Fic Bulletproof (2/3)
Author’s Notes: So, this chapter is definitely a new experience for me because the content is really out of my comfort zone. (They tell me that’s what I’m supposed to do as a writer - push my own limits. Sometimes I think they’re full of shit, if I’m honest.) Since it’s so far out of my strike zone, I’m also hoping that Pike’s reactions are in character. I feel like they are, but his voice and such weren’t coming as naturally to me in this story as they do in the cop or canon verses. But I’ve come to the conclusion that nit-picking it any farther isn’t going to make it better. So I’m just going to bite the bullet and post it and see what you all think. As always, comments (even if it’s to tell me I suck) are welcomed. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Not mine. No money made. Please don’t sue me.
Chapter | 1 | 2 | 3 |
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Chapter 2
The first thing he noticed was how eerily silent it was.
Pike’s California office was never quiet. As Washington’s self-anointed antithesis to the typical career politician, Chris’ home state headquarters was part arcade, part zoo, part working office. In that order. All of his staff had grown so accustomed to the stacks of legal volumes placed on the very proper bookshelf that was right next to the very improper air hockey table and the even more improper pinball machine (both purchased by Pike from his personal funds, of course) that they often forgot how stiff and uptight other offices were. It wasn’t as if they didn’t get the work done; Chris and his staff just had another way of doing it. As he’d reminded his peers over the years, plenty of good ideas came from the post lunch dart tournament. There was nothing that bonded people more than a little friendly competition, or so Chris often preached.
'Memories of a different time,' Pike thought as he stepped over a pile of broken glass, nudging his way around the sad remains of his favorite pinball machine. The office - his office - the thing he'd worked so hard to build and expand and how he judged his success in life - was completely demolished. It looked as if a tornado had torn through the inside of the building. Furniture broken, walls full of holes or entirely missing, doors off their hinges, windows smashed. Chris shuddered to think what kind of events went on inside the building for it to look so utterly devastated.
About to pass, a flash of light caught his attention from under the pile of rubble. He narrowed his eyes, knelt down and pushed back the destroyed lighting panel. Pike sucked in a breath and nearly jumped backwards when the board slid away. Propped up against the wall, the twisted, bloated body of his office admin lay in a messy heap on the floor. There were telltale signs of decomposition; Maggie’s platinum blonde hair clashed against the sickly green pallor of her skin, which only served to accentuate the fact that half her face was missing. Dark red blood dripped down her arm and shoulder, coagulating in a formidable puddle near her right side. Strange; he knew there should be a heavy stench of decomposition roaming the air, but none choked his olfactory sensors. Perhaps there was something wrong with his nose, or Pike was getting used to it.
He chalked it up to one more thing irrevocably changed by his new world. Pike wasn’t sure if it was for better or indeed for worse.
Chris shook his head, pushing the somewhat extraneous thoughts to the back corner of his mind. He reached out a tentative hand to touch her, but he snapped it back just as quickly. A quick traverse through Appalachia taught him that while people might look dead, they might not actually be dead. Pike unholstered the 9mm Springfield XDM he’d scavenged off a dead cop and extended his arm. He scoffed internally; it wasn’t like he was going to shoot anyone with it since he ran out of ammo well before he crossed the Mississippi, but it did make a great extension of his body. He used the barrel and poked Maggie’s shoulder, exhaling a sigh of relief when she didn’t move. Pike pursed his lips and reached for the board. Replacing it gently over her still form, he dropped his head and let out a low, frustrated growl.
She was the fifth staffer he’d encountered since he bulldozed his way back into his office.
Every single one of them were dead.
Chris counted his blessings that none of them attempted to eat him. It was a small favor, but a favor none the less.
Working his way past the reception area, Pike stopped short when he heard a long scrape echo faintly from behind the closed conference room doors. His feet moved seemingly of their own volition as they carried him across the room. With his back pressed against the wall, Chris soundlessly snagged the sharpened broom handle from amidst a the rubble scattered about the floor. Using the toe of his boot (stolen from a sporting good store - at least those hadn’t come off a dead person), he slowly pushed at the kick plate.
The door swung open, and poking his head around the corner, Pike took a deep breath and looked surveyed the room. Chris thought he’d open the door to find a horde of zombies waiting for him or a group of frantic survivors; both groups would have been equally deadly. But in reality, he found neither. Instead, he was greeted by the sight of a single, rigid figure standing the middle of the room. With his back to the door, it was impossible for Pike to discern if the man was human or a zombie. But given the fact he didn’t even acknowledge Chris’ entrance, the chances weren’t looking good for contact of the human variety.
Pike’s fingers flexed instinctively against the wooden handle as he crept quietly towards the man’s back. As he was in the motion of raising the weapon for a strike, his metal belt buckle picked the most inopportune time to refract the sun cascading into the room. The glint of light grabbed the man’s attention as it blossomed out, bouncing off a section of drywall in a kaleidoscope pattern of white. Blue eyes widening in the reflection off the window pane, the man ducked the strike and rolled away to safety.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! What are you doing, man?” the blond screeched, extending his hands as he clamored to his knees.
Chris felt a momentary spike of panic which was replaced instantly by relief as recognition set in. “Sam?” he breathed out, allowing the broom handle to slip from his suddenly numb fingers.
“Yeah - Chris, oh thank god!” the younger man exclaimed, leaping to his feet before he reached out to embrace his boss.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Pike replied as he pulled his chief of staff into a manly hug, giving him a couple of slaps on the back for good measure. Chris finally released Kirk from his grip and stepped back to observe. Far from his normal squared away, not a hair out of place chief of staff, Sam was dirty and bloody; the man’s clothes were shredded and stained and his hair was askew and mixed with sweat and grime. He had a solid week’s worth of beard, the dark hair on his face only accentuating the pallor of his skin, the puffy red eyes and nearly black circles hovering under his eyes.
Pike looked down at his own clothes. He was sweaty and in desperate need of a shower, but his state of hygiene was nowhere near as bad as Kirk’s. And he was really sure he didn’t look like he got in a fight with Mike Tyson and lost. A wave of worry washed over him, because from all accounts, the worst of the infection was moving from East to West, not the other way around. Something wasn’t right and it was starting to sound warning alarms in Chris’ head. He inched closer, but maintained an arm’s length distance. “You look like you’ve been through it,” he rumbled lowly to Kirk.
