scoffs. “I wanted to see what it was like. Didn’t think there was gonna be anything in there, and then one just shot at me outta nowhere. Thought I got away, but.” 

“So it was just you in there, alone?” 

There’s a pause, and Bobby can feel the grief take over the boy's body from here. “Yeah.” He’s lying. 

Athena keeps asking questions without a care whether he’s lying or not. “How old are you?” Bobby knows this one, they talked about it earlier. 

“Fourteen.”

“Wow.” Bobby can tell Athena is doing the math in her head to realize that he was born after her. “Well, I mean, you got some balls on you, boy.” 

Buck smiles a little, it’s the first one they’ve seen. “Thanks.” 

They keep walking down the street. Climbing over a car that is flipped over in the middle of the road. “No one is gonna be coming after you, right? I mean, we know about the parents thing, but FEDRA, friends, girlfriend?” 

“That school lost kids weekly, and no.” He looks over the bridge like he’s expecting something. “Everyone said the open city is supposed to be crazy. Like, swarms of infected running around everywhere.” 

There’s a little smile on both Bobby and Athena’s faces as he says that. “Not exactly like that. You know, people like to tell stories.”

“So there aren’t super-infected that explode fungi spores on you?” 

“Shit, I hope not. But spores are a thing. Not crazy common, but a thing. Mostly in hyper-infected, compacted areas.” 

“Or ones with split-open heads that can see in the dark like bats?” They don’t reply to that one. 

Then there’s a screech. 

They all pause instantly. Bobby and Athena reach for their guns. There’s no obvious infection on the bridge. Nothing that could have made that noise close enough to cause imminent harm. 

“What was that?” 

The duo’s eyes do one last scan of the rest of the bridge connecting a part of the highway to another. “Let’s keep moving,” Bobby says lightly and hits Buck on the back as they continue to walk across the highway. 

They reach a building that they have to go through, an old hotel filled with water and weeds. Every once in a while, the sound of a piano is heard. 

“You gotta be kidding me!” Buck looks around in excitement but also despair. “You guys ever stay in a place like this?” 

“No, a little out of our league,” Athena says with a laugh. 

“How do you even know what this is?” Bobby looks at the kid skeptically. 

“Ever heard of books?” They both look at him in annoyance.

Bobby starts to walk down the stairs into the water. “Wait, are we going in there?” He looks back at Buck. 

Athena answers for him. “Yeah, we gotta get to the stairwell on the other side.” 

Buck looks at Athena, then at the water, then at Athena again. “Well, um, I don’t know how to swim.

“Seriously?” Bobby looks at the two of them.

“Do you think we had pools at the QZ?” 

“No, smart ass, I mean.” Bobby jumps into the water. It goes up to his knee. 

Buck looks around sheepishly. “I don’t know how I was supposed to know that.” He starts walking down into the green-looking water. A smile grows on his face as he trods through the water. “This is so gross.” He says it with a laugh. 

Then he spots something out of the corner of his eye. “Check it out!” He moves as fast as he can to the reception desk. There’s an old bell sitting next to a broken lamp. “Ding! Ding! Yes, sir. I would like your finest suit, please. Yes, sir, would you like me to take your luggage? Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”

“You’re a weird kid.” Bobby looks at him in amazement. 

“You’re a weird kid. Did you know the first hotel was built in Japan in 705?” Buck lists off the fact while pushing the luggage cart. 

“Why do you know that?” 

“Oh, fuck!” The boy jumps, ignoring Bobby’s question, as a skeleton falls into the water, scaring him.

Bobby runs around to join him, his gun is raised, and his shoulders are tense. Buck is breathing heavily, leaning against the cart. “Oh, my god.” 

Bobby looks down at the skeleton, puts his foot up, and kicks the head of the skeleton. He’s not impressed. Buck rubs his head, “Sorry.” Bobby holds out his hand for the boy to grab. Buck takes it and gets pulled up. 

As he walks away, Bobby looks down at his hand. The fractures aren’t getting any better. “You okay?”

Buck looks back at him. “Fucking fabulous, Pops.” 

They continue to walk through the water until they reach the other end of the lobby. The water starts to subside as they make it to the hallway with the broken-down elevators. They cannot use the elevators, obviously, but the emergency exit stairs still look usable.

Buck doesn’t seem to mind the stairs, but Bobby and Athena look at each other, dread matching on both their faces. Not seeming to notice, Buck opens the door to the stairs and starts to run up. 

Bobby opens the door at the top of the stairs and walks out into the hallway, clearly winded. 

Athena is right behind him, starts leaning on the wall the second she gets out of the stairwell. “Fuck. Holy shit.” She’s panting and holding her legs. 

Buck walks right past the two of them. “Come on, it wasn’t that bad.” 

Athena pushes him a little. “You try climbing ten fuckin’ floors with our knees. See how you feel.”

The group continues to walk down the broken hallway. Rubble surrounds the floor, tears cover the walls, and the windows are shattered. Remnants of the bombing encompass the hallway. Athena doesn’t look happy as they turn into the next hallway. “Well, when the fuck did this happen.” 

The path is blocked by mounds of concrete. There are doors on either side. One is blocked, one isn’t. “Maybe that one.” Bobby points at the unblocked door. Questions were circulating in his eyes.

“No,” Athena responds, looking at the mound, “but maybe I can climb up there. Work my way around, and open it up from the inside?” 

Buck looks at her. “I mean, I’m the smallest, so it’d be easier for me to get through.” 

“But you’d die, and we’d get nothing. So stay.” She looks over Buck and at Bobby. “Do you wanna give me a hand?” 

Even with his fractured knuckles, he puts his hands together at the base of the mound, and Athena steps on them. Hoisting herself over the rubble. “You good up there?” 

“Yeah, it’s a bit of a mess, so I’m gonna need a few minutes,” Athena responds to Bobby. 

He nods and backs up to the wall. Buck is already sitting against it, seeming to get the memo, Bobby does the same. There’s silence for about ten seconds before the kid grabs a knife from his pocket. The same knife he stabbed the soldier with, back at the wall.

He opens it and starts to flip it in his hand. Bobby stares at him incredulously. “Nice knife.” The boy just looks at him, then continues to flip the knife. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“The circus.” 

Bobby sighs and looks away, agitated. Buck stops flipping the knife and closes it. “Where are you from?”

That seems to catch Bobby off guard. “Minnesota.” 

“And Athena?”

“She’s from Florida, but moved to Los Angeles, which is in California.”

“I go to school, I know where Los Angeles is. So are you too like-”

“Pass.”

“How’d you end up in Boston?”

“Pass. No more questions about me.” 

Buck sighs in agreement. “So, how long do infected live?” He asks after a minute of thought.

“I thought you went to school?”

“It’s a really shitty one.” 

Bobby huffs out a laugh. “Well, some last about a month or two. But there’s others been walkin’ around for twenty years.”

“Ever kill one?”

“Yeah, I killed lots of ‘em.”

“Was it hard?” He paused. “Like, knowing they were people once?” 

“Sometimes.” 

“What about that girl a couple of hours ago?”

There’s a bang as the two of them stand up. The door that was blocked off opens, with Athena walking through. “You can put the gun down, Bobby.”

She nods in confirmation that it’s clear, and they start walking through the door to the other side of the hotel. 

Bobby never does answer Buck’s question.

The group walks up to a balcony where there’s a view of the city. The sun is still not yet visible, but they can make out objects moving on the city floor. They’re clearly infected, and Buck looks terrified watching them move around. 

“There are so many.”

“The last time we were here, they were still buried deep inside the buildings.” Athena walks up to Buck’s side as she says this. “Then I guess people came through looking for the QZ, they went inside seeking shelter, and that’s how more and more of the city gets bitten every year.”

Buck, almost not hearing Athena, watches the infected move around in a group. His wide eyes did not leave them. “They’re connected.”

“More than you know. The fungus also grows underground. Long fibers stretched like wires, some of them stretching over a mile. Now, you step on a patch of cordyceps in one place, and you can wake a dozen infected somewhere else. Now they know where you are, and now they come. You’re not immune to being ripped apart.” 

She looks Buck in the eyes. “Understand? It’s important. I’m trying to keep you alive.”

He nods and looks right back down at the dozens of infected on the floor below. “So, we’re not going that way.” He looks at Athena.

“No.”

“So what do we do then? Short way?” 

Athena looks at Bobby and nods slowly as he says, “museum.” 

The trio starts walking down the fire escape of the hotel, ignoring the confused looks given to them by Buck.

The museum wasn’t a long walk from the hotel, even in the dark. They reach it without trouble from anything. That’s where their good fortune ends. 

Because the door to the museum is covered in fungus. 

“You got to be fucking kidding me,” Buck says as he looks at the large door. The fungus looks fresh enough, so Bobby pulls out his gun, and Athena puts a hand out to stop them for a second.

“Well, there’s a way across from the rooftop.” 

Buck looks at her, “Then I guess this is fine.” 

Athena puts a hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort him. She says, “We used to take this route all the time.”

“Okay.”

While they were talking, Bobby was walking closer to the fungus. By the time they notice him, he’s hitting the root with the butt of his gun. “It’s bone dry. It could mean they’re all finally dead in there.” 

They nod and both take their backpacks off, looking for their flashlights, not needing them till now because of the natural light coming from the QZ and the moon. 

Bobby looks up to Buck as he holds his flashlight in his hand. “Chimney, not pack you one of these? Or just sandwiches.”

“Yeah.” He brings his backpack to the ground, looking for the flashlight. 

“Alright, so, more ground rules.” Buck stops for a second and looks up at Athena. We’re gonna go slowly. If we come up against anything, you get behind us and you stay there?” 

“Yes.” He grabs his bag from the ground, finds his flashlight, and puts it back on his back. Athena, like Bobby, grabs her gun from its holster and crosses it with her flashlight. “I have a spare hand.”

