Inception fic: Justement, Je Regrette Les Zombies (5/14)
Title: Justement, Je Regrette Les Zombies (5/14)
Fandom/Pairing: Inception, Arthur/Eames
Overall Rating: PG-13
Overall Warnings: Language, violence, character un-death
Wordcount: 4,790
Notes: After a thoroughly exhausting yesterday, there is nothing that brings me greater joy than to bring you Chapter 5! Oh, wonderful towel_master, how I adore thee.
Chapter One
Summary: After college, all Arthur wanted to do was live a normal life hacking into government databases. But if the flesh-hungry zombies are any indication, the universe has different plans.
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Previous Chapter
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November 4, 2013: Present Day, half an hour earlier
The apartment building loomed before Arthur like a skeleton; a bare, empty shell. He could already make out the shapes of at least five infected by the doors, and the street before it was so packed with wrecked cars that driving was definitely out of the question-so he set his mind on a stealthy approach and parked a ways away, hoping not to draw attention to himself.
He was tired. God, he was tired. But his mind refused to rest until he found out if Ariadne was all right, and by the looks of the building, she was either gone or…gone. He shook his head, focusing instead on loading and holstering his guns.
As a last minute thought, he picked up the axe as well.
He was forced to simply abandon his Beretta when the bullets ran out. He didn’t have time to reload, and he was too busy dodging the attack of an oncoming zombie to worry about holstering it properly. The zombie ran at him from the side, out of a patch of darkness where, on a normal day, there would have been a streetlamp illuminating the area. The zombie was half mad, snarling at him and making small noises that were too eerily close to screams for Arthur’s tastes. He knocked it far enough away with the flat of his axe to take a shot.
It took two to knock it down.
He knew he had wasted a few shots, but it was already late night and quite dark. The meager light from a still-glowing neon sign wasn’t lending itself to accurate vision. Wary of the shapes he could see sneaking around farther off down the shadowy street, Arthur ducked through the blood-spattered remains of the apartment building’s front doors.
It was lucky for him that the few infected crowding the hall inside were too focused on the inner organs of a middle-aged woman to pay much attention to him. He dropped all of them with well-aimed shots, the narrow hallway too thin for them run at him more than two at a time.
When the last of the zombies had stopped twitching, Arthur paused to listen. He could hear what sounded like screams ringing down from the next level, echoing out from the stairway six gaping doorways away. The empty eyes of the abandoned rooms stared at him, blinking in and out of existence as the lights above guttered.
Holding his Glock more firmly, Arthur refused to admit to himself that his hand was white-knuckled on the grip from fear of what could possibly lurk just out of his view, hidden away in the dark corners of the chambers along his path.
The first two held no surprises.
From the third emerged two children, crouched and snarling and dripping gore from their mouths as they gnashed their teeth at him. He took down the first boy by firing into his eyes socket, momentarily filling the hole where the eye should have been with hot lead and blood. The second screeched at him, then, and Arthur wasn’t sure whether it was from anger or loss or simply nothing at all.
He didn’t care to find out.
When it ducked below the first swing of his axe, the zombie child very nearly got its teeth into Arthur’s leg. He managed to dance a few short steps back, but he didn’t have enough space to go at it with his axe again and it was moving too quickly towards him for him to even try to shoot it.
He kicked it in the face, instead.
The force of the blow was enough to make the zombie stagger back, its nose broken and sluggishly oozing as it bared its teeth at Arthur once again. Its face was still fixed like that as it fell to the ground with a new hole in its forehead courtesy of Arthur’s gun.
The last three rooms he passed were well and truly empty, something he was thankful for as the screams from the story above grew louder.
“Please be all right, Ariadne,” he whispered, taking the stairs two at a time.
He cleared the first floor.
-ooo-
“Does that sound like gunshots to you?” Ariadne asked, staring up from where she was carefully packing cans into a box. She turned her frightened eyes to the door. “You don’t think they’re using guns now, do you?”
“As far as I’ve observed, the undead have no taste for guns. But it’s always a possibility, I suppose,” Eames said with narrowed eyes. He picked up his own gun from the coffee table. “There haven’t been any healthy people around for hours now, so are they killing each other? Over territory, perhaps?”
“Just like wild beasts,” Ariadne sighed, and then she wrapped her arms around herself. “God, why is this happening?”