“Yeah,” Sam answered, nearly deflating in on himself as the adrenaline rush faded. “Glad you made it.”
Pike gave the younger man a critical once over, noting the instantaneous appearance of the thousand yard stare from eyes that wouldn’t meet his own. He cocked his head to the side and reached out one hand to steady Sam as he wavered in place. “It was touch and go there for a while. Thought I’d seen the worst of it.” Pausing, Chris looked around the demolished room and then back to Kirk’s shell-shocked form. “But from the looks of all this, it’s pretty clear to me that it hasn’t been sunshine and rainbows here, either.”
“You could say that,” was Kirk’s cryptic response.
“Wanna tell me what happened?” Pike gently probed.
“It’s a long story.”
Chris snorted. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He started to lower himself into the sturdiest looking remaining chair when a twitch of movement on the table behind the open door grabbed Chris’ attention. Vaulting back to his feet, Pike took a quick half-step towards the corner of the room only to be stopped by Kirk’s hand. The former congressman looked down at the fingers gently restraining his chest and then, like an elevator ascending to the top floor, met his chief of staff’s stare. Very quietly, he asked, “Sam, what’s going on? Where’s Aurelan?”
“She’s gone,” he replied.
“Gone?” Pike questioned as his stomach began to turn. “Gone how? What do you mean?”
Without a word, Sam sighed deeply, rubbed hand over his face and stepped aside to give Chris a clear view of the table’s contents.
Pike swallowed hard a couple of times, trying to dispel the lump that vaulted into this throat. He sucked in a deep, slow breath as he angled his head around Sam’s shoulder to see what his chief of staff’s body was hiding. “Peter,” he breathed. Looking back up towards the boy’s father, Pike asked sharply, “What the hell happened here?”
“When you called, I did what you ordered. Closed up the office and sent everyone home to their families. But the infection was quicker than we thought. It started right about the time you called to warn me. We decided it would be best to regroup here since we had everything we needed to make a stand until you could get back and lead the charge. Aurelan was helping me round everyone up. We were the last ones to make it back here. She tried to get to me and she almost made it. Got within a couple of blocks before she got caught. She knew it was bad, so she gave Peter the gun and then gave him a head start.”
“A head start?”
“You know what I mean. She provided a...distraction,” Kirk said quietly.
“She’s dead,” Chris concluded matter of factly.
“Yeah. I think I’ll hear that scream until the day I die.”
Pike closed his eyes. He’d seen enough to know how zombies fed on their prey. It was brutal and ugly and incredibly violent. “But what about your son? He’s okay, right?”
“For now, yeah.”
Chris felt his heart rate spike as he listened to Sam’s narrative. The boy laid out on the conference room table was pale, sweaty and struggling to pull in each shaky breath. Pike cocked his head to the side and reached out one gentle, fatherly hand. He smoothed back Peter’s matted hair, cringing as he felt the heat radiating off the boy in waves. He forced his eyes up, meeting Sam’s blank stare. “Is he...” Pike began, unable to actually finish the question.
Kirk opened his mouth to say something, but snapped it closed when no words were forthcoming. Instead, he pulled down the blanket that was covering Peter’s slight body and pointed to a mark near the child’s right shoulder. “It’s been almost a half a day since it happened. It won’t be long now, I don’t think.”
“No,” Chris breathed out, his hands suddenly shaking with rage and denial. “Goddammit!” he exclaimed even louder. He wanted to punch something, put his fist through what remained of his office. This shouldn’t be happening - not to Sam, not to Aurelan, not to anyone. But knee jerk reactions would get him nowhere and earn him nothing but broken bones for his troubles. So Pike took a deep breath and flexed his fists open and closed until the curtain of red behind eyes faded away. He walked over to Kirk and laid a gentle, fatherly hand on his chief of staff’s shoulder. Compassionate but firm, he said, “Tell me what happened, son.”
Sam’s head fell to his chest. “I wasn’t quick enough. I let myself listen for a half second to my wife. Peter was running towards me. He was so close. I reached out to grab him, but he got snagged by one on the ground. I shot it, but not before he bit my son’s shoulder. I brought him here because I didn't know what else to do. I hoped - I thought maybe we’d get lucky with...something. I don’t know. A miracle.”
It was a strange sensation. Equal parts confusion and helplessness, the thoughts rolling around Pike’s brain created a ball of dissonance that planted itself firmly in his gut. Licking his dry lips, Chris said the only thing that came to his mind. “Tell me what you need.”
Kirk’s chest heaved up and down silently while he fisted his hands through his hair. He paced about the room like a caged animal ready to fight or flee. “What do I need? I need for my life to go back to the way it was before all this shit. I need my old life back, where I had a wife who was very much alive and a son who isn’t dying. Barring that, I need a miracle. Do you happen to have any of those lying around?”
“Sorry. Fresh out,” Chris replied with a dramatic sweep of his hand.
He shook his head and gripped the table so hard his knuckles went white under his skin. Rubbing his hand over his face, Sam exhaled hard and said, “I’m sorry, Chris. You don’t deserve that. Target of convenience, I guess.”
“Better me than the zombies,” Pike snorted in return, allowing the room to fall into companionable silence. After working with Sam for so many years, he had a pretty good idea of what was going through the younger man’s head. Most of it centered around relief mixed with panic and laced with a healthy dose of fear. Pike thought he could do one of two things: he could feed Sam a bunch of lines, or he could be honest.
Further proving he wasn’t a typical Washington pundit, Chris never considered himself to be a very efficient liar.
Truth it was. Chris shifted his eyes over to Kirk and added, “You know I don’t bullshit and I don’t take things personally.”
“Yeah, that’s why I’ve stuck with you for so long. Despite what everyone says about you, you can be an asshole when you’re pissed.”
Pike let out a little snort at his long time assistant’s blunt but on point observation. Shifting his weight to his left foot, he said, “I wish I was the answer you were looking for. But I’m not. I’m just another guy, doing the best he can in the moment. Just like you, Sam.”
“For all the good it’s done me,” Sam added as the fight seeped from his tired body. He sank down to the floor, back against the (mostly intact) chunk of wall near the door. Kirk titled his head back and let it fall to the drywall, landing with a dull ‘thunk’. He closed his eyes, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down a couple of times as he swallowed harshly. “Actually, you do have one thing I would like.”
“Name it.”
“I need your advice, Chris,” he said without preamble.