Bobby, not even looking at him, walks forward into the museum. “Congratulations.” 

The doors of the museum cove open, and dust falls to the floor as the trio walks inside. There are no signs of life. Buck looks around, amazed by the paintings and statues that cover the walls and floor. He runs up to a plaque that still exists, reading it excitedly. 

Athena watches him with wonder. “Finally, some fuckin’ luck.”

“I guess we should have gone the hard way in the first place,” Bobby mutters to Athena.

“Oh, shit!” Bobby and Athena whip their heads around to see Buck looking at something. Both start running towards him, guns up and ready. It’s a dead body. A very recently killed body. “What the fuck did that?” The boy looks terrified. 

The reality that the man didn’t turn, but he was just killed. Something that he is not immune to. Just like Athena said.

Athena and Bobby turn to each other. “Maybe, maybe he was attacked outside and crawled through the doors.” It’s a desperate plea. A hope that seemed almost impossible. “The door was open, it could’ve been him.”

Bobby closes his eyes. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“Who would you have heard?” Buck looks confused. 

They both turn and shush him. 

“Who would you hear?” He says it quietly this time. “Are you saying an infected did this? Because I’ve been attacked like one, and it wasn’t like that.”

Not responding to Buck, Bobby gives the trio instructions. “Okay, from this point forward, we are silent. Not quiet. Silent.”

“What-”

“No. No questions. Just do it.” 

Bobby turns and starts to walk up the stairs. They’re not covered in fungus to start. Clear and not creaking as one would expect from years without use. It doesn’t take long for the stairs to start filling up with fungus and blood. 

It doesn’t take long for them to hear a crunch as Bucks' foot lands on a withered hand.

Bobby looks up quickly, eyes meeting Buck as his gun follows. Buck glances around, tense and teeth clamped together. Bobby, not hearing anything either, just nods and points to a room at the top of the stairs. 

Buck nods as they continue to walk up with Athena right behind them. 

Bobby steps off the stairs first and starts walking to the door with his gun drawn. His shoulders tense when he sees the door has already been opened, not by much, but it was. As he walks in, he scans the room with his gun. It’s empty, so he nods back at the other two, and they walk in. 

As Athena takes her last steps into the room, there’s a boom, followed by the ceiling collapsing right behind her. Buck grabs her arm and pulls her into the room. 

The sudden silence that follows the crash is almost deafening. 

The click that follows is worse. 

Bobby whips his gun around to the hallway near the back of the room. Buck helps Athena off the floor. She grabs her gun and points it as well. Buck stands behind the two. 

Another click echoes through the room as the trio sees a hand, then a leg, and finally the full body of the infected. It slowly stutters into the room. Bobby leads the others to a section behind a display case with at least two exit points. Then, he looks at Buck. “They can’t see, but they can hear.”

Buck nods as they see the infected walk closer through the glass of the case. It walks around the glass and clicks again. Bobby raises his gun as it turns to face them. It hisses right at them, its face split in two with fungus growing where its face should have been. 

Bobby shoots. 

“Run!” 

Another one comes from the hallway. Athena pulls Buck behind her with one hand and fires with the other. The two of them run down the hallway, just dodging the infected chasing them. Bobby is left to fight the other by himself. 

Athena and Buck run into the next room, the infected a little behind them. A statue broken all over the ground trips Athena, and pulls Buck down with her. 

The infected, hearing the crash, runs right at them. They have no choice but to split up, Buck crawling under a table to escape, and Athena, standing back up quickly, continues to shoot at it. “Run, kid! Run!” 

There’s a crash that Buck assumes is Bobby. Then a smaller sound of metal hitting the floor. Then footsteps. Buck turns his head and tenses, expecting to see an infected. His eyes widen when he sees Bobby instead. 

Bobby kneels next to Buck. His eyes move back to the hall he just came from, telling Buck that there is an infected person he just came from. 

As it walks into the room, they slowly start to move around the display, they are kneeling around. Unlike last time, it is Bobby who causes the noise. His foot hits a piece of glass on the floor. 

The infected jumps over the display, right onto Bobby. 

He brings his arm up to stop the thing from biting him and tries to reach for the gun in his holster. Buck has a hand trying to pull it off him. 

A bang is heard throughout the room as the infected jumps up. It falls to the floor, and that gives Bobby and Buck the chance to get up. 

Like Athena, Bobby grabs Buck with one hand and holds the gun in the other. The infected charges at them, as Bobby shoots. One of the bullets hit it in the neck as it fell to the floor. Bobby, even though he thinks he has killed it, shoots the thing in the head one more time. 

He realizes that might have been a stupid idea when another one runs straight at them, and he’s out of bullets. 

He pulls Buck behind him, shielding the kid from the infected. 

There’s a scream and a squelch as Athena comes into the room with an axe and slams it into the infected's neck. She then falls into the corner of the room, as Bobby runs to his gun with ammo still on the floor. The infected clicks as Bobby shoots it. “You alright?”

Athena winces as she stands up. “Twisted ankle, but, yeah. You all alright?” 

Buck answers first, snarky as usual. “Well, I didn’t shit my pants, so.” He pulls up his sleeve as he itches it. There’s blood pooling from the place where he got bitten the first time. “You fucking kidding me? I mean, if it was gonna happen to one of us.” 

They both look at the kid incredulously. “Hey,” Athena points at the door on the other side of the room, “let’s get the fuck out of here.” 

The group with Athena limping walks through the door into an empty room. In the back corner is a window that Bobby points at. He takes the lead of the group and pushes it up with his hands, which are still fractured, something which he forgot when he was shooting, but the pain is slowly coming back to him.

The second she’s through the window, Athena sits down, wincing. 

Bobby takes his bag off and grabs a cloth from inside it. “Here, for your arm.” He hands it to Buck. 

“Thanks.” 

Athena is taking off her shoes, as Buck looks at a wooden plank connecting the museum to the building next to it. “Over there?”

“I know it looks scary.”

“That was scary, this is wood.”

He crosses the plank without fear, holding his hands out as he does so. 

“Just wait there. Give me a minute.” Buck looks back and nods, acknowledging Bobby. 

Bobby, turning back to Athena, grabs tape from his bag. He starts wrapping it around her foot, feeling her eyes on him, and he speaks. “There’s probably more ahead.”

“So, we’ll deal with it then.” She winces as he keeps wrapping the tape around her ankle. “I got it, I got it.” 

“What about the kid? I mean, maybe the first bite didn’t take, but what about the second?”

“How ‘bout you take the good news? Can you do that? Like to think, for once, maybe we could actually win?” She shakes her head. “Just go, go and watch him.”

Bobby stands up as she continues to wrap her ankle. Athena puts her head in her hands.

He puts his bag on his back and starts to walk across the wooden panel connecting the two buildings. He walks over to the kid, who’s watching the sunrise. Amazement is lining his entire face. 

They look at each other briefly as Bobby stands to join him. 

“Is it everything you hoped for?” 

“Jury’s still out. But man, you can’t deny that view.” 

Bobby looks at him quickly, and a small smile graces his features. 

Athena walks behind the two of them. She’s moving fast, even with her ankle. “C’mon, this way.”  Bobby looks at her and moves more slowly than he has during the entire job. “Hey! Pick it up.” He bows his head. “Look, we’re almost done. Stay focused.”

“Yes, ma’am.” 

Athena walks down the ladder. Bobby turns his wrist to glance at his watch. 

He follows her down the ladder. 

As they walk to the Capitol, Bobby can’t help but stare at the boy's arm and the cloth that envelops it. If he doesn’t turn again, what could this mean? Even if there’s no way to make a vaccine, there might be something else that could make them immune. Something from birth. 

It’s silent as they get to the Capitol, which isn’t always a good sign. Especially because they’re looking for a group of Fireflies. 

The trio is hiding behind a car when Athena looks at Bobby. “Where the fuck are they?” 

They look back at the truck iin of the building. Athena nods at Bobby as he starts to walk closer to it. She puts a hand out to keep Buck behind the car, and does not follow him. 

Bobby slowly walks up to the truck, trying not to step on any vines connecting the fungi. He puts a hand on the handle of the truck and slowly lifts it. The truck is empty, but blood is splattered throughout the insides. Bobby turns back to Athena and Buck. “Stay back.”

This could be a lot worse than they thought. He raises his gun and walks slowly around the truck. He circles the entire truck, till all that’s left to check is the back. It’s almost anticlimactic, opening the door to the back with nothing inside. 

Where are the Fireflies?

“Bobby?” Athena comes running up to him with Buck not far behind. “What the fuck is going on?”

“I don’t know.” 

Buck, ignoring the two, decides to move closer to the steps, his eyes trained on something. “They went inside.” They both turn to him as he points to the trail of blood moving up the steps to the capital. 

Unexpectedly, it’s Athena who grabs onto Buck’s arm and drags him up the stairs of the building. “Come on.” 

“Athena.” 

“Come on!” 

“Athena!”

Bobby, confused and mad, walks behind the two up the stairs until they reach the door. Athena grabs her gun, points it out in front of her, and opens the door in one swift motion. They hear the door open a second time, and Bobby walks in, breathing heavily. 

Everyone in the building is dead. 

Blood is everywhere, dozens of Fireflies down. “Holy shit.” 

“Jesus.” 

“I mean, there’s got to be a fuckin’ radio or something, right?” Athena runs around the place looking for something that can help them. 

Buck looks frightened. “Who killed them, FEDRA?” 

“No.”

Bobby turns the closest body to Buck over. There’s blood matted in the guy's hair, but what is most important about him is his eyes. The yellow glow that covers them, with veins reaching up to it. 

“One of them got bit. The healthy ones fought off the sick ones. Everyone lost.” He turns away from Buck. “Athena. What are you doing?” 