For a moment, Eames feared she would cry, but she didn’t. Resolutely, she wiped her eyes and turned back to her box.
“Well, fuck this, then. Life goes on, right? I’m going to live through this.”
Eames was about to smile encouragingly at her until they both heard something that made them freeze.
“-ne? Ariadne?”
-ooo-
“Ariadne!” Arthur yelled, kicking the woman in the chest and away from him, further down the empty hallway. It stumbled back, screeching, arms flailing, until coming to an abrupt halt as it collided with the door of apartment 117 and sank to the ground.
“Ariadne, are you still here?” He jumped back a few feet closer to the stairs to avoid the dive of a second zombie, one that looked to have been sixteen, maybe seventeen at most before being turned. It forced him to retreat clumsily, running into a hanging lightbulb, causing it to swing crazily and cast distracting shadows as it rocked back and forth from the impact. The light bounced around the seeming miles of open rooms, drawing his eyes to anything that looked like motion.
It made him think they were coming from everywhere.
“Ariadne!”
He fired his gun twice before it gave him the hollow sound that signaled he was out of bullets. Arthur swore violently as another zombie-a man of about thirty, once-appeared from one of the half-open doors, and he swiveled just in time to see it block the stairs he had just emerged from. With it before him and the two infected behind him, he was trapped.
Arthur angled his body sideways, trying to keep all three of the zombies in sight, but he wouldn’t be able to hold all of them off, and he knew it. By the stairs, the most recent arrival grinned, blood running down its chin as it silently celebrated the victory over its prey, and lunged for Arthur’s throat.
Then, suddenly, a gunshot rang out to silence the cries of the woman.
The abrupt quiet momentarily disoriented the zombie from the stairs, allowing Arthur enough time to get the axe up between them. He didn’t have time to worry about exactly who was shooting right now, because he was interested in living.
When the teen fell to the mysterious shooter as well, Arthur was finally able to push the infected man far enough away from himself to decapitate, freezing the zombie’s eyes open in eternal shock as the head and shoulders parted ways.
He drew his gun, leveling it at the two newcomers in the hallway, expecting a fight and knowing he was screwed if they wanted one. He was out of bullets, and they were not. It was simple logic.
Relief hit him like a shot to the chest.
‘James,’ he thought, his frazzled mind finally latching on to something. ‘Jesus Christ he’s alive, he’s safe, he’s all right…’ It would be embarrassing for him, later-if he was ever forced to admit it, that is-that he didn’t even see Ariadne at first, too focused on seeing his…ex alive and well.
“Darling, you look gorgeous as always.”
-oooxooo-
November 5, 2013
“The hell you are! I’m not letting you take her anywhere you irresponsible-”
“Oh, I’m irresponsible, am I? And who’s the one who’s trying to drag her into a war zone to find someone she doesn’t even know? I’ll give you a hint: It’s not me!”
“I’m not dragging her into a war zone, I’m keeping her safe! At least I’m reliable! You just disappear all the time, ending up God knows where without so much as a phone call-”
“A phone call? Well the phone works both ways! You never tried to-”
“Never tried to what?! I must have left you a dozen messages you fucking-”
“Guys!”
Arthur and Eames turned, still fuming, to glare at Ariadne. A livid flush had risen into her cheeks, and she glared right back at them. Finally, she breathed in slowly and exhaled, crossing her arms over her chest.
“‘She’ can decide what she wants to do for herself, you know. She is twenty-two.”
Arthur sighed and ran a hand through his hair, knocking the already disarrayed strands further out of place. “Yes, I know. I’m sorry, Ariadne. I should have asked you what you wanted to do.”
“You’re right, pet,” Eames agreed, but not with Arthur-no, never with Arthur. “It is your life. Who do you want to go with? Or would you rather strike out on your own?”
They were both looking at her expectantly, both completely ignoring the other, and Ariadne let out a frustrated groan. “Oh come on, guys. It’s the end of the world! The freakin’ end of the world and you two are turning it into some testosterone-fueled spat about what, exactly?” She shook her head and closed her eyes, disappointed.
When she opened them again, Arthur and Eames were looking properly chastened. Eames was gazing out the window, at anything but her and Arthur, and Arthur was adjusting his tie with his eyes downcast.