“Of course,” Pike replied.
Opening his eyes, Sam searched for Chris’ stare and held it as he asked simply, “What should I do?”
Pike was confused; he wasn’t sure what Kirk meant by his statement. But as he followed Sam’s line eyes as it drifted towards his son, the question became indelibly clearer. Exhaling hard, Chris dropped his head to his hands and rubbed his eyes hard. “I don’t know,” he admitted breathlessly.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Kirk replied mirthlessly. He hauled himself to his feet and joined Pike at the side of the conference room table. Sam adjusted the blanket over his son’s trembling body and dabbed at the child’s sweat soaked forehead with a piece of torn cloth. He turned his back on Chris, reached into his pocket and extracted something. Hefting the object in his hands, Sam spun around to face Pike. “I’ve had this now for a while. It’s got one round left in it. I’m wondering if now would be a good time to use it.”
“Sam,” Pike warned lowly, edging his way towards his chief of staff, and closer to the gun Sam held loosely in his right hand. Gun safety was not even in Kirk’s conscious stream of thought; Sam’s finger was on the trigger while he pointed the weapon at his left shoulder, inspecting it as if it were some shiny new toy. “Let’s talk about this, okay?”
“I don’t think there’s anything left to talk about. I don’t want my son turning into one of those things. There’s no dignity in that. He deserves better.”
Pike let out a marginal sigh of relief when he realized that Kirk wasn’t planning on using the gun on himself. But as realization struck, Chris felt his stomach do yet another painful flip-flop in the middle of his chest. “I can’t let you do that, Mr. Kirk.”
Pike’s uncharacteristic deployment of formality caught his attention. Kirk stopped inspecting the silver .380 long enough to glare at his mentor and friend. “Why not? It’s that or I get to watch my son---” Sam said, trailing off as the words died in his throat.
“No, that’s not what I meant,” Chris said, stepping forward and removing the gun from Sam’s pliable fingers all in one swift motion. He held the other man’s wrist in his right hand and forced him to meet his gaze. In as steady a voice as he could muster, Chris looked Sam squarely in the eye and clarified, “I meant that, as Peter’s remaining parent, you’re not going to be the one that lives with that.”
“What are you suggesting?”
Chris forced down the fresh wave of nausea building in his throat as he looked towards the partially prostrate child on the conference room table. He pursed his lips into a thin, hard line and replied with a lot more confidence than he felt, “I’ll do it.”
“You’re going to live with this?”
Chris dipped his chin. “Better me than you.”
Kirk nodded his head, tears welling at the corners of his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak but clamped his jaw closed when his chin started to tremble. Sam sucked in a couple of deep breaths through his nose, composed himself and cleared his throat. Kirk’s gaze wandered from the gun in Pike’s hands to his deathly still child. Voice thick with emotion, he asked simply, “Why are you doing this, Chris?”
Pike sighed and let his gaze travel up the ceiling. “Karma, I guess, if such a thing still exists in this world. I suppose I hope that someone would do the same for me if it came to that.”
“You won’t let it go that far. I know you.”
“I hate to break it to you, Kirk. It doesn’t take much. One mistake, one moment of complacency and that’s all she wrote. ”
“Like my wife. Like my son,” Sam said with a sad smile, fiddling with the blankets covering Peter.
“Yeah, like your family,” Chris replied in an almost inaudible whisper. He cleared his throat and quietly moved towards the door. “I’m going to wait outside. Take your time and let me know when you’re ready,” he added, exiting without waiting for Sam’s response.
Clear of the conference room, Pike leaned his shoulders up against the crumbling drywall and stared up at the ceiling. The sad, pockmarked tiles blurred as the tears pooling at the corner of his eyes threatened to spill over. He swore internally. What the hell was he doing and - more importantly - who the hell was he fooling? ‘No one. This is crazy,’ Pike mentally acknowledged. It was true - he wasn’t trained for this kind of shit. Chris learned how to fight and kill enemies of all types, but was he really ready to shoot a child?
Even as an act of mercy, he wasn’t entirely certain the answer to that question was ‘yes’.
But he was shit out of other options, and he knew it. Even after all he’d been through, both in his past and now, the prospect was nearly overwhelming. Running on adrenaline alone, Pike’s shaking legs finally gave out. He fell gracelessly to the ground and landed with a light ‘thud’ on his ass. The stainless steel frame of the Sig Sauer .380 felt cold against his palm, his fingers numb and clumsy. Making a concerted effort to remove his index finger from the vicinity of the trigger, Pike carefully laid the gun on the floor next to him as he dropped his head to his knees. He let a couple of silent tears fall, watching as they hit the carpet and disappeared into the thick, high-traffic weave.
Chris let his thoughts wander to the man in the conference room. He had no idea what Sam saw in him; Pike was an average middle aged career-driven man, but even with the fancy title and the someone conspicuous background, he wasn’t anything special. Something he did, something he said, had earned him Sam Kirk’s loyalty and for that, he would be grateful for the rest of his life. And along the way, as he molded Kirk from a fresh-faced, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed college grad into the best staffer he could have ever asked for, Sam Kirk became his family. He became the son he never had but always dreamed about and he filled a gap in Pike’s personal life that Chris didn’t know was there.
Chris cared for Sam Kirk - loved him - like his own son.
And because of that, Pike felt like he was going to throw up.
But it would do Sam no good if the man he looked to for answers for everything in life - from women to the best booze to how to deal with a zombie apocalypse - fell apart before he could be useful. So Chris wiped his eyes and literally ordered his stomach not to expel its contents on to the floor before he straightened his posture. The glint off the Sig caught his attention. Pike reached out, ejected the magazine and cleared the slide, ensuring that there really was only one bullet left. He chambered the round, racked the slide and shoved it in the waistband of his pants. Climbing to his feet, Pike was in the middle of stretching his shoulders when Sam exited the conference room.
Chris stopped in his tracks. An unintended glimmer of trepidation flashed momentarily across his handsome features before he corralled it, locking it away with his own personal fears. He swallowed hard and asked simply, “Is it time?”
Unable to speak past the giant softball lodged in his throat, Kirk simply nodded.
Pike laid his hand on Sam’s shoulder as he passed. He stopped, squeezed Kirk hard enough to feel his collarbone and whispered in his ear, “This is the right thing, Sam. He won’t suffer any more. I promise you. I’ll make it count.”