She’s still walking around the base trying to find a radio to reach someone. “Where did Chimney say that she was taking you?” She looks at Buck, ignoring Bobby’s question. Buck looks at Bobby in confusion. “Buck!”

“I don’t know! Just west.” 

“Just west, fuck, okay.” She walks back to the gear that the Fireflies had. “Well, I mean, one of them’s gotta have a map on them, right?” She bends down, giving up on the gear, and starts to check the bodies. “Bobby, can you help me?”

“No! Athena, it’s over. We are going home.” 

“That’s not my fucking home!” There’s a pause as everyone stops talking and moving. Athena stands back up. She takes a deep breath. “I’m staying. I mean, our luck had to run out sooner or later.” She’s looking at Bobby’s devastated face as she says it. 

“Fuck.” The atmosphere built around the two of them is broken as they turn to Buck. “She’s infected.” 

Bobby swivels his head around to Athena as she clicks her teeth together, a sound of confirmation. “Show me.” 

She takes a step towards him. “Bobby.” 

He steps back. “Show me.”

She doesn’t look at him as she lowers her collar of her jacket. There’s a bite near the crook of her neck. It’s not like Bucks’, it’s red and puffy, and veins are starting to grow up her neck already. “Oops. Right?” 

Bobby’s eyes widen slightly. Buck has a blank expression planted across his face. 

Athena points at him. “Take your bandage off.” Buck unwraps the cloth. Athena grabs his arm. “Look.” She faces his arm at Bobby. “Bobby? This is real. Bobby, he’s fucking real.” She looks up, blinking back tears. “You gotta get this boy to your brother. If you can find him, he used to run with this crew, he’ll know where to go.”

“No, no, no, this was your crusade. I ain’t doing that.”

“Yes, you are. Look, there’s enough here that you have to feel some sort of obligation to me.” She’s looking desperately into his eyes. “So get him to Charlie.” 

“No.”

“I never ask you for anything, not to feel the way I felt.”

“No.”

“Shut the fuck up because I don’t have time. This is your chance. You get him there, you keep him alive, and you set everything right. All the shit we did. Please say yes, Bobby, please.”

Buck screams, the man Bobby showed him earlier, raises a hand. Walking right past Athena without even looking at her, Bobby grabs his gun and shoots the infected. The hand lands right onto a vine. Not a dead one like at the museum, but an alive one. One that slowly curls around his fingers and reaches to the others, miles away. 

Bobby runs to the door, checking it, seeing how long they have. He shuts it quickly.

“How many?”

“All of them.” He doesn’t look at Athena when he responds. “Maybe a minute.” 

Athena runs to the nearest gasoline container, pops it open with her gun, and starts to spill it on the floor. 

Buck looks confused. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure they don’t follow you.”

Bobby lets out a harsh, shaking breath. His hands are shaking, not because of the pain, but because of fear. Athena walks up to him, grabs his arm, and forces him to look her in the eyes. 

Her eyes meet his, she scans his entire face, stopping quickly at his lip, then right back at his eyes. “Bobby.” It’s almost a whisper. “Save who you can save.” His eyes haven’t wavered from hers. 

In less than a second, he turns away, grabs Buck, and starts to leave the building. 

“No!” The kid is fighting against his grip, but he just holds tighter. “We’re not leaving her! Get off me, you fucker! I’m not going with you!”

Athena is left standing alone. 

Her breathing is heavy, her shoulders tense. 

She grabs the lighter from her pocket and waits.

Bobby and Buck run through the building. Buck is still screaming, but Bobby keeps ignoring him. They don’t have time. His hold on the kid is tight as they quickly get out of the building. 

They make it about a hundred feet out when the building explodes. 

The shock of the explosion knocks the two of them off their feet. They stay down for cover, but Bobby grabs his gun. 

Buck takes one look at the building and feels a tear fall from his eyes. He looks up at Bobby, the man's gun is still drawn and ready. He’s still shaking.

Bobby turns, lowering his gun, and walks away.

Buck can’t take his eyes off the building. 

With a breath, he turns and tries to catch up with Bobby. 

“Hey, look, um, about Athena. I don’t even know what to-”

Bobby interrupts him quickly. "Here's how things are going to play out."

He's sitting on the tree stump, exhausted, blood building up around his hands and a fresh wave of grief tight on his shoulders. "You don't bring up Athena, ever. Matter of fact, we can just keep our histories to ourselves. Secondly, you don't tell anybody about your condition."

He pauses, trying to find the words. "They'll either think you're crazy or try to kill you."

He puts his hand out and looks him right in the eyes. "And lastly, you do what I say, when I say it.”

Buck sighs, Bobby continues. “We clear?"

He looks at the ground and scoffs, but he nods in agreement, "Sure."

Bobby doesn't believe him. "Repeat it."

With a roll of his eyes, he brings his head up to face Bobby. "What you say goes."

Bobby looks away and slowly gets up. "Good."

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.

Chapter Text

Lincoln, Massachusetts - November 13th, 2017

“Pizza’s ready!” 

Denny comes running towards Daniel with a plate and a smile. “Did you burn it this time?”

“No! Ask Maddie, she helped me.” Daniel points to his sister, who is occupied with the string on her bow. 

She looks up at the mention of her name, the two thirteen-year-old boys' eyes meeting hers. “It shouldn’t be burnt.”

“See!” Daniel slowly takes the pizza out of the oven and brings it to the counter. “Not burnt in the slightest.” There’s a smirk on his face as he cuts the pizza and dishes it out to Denny and Maddie. 

The trio sits around the table in the center of the room, they could almost pass as normal teenagers. If one ignores the blood stains on the floor and walls, or the broken glass where windows used to be, most importantly, the bow that the oldest is stringing, the arrows she has draped across her back, they’re already covered in blood.

“Do you have a patrol today?” 

Maddie looks at her brother, “Yeah. Karen isn’t feeling great, so I offered to take her spot near the truck, on top of the building, near the plank. You’ve been there, right?” 

“Yeah, Mom let us practice there with our bows once,” Denny responds with food in his mouth. “I think after we clean up the diner, we’re helping make some explosives today.”

“Oh? She’s letting you help out with them?”

“I mean, yeah, you were younger than us when you started working on all this stuff.”

She looks at her brother, “I was also taking care of you and Evan by myself in a rabidly failing QZ. We’re safe here, there’s no need to start training you guys so fast.”

“You’re only two years older than us.” 

“Still, you guys are only thirteen, I mean, we have a working video game system, or hell, a chess board at the bar, and instead of playing with either of them, you guys want to help defend the town.”

Silence falls over the group. The pizza is sitting in the center of the table, uneaten and getting colder. “Maddie, I might have been young, but I still remember how Mom and Dad died. You can act like we’re safe here, but we’re not. There’s no safe place in this goddamned world anymore.” 

Tears reach Maddie’s eyes, she looks down at the table. “I know. I do. I just- I don’t want to lose you, either of you.” She takes one last bite of her pizza, grabs the bow sitting at her side, and leaves the restaurant. 

The boys watch each other in silence as she leaves. 

“Well,” Denny looks at Daniel, “we have two options before we have to meet with my Mom in a couple of hours. Record store or play with Mara and Evan.”

Daniel laughs. “I vote record store, Mara and Evan are six, I would rather not.”

They both laugh as they put the pizza in a semi-put-together cabinet. 

Daniel glances at his friend as they walk out of the restaurant. “Can we also stop at the garden? I found this cool book on Myths, the gnomes in it looked so cool! I was wondering if the garden has any tucked away somewhere.” 

---

The machete slashes the infected right in the eyes as its head lobs sideways. 

Bobby covers his face with his arm, trying not to get the blood near his mouth or eyes. 

He hears the slash of the machete one last time as the top of the infected falls next to him. Bobby pushes the body away from him and starts to bring himself up. 

“Get off your ass and on your feet.” The person reaches out a hand to help Bobby off the floor. 

“What?” Buck looks around, confused. 

The person ignores him and starts to run out of the warehouse. “Alright, this way, keep up.” 

Bobby looks around. There aren’t many ways for them to go, and the free ways are surrounded by mountains of infected. “Shit.” 

The third person points at an alley hidden away in the corner. “Alright, we’ll cut through! C’mon, here.” 

At the end of the alley, a gate is blocked off. Bobby looks around, they’re stuck, and they’re being chased by infected. He reaches for his gun when he notices the first one making it around the corner. “Hen! Hurry up.” 

The woman is trying to reach the keys in her pocket for the door next to the gate. She’s mumbling to herself, her eyebrows tensed in confusion. Then there’s a click sound and the slam of the door opening. Bobby won’t look until the last infected is down; the chance of his guard slipping and him getting killed is too high. 

The bang of his last shot rings out as the last one falls limp. 

Bobby runs into the building, the door shuts behind him in haste. 

Hen looks at him, “Don’t slow down. This place ain’t secure.”

“Well no shit Hen, they’re coming through the door.” 

“I fuckin’ knew it. Take them out, it’s our only way through.”

Bobby reloads his gun and points a Buck. “Stay back! Stay back!” 

The three infected quickly go down, and they keep running through the building. “Alright. C’mon, we’re almost there. Follow me.” 

They run through the rest of the building, then through a truck near the back. He can hear the footsteps of the infected following close behind them. “Hurry!”

At the end of the truck, there’s an opening to another door. This door looks a lot more stable than anything else Bobby has seen so far in the town. And on the outside, there’s a note spray-painted. 

The trio runs through the door, and both Hen and Bobby push it shut, locking the infected out. With a grunt, Hen pushes the metal bar in place. 

“Man, that was close.” The duo looks at Buck, and he’s visibly tired, with sweat covering his body. Hen starts walking near him, her gas mask is still on, blocking his view of her face. “Uh, thanks for the heroics and all.”