“Sorry,” he said again, finally dropping the fabric and running a hand over his face. “You’re right. What would you like to do?”
“Well, what are my options?” she asked. “Where are you both headed?”
“I’m headed out towards LA,” Arthur answered. “I have a friend there, with a family, and I need to make sure that they’re all right.”
“I’m headed out to Colorado,” Eames said, finally stepping away from Arthur to pick up one of the guns on the coffee table. He had already cleaned all of them, and as many of Arthur’s as he could get through without the hacker snapping at him, but he was still restless. He wanted to leave now.
“Colorado?” asked Ariadne, a little surprised. “Not Sewickley Heights? I thought that’s where you said you were headed earlier.”
“That was where I was headed earlier,” the Brit said with a shrug. “Not anymore.”
“Colorado?” Arthur asked, too, but with the ghost of a smile. “I seem to recall that you’re highly wanted in Colorado. For that Ponzi scheme, if I remember correctly.”
And even though they had been just about to rip each other’s throats out a second ago, Eames laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling in an endearing way that had Ariadne wondering exactly what kind of history these two had.
“Ah, yes. That was singularly successful venture, wasn’t it, love?” the conman sighed, smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “You would be wanted there, too, if you hadn’t skipped town earlier that morning.” His eyes were fond as they settled on Arthur again.
Arthur’s eyes had similarly softened, head tilted to one side as he…relaxed. His shoulders lost their tension as he chuckled, shaking his head. “I told you to pull out sooner. They nearly caught you, getting onto that train.”
“If I’d pulled out sooner, we wouldn’t have gotten as much out of it,” Eames interjected. “Besides, I never get caught.”
“You nearly did,” Arthur jabbed, tension flowing back into his shoulders as he stood up a little straighter.
“Yes, well, I didn’t, Arthur. And because of that, we each got over ten million. Or had you forgotten that part?” Eames had narrowed his eyes now, and was regarding Arthur with a silent challenge in the air between them.
“Forgotten? Forgotten seeing you nearly get dragged away to spend twenty years or more in a tiny prison cell with no hope of bail or probation? How the hell could I forget-” Arthur stopped talking and scrubbed a hand across his eyes.
Ariadne watched with a slightly open mouth, blinking rapidly and trying to get off the emotional rollercoaster she seemed to have unwittingly stumbled onto. One minute these two were reminiscing about the ‘good old days’, and the next they were tearing each other apart!
Looking at them now, Ariadne knew why Arthur had never looked at her twice, even when she’d hoped he would. They must have been seriously in love for the fallout to have been this bad.
“Darling, how long has it been since you slept?” Eames asked suddenly, gently, further surprising Ariadne with the simple depth of the concern in his voice. He crossed over to place an unobtrusive, supporting hand on Arthur’s lower back, and the hacker leaned into him instinctively, savoring the warmth.
“Too long,” was his only answer. “It’s been a hell of a day.”
“A hell of a day and three hours,” Ariadne corrected, somewhat cheekily, rolling her shoulders in a stretch. She and Eames had taken turns napping earlier, so she sympathized with her obviously over-tired friend. “You know, it might be a bad idea to suggest this, but why don’t we all go together? I mean, Colorado and LA are in the same direction. Wouldn’t it be safer for all of us to travel in the same car? Watch each other’s backs and all that?”
She watched as Eames considered this, his hand rubbing distracted, soothing circles on Arthur’s back until the hacker had all but collapsed against him, leaning his head into the junction of Eames’s neck and shoulder.
“Well, I suppose you have a point, pet,” the conman finally conceded, laying his cheek against the top of Arthur’s head for a brief second before straightening a little. “Come on, Arty,” he whispered. “You can sleep in the car. Come on.”
For a moment, the only noise Arthur made was a grudging one as he shifted a little closer to Eames, who laughed. Then Eames gently shook Arthur’s shoulder until the slighter man wearily blinked his eyes open. Ariadne expected-well, to be honest, she expected a dramatic leap away. But instead Arthur just sighed, not even making a move to get Eames’s hand off his back.
Together, the two men began loading the guns into a bag, talking quietly with each other as Ariadne finished packing the rest of the food into a box. The way they oriented their bodies towards each other was interesting. Maybe she’d been wrong about their relationship.
Maybe they’d never broken up.