“Yeah,” Kirk choked out.
“Do you want to be in the room?”
Sam turned his red rimmed, puffy and bloodshot eyes towards his mentor. In a tiny voice, he admitted, “I don’t know if I can. God, I’m such a coward.”
“No,” Pike began firmly. “You’re a parent. A good one at that. Never forget that.”
“I’ll work on that.”
“Okay,” Pike said, more for the benefit of himself than Kirk. “Okay.”
Stepping through the door, Chris took a deep breath. On unsteady legs, he walked towards Peter. Though Pike gave up religion years ago, he cursed God and any other deities who happened to be listening with each step to the seventh circle of hell for allowing this mess to take a child’s life. Chris stopped in front of the table and reached out, laying one large hand over Peter’s forehead. The boy was completely and utterly still, such a contrast to the vibrant child that had gleefully raced RC cars down the hallway of the office and who enjoyed playing hide and seek with anyone willing to entertain him. There was no smile, there was no laughing. There was only...nothing.
Chris pulled Peter’s slender wrist from under the covers, checking for a pulse as he’d been taught in basic training. At first, he felt nothing but then after he held his own breath, he felt the tick of an unsteady, erratic and deathly slow pulse under his fingertips. Chris reached out and laid his left hand on Peter’s chest, waiting for the intake and exhale of Kirk’s chest to move his hand. He stood stock still for what seemed like an eternity but was rewarded by nothing but stillness. Chris sighed, bit the inside of his mouth hard enough to draw blood, and folded the boy’s hands neatly over his chest. It was the only thing he could think do; at least there would be a little dignity in death, not there was much of that to be found of late.
Shaking his hands out, Pike pulled the small Sig from the waistband of his pants. He gripped the pistol as he’d been taught, cursing the slight tremor he could feel in his left hand. He flexed his fingers, steadied the gun and took careful aim at Peter’s left temple. Looking up towards the ceiling, Chris whispered, “God, forgive me for this.”
And pulled the trigger.
The sound felt like a hard punch to the solar plexus. For a moment, Chris couldn’t move. He couldn’t breath, he couldn’t speak, he couldn't even blink. Blood rushed through his body at warp speed, muffling out every other sound. His heart felt like it was about to explode if he took one more goddamned breath. His diaphragm was now perfectly at home in his throat, and his vision was greying out at the edges.
The gun fell from his numb fingers and bounced off the carpet, spinning uselessly across the floor. Pike staggered towards the corner of the room and retched, throwing up nothing but water. He remembered the feeling of gnawing hunger coupled with fear, so present as he walked into his old office. Now food seemed like the least appetizing thing on the face of the earth. Or what remained of earth.
Wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, Pike reigned in control of his runaway emotions and forced his feet to take him towards Peter. He brushed a couple of pieces of hair to the side as he smiled sadly. From his angle, it looked as if the boy was simply sleeping; the evidence of Pike’s actions was only visible from the left side. Chris ran his hand over Peter’s face one last time, reached for the blanket, and drew it over Kirk’s still form.
Chris exited the room and searched the hallway for Sam. The whole building was completely silent. Pike cursed, wondering if Sam split while he was doing the deed. He stuck his head in every single office, working his way from the proverbial bow of the office to the stern. Chris was just about to give into the panic welling in his chest when a flicker of movement caught his eye. He pushed open the door to his office and slowly approached the figure huddled on the floor.
With his back to the door, Kirk couldn’t see who was standing behind him. But he knew, just like he always did, when his boss was in the vicinity. Sam stared blankly out at the area where Pike’s oversized bay window used to be. After a couple long beats, he finally said, “I always liked your office, Chris. It’s so bright.”
Pike looked past the shattered window and to the street three levels below. Outside, birds chirped. He could hear the wind floating among the grass, and he could smell the salty sweetness of the beach and the ocean not too far away. Chris closed his eyes as he thought of all the things that used to seem so normal, so mundane that now existed only in his dreams. “I did, too.” He stopped a couple of feet in front of Sam. Motioning with his hand, Pike asked, “Permission to sit?”
Kirk’s head bobbed up and down once as he scooted over to make some room. “Granted.”
“Sam, I know there's nothing I can say that will make this right,” Pike began, breaking the silence after a couple of long minutes, “but if there's anything I can do, just name it.”
Sam licked his dry lips, tension pulling at the corners of his eyes. “I think I just need to make my peace with it. Easier said than done,” Kirk replied, shaking his head ruefully as he plucked away at a bare spot on the carpet.
Pike nodded, clenching and unclenching his jaw as more emotions roiled just under the visible surface. “You know I’m always going to here for you, even if it’s just to listen.”
Kirk went silent and still as a stone. His gaze dipped down to his hand, spinning the gold wedding band on his left ring finger in nervous circles. “Chris, with all due respect, do me a favor and shut the fuck up. I don’t know if I can handle your pity right now.”
Taken aback for a half a breath, Chris closed his mouth and dropped his chin to his chest. He stole a glance over at his subordinate and suppressed a sigh. What his arrhythmic heart wanted so badly to do - to reach out to Sam and hug him, hell even give him a firm clap on the shoulder - wasn’t what his brain deemed appropriate. Pike could see the barely restrained hold Kirk had over his emotions and he didn’t want to be cause that unleashed the emotional tidal wave. Not after the day Kirk had been through. Not yet. It would have been too much too soon and Pike knew it.
Still, it was discomforting for him as a politician. Christopher Pike the politician was never at a loss for words. He always came prepared with the proper words or that just right phrase or idea that would resonate with the masses. But this time, Chris Pike, simple guy and zombie apocalypse survivor, was at a loss. All he needed was the right words to resonate with a single person, and he couldn't even muster that.
Pike cleared his throat, placed his hands in his lap and replied simply, “Understood.”
Some of the tension fled from Kirk’s body. He pulled his knees to his chest and, without turning towards his boss, simply said, “Thanks.”
He didn’t have to say it. Chris knew it, and Sam knew Chris understood the clear double meaning behind that one simple word. ‘Thanks’ meant so much more than, ‘Thank you for teaching me,’ or, ‘Thanks for doing what I couldn’t with Peter,’ or, ‘Thanks for coming back for us when I know you didn’t have to,’ or, ‘Thanks for knowing what I need or don’t need in ever single moment of life.‘ This time, ‘Thanks’ meant ‘Thank you for being a friend.’