Hen pulls the mask off and clips it to something behind her. Buck sticks out a hand in greeting. “Uh, I’m Buck- Hey! What are you doing?”

Hen grabs his arm and clasps a handcuff around it. “Bobby?” Buck glances at him.

“Hen.”

“What are you doing?” Hen clips the other cuff to the pipe connected to the wall. “Let me go!” Buck moves and pulls at the pipe he’s connected to.

“Hen!”

“Turn around and get on your knees.” She has a gun pointed at Bobby’s head.

“Just calm down a second.” Bobby brings his hands up in a peace-like position. 

“Turn around and get on your knees!” Hen starts to grab and spin him around with the hand not holding the gun.

“Alright.” Hen kicks Bobby in the back of his knee, and with a grunt, he falls fully. 

“Don’t test me.”

“Just, ah, just take it easy.”  Bobby can hear a clinking in the background, which he assumes is Buck moving around in the cuffs. 

“Do you have any bites?” 

“No.”

“Anything sprouting?” 

“No, goddamnit I’m clean!” 

The clinking stops. “Well, if I see so much as a twitch.” Bobby sees the swing before he fully understands what’s happening. “Ow!” 

Buck hits Hen a second time as she brings her arms up to block the pipe. Bobby springs up, ignoring the pain in his knees, and reaches for the kid, stopping the hit.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Hen yells from the ground. 

Bobby grabs the pipe from the kid's hand and turns to face her. “You done?”

“Am I done? You come to my house, you set off all my traps, you damn near break my shooting arm. Who the fuck is this punk and what is he doing here?” If Bobby looked closely, he would see fear and the impossibility of recognition in the woman's eyes.

Buck, fed up with her, starts walking closer. “I am none of your goddamn business, and we’re here becasue you owe Bobby some favors. And you can start by taking these off!” He shoves his cuffed arm in front of her.

Hen takes two steps back, still clutching her arm. “I owe Bobby some favors. Is that some kind of joke?” 

Bobby throws the pipe to the ground and walks closer to her. “I’ll cut to the chase. I need a car.”

“Well, it is a joke. Bobby needs a car.” She looks at him. “If I had one that works, which I sure as hell don’t, what makes you think I’d just give it to you? Huh? Yeah, sure, Bobby, just go ahead, take my car. Take all of my food, too, while you’re at it.”

“By the looks of it, you could lose some of that food.” Buck chimes in from the other side of the room. 

“You listen to me, you little shit.” Hen reaches for the machete sitting on the table. 

“No! Fuck you, you handcuffed me-”

“I need you to shut up.” Bobby places his hands on the boy's shoulders, bringing him away from Hen. “Alright.” He shoves Buck a little farther back. 

Hen grabs the stone she uses to sharpen the knife and starts to do so. “Whatever favors you think I owe ya, it ain’t worth that much.”

“Actually, Hen, they are.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. I don’t have a car that works.” 

“But there is one in this town.” 

“Parts. There are parts in this town.” 

“Meaning that you could fix one up.”

She pauses and brings a hand to wipe her mouth. There’s a nervous edge to her as she looks Bobby in the eyes. “Alright.” She clears out the table and places a map down. “If I’m gonna do this, there’s some gear I’m gonna need.”

“Okay.” Bobby nods in acknowledgement.

Hen points at the top of the map. “It’s on the other side of town. Now you help me gather it. And maybe, I can put together something that runs.” She pulls something out of her pocket. “But after this, I owe you nothin’.” She places a key down on the table. 

Bobby looks at her. “That’s fine.” He grabs the key and brings it to the cuff around Buck’s arm. “Couple of days from now, we’ll probably be dead anyway.”

With a laugh, Hen starts walking. “Good. Follow me. Whole goddamn town’s booby trapped, best stay right on my ass.” 

“Can’t miss it.”

Bobby grabs the boy's arm and drags him along. “Knock it off.”

“Whatever supplies you may want or need, I suggest you grab them.” Hen points to the bar as she walks past it, completely ignoring the comment Buck made.

Bobby points to Buck. “Take a look around, see if there’s anything we can use.” 

They both look around the bar, grabbing whatever food is left, as well as some bottles, paper, and a couple of dull blades. At one of the tables, there’s an old chess set, clearly well-loved. Bobby analyzes it in wonder. Was this something that the kids played with, or was it Hen?

“Hey, you know how to play this?” Buck strides over to him. It’s funny, Bobby thinks with a glance back at the board, the boy doesn’t even know the name of the game. 

“Yeah. Pretty badly, but yeah.”

“I always wanted to learn, there were kids at the FEDRA school who learned when they were older.” He reaches a hand out to look at one of the pieces.

“Hey! Bobby Fischer! Don’t touch anything on that board!”

Buck pulls back quickly and glances at Hen in confusion. “Bobby, what?”

“Just let it go.” Bobby continues walking through the bar. Hen opens the door near the end of the bar. It’s like the previous door, thick and durable. Bobby walks through it after her, “Alright, Buck, come on through.”

Halfway up the stairs already, Hen yells back down to them. “Don’t leave the door open!” 

“I got it.”

“We have to cross to the other building, up the stairs. Let’s move it.” 

Bobby grabs Buck’s shoulder and forces the kid's eyes to meet his own. “Just stay with me.” 

The two follow the woman up the stairs, and she’s muttering to herself. “Can’t believe you agreed to this bullshit, Hen. You should’ve just left them back there, is what you shoulda done.”

Buck taps Bobby’s arm. “You weren’t kidding about her.” There’s an amused smile on his face as he says it.

“Yeah, well, you’re not making it any better.” Buck laughs a little as Bobby says it. The kid knows fully what he is doing. 

The trio makes it through the building; half of the walls are torn down or overgrown with weeds. There’s nothing of importance in most of the rooms, a bed here or there. The only room worth looking at had three sets of bunk beds, some children's drawings, and an old backpack. 

It’s the only room where Hen looks uncomfortable passing it. 

They reach an outside section of the building, where the ceiling has collapsed, when Hen asks the question that’s been on her mind. “So, what kind of trouble are you in? Where the hell is Athena?”

Bobby can see Buck flinch at the mention of the other woman's name, but Bobby doesn’t flinch as he answers. “It’s just a job. Simple drop-off.”

“What’re you delivering?”

“That little brat.”

Hen looks back at Buck, there’s still the underlying sense of familiarity in her gaze when she looks at the boy. And when he laughs, she just looks sad. “Ha ha, fuck you too.”

“What happened to the kids? Karen-”

“Y’know, I hope you know what you’re doin’.” Hen doesn’t answer his question, just continues to walk, even as Buck starts to talk back about that last remark.

Bobby, getting the hint, ignores his question and asks a new one. “So, where are we going?”

“My other safe house. It’s more of an armory.” 

Buck’s gaze travels between the two, confused. “Wait, I thought we were going to fix up that car?”

“We? Do you know how to fix a-”

“Hen, just.”

Buck, looking offended, interrupts the two. “Yes, actually, I know a decent amount about fixing a car. I read this book a while ago about cars pre-well, you know.”

Hen glances at the boy, there’s a sliver of something akin to impressed in her scan of the kid. Maybe Bobby imagined it, though, because Hen keeps talking like Buck never said anything. “It’s like I said, what I need is on the other side of town. Now, that side I don’t ever go to cause it’s filled with infected. So we’re gonna need more guns.”

They walk down another set of stairs and into a kitchen-looking room. Bobby hears a noise and brings a finger to his lips, looking at Buck. “Shh. There’s one inside.”

Hen laughs a little, “Oh, I’ve been meaning to take care of that. Relax, it’s nothing.” Bobby walks through another door to see exactly what she was talking about. There is an infected trapped between broken glass and fallen wood. “You didn’t answer my question about Athena. You know, I thought the two of you were inseparable.”

“She’s busy.” He ignores the stink in his heart. 

“Yeah, sure, busy.” He ignores the worry in the woman's eyes. “Sound to me,” Hen grabs the machete connected to her bag and swings it at the infected’s head, “like, might be trouble in paradise.” 

“Somethin’ like that.” He wishes. 

Buck walks around him to look at the infected Hen just murdered. There’s a fascination in his eyes as he analyzes the dead body. “Ew, gross.”

“Ah, here we go.” Bobby’s gaze leaves the kid and turns to Hen, who has opened the front door.

The kid runs through first, pushing past Bobby and Hen. He stops when he sees the car right in front of the door. It’s not blocking their way or anything, the kid just looks surprised to see it. “So,” he turns to face Hen, “why don’t we use one of these cars?”

“Oh my god. You’re a genius. Why didn’t I think about using one of these cars? The whole time I’ve been here, why on earth didn’t I think of that?”

Buck flips her off. “Okay, don’t be a dick.”

Bobby covers his laugh with a cough. 

Hen looks at the kid genuinely for a brief second, then looks away. “Their tires are rotted and their batteries are dead.” 

“Oh, thanks.”

“-I mean, I can’t even imagine to think what the inside of the engine block looks like.”

“Are you done?’

She taps the kid's shoulder. “The only ones making cars are the military, kid.” Her finger points at a gate in the distance, “C’mon, this way.” 

“Up we go.” Buck huffs as he trudges to the gate.

“You know,” Hen points back to the building they were just in, “those things, the infected, they aren’t what scares me. They’re predictable. It’s the normal people that scare me.” She looks at Bobby as she shuts the gate. “You of all people should know that.”

Buck’s eyes travel between the two. “What does that mean?”

“Nothin’.” Bobby walks past the two and up the stairs that the gate led them to. 

It’s around two flights of stairs till they reach a grass-covered backyard of sorts. “Which way?”

“We’re here. It’s in the cellar.” She points to a wooden trap door planted in the ground. 