The walk to the car was surprisingly uneventful, with only two or three infected to deal with. Arthur muttered something about greener pastures as he helped load the guns and food into the backseat before Eames all but shoved him into the car.
“Sleep,” Eames said, taking off his coat and laying it over Arthur. “I’ll drive.”
Arthur protested quietly, but subsided quickly enough, absentmindedly tugging the coat closer around his shoulders and shifting into a more comfortable position before suddenly sitting up again.
“Here,” he said, pulling a lighter out of his pocket and handing to Eames. “You forgot this, in Prussia. I-I’ve kept it for you.” He settled back into the seat again once the lighter was safely in Eames hand, turning his face away so he wouldn’t have to look at Eames and whatever expression he was making.
Eames’s eyes were soft again as he gently shut the door, and then turned to Ariadne.
“Coming, then?” he asked, and she nodded. Climbing into the passenger seat, Ariadne glanced at her apartment building in the rearview mirror. Then she buckled her seatbelt and turned to Eames in driver’s seat.
“Let’s go.”
-ooo-
When Arthur woke, it was because the car had stopped. He checked to make sure that his gun was still tucked into his holster, and then flicked his gaze to the faintly glowing display of the car’s digital clock.
Nine, just about.
So, he’d slept for six hours, give or take. He didn’t feel all that rested, but he did feel a little clearer. He jumped a little when there was a tap on the glass. It was Eames, leaning into view with a smile on his face. Past him out the window Arthur could see Ariadne, mouth pressed into a thin line.
“Time to get up.”
Arthur could barely hear him through the glass, but he got the general gist of the statement from the smirk on Eames’s face. After a second of disgruntled shifting, Arthur got the door open and stepped out into the weak autumn sunlight.
“Why have we stopped?” he asked, shaking off the hand Eames had put on his elbow to steady his half-asleep legs.
“Ariadne has to go to the bathroom. I wasn’t going to let her go in alone, and I wasn’t just going to leave you sleeping in the car, even If I did crack a window…”
“Yeah, uh, can we go now?” Ariadne asked, shifting her weight from foot to foot irritably. “We can chat later.”
“Right,” Arthur said, and reached back into the car for his axe. He’d grown rather fond of it, and it was useful. He checked his gun’s magazine, put another one in his pocket, and nodded for them to lead the way.
The rest stop was seemingly deserted as they walked the long, bare expanse of the parking lot toward the building. Arthur checked every car, though, just to be safe. They didn’t need any nasty surprises, no matter how badly Ariadne had to go to the bathroom.
Luckily for them, it seemed that most of the zombies had moved on, leaving only seven or eight of them behind in the building. The companions managed to sneak past three of them, not wanting to shoot for fear of alerting the rest to their existence.
They were noticed anyway, of course.
Eames ducked around the tackle of a maintenance man who had come at him too quickly for Eames to take aim. There was no time for Eames to even raise his gun before the zombie charged at him again, almost knocking him off-balance.
“Eames!” Arthur shouted from where he was prying his axe out of the juncture of a shopper’s neck and shoulder. “Catch!”
Eames looked up just in time to see the crowbar Arthur was throwing come flying at him. Luckily, it missed his own head and hit his attacker in the throat, sending it back the few inches Eames needed to get his footing again.
“Where the hell did that come from?” Eames barked in irritation. “And more importantly, why the hell did you throw it at my head?”
“Shut up and use it!”
Eames dipped down to snatch the crowbar from the floor, straightening in time to catch the maintenance man with the backswing. The hook of the bar made a rather unappetizing sound as it dug into the infected’s skull, but it had the effect Eames was hoping for.
The zombie dropped and stopped moving.
Eames huffed and looked up from checking to make sure it was dead to see how the other two were faring. Ariadne had finished off one zombie with a few bullets to the brain and was currently beating the head of another against the fake brick wall. Arthur was dissecting his third with rather messy efficiency, eyes narrowed and completely focused on the task at hand.
He was lucky that Eames saw the last two infected come vaulting over the counter of the Auntie Em behind him.
“Duck!” Eames screamed at him, and Arthur didn’t even think before he dropped to his knees on the ground to give Eames the space he needed to take out the last two undead, silencing their breathless shrieks forever.
He couldn’t help but grin at the face Arthur made when a bit of the resulting gore hit him in the back of the head as the zombies collapsed around him.