It wasn’t much, but it was all he had left to offer. As the two men sat in silence, staring out a demolished window at an equally demolished world, Chris Pike realized that for the first time in his life, one simple word was enough.
It would do, for now.
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Next Up: Sam makes a request. Pike can't refuse; though in retrospect, it might have been smarter to have walked away.
Disclaimer: Not mine. No money made. Please don’t sue me.
Chapter | 1 | 2 | 3 |
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Chapter 2
The first thing he noticed was how eerily silent it was.
Pike’s California office was never quiet. As Washington’s self-anointed antithesis to the typical career politician, Chris’ home state headquarters was part arcade, part zoo, part working office. In that order. All of his staff had grown so accustomed to the stacks of legal volumes placed on the very proper bookshelf that was right next to the very improper air hockey table and the even more improper pinball machine (both purchased by Pike from his personal funds, of course) that they often forgot how stiff and uptight other offices were. It wasn’t as if they didn’t get the work done; Chris and his staff just had another way of doing it. As he’d reminded his peers over the years, plenty of good ideas came from the post lunch dart tournament. There was nothing that bonded people more than a little friendly competition, or so Chris often preached.
'Memories of a different time,' Pike thought as he stepped over a pile of broken glass, nudging his way around the sad remains of his favorite pinball machine. The office - his office - the thing he'd worked so hard to build and expand and how he judged his success in life - was completely demolished. It looked as if a tornado had torn through the inside of the building. Furniture broken, walls full of holes or entirely missing, doors off their hinges, windows smashed. Chris shuddered to think what kind of events went on inside the building for it to look so utterly devastated.
About to pass, a flash of light caught his attention from under the pile of rubble. He narrowed his eyes, knelt down and pushed back the destroyed lighting panel. Pike sucked in a breath and nearly jumped backwards when the board slid away. Propped up against the wall, the twisted, bloated body of his office admin lay in a messy heap on the floor. There were telltale signs of decomposition; Maggie’s platinum blonde hair clashed against the sickly green pallor of her skin, which only served to accentuate the fact that half her face was missing. Dark red blood dripped down her arm and shoulder, coagulating in a formidable puddle near her right side. Strange; he knew there should be a heavy stench of decomposition roaming the air, but none choked his olfactory sensors. Perhaps there was something wrong with his nose, or Pike was getting used to it.
He chalked it up to one more thing irrevocably changed by his new world. Pike wasn’t sure if it was for better or indeed for worse.
Chris shook his head, pushing the somewhat extraneous thoughts to the back corner of his mind. He reached out a tentative hand to touch her, but he snapped it back just as quickly. A quick traverse through Appalachia taught him that while people might look dead, they might not actually be dead. Pike unholstered the 9mm Springfield XDM he’d scavenged off a dead cop and extended his arm. He scoffed internally; it wasn’t like he was going to shoot anyone with it since he ran out of ammo well before he crossed the Mississippi, but it did make a great extension of his body. He used the barrel and poked Maggie’s shoulder, exhaling a sigh of relief when she didn’t move. Pike pursed his lips and reached for the board. Replacing it gently over her still form, he dropped his head and let out a low, frustrated growl.
She was the fifth staffer he’d encountered since he bulldozed his way back into his office.
Every single one of them were dead.
Chris counted his blessings that none of them attempted to eat him. It was a small favor, but a favor none the less.
Working his way past the reception area, Pike stopped short when he heard a long scrape echo faintly from behind the closed conference room doors. His feet moved seemingly of their own volition as they carried him across the room. With his back pressed against the wall, Chris soundlessly snagged the sharpened broom handle from amidst a the rubble scattered about the floor. Using the toe of his boot (stolen from a sporting good store - at least those hadn’t come off a dead person), he slowly pushed at the kick plate.
The door swung open, and poking his head around the corner, Pike took a deep breath and looked surveyed the room. Chris thought he’d open the door to find a horde of zombies waiting for him or a group of frantic survivors; both groups would have been equally deadly. But in reality, he found neither. Instead, he was greeted by the sight of a single, rigid figure standing the middle of the room. With his back to the door, it was impossible for Pike to discern if the man was human or a zombie. But given the fact he didn’t even acknowledge Chris’ entrance, the chances weren’t looking good for contact of the human variety.
Pike’s fingers flexed instinctively against the wooden handle as he crept quietly towards the man’s back. As he was in the motion of raising the weapon for a strike, his metal belt buckle picked the most inopportune time to refract the sun cascading into the room. The glint of light grabbed the man’s attention as it blossomed out, bouncing off a section of drywall in a kaleidoscope pattern of white. Blue eyes widening in the reflection off the window pane, the man ducked the strike and rolled away to safety.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! What are you doing, man?” the blond screeched, extending his hands as he clamored to his knees.
Chris felt a momentary spike of panic which was replaced instantly by relief as recognition set in. “Sam?” he breathed out, allowing the broom handle to slip from his suddenly numb fingers.
“Yeah - Chris, oh thank god!” the younger man exclaimed, leaping to his feet before he reached out to embrace his boss.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Pike replied as he pulled his chief of staff into a manly hug, giving him a couple of slaps on the back for good measure. Chris finally released Kirk from his grip and stepped back to observe. Far from his normal squared away, not a hair out of place chief of staff, Sam was dirty and bloody; the man’s clothes were shredded and stained and his hair was askew and mixed with sweat and grime. He had a solid week’s worth of beard, the dark hair on his face only accentuating the pallor of his skin, the puffy red eyes and nearly black circles hovering under his eyes.
Pike looked down at his own clothes. He was sweaty and in desperate need of a shower, but his state of hygiene was nowhere near as bad as Kirk’s. And he was really sure he didn’t look like he got in a fight with Mike Tyson and lost. A wave of worry washed over him, because from all accounts, the worst of the infection was moving from East to West, not the other way around. Something wasn’t right and it was starting to sound warning alarms in Chris’ head. He inched closer, but maintained an arm’s length distance. “You look like you’ve been through it,” he rumbled lowly to Kirk.
“Yeah,” Sam answered, nearly deflating in on himself as the adrenaline rush faded. “Glad you made it.”