As Bobby opens the door and Hen walks down with Buck, she points to him. “You. Don’t touch anything.” And with a smirk, Buck raises his hands.

Hen walks over to a lamp and lights it slowly. “Alright, let’s gear up.” 

“No.” Bobby doesn’t even look at Buck as he says it.

“What? I need a gun.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Bobby, I can handle myself.”

“No.” This time he’s looking him in the eyes. “Just- stay here.” 

The boy scoffs and backs up. “Fine! I’ll just wait around for you two to get me killed.” 

Bobby walks closer to Hen, who is scavenging through her gear. She laughs as he walks closer. “This goes on record as the worst fucking job you’ve ever taken.” 

“It’s up there.”

“How the hell is Athena okay with this suicide mission?” 

“It was actually her idea.” 

“Really.” Hen pauses; they both know that she can tell there’s something wrong. There aren’t many reasons why Athena wouldn’t be joining Bobby. “Well then,” she takes a breath, “my best friend isn’t as smart as I thought she was.” 

Bobby’s a fucking coward.

The lapse of silence is broken when Hen starts to fix up one of her guns. “Seriously, you gotta take that kid back where you found him.”

“Hen, I can’t just take him back.”

“Well then, send him packing, let him find his own way. Let me tell you a story, once upon a time, I had someone I cared about. It was a partner. Somebody I had to look after.” She clocks the gun. “And in this world that sort of shit is good for only one thing. Gettin’ you killed.” 

Bobby decides not to mention the kids he knows who once lived here. 

“I’ll tell you what I did. I wisened the fuck up. And I realised it’s gotta be just me.” He ignores the drop of water he sees hitting the table.

“Hen, it ain’t like that. It’s-”

“Bullshit. It is just like that.” She looks over Bobby’s shoulder. “Hey!” 

Bobby turns his body to find Buck near the other end of the room, looking through some sort of magazine. 

“What did I say to you when we walked down the steps? What did I say?”

Buck backs up intimidated. “I was just fixing your stupid pile!” 

“Don’t touch!”

The kid flips Hen off for the second time.

“Goddamnit.” She turns back to Bobby and her gun. “You keep babysitting long enough and eventually it’s gonna blow up in your face.”

“Hen.” He sounds desperate. “Can we please just get on with it?”

“Here.” She tosses Bobby the gun she was fixing up. “Let’s just get on with it.”

Chapter Text

Lincoln, Massachusetts - August 3rd, 2021

There’s a bow pointed at her face.

A child is pointing a bow at her face. She looks scared but determined. The bow isn’t shaking; the form looks correct. The girl is standing on a truck, giving her a higher vantage point. 

It would be easy to kill the child if she could get onto the truck. 

She doesn’t want to think of the 13-year-old she met 6 years ago, who reminds her so much of this child with the bow. 

It doesn’t matter if she wants to kill the child or not. She’s here for another reason, and that means she can’t kill the kid.

With the slow raising of her hands, the child lowers her bow. They nod at each other as the kid points to a ladder on the opposite side of the truck. Then the kid starts walking across the plank connecting the truck to a building.

She takes the hit and follows. Slowly climbing up the ladder but keeping an eye on the girl. She’s not dumb enough to think this isn’t a trap. That the child could be leading her to her death.

The kid is standing on the other side of the plank, waiting for her to cross. The drop to the ground isn’t deadly, but it would still hurt, so she takes her time, despite the judgmental eyes of the child. 

When she reaches the other side of the plank, the girl points to the opposite side of the roof and then back at the wood. Getting the hint, the older woman lifts the plank and carries it from one end of the roof to the other. 

It’s not heavy, but she understands why the kid couldn’t lift it herself. The height of the thing is at least triple the girl's size, if not more. That’s not acknowledging the bow hanging from her shoulder, hindering her arm movements. 

The child watches as she places the plank down, connecting the two rooftops. She continues to stare once the plank is placed. They stand there awkwardly for a few seconds as she wonders what to do next. The girl looks at her like she’s an idiot. 

“Go.” It’s a whisper. She wouldn’t have been able to hear it if her ear weren’t directly facing the child. Even the voice sounds young. 

She crosses the plank, her back facing the girl. 

The hope that the signal she received in Boston is real overtakes her distrust of the child.

Because if it’s real, that means that there are other people out here. Not in a QZ, able to fend for themselves, and by the looks of it, kids as well. 

So she trusts the girl. Ignoring the voice inside her mind that is telling her it’s a bad idea. Ignoring the voice telling her that the reason she trusts the girl is because she sees someone else in her, two other someones in her. Because if she listens to that voice, she’ll break down. 

She can’t afford to break down. 

The girl treks through the city, making her way around traps and bombs. It’s a complicated maze of death that one would only know their way around after years of living there. Or someone who was born there. 

Because the child looks as if she’s only ten, she could easily have been born and raised in this town, never having seen a QZ. Wouldn’t that be something?

Living like this, against government orders, makes it seem like life outside of a QZ is possible. It’s everything she used to dream of. That they used to dream of.

The town looks like it was minimally populated as well. Either from the voice on the radio or this girl. Or more people? 

There’s a central area that they start to walk past that she can tell used to be shops, the pizza place, and a record store. Even the garden looks taken care of.  

The girl walks into a building near the end of the street. The inside is empty, but she can tell it is used for through traffic with the amount of wear on the floor. It’s about ten steps to the other side of the building, where another door resides.

She watches as the girl pushes that door open, bringing them back outside to face a gate. The child points in the opposite direction; there’s another, slightly smaller, door that she wouldn’t have noticed if not for her. 

Following the girl down the alley, she stares as she opens the door that leads to a small room with another door.

The kid puts her hand out before she can open it. 

Her finger points to the ground as she opens the door, staring at her. The child scoffs as the door clicks open and emphasizes her pointed finger when a rope becomes visible. 

Her ankle was supposed to get stuck in that. 

The girl just saved her life. 

They swiftly move around the rope and through the warehouse, up another set of stairs. The child has yet to utter another word. 

After the stairs leading up to a house, the duo stops. The girl goes to the hatch connecting the trapdoors to what she can only assume is the basement of the house. 

The doors open with a click as the girl unlocks them and pulls the handles. 

They make it down the stairs when a voice interrupts them. “Mara, you’re good to go back to whatever you were doing. Thank you for bringing her here.”

She whips her gun out from behind her back to face the voice. The girl, whose name is Mara, nods once and walks back up the stairs. 

The new woman raises her hands slightly with a slight smile on her face. “I assume you were the woman I was talking to on the radio.”

She sighs in relief. It wasn’t a trick. They have stuff to trade; she seems like a good person. They could be safe. 

She nods, lowering her gun. “You must be Hen, then.”

Hen smiles at her. “Yes, nice to meet you, Athena.” 

--

“Alright, before we go any further, I’ve got something to show you.” 

Hen walks through the rest of the room, Bobby right on her heel. “What do you have?”

He can hear her smirk before he sees it. “A new toy from the toy box.” She stops walking in front of a workbench with a cloth fitted over it. There’s a tin can with tin foil wrapped over the top. “This is a nail bomb.”

“Like the ones that almost killed Buck and me?”

Hen laughs a little and nods. “You gotta be careful. This thing blows; well, it shreds anybody nearby.”

Bobby takes it into his hand slowly and turns it around. Knives are sticking out of the top, and he can hear the rattle of something (probably nails) from inside the can. “Trust me, I know.” 

He hooks the bomb securely to the side of his backpack and looks at Hen questioningly. “So we got guns and bombs. What the hell are we doing with them?” 

“Well, every few weeks, this military caravan rides through town. I assume they’re looking out for supplies. I mean, you’d be amazed at the shit they overlook.” She pauses, taking a breath. “Anyway, a few months back, they were rolling through, and they got overrun by a horde of infected.” She makes eye contact with him. “They were all over their truck, and they tipped it over, plowing it right through the high school.”

Bobby, meeting her gaze, slowly reaches an understanding of what she is saying. “The truck should still have a working battery. So, we could take that battery and put it into another car.”

“Exactly, I wanted to get it myself, but it’s too dangerous with the infected. If the kids were still—” She pauses, stopping herself from saying the rest of the sentence. It doesn’t matter, though; Bobby could tell what she was about to say.

Athena talked about those kids, without mentioning names, with the same fondness he could hear in Hen’s voice. 

“What if the battery is damaged?” Bobby looks at Hen questioningly. “What if it’s all for nothing?”

“No. No, those trucks are stubborn bastards; they can make it through anything.” He doesn’t call her out for the wavering in her voice. The hesitation makes it sound like she’s trying to convince herself of that fact.

So he just nods. “It might work.” 

The duo walks back to Buck near the other side of the room.

He looks enamored by the books and magazines sitting on the shelf next to him. 

“Kid, I swear to god, if you took anything—” 

“Hey, I don’t need any of your shit, trust me.” 

Hen jabs a finger at Bobby. “You keep an eye on him, alright?”

“Like a hawk.”

Hen starts to walk out of the room with all the equipment, through a door, and up a stairwell lined with a magenta carpet. It creaks with every step, but they make it up two flights of stairs before they enter a long room with a tall ceiling. 

It takes Bobby less than a second to figure out what this place used to be. 

“Wow.” His head turns back to the boy, who looks amazed by the stained glass windows. Or maybe it’s the overall grandness of the room that amazes him. 

“Nice place you’ve got here.” Bobby turns his head to Hen as he says the words.

“Yeah, well, if you got anything to confess, this’d be the place to do it.” 

Bobby shoves his shaking hands into his pockets. He has so much to confess. 

They walk up the stairs to the front of the room, and Hen opens up one of the windows. Before she goes through it, Bobby spots a small room in the corner of his eye. He walks towards it slowly, the ambiance of the room as a whole taking control of his body in a way that couldn’t be explained.