“You all right, Ariadne?” Eames asked, lowering his gun and looking over to where she was just letting her last kill fall to the ground.
“Yup,” she said. “You?”
“I’d be better if Arthur hadn’t tried to kill me,” Eames responded, but his voice held nothing but a light tease as he extended his hand to help Arthur up.
“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Arthur snorted, accepting the hand and releasing it a second too late. He forced attention away from his slightly colored cheeks by nodding to the crowbar now protruding from a zombie’s head. “See if you can get that out. It could be handy.”
Eames walked back over to it and pulled, bracing his foot on the infected’s temple. After a few tries and once of Arthur’s beautifully slim eyebrows raising, he finally got it free with a sick kind of squelch.
“Where did you even find this?” he asked, turning back to Arthur with the crowbar over his shoulder. “I’m one hundred percent positive you didn’t have it with you when you came in.”
Arthur shrugged. “On the floor. Some poor bastard probably dropped it while he was busy getting his flesh ripped off.”
“Well that’s a wonderful image, Arthur, thank you,” Eames muttered, his mouth twisting.
“You’re welcome, Eames. And as for another thing-”
“Okay, this is all great, but I have to pee,” Ariadne interrupted, suddenly. “So if you two don’t mind, I’ll meet you back here in a few.” With that, she quickly jogged past the sign reading Women, leaving Eames and Arthur alone.
After a few seconds of awkward silence, Arthur sighed, “Well, we might as well get cleaned up, at least. And thank you for the wonderful addition of zombie blood to my hair. I’m sure it looks great.”
“You look fine,” Eames said, grinning. “Always.”
-o-
Arthur leaned back against the counter of the McDonald’s when he and Eames returned from the men’s room, trying in vain to stop the yawn he could feel creeping up on him. When he lost the battle, Eames chuckled and earned himself a glare.
“Oh come off it, darling,” the conman sighed. “Just because we don’t like each other doesn’t mean we have to fight all the time.” His eyes bored into Arthur, willing the younger man to respond.
“It’s not that I don’t like you, Eames,” Arthur said, sounding a little exasperated. “It’s just that we don’t get along.”
“Well, you could have fooled me, Arthur,” Eames said irritably. “And what, pray tell, is the difference between those two things? Especially with you?”
“What do you mean ‘especially with me?’ I’ll have you know that there are very distinct differences! I do like you. I’m only arguing with you because you’re arguing with me.” Arthur wasn’t leaning against the counter anymore. He was standing firmly, eyes locked on Eames.
“That doesn’t make sense!” Eames exploded. “I’m not arguing with you! I don’t want to argue with you! In fact, I think I like you better with your mouth closed. Darling.”
From where she stood about five yards away, partially concealed behind a blood-spattered rack of cheap sunglasses, Ariadne watched and shook her head. The only thing wrong with these two was their lack of communication. She wondered if they’d ever figure it out.
“Oh do you?” Arthur spat. “Well maybe you’d like it if I-oh, Ariadne.” Arthur tugged his vest straight again, absently, as if he were trying to smooth out his aggravation with Eames. “All set? Time to go, then.”
He turned on his heel and left the building.
-oooxooo-
November 7, 2013: 12:00 pm, 960 miles from destination
“So, where exactly in Colorado are we going?” Arthur asked, finally breaking the hours-long silence that had settled between him and Eames while Ariadne napped in the back. It wasn’t that he particularly wanted to talk to Eames, it was just…he wanted to talk to Eames.
Really talk. Not argue.
He hoped that didn’t make him as pathetic as he felt.
“A tiny town called Bonanza. It only has a population of 14 people, and one of them is the man I’m looking for.” Eames steadily handled the car around another empty van left in the middle of the road, not looking at Arthur.
“And who is that, exactly?” Arthur prodded, sounding a little accusing. He hated not knowing things. “You were less than forthcoming with information earlier.”
“I just didn’t think you’d want Ariadne here to know about your criminal activities, Arthur,” Eames said, rolling his eyes. “She knows I’m one, and I figured that was enough of a shock for her already.”
“Yeah, fair enough I guess,” Arthur said, shrugging a little. “That still doesn’t change the fact that you haven’t told me who he is.”
“His name is Yusuf,” Eames said. “He was a chemist who worked with the government before he ruffled a few feathers and nearly got spirited away in the back of a black van.”