Pike gave the younger man a critical once over, noting the instantaneous appearance of the thousand yard stare from eyes that wouldn’t meet his own. He cocked his head to the side and reached out one hand to steady Sam as he wavered in place. “It was touch and go there for a while. Thought I’d seen the worst of it.” Pausing, Chris looked around the demolished room and then back to Kirk’s shell-shocked form. “But from the looks of all this, it’s pretty clear to me that it hasn’t been sunshine and rainbows here, either.”
“You could say that,” was Kirk’s cryptic response.
“Wanna tell me what happened?” Pike gently probed.
“It’s a long story.”
Chris snorted. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He started to lower himself into the sturdiest looking remaining chair when a twitch of movement on the table behind the open door grabbed Chris’ attention. Vaulting back to his feet, Pike took a quick half-step towards the corner of the room only to be stopped by Kirk’s hand. The former congressman looked down at the fingers gently restraining his chest and then, like an elevator ascending to the top floor, met his chief of staff’s stare. Very quietly, he asked, “Sam, what’s going on? Where’s Aurelan?”
“She’s gone,” he replied.
“Gone?” Pike questioned as his stomach began to turn. “Gone how? What do you mean?”
Without a word, Sam sighed deeply, rubbed hand over his face and stepped aside to give Chris a clear view of the table’s contents.
Pike swallowed hard a couple of times, trying to dispel the lump that vaulted into this throat. He sucked in a deep, slow breath as he angled his head around Sam’s shoulder to see what his chief of staff’s body was hiding. “Peter,” he breathed. Looking back up towards the boy’s father, Pike asked sharply, “What the hell happened here?”
“When you called, I did what you ordered. Closed up the office and sent everyone home to their families. But the infection was quicker than we thought. It started right about the time you called to warn me. We decided it would be best to regroup here since we had everything we needed to make a stand until you could get back and lead the charge. Aurelan was helping me round everyone up. We were the last ones to make it back here. She tried to get to me and she almost made it. Got within a couple of blocks before she got caught. She knew it was bad, so she gave Peter the gun and then gave him a head start.”
“A head start?”
“You know what I mean. She provided a...distraction,” Kirk said quietly.
“She’s dead,” Chris concluded matter of factly.
“Yeah. I think I’ll hear that scream until the day I die.”
Pike closed his eyes. He’d seen enough to know how zombies fed on their prey. It was brutal and ugly and incredibly violent. “But what about your son? He’s okay, right?”
“For now, yeah.”
Chris felt his heart rate spike as he listened to Sam’s narrative. The boy laid out on the conference room table was pale, sweaty and struggling to pull in each shaky breath. Pike cocked his head to the side and reached out one gentle, fatherly hand. He smoothed back Peter’s matted hair, cringing as he felt the heat radiating off the boy in waves. He forced his eyes up, meeting Sam’s blank stare. “Is he...” Pike began, unable to actually finish the question.
Kirk opened his mouth to say something, but snapped it closed when no words were forthcoming. Instead, he pulled down the blanket that was covering Peter’s slight body and pointed to a mark near the child’s right shoulder. “It’s been almost a half a day since it happened. It won’t be long now, I don’t think.”
“No,” Chris breathed out, his hands suddenly shaking with rage and denial. “Goddammit!” he exclaimed even louder. He wanted to punch something, put his fist through what remained of his office. This shouldn’t be happening - not to Sam, not to Aurelan, not to anyone. But knee jerk reactions would get him nowhere and earn him nothing but broken bones for his troubles. So Pike took a deep breath and flexed his fists open and closed until the curtain of red behind eyes faded away. He walked over to Kirk and laid a gentle, fatherly hand on his chief of staff’s shoulder. Compassionate but firm, he said, “Tell me what happened, son.”
Sam’s head fell to his chest. “I wasn’t quick enough. I let myself listen for a half second to my wife. Peter was running towards me. He was so close. I reached out to grab him, but he got snagged by one on the ground. I shot it, but not before he bit my son’s shoulder. I brought him here because I didn't know what else to do. I hoped - I thought maybe we’d get lucky with...something. I don’t know. A miracle.”
It was a strange sensation. Equal parts confusion and helplessness, the thoughts rolling around Pike’s brain created a ball of dissonance that planted itself firmly in his gut. Licking his dry lips, Chris said the only thing that came to his mind. “Tell me what you need.”
Kirk’s chest heaved up and down silently while he fisted his hands through his hair. He paced about the room like a caged animal ready to fight or flee. “What do I need? I need for my life to go back to the way it was before all this shit. I need my old life back, where I had a wife who was very much alive and a son who isn’t dying. Barring that, I need a miracle. Do you happen to have any of those lying around?”
“Sorry. Fresh out,” Chris replied with a dramatic sweep of his hand.
He shook his head and gripped the table so hard his knuckles went white under his skin. Rubbing his hand over his face, Sam exhaled hard and said, “I’m sorry, Chris. You don’t deserve that. Target of convenience, I guess.”
“Better me than the zombies,” Pike snorted in return, allowing the room to fall into companionable silence. After working with Sam for so many years, he had a pretty good idea of what was going through the younger man’s head. Most of it centered around relief mixed with panic and laced with a healthy dose of fear. Pike thought he could do one of two things: he could feed Sam a bunch of lines, or he could be honest.
Further proving he wasn’t a typical Washington pundit, Chris never considered himself to be a very efficient liar.
Truth it was. Chris shifted his eyes over to Kirk and added, “You know I don’t bullshit and I don’t take things personally.”
“Yeah, that’s why I’ve stuck with you for so long. Despite what everyone says about you, you can be an asshole when you’re pissed.”
Pike let out a little snort at his long time assistant’s blunt but on point observation. Shifting his weight to his left foot, he said, “I wish I was the answer you were looking for. But I’m not. I’m just another guy, doing the best he can in the moment. Just like you, Sam.”
“For all the good it’s done me,” Sam added as the fight seeped from his tired body. He sank down to the floor, back against the (mostly intact) chunk of wall near the door. Kirk titled his head back and let it fall to the drywall, landing with a dull ‘thunk’. He closed his eyes, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down a couple of times as he swallowed harshly. “Actually, you do have one thing I would like.”
“Name it.”
“I need your advice, Chris,” he said without preamble.
“Of course,” Pike replied.
Opening his eyes, Sam searched for Chris’ stare and held it as he asked simply, “What should I do?”