“That’s not a confession booth. That’s my room.” Hen mutters from behind him. 

Bobby’s eyes search the room; there’s a double bed pressed against the wall, clothes spread around the floor, and a small desk with used paper and pens. The most damning thing in the entire room, though, is not any of that, not the clothes that are clearly not hers. Nor the handwriting that can’t be explained. 

It’s the small kid’s toy hidden in the corner, a wooden rocket ship with the letter ‘M’ carved into the top.

The toy hasn’t been touched in years. 

Bobby’s eyes leave the room, and his feet start moving back to the window.   

“Buck, come on.” He waves a hand at him and follows Hen through the open window. He hears the kid land behind him on the balcony. 

Hen points to a building past the trees. “That’s the school.”

“Alright.”

Hen starts climbing down. “Are you ready?”

Bobby follows her down the ladder. “I guess we’ll find out.” 

The first thing he notices as he jumps off the ladder and into the grass is the fact that they’re in a graveyard. The second thing he notices is the fact that one of the graves has an ‘M’ engraved on it. Like the toy he found in Hen’s room. 

The final thing that steals Bobby’s attention is the smell of burning flesh. It grasps his eyes away from the gravestone and pulls them to where Buck is standing. 

A pile of burning bodies with sparks flying out from the fire makes him forget about the grave and the toy completely. 

He walks up to Buck and grabs his arm, pulling him through the gate. “Yeah, c’mon, you don’t need to see that.” Nor smell it, Bobby thinks as he continues to pull the kid away from the bodies. 

“I’ve seen worse.” 

This fucking world. 

“Past this gate is new territory for me.” Bobby looks at Hen and nods, ignoring the small part of his brain that tells him that the graves aren’t new, that she spends time here. That there is something or someone important buried here. 

The second he passes the gate, he hears a click. He pauses; while there’s nothing visible to him, Bobby knows what he heard. He holds up a hand for Buck to stop walking and feels the kid step up beside him. Hen looks towards him and nods silently.

She heard the infected as well. 

Bobby grabs his gun from the holster and watches as Hen does the same. It doesn’t sound like there are many infected around them, but they have to be careful anyway. 

He looks back at Buck once more, a warning to stay back, before he steps past through the gate and goes face-to-face with the first of the infected he heard. 

He pulls the trigger twice as the bullets pierce the thing in the head. It falls to the ground limp as he hears footsteps coming closer to him. 

Fuck, he forgot guns made sound. Sound that attracts the other infected closer to him.

He spots a brick on the ground, and ignoring the slight twitch in his knees, he sprints towards it. His fingers reach for the brink, and he grabs it and instantly throws it in the opposite direction. He lets out a breath as the footsteps cease. 

He’s going to have to do this stealthier. 

Hen still has her gun raised, but she’s looking at him with wide eyes. Bobby can almost hear the clear ‘what the fuck’ that she’s thinking as she stares at him. 

He moves around the grass and stone to reach the area where the infected stopped running. He counts four of them before he starts to figure out how to quietly take them out. 

A brick would be easy but annoyingly hard to find; a stone could work—there are lots of stones around the grass area, but the chances of him hurting his knees to keep bending down to pick them up—fuck it. His knees are screwed no matter what he does. 

So, reaching down for a stone, he clasps it around his scarred fingers and throws it.

Right in between the four infected. 

Then he throws the nail bomb that Hen gave him.  

The crack and then boom that follows is close to deafening, but it’s the feeling of blood hitting his face that makes him numb. 

This shouldn’t be normal. 

He shouldn’t be losing hearing because of the number of times he’s shot a gun; he shouldn’t have knee problems because of the running, jumping, and ducking he’s done to try and save his own life. 

He shouldn’t have the fucking scar on his neck. 

His kids shouldn’t be dead.

Hen puts a hand on his shoulder. He tries to hide his flinch when it makes contact. 

She points at a wooden gate a couple of feet away. “I have a key to the gate; let’s hurry.” She tries to smile at him; it’s small and not something he’s seen her do in the last couple of hours he’s known her, but goddamn, he can tell why Athena liked her. 

Hen, quickly inserting the key, waits for the door to open before she looks back at him. Understanding it’s clear to continue, Bobby turns and meets Bucks’ eyes. The kid moves swiftly through the tall grass and stone; he reaches them with an unimpressed look. 

“You know, I could have helped.”

“No, you couldn’t have.” Bobby interrupts. 

“Yes. I could have. You what? Needed a distraction? You threw the stones and brick. I could have stabbed a couple at least while you kept distracting them. Guns are loud, you know.”

“I had the bomb.”

“You had one bomb. And you wasted it on four infected.”

“I didn’t want you to be a part of that.”

Buck sounds angrier the more they talk. “I’ve killed before.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“I’m not trying to make you feel better. I’m just stating a fact. I’ve killed before; this wouldn’t be my first time. You’re not protecting my innocence or some bullshit.”  

“That’s not the point.”

“Isn’t it?”

Buck looks at Bobby with an eyebrow slightly raised. And while Bobby can see where the kid is coming from, he can’t not see his age. 

Bobby Jr. was older than Buck is now. He couldn’t imagine his son killing someone or even living in these times. He couldn’t imagine Brooke surviving with a knife in her pocket at all times. 

“Just—stop. Stop trying to help; stop trying to argue. We talked about the rules; I know you know them. So stop trying to fight them, please.” Bobby breathes heavily and turns away from Buck, a clear end to their conversation. 

He taps the wood as he walks through the gate; his hands are starting to hurt again, the pain from the fractures still there. At least some things haven’t changed. 

Hen’s gaze reaches his. He nods in confirmation to keep walking. 

The other side of the gate leads them to a small neighborhood. The houses surrounding them are overgrown with weeds and grass. The dirt path leading up to the houses from the gate was clear, but Bobby could hear clicks from somewhere close.

“The main roads are blocked.” Hen points out as she starts to walk further up the dirt path, stopping to point out a paved road to the left of them. “We’re gonna have to go through the backyards.” 

That’s when Bobby notices the road Hen’s walking on leads to another, smaller fence. The fence is connected to a small house that looks as if it hasn’t been used since the breakout twenty years ago. 

Taking the lead, Bobby walks close to the fence, checks the other side for glass, then jumps over it into the backyard of the rundown house. He hears the thud of Buck and Hen as they land behind him. 

It doesn’t take long for them to go from fence to fence of three houses, all connected by their backyards. The third house is when the group gets caught. The fence is too high for them to climb over, and they can’t cut through the inside of the house.

“We could try the shed.” Buck points to a small red building off to the side of the house. There was a hole in the ceiling, and it looked as if a breeze could cause the shed to collapse, but the building was connected to the fence, which meant that they could potentially get through if there was a door inside the shed.

“Okay, that should work.” Bobby nods at Buck in approval. 

Walking into the shed, the trio finds a door connected to the fence, just as they hoped. Bobby’s eyes meet Buck’s; he smiles briefly at the kid. As he’s smiling, his hand grips the handle of the door and turns it. The door opens about two inches, then it stops. 

There’s a rope tied to the handle on the other side that’s connected to something else: it’s blocking the door from opening. Fuck. 

“It’s tied.” He looks back at Hen, who’s standing a few feet away from the other two. 

Buck kicks the bottom of the door and points. “What about going through here?” There’s a boarded-up doggy door. 

“What?” Hen looks at him. “The doggy door?”

Bobby sighs and rips the wood off the door. “Just be very careful.” 

“Of course.” Buck crouches down and climbs through the door. 

“Maybe you should give him a gun.” Hen mutters from behind him.

Bobby glances back and shakes his head in exasperation. “Okay, Hen.”

The door swings open, bringing Bobby’s attention back to the kid. Buck looks past him and straight at Hen. “How much longer?” 

“We’re getting close now; we’re gonna have to be quick about it. Go in and grab the battery, then get the fuck out. I don’t want to get trapped over there.” 

Bobby walks past them both and into the next house. “Alright, we get it; let’s hurry up.” 

He opens the sliding glass door and starts walking through the house. 

The house is messy but lived in. There are two kids' bedrooms and a guitar hanging by the kitchen counters. A family used to live here. 

He walks over to the guitar and places his hands over the strings. He pretends his hands aren’t shaking as he carefully plucks them. 

It’s been a long time since he’s seen a guitar in good condition. 

As Buck is about to walk up to him, Bobby walks away from the guitar. He doesn’t look back at it as he walks out the side door. 

The side of the house has a broken-down RV. The most interesting thing about the trailer was not inside it but on top, where someone had made a path connecting it to a tree house in the neighboring yard. 

“Who the hell left this here? You got friends in town?” Buck looks towards Hen.

“No.” Hen responds quickly, too quickly, Bobby notes as he watches her flinch a little. “Although, I have some idea who might’ve come through here.” 

She walks close to the edge of the treehouse and jumps off, landing on the ground with a soft thud. “C’mon, the school’s on the other side of this house.”

Bobby jumps off right after, his knees twinging in pain as he lands. “C’mon, Buck.”

He doesn’t turn around, but he hears the huff as he lands on the ground. Following Hen through the yard, they reach the house and look around for a side door or some kind of exit. 

“Here!” It takes about five minutes to find, but Bobby hears Hen call out from the opposite end of the house when she finds a garage. The bottom is not connected to the ground, and the door doesn’t appear too heavy. 

He meets Hen’s eyes as they both go to reach for the door. “Together.” 

She rolls her eyes and nods. “God, you sound just like Athena.” 

Bobby just shakes his head, ignoring her comment. Ignoring the thumping of his heart and the shaking of his hands.

They push the door open, and Bobby is greeted with the sight of ten or so infected walking around school buses that clearly haven’t been used since the breakout. 