“I assume you’re responsible for that,” Arthur said, crooking a half-smile at Eames before catching himself and turning his frown back at the dashboard. “Why are we going to find him?”
“Because he’s brilliant. If there’s anyone who can make a cure for this…this thing, it’s Yusuf.” Eames slid his gaze over to Arthur, looking at him out of the corner of his eye. “And I’ll have you know, the trouble he got into was of his own making, no help from me.”
“I see,” was all Arthur had to say to that. Silence fell, smothering, until he sighed. “So, Bonanza? That’s…nine hundred and sixty miles from here, just about.” Arthur kept his eyes fixed out the window, not looking at Eames. He was a little startled by Eames’s laugh.
“Only you, darling,” the conman chuckled, and just like that, the tension was broken. “Only you would know how many miles from here it is to a Podunk town in Colorado.”
“Well, forgive me for wanting to know how many hours I’m going to be stuck in a car with you,” Arthur said, but his words held nothing but amusement. “God forbid I have to be here longer than necessary.”
“Oh yes, God forbid.” Eames laughed again, and glanced over at Arthur. He was infinitely pleased to find the hacker’s mouth pulled into a smile, and grinned wider when he caught Arthur’s eye. “How long has it been since we roadtripped, Arthur?” he asked, levity dancing in his words.
“Do you mean for fun, or for work?”
“It was always fun with you, darling,” Eames answered, and they both paused. There had been an uncomfortable amount of truth in that statement, and not just about traveling. So, instead of looking at each other, Eames focused on the road in front of them and Arthur counted the number of zombies he could see shambling along in the line of tress by the edge of the highway.
“I’d place it at about…eleven months ago,” Arthur said, finally, and Eames took a minute to wonder if he was just throwing a date out there before Arthur continued. “Beirut. We were stuck in the car together for twelve hours, running from the police. Remember?”
“Of course I do, darling. But wasn’t there that time in San Diego only a few months ago?”
“That doesn’t count, since we were only driving for half an hour.” Arthur argued lightly, more teasing than anything else.
“It does too count!” Eames protested, and then they were off again, both too angry to really be fighting over what did or did not count as a roadtrip, based on driving time and distance covered. ‘Do you remember that time we were driving from here to there, and we were so happy?’ every barb seemed to say. ‘Do you? Why you’d have to go and ruin it? Why did I?’
Silence settled thickly over them once the snarking had stopped. It seemed more permanent than the one before, and had the potential to bleed into uncomfortable at any second. But then, after a moment’s hesitation, Eames reached over and laced his fingers with Arthur’s, keeping the other hand firmly on the wheel and his eyes forward.
After a minute, Arthur curled his fingers around Eames’s hand and turned his eyes out the window once more.
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Next Chapter
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So far, this one's my favorite. :) A HUGE thanks to towel_master for getting me out of repetitive combat! I had fun with that crowbar. ;)
Hope you all enjoyed, and see you next week!
Fandom/Pairing: Inception, Arthur/Eames
Overall Rating: PG-13
Overall Warnings: Language, violence, character un-death
Wordcount: 4,790
Notes: After a thoroughly exhausting yesterday, there is nothing that brings me greater joy than to bring you Chapter 5! Oh, wonderful towel_master, how I adore thee.
Chapter One
Summary: After college, all Arthur wanted to do was live a normal life hacking into government databases. But if the flesh-hungry zombies are any indication, the universe has different plans.
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Previous Chapter
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November 4, 2013: Present Day, half an hour earlier
The apartment building loomed before Arthur like a skeleton; a bare, empty shell. He could already make out the shapes of at least five infected by the doors, and the street before it was so packed with wrecked cars that driving was definitely out of the question-so he set his mind on a stealthy approach and parked a ways away, hoping not to draw attention to himself.
He was tired. God, he was tired. But his mind refused to rest until he found out if Ariadne was all right, and by the looks of the building, she was either gone or…gone. He shook his head, focusing instead on loading and holstering his guns.
As a last minute thought, he picked up the axe as well.
He was forced to simply abandon his Beretta when the bullets ran out. He didn’t have time to reload, and he was too busy dodging the attack of an oncoming zombie to worry about holstering it properly. The zombie ran at him from the side, out of a patch of darkness where, on a normal day, there would have been a streetlamp illuminating the area. The zombie was half mad, snarling at him and making small noises that were too eerily close to screams for Arthur’s tastes. He knocked it far enough away with the flat of his axe to take a shot.