Pike was confused; he wasn’t sure what Kirk meant by his statement. But as he followed Sam’s line eyes as it drifted towards his son, the question became indelibly clearer. Exhaling hard, Chris dropped his head to his hands and rubbed his eyes hard. “I don’t know,” he admitted breathlessly.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Kirk replied mirthlessly. He hauled himself to his feet and joined Pike at the side of the conference room table. Sam adjusted the blanket over his son’s trembling body and dabbed at the child’s sweat soaked forehead with a piece of torn cloth. He turned his back on Chris, reached into his pocket and extracted something. Hefting the object in his hands, Sam spun around to face Pike. “I’ve had this now for a while. It’s got one round left in it. I’m wondering if now would be a good time to use it.”
“Sam,” Pike warned lowly, edging his way towards his chief of staff, and closer to the gun Sam held loosely in his right hand. Gun safety was not even in Kirk’s conscious stream of thought; Sam’s finger was on the trigger while he pointed the weapon at his left shoulder, inspecting it as if it were some shiny new toy. “Let’s talk about this, okay?”
“I don’t think there’s anything left to talk about. I don’t want my son turning into one of those things. There’s no dignity in that. He deserves better.”
Pike let out a marginal sigh of relief when he realized that Kirk wasn’t planning on using the gun on himself. But as realization struck, Chris felt his stomach do yet another painful flip-flop in the middle of his chest. “I can’t let you do that, Mr. Kirk.”
Pike’s uncharacteristic deployment of formality caught his attention. Kirk stopped inspecting the silver .380 long enough to glare at his mentor and friend. “Why not? It’s that or I get to watch my son---” Sam said, trailing off as the words died in his throat.
“No, that’s not what I meant,” Chris said, stepping forward and removing the gun from Sam’s pliable fingers all in one swift motion. He held the other man’s wrist in his right hand and forced him to meet his gaze. In as steady a voice as he could muster, Chris looked Sam squarely in the eye and clarified, “I meant that, as Peter’s remaining parent, you’re not going to be the one that lives with that.”
“What are you suggesting?”
Chris forced down the fresh wave of nausea building in his throat as he looked towards the partially prostrate child on the conference room table. He pursed his lips into a thin, hard line and replied with a lot more confidence than he felt, “I’ll do it.”
“You’re going to live with this?”
Chris dipped his chin. “Better me than you.”
Kirk nodded his head, tears welling at the corners of his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak but clamped his jaw closed when his chin started to tremble. Sam sucked in a couple of deep breaths through his nose, composed himself and cleared his throat. Kirk’s gaze wandered from the gun in Pike’s hands to his deathly still child. Voice thick with emotion, he asked simply, “Why are you doing this, Chris?”
Pike sighed and let his gaze travel up the ceiling. “Karma, I guess, if such a thing still exists in this world. I suppose I hope that someone would do the same for me if it came to that.”
“You won’t let it go that far. I know you.”
“I hate to break it to you, Kirk. It doesn’t take much. One mistake, one moment of complacency and that’s all she wrote. ”
“Like my wife. Like my son,” Sam said with a sad smile, fiddling with the blankets covering Peter.
“Yeah, like your family,” Chris replied in an almost inaudible whisper. He cleared his throat and quietly moved towards the door. “I’m going to wait outside. Take your time and let me know when you’re ready,” he added, exiting without waiting for Sam’s response.
Clear of the conference room, Pike leaned his shoulders up against the crumbling drywall and stared up at the ceiling. The sad, pockmarked tiles blurred as the tears pooling at the corner of his eyes threatened to spill over. He swore internally. What the hell was he doing and - more importantly - who the hell was he fooling? ‘No one. This is crazy,’ Pike mentally acknowledged. It was true - he wasn’t trained for this kind of shit. Chris learned how to fight and kill enemies of all types, but was he really ready to shoot a child?
Even as an act of mercy, he wasn’t entirely certain the answer to that question was ‘yes’.
But he was shit out of other options, and he knew it. Even after all he’d been through, both in his past and now, the prospect was nearly overwhelming. Running on adrenaline alone, Pike’s shaking legs finally gave out. He fell gracelessly to the ground and landed with a light ‘thud’ on his ass. The stainless steel frame of the Sig Sauer .380 felt cold against his palm, his fingers numb and clumsy. Making a concerted effort to remove his index finger from the vicinity of the trigger, Pike carefully laid the gun on the floor next to him as he dropped his head to his knees. He let a couple of silent tears fall, watching as they hit the carpet and disappeared into the thick, high-traffic weave.
Chris let his thoughts wander to the man in the conference room. He had no idea what Sam saw in him; Pike was an average middle aged career-driven man, but even with the fancy title and the someone conspicuous background, he wasn’t anything special. Something he did, something he said, had earned him Sam Kirk’s loyalty and for that, he would be grateful for the rest of his life. And along the way, as he molded Kirk from a fresh-faced, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed college grad into the best staffer he could have ever asked for, Sam Kirk became his family. He became the son he never had but always dreamed about and he filled a gap in Pike’s personal life that Chris didn’t know was there.
Chris cared for Sam Kirk - loved him - like his own son.
And because of that, Pike felt like he was going to throw up.
But it would do Sam no good if the man he looked to for answers for everything in life - from women to the best booze to how to deal with a zombie apocalypse - fell apart before he could be useful. So Chris wiped his eyes and literally ordered his stomach not to expel its contents on to the floor before he straightened his posture. The glint off the Sig caught his attention. Pike reached out, ejected the magazine and cleared the slide, ensuring that there really was only one bullet left. He chambered the round, racked the slide and shoved it in the waistband of his pants. Climbing to his feet, Pike was in the middle of stretching his shoulders when Sam exited the conference room.
Chris stopped in his tracks. An unintended glimmer of trepidation flashed momentarily across his handsome features before he corralled it, locking it away with his own personal fears. He swallowed hard and asked simply, “Is it time?”
Unable to speak past the giant softball lodged in his throat, Kirk simply nodded.
Pike laid his hand on Sam’s shoulder as he passed. He stopped, squeezed Kirk hard enough to feel his collarbone and whispered in his ear, “This is the right thing, Sam. He won’t suffer any more. I promise you. I’ll make it count.”
“Yeah,” Kirk choked out.
“Do you want to be in the room?”
Sam turned his red rimmed, puffy and bloodshot eyes towards his mentor. In a tiny voice, he admitted, “I don’t know if I can. God, I’m such a coward.”
“No,” Pike began firmly. “You’re a parent. A good one at that. Never forget that.”