The three of them run to the closest car to not be seen or heard. “What’d I tell you?” Hen looks at him with a slight smirk on her face. She brings her head above the car and points to something across the field. “That truck, the one that’s sticking out of the school. That’s our way in.”

Bobby nods and starts to shuffle past the car as quietly as he can. He spots the infected nearest to the car and moves towards it slowly. Instead of reaching for his gun, he grabs the knife out of the sheath and readies it in his hand. 

With a swift motion he pulls the infected to him, and before the thing can turn around, he stabs it in the neck with the knife. 

It hisses and creaks as it dies. 

A sound he’s learned to love instead of flinching from. 

He doesn’t know if that makes him a monster or not. 

He doesn’t know if he cares enough to figure that out.

Maybe that’s more terrifying than the truth itself.

With those thoughts in his head, he follows the pattern using his knife and quickly rounds up the others. Buck stays close behind him the entire time, and once they get to the final infected as it creaks and hisses, he brings his eyes to face the kid.

Buck doesn’t look scared at all, so maybe that makes both of them monsters.

“Well, that was easier than I thought it would be.” Hen interrupts Bobby’s thought. “They must be holding up somewhere else.”

He nods in agreement and slowly crouches down so the kid can get up onto the school bus.

With a huff, Bobby springs him up onto the bus. And waits for Buck to drop down the ladder. 

It drops with a clang, and he lets Hen climb up first, listening as she explains where to head to next. “We need to get to the battery and then get the hell out of there.” 

She drops from the other end of the bus, the kid following right after.

They finally made it to the school and past the fence. It feels like a weight off of his shoulders, a reduced pain in his hand. They might finally be getting somewhere. 

He leads them to the side of the building; there’s a window with a generator under it. It’s just the right height for them to climb into it. Bobby climbs onto the generator and pulls the window open, holding it for Hen and Buck.

“Let’s go! You two go! Go, go, go!” He beckons them through the window quickly, hearing the infected around the perimeter quickly closing in. 

And just as he starts to climb through, he feels a hand grab his leg. Shit. The infected starts to climb higher up his body, and as he feels the puffy, veiny fingers clasp around his neck, he pulls his elbow back right into its body.

“Bobby!” Buck grabs his arm as he yells, trying his hardest to pull him through the window. 

“Shit.” The kid isn’t strong enough to pull him through, and he starts slipping into the infected’s arms.

“Alright, let’s get going.” Hen mutters from the side of the room, completely unbothered with Bobby getting closer and closer to death. She walks over to the window and yanks on Bobby’s backpack, sending him flying through the window. 

He flies to the floor with a thump. Then a bang echoes through the room as he looks up in time to see Hen move her shotgun from out of the, now dead, infected's face.

Buck closes the window as soon as Hen moves the shotgun. “That’s not gonna hold.” 

“Hen! Make it fast!” Bobby yells as Hen moves to the truck, crashed into the building, and opens the hood of the truck.

The infected are surrounding all entrances to the room, not just the window; they need to move quicker.

Then there’s silence, and Bobby can tell, without even hearing Hen, that something has just gone wrong. 

“It’s empty.”

“What?”

“It’s fucking empty.” 

Bobby, ignoring the infected, runs over to Hen and the truck. Fuck, she wasn’t lying. The spot where the battery should be is gone. And almost taunting them, the spiderweb in its place starts to move with the wind from the arms.

“Guys!” Buck yells from where he’s trying to keep a door closed. 

Bobby turns to Hen. “Where to?”

“Anywhere but here.”

Bobby nods grimly, then moves to grab Buck's arm. “Get ready to haul ass.” 

They run out the other door, just as the infected break through and into the room. The wooden door slams behind them as they run through it, and Bobby picks up a metal pipe on the floor and puts it through the handle.

As he turns back around, he realizes that they’re in the main part of the school. Lockers are everywhere around them; old paper is spewed across the floor. The ceiling is falling apart one tile at a time. It’s a haunting look for a place that once housed kids. 

“Let’s escape out the back.” Hen mutters from in front of them.

Bobby reaches her and puts a hand out. “Let me do it.”

She smirks a little, and with a gleam of approval in her eyes, she nods. “Be my guest.”

He steps in front of her and starts walking through the school. They make it past a fallen ‘Let’s Go Eagles!’ sign and an empty science lab with the flasks still sitting on the tables. There are chipped blue plastic seats near a hallway.

He lets out a breath that’s close enough to a laugh and starts walking down that hallway. “There should be a path down this way.” He tells the others, and they follow him without question.

At the end of the hallway there’s an open door, and when he peeks through, he spots windows. It’s an escape. As he goes to push on the door, he realizes it’s stuck. “Help me open this.” He points to Hen. 

She rolls her eyes and nods at him. She walks next to Bobby and puts her body weight on the door, and they both push at the same time. They slam against it three times, and the mats holding it in place slide out of the way, letting them into the room.

“C’mon.” Hen huffs and pushes the rest of the door open herself. 

Bobby starts placing the mats back right as Hen closes the door. “That isn’t gonna hold them for long.” 

And just as he finishes his thought, a thud echoes through the room. The door and mats shake, and sawdust falls from the ceiling. The floor vibrates. 

“That doesn’t sound good.” Hen quips under her breath, already reaching for her shotgun.

The door on the other side of the gym bursts open as Bobby’s eyes go wide. “Oh, fuck.”

“What the fuck is that!” Buck yells as he runs to hide behind the nearest thing available.

The eight-foot-tall infected starts hobbling over to them. Its head is split open with no human features left remaining. The split from his head continues down to his chest, where fungal buildup from over five years sits the most heavily.

“It’s a goddamn bloater!” Hen yells, reloading her shotgun. 

“Buck, I need you to take cover!” Bobby yells over the sound of the monster stomping closer to them.

The bullets aren’t working so far; it’s already been shot around ten times from a range of different ammo types. Then the thing rips off a part of his own shoulder and throws it at them. Bobby, the main target of the throw, runs out of the way in time for the smoke from the thing's shoulder bomb to start getting close to him.

Buck looks freaked out for the first time all day. “What the fuck is it throwing at us?”

“Buck, just stay away from it!” Because he can’t let him near the smoke. The smoke has spores in it; if Buck gets too close, Hen will be able to figure out he’s immune. And while he might trust Hen with his own life, he does not trust her with his.

Bangs keep going off from both his and Hen’s guns as the monster starts to only look a little weary around twenty-five bullets in. After a couple more, it starts to stumble over its own feet. And it only goes down when Hen puts another two bullets into its head. 

“There.” She spits, panting and clutching her knees in exhaustion. Bobby can see why Athena liked her; she’s a fucking beast.

Buck, noticing the end to the shooting, comes out from the corner he was hiding from. “What was up with that thing?”

“They’re called bloaters; they’ve been infected for a long ass time.”

“Okay.” He mutters. “Bloaters, got it.” 

“Hey.” Hen calls from the bleachers. “I hate to interrupt this little biology lesson, but can we hurry the fuck along, please?” She points to what she’s standing next to. “Bobby, do you want to give me a hand up these bleachers?”

He shakes his head in amusement, and as he bends down to give her a boost, he starts to notice the adrenaline crashing and the pain in his hand returning. 

“Here we go, people.” Hen jokes as she gets pushed up on top of the bleachers and closer to the windows. She then bends down and grabs Buck’s hand, pulling him up. 

Bobby is last up onto the bleachers; Hen pulls him up slowly, and Buck helps grab his other arm when he gets higher.

The group pants in exhaustion, but they quickly start moving across the bleachers and through the window. They jump about ten feet down onto grass, Hen points in the direction they need to go, and they start running. 

They keep going through the grass until they reach a hole in the fence big enough for them to get through. It leads them to a shallow river with another fence on the other side. 

“A ladder!” Buck yells with a deep breath. They follow his finger that’s pointing a little farther down the river. They continue running down, the sound of footsteps from the infected following them getting closer. 

Hen and Buck make it to the ladder first and climb up with Bobby following behind. He can see the infected closing in as he makes it to the ladder and practically runs up it. As he jumps off the ladder and into the backyard of the house he landed in, Hen pushes the ladder down so no infected can attempt to climb it.

“Inside the house, now!” Hen yells as she turns away from the fence. Bobby and Buck follow her as she turns and runs through the backyard and through the sliding glass back door. She shuts it quickly behind them, her breaths coming out deep with exhaustion. 

“So, that worked out well.” Buck mutters, backing away from the door. 

Bobby glares at him as Buck winces at the look. “Okay. I’ll, um, go check out this side of the house.” He says, walking to the right. 

“Hen?” Bobby looks at her, anger covering his face.

“Look. Someone had the same idea. They stole all my shit.”

“Well then, what the hell is plan B?” 

“You should be thankful you’re still breathing.” He huffs. “That was plan A, B, all the way through fucking Z.” He pauses, walking right up to Bobby. “And furthermore, tell Athena that she can take this job—”

“Don’t bring Athena into this.”

“—and she can shove it right up—” 

“This has nothing to do with—”

Bobby pauses when he realizes she’s no longer looking at him. Her gaze is locked onto something behind and above it. In fact, her eyes are wide, and her hands are shaking.

Bobby’s never seen her this terrified.

He slowly turns around to see what she’s looking at.

He’s met with a pair of shoes to the face. 

His eyes wander up to see a woman with a noose around her neck; it’s clear she’s been dead for a while.

“Jesus.” He whispers, backing up closer to Hen.

She still hasn’t said anything. “What? Did you know her or something?” He says, looking back at her. 

“Karen.”

Bobby throws his hands up. “Who the hell is Karen?” 

“She was my partner.” 

She says it like it’s the first time she’s ever told anyone. A secret to be opened for the first time. Like a dying breath.