It took two to knock it down.
He knew he had wasted a few shots, but it was already late night and quite dark. The meager light from a still-glowing neon sign wasn’t lending itself to accurate vision. Wary of the shapes he could see sneaking around farther off down the shadowy street, Arthur ducked through the blood-spattered remains of the apartment building’s front doors.
It was lucky for him that the few infected crowding the hall inside were too focused on the inner organs of a middle-aged woman to pay much attention to him. He dropped all of them with well-aimed shots, the narrow hallway too thin for them run at him more than two at a time.
When the last of the zombies had stopped twitching, Arthur paused to listen. He could hear what sounded like screams ringing down from the next level, echoing out from the stairway six gaping doorways away. The empty eyes of the abandoned rooms stared at him, blinking in and out of existence as the lights above guttered.
Holding his Glock more firmly, Arthur refused to admit to himself that his hand was white-knuckled on the grip from fear of what could possibly lurk just out of his view, hidden away in the dark corners of the chambers along his path.
The first two held no surprises.
From the third emerged two children, crouched and snarling and dripping gore from their mouths as they gnashed their teeth at him. He took down the first boy by firing into his eyes socket, momentarily filling the hole where the eye should have been with hot lead and blood. The second screeched at him, then, and Arthur wasn’t sure whether it was from anger or loss or simply nothing at all.
He didn’t care to find out.
When it ducked below the first swing of his axe, the zombie child very nearly got its teeth into Arthur’s leg. He managed to dance a few short steps back, but he didn’t have enough space to go at it with his axe again and it was moving too quickly towards him for him to even try to shoot it.
He kicked it in the face, instead.
The force of the blow was enough to make the zombie stagger back, its nose broken and sluggishly oozing as it bared its teeth at Arthur once again. Its face was still fixed like that as it fell to the ground with a new hole in its forehead courtesy of Arthur’s gun.
The last three rooms he passed were well and truly empty, something he was thankful for as the screams from the story above grew louder.
“Please be all right, Ariadne,” he whispered, taking the stairs two at a time.
He cleared the first floor.
-ooo-
“Does that sound like gunshots to you?” Ariadne asked, staring up from where she was carefully packing cans into a box. She turned her frightened eyes to the door. “You don’t think they’re using guns now, do you?”
“As far as I’ve observed, the undead have no taste for guns. But it’s always a possibility, I suppose,” Eames said with narrowed eyes. He picked up his own gun from the coffee table. “There haven’t been any healthy people around for hours now, so are they killing each other? Over territory, perhaps?”
“Just like wild beasts,” Ariadne sighed, and then she wrapped her arms around herself. “God, why is this happening?”
For a moment, Eames feared she would cry, but she didn’t. Resolutely, she wiped her eyes and turned back to her box.
“Well, fuck this, then. Life goes on, right? I’m going to live through this.”
Eames was about to smile encouragingly at her until they both heard something that made them freeze.
“-ne? Ariadne?”
-ooo-
“Ariadne!” Arthur yelled, kicking the woman in the chest and away from him, further down the empty hallway. It stumbled back, screeching, arms flailing, until coming to an abrupt halt as it collided with the door of apartment 117 and sank to the ground.
“Ariadne, are you still here?” He jumped back a few feet closer to the stairs to avoid the dive of a second zombie, one that looked to have been sixteen, maybe seventeen at most before being turned. It forced him to retreat clumsily, running into a hanging lightbulb, causing it to swing crazily and cast distracting shadows as it rocked back and forth from the impact. The light bounced around the seeming miles of open rooms, drawing his eyes to anything that looked like motion.
It made him think they were coming from everywhere.
“Ariadne!”
He fired his gun twice before it gave him the hollow sound that signaled he was out of bullets. Arthur swore violently as another zombie-a man of about thirty, once-appeared from one of the half-open doors, and he swiveled just in time to see it block the stairs he had just emerged from. With it before him and the two infected behind him, he was trapped.
Arthur angled his body sideways, trying to keep all three of the zombies in sight, but he wouldn’t be able to hold all of them off, and he knew it. By the stairs, the most recent arrival grinned, blood running down its chin as it silently celebrated the victory over its prey, and lunged for Arthur’s throat.