“I’ll work on that.”
“Okay,” Pike said, more for the benefit of himself than Kirk. “Okay.”
Stepping through the door, Chris took a deep breath. On unsteady legs, he walked towards Peter. Though Pike gave up religion years ago, he cursed God and any other deities who happened to be listening with each step to the seventh circle of hell for allowing this mess to take a child’s life. Chris stopped in front of the table and reached out, laying one large hand over Peter’s forehead. The boy was completely and utterly still, such a contrast to the vibrant child that had gleefully raced RC cars down the hallway of the office and who enjoyed playing hide and seek with anyone willing to entertain him. There was no smile, there was no laughing. There was only...nothing.
Chris pulled Peter’s slender wrist from under the covers, checking for a pulse as he’d been taught in basic training. At first, he felt nothing but then after he held his own breath, he felt the tick of an unsteady, erratic and deathly slow pulse under his fingertips. Chris reached out and laid his left hand on Peter’s chest, waiting for the intake and exhale of Kirk’s chest to move his hand. He stood stock still for what seemed like an eternity but was rewarded by nothing but stillness. Chris sighed, bit the inside of his mouth hard enough to draw blood, and folded the boy’s hands neatly over his chest. It was the only thing he could think do; at least there would be a little dignity in death, not there was much of that to be found of late.
Shaking his hands out, Pike pulled the small Sig from the waistband of his pants. He gripped the pistol as he’d been taught, cursing the slight tremor he could feel in his left hand. He flexed his fingers, steadied the gun and took careful aim at Peter’s left temple. Looking up towards the ceiling, Chris whispered, “God, forgive me for this.”
And pulled the trigger.
The sound felt like a hard punch to the solar plexus. For a moment, Chris couldn’t move. He couldn’t breath, he couldn’t speak, he couldn't even blink. Blood rushed through his body at warp speed, muffling out every other sound. His heart felt like it was about to explode if he took one more goddamned breath. His diaphragm was now perfectly at home in his throat, and his vision was greying out at the edges.
The gun fell from his numb fingers and bounced off the carpet, spinning uselessly across the floor. Pike staggered towards the corner of the room and retched, throwing up nothing but water. He remembered the feeling of gnawing hunger coupled with fear, so present as he walked into his old office. Now food seemed like the least appetizing thing on the face of the earth. Or what remained of earth.
Wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, Pike reigned in control of his runaway emotions and forced his feet to take him towards Peter. He brushed a couple of pieces of hair to the side as he smiled sadly. From his angle, it looked as if the boy was simply sleeping; the evidence of Pike’s actions was only visible from the left side. Chris ran his hand over Peter’s face one last time, reached for the blanket, and drew it over Kirk’s still form.
Chris exited the room and searched the hallway for Sam. The whole building was completely silent. Pike cursed, wondering if Sam split while he was doing the deed. He stuck his head in every single office, working his way from the proverbial bow of the office to the stern. Chris was just about to give into the panic welling in his chest when a flicker of movement caught his eye. He pushed open the door to his office and slowly approached the figure huddled on the floor.
With his back to the door, Kirk couldn’t see who was standing behind him. But he knew, just like he always did, when his boss was in the vicinity. Sam stared blankly out at the area where Pike’s oversized bay window used to be. After a couple long beats, he finally said, “I always liked your office, Chris. It’s so bright.”
Pike looked past the shattered window and to the street three levels below. Outside, birds chirped. He could hear the wind floating among the grass, and he could smell the salty sweetness of the beach and the ocean not too far away. Chris closed his eyes as he thought of all the things that used to seem so normal, so mundane that now existed only in his dreams. “I did, too.” He stopped a couple of feet in front of Sam. Motioning with his hand, Pike asked, “Permission to sit?”
Kirk’s head bobbed up and down once as he scooted over to make some room. “Granted.”
“Sam, I know there's nothing I can say that will make this right,” Pike began, breaking the silence after a couple of long minutes, “but if there's anything I can do, just name it.”
Sam licked his dry lips, tension pulling at the corners of his eyes. “I think I just need to make my peace with it. Easier said than done,” Kirk replied, shaking his head ruefully as he plucked away at a bare spot on the carpet.
Pike nodded, clenching and unclenching his jaw as more emotions roiled just under the visible surface. “You know I’m always going to here for you, even if it’s just to listen.”
Kirk went silent and still as a stone. His gaze dipped down to his hand, spinning the gold wedding band on his left ring finger in nervous circles. “Chris, with all due respect, do me a favor and shut the fuck up. I don’t know if I can handle your pity right now.”
Taken aback for a half a breath, Chris closed his mouth and dropped his chin to his chest. He stole a glance over at his subordinate and suppressed a sigh. What his arrhythmic heart wanted so badly to do - to reach out to Sam and hug him, hell even give him a firm clap on the shoulder - wasn’t what his brain deemed appropriate. Pike could see the barely restrained hold Kirk had over his emotions and he didn’t want to be cause that unleashed the emotional tidal wave. Not after the day Kirk had been through. Not yet. It would have been too much too soon and Pike knew it.
Still, it was discomforting for him as a politician. Christopher Pike the politician was never at a loss for words. He always came prepared with the proper words or that just right phrase or idea that would resonate with the masses. But this time, Chris Pike, simple guy and zombie apocalypse survivor, was at a loss. All he needed was the right words to resonate with a single person, and he couldn't even muster that.
Pike cleared his throat, placed his hands in his lap and replied simply, “Understood.”
Some of the tension fled from Kirk’s body. He pulled his knees to his chest and, without turning towards his boss, simply said, “Thanks.”
He didn’t have to say it. Chris knew it, and Sam knew Chris understood the clear double meaning behind that one simple word. ‘Thanks’ meant so much more than, ‘Thank you for teaching me,’ or, ‘Thanks for doing what I couldn’t with Peter,’ or, ‘Thanks for coming back for us when I know you didn’t have to,’ or, ‘Thanks for knowing what I need or don’t need in ever single moment of life.‘ This time, ‘Thanks’ meant ‘Thank you for being a friend.’
It wasn’t much, but it was all he had left to offer. As the two men sat in silence, staring out a demolished window at an equally demolished world, Chris Pike realized that for the first time in his life, one simple word was enough.
It would do, for now.
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Next Up: Sam makes a request. Pike can't refuse; though in retrospect, it might have been smarter to have walked away.