He guesses it doesn’t matter anymore, though, because she grabs the machete attached to the back of her bag and starts to walk over to the body. “She was the only idiot that would wear a shirt like that.” 

The only thing special about the woman’s shirt is the fact that it has color, unlike Hen’s getup. 

She moves over to the rope and whacks it with the machete. The noose tears in two, and the body thumps to the ground, lifeless. 

Hen kneels down to look at her partner. 

“She’s got bites.” She whispers with a small gasp that was only meant for her but so full of emotion that Bobby couldn’t help but hear it from where he’s standing. “They’re here and…”

She stops and wipes the one tear rolling down her cheek.

“I reckon she didn’t want to turn, so she…” Bobby points out.

“Yeah, I guess not.” Hen stands up slowly, tearing her eyes away from the body. “Well, fuck her.”

Bobby grimaces; there’s a tense posture fixed all over her. And the worst part is Bobby not being able to tell her that he understands how she’s feeling without making her day even worse. Because the partner he’s mourning happened to be one of her best friends. 

The sound of an engine starting breaks the silence and causes both of them to jump. 

They face each other, eyes wide, and start to use the rest of their remaining strength to run to the sound. 

Once they make it to the far right side of the house, they find Buck sitting in the driver's seat of a truck, a smile planted onto his face. 

“Look what I found.” He tells them smugly. “It’s still got some juice in it.” 

Hen astonished walks to the hood of the truck. “That’s my battery.” She looks towards the door of the garage. “That fucking bitch.” 

She slams the hood shut and sneers at Bobby, who’s standing a couple feet behind her. “Get out.” 

Buck, unknowing of the dead body in the living room, jumps out of the truck surprised. “Okay, geez.”

Hen, ignoring the remark, pushes past him and tries to start the truck fully. Bobby can hear the problem before she says it. “Battery’s drained, but the cells are alive.” 

“So?”

“If we push it, the alternator will recharge the battery.” 

“Is that your guess?”

“Look.” Hen gets out of the truck and meets Bobby’s eyes. “You wanted a plan B. This is as good as it gets.” 

Buck stands closer to Bobby and tries to ask quietly, “What are you thinking?”

“Thinkin’ you’re gonna drive, and we’re gonna push.” 

“Jesus,” Hen interrupts them, “this is all my stuff.” She’s crouched in the corner of the garage looking through a backpack. “So that’s it. Just gonna steal my shit and run off, was that your plan, Karen?”

“Stay here.” Bobby looks at Buck. “I’m going to check the house for supplies.” 

He doesn’t wait for confirmation before turning to walk back into the main house. 

He starts in the kitchen; there’s some ammo, a good-looking knife or two, and some food that can be rationed. The house look almost lived in. 

Maybe this is where Karen liked to go when she wasn’t with Hen.

Or maybe this used to be someone else's house.

The last room Bobby checks for supplies before he leaves is the bedroom. 

And it’s the bedroom where he finds the letter. 

It has Hen's name written at the top. It’s in cursive. 

His injured hand reaches out carefully for the paper. He doesn’t open it, even if he wants to know what it says. 

Some things are better unknown.

Instead, he walks back through the house to the garage. 

He looks at the other two, ready to go, and taps Hen on the shoulder.

“Hen, I, uh. I found this in there, and I, well, I figured you should have it.” She stops what she was doing and looks down at the letter. 

She carefully grabs it. Her hands shake as she opens it. 

And then something Bobby could never see coming happens. 

Hen goes from angry to happy, almost relieved. 

Sure, there’s sadness, but she looks as if a weight has been ripped off of her shoulders. A small smile takes over her face. “So,” she whispers to the paper, “you knew where they were after all.”

She pockets the paper. Turns to the door and looks to the living room. “Thank you.” 

Her eyes look glassy as she moves her face back to Bobby and Buck. “Ready to go?” 

Bobby nods solemnly and heads to the back of the truck with Hen following right behind him. 

On his way he stops at Buck’s window. “You gonna be okay with this?”

The kid smiles a little nervously but nods. “Yeah, not a problem.”

Bobby leans further through the window and puts a hand on the boy's shoulder. “You’re doing a good job.” He pauses as the kid meets his eyes, shock evident in them. “I just figured you should know that.” 

“I won’t let you down with this.” Buck looks at the hand on his own shoulder as he says it.

“Alright.” Bobby backs out of the window and joins Hen at the trunk.

Once the two of them are ready, Hen yells up to Buck, “Put her into first!”

“Already did it!” The kid yells back, and Bobby can’t help but smile. A sense of pride glowing in his chest. 

Hen keeps spewing out instructions. “Just keep your foot on the clutch, and when we get to roll—”

“I know how to pop a clutch!”

Bobby laughs as Hen splutters, surprised. “How the hell do—you know what? I don’t care; just don’t fuck it up!”

“Alright, Buck, get ready.” Bobby says as they start to push the truck out of the garage. 

As they get it out of the garage and onto the driveway, he yells, “Now! Now! Hit it!”

The truck starts for a second, then dies back down. It’s working, but it’s going to have to take a little longer to get it to fully go. “If we get it over that hill, we should be good.” Hen tells them, pointing about a block down the street. 

“C’mon, we don’t have much time before more infected show up. Back to pushing.” 

They get their hands back onto the trunk and continue to push. “You have really fucked up my day. You know that, Bobby.” Hen huffs with fatigue as they push.

Bobby just smirks, eyes staying on the boy driving. “Try again, Buck! Start her up!”

And this time when the engine gets going, the truck stays on and makes a beautiful noise. 

“You hear that, Hen?” Bobby punches her in the arm.

She glares back but nods, a small but relieved smile placed on her face. “Yeah, I do.” She starts walking, leaving Bobby in her wake. “But that also means the infected can hear it too, so let’s get in the fucking truck!”

They run and jump in the trunk at the same time. “Go! Go! Floor it!” Bobby yells, hitting the back window.  

Bobby and Hen thump the back of the truck as Buck presses down on the gas as hard as he can. Even though his side hurts and he might have bruised a rib from it, Bobby can’t stop smiling.

He can’t remember the last time he felt this happy.

They go for about a mile before they can start to see the entrance of Lincoln. That’s when Hen hits the side of the truck with her hand. 

 “This should be good.” 

She jumps out of the truck as Buck is slowing down and starts to walk away. 

“Just wait here, but don’t turn it off.” Bobby tells him as he hops out to follow her. Buck gives him a thumbs up as Bobby walks closer to Hen.

“That boy nearly got us killed.” She tells him as they make it farther from the truck.

“You gotta admit, he did hold his own back there.” 

Hen chuckles. “You aren’t gonna make it.” She bends down, pulls a tube out of her backpack, and chucks it at Bobby. “You’ll, uh, be amazed how many cars still have gas in them.”

“Appreciate it.” Bobby walks close, just in case Buck can still hear them. “Look, Hen, about your partner back there. That’s a tough deal. And I’m, uh—”

“We’re square?”

“What?”

“Karen, I never would have found her or that letter, and, um, that letter told me something I’ve been wondering for the last two years now. So, we’re square?”

“We’re square.” Bobby agrees back. 

“Then get the fuck out of my town.” She pushes with a small smile. 

Bobby nods, turns, and walks back to the truck. 

By the time he looks back, Hen’s already gone.

It doesn’t take long for the rain to start as they make it on the road. It’s almost hypnotizing, and Bobby doesn’t realize he’s falling asleep until Buck yells from the back seat.

“Oh man!”

 Bobby, looking in his rearview mirror, meets the kids' eyes. “Hey, what happened to sleeping?”

“Okay,” he says, sitting up from how he was lying across the entire back row. “I know it looks like it. But this here is not a bad read.” He holds up the comic book so Bobby can see it through the mirror.

“There’s only one problem.” He pauses for dramatic effect, flipping to the back of the comic. “Right here.” He points to the last line. “To be continued.” He sighs dramatically. “I hate cliffhangers.”

“Where did you get that?”

“Back at Hen’s. I mean, all this kids’ stuff was just lying there.”

Bobby sighs but looks resigned. “What else did you get?”

“Well.” He starts to dig through his backpack. Then he pulls out the last thing Bobby expected, a cassette tape. “Does this make you all nostalgic?”

“This came out in my twenties actually, so yes.” He grabs the Bruce Springsteen cassette from Buck. “It’s a winner, though.” He puts the cassette into the player. “Oh, yeah.” 

He hears a ruffle from the back seat as Buck grabs something else from his bag. “Oh, and I’m sure your friend will be missing this tonight.”

“Uh-huh.” Bobby acknowledges, not even looking back at what Buck picked up. 

“Light on the reading, but it does have some interesting photos.”

What?

Startled, he looks through the mirror to find Buck reading a porn magazine. 

Shit.

“Now Buck, that isn’t for kids.”

“Woah.” He says, looking at a folded-down picture of a naked woman. “How the hell would she even walk around with those things?”

“Get rid of that. Just—” Bobby reaches back to try and grab the magazine from him.

“Hold your horses. I want to see what the fuss is about.” He pauses. “Oh. Why are they all stuck together?” 

Bobby’s eyes go wide. “Um.”

Then Buck starts laughing and rolls down the back window. “I’m just fucking with you.” He throws the magazine out. “Bye-bye, lady!” 

He then closes the window and starts to climb over the center console and take the shotgun seat. 

Plopping right down, he looks at Bobby. “You know what, this isn’t that bad.” He leans forward to turn up the radio, then leans back against the seat.

“You know what, why don’t you try and get some sleep?” Bobby pats Buck on the shoulder. 

He laughs a little, looking at Bobby with a smile on his face. “Pft. I’m not even tired.” He leans into the seat and starts to face out the window, the music slowly droning on in the background. 

Bobby smiles and continues to drive through the pouring rain.

And when he looks at Buck five minutes later, the boy is passed out in his seat.