Then, suddenly, a gunshot rang out to silence the cries of the woman.
The abrupt quiet momentarily disoriented the zombie from the stairs, allowing Arthur enough time to get the axe up between them. He didn’t have time to worry about exactly who was shooting right now, because he was interested in living.
When the teen fell to the mysterious shooter as well, Arthur was finally able to push the infected man far enough away from himself to decapitate, freezing the zombie’s eyes open in eternal shock as the head and shoulders parted ways.
He drew his gun, leveling it at the two newcomers in the hallway, expecting a fight and knowing he was screwed if they wanted one. He was out of bullets, and they were not. It was simple logic.
Relief hit him like a shot to the chest.
‘James,’ he thought, his frazzled mind finally latching on to something. ‘Jesus Christ he’s alive, he’s safe, he’s all right…’ It would be embarrassing for him, later-if he was ever forced to admit it, that is-that he didn’t even see Ariadne at first, too focused on seeing his…ex alive and well.
“Darling, you look gorgeous as always.”
-oooxooo-
November 5, 2013
“The hell you are! I’m not letting you take her anywhere you irresponsible-”
“Oh, I’m irresponsible, am I? And who’s the one who’s trying to drag her into a war zone to find someone she doesn’t even know? I’ll give you a hint: It’s not me!”
“I’m not dragging her into a war zone, I’m keeping her safe! At least I’m reliable! You just disappear all the time, ending up God knows where without so much as a phone call-”
“A phone call? Well the phone works both ways! You never tried to-”
“Never tried to what?! I must have left you a dozen messages you fucking-”
“Guys!”
Arthur and Eames turned, still fuming, to glare at Ariadne. A livid flush had risen into her cheeks, and she glared right back at them. Finally, she breathed in slowly and exhaled, crossing her arms over her chest.
“‘She’ can decide what she wants to do for herself, you know. She is twenty-two.”
Arthur sighed and ran a hand through his hair, knocking the already disarrayed strands further out of place. “Yes, I know. I’m sorry, Ariadne. I should have asked you what you wanted to do.”
“You’re right, pet,” Eames agreed, but not with Arthur-no, never with Arthur. “It is your life. Who do you want to go with? Or would you rather strike out on your own?”
They were both looking at her expectantly, both completely ignoring the other, and Ariadne let out a frustrated groan. “Oh come on, guys. It’s the end of the world! The freakin’ end of the world and you two are turning it into some testosterone-fueled spat about what, exactly?” She shook her head and closed her eyes, disappointed.
When she opened them again, Arthur and Eames were looking properly chastened. Eames was gazing out the window, at anything but her and Arthur, and Arthur was adjusting his tie with his eyes downcast.
“Sorry,” he said again, finally dropping the fabric and running a hand over his face. “You’re right. What would you like to do?”
“Well, what are my options?” she asked. “Where are you both headed?”
“I’m headed out towards LA,” Arthur answered. “I have a friend there, with a family, and I need to make sure that they’re all right.”
“I’m headed out to Colorado,” Eames said, finally stepping away from Arthur to pick up one of the guns on the coffee table. He had already cleaned all of them, and as many of Arthur’s as he could get through without the hacker snapping at him, but he was still restless. He wanted to leave now.
“Colorado?” asked Ariadne, a little surprised. “Not Sewickley Heights? I thought that’s where you said you were headed earlier.”
“That was where I was headed earlier,” the Brit said with a shrug. “Not anymore.”
“Colorado?” Arthur asked, too, but with the ghost of a smile. “I seem to recall that you’re highly wanted in Colorado. For that Ponzi scheme, if I remember correctly.”
And even though they had been just about to rip each other’s throats out a second ago, Eames laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling in an endearing way that had Ariadne wondering exactly what kind of history these two had.
“Ah, yes. That was singularly successful venture, wasn’t it, love?” the conman sighed, smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “You would be wanted there, too, if you hadn’t skipped town earlier that morning.” His eyes were fond as they settled on Arthur again.
Arthur’s eyes had similarly softened, head tilted to one side as he…relaxed. His shoulders lost their tension as he chuckled, shaking his head. “I told you to pull out sooner. They nearly caught you, getting onto that train.”
“If I’d pulled out sooner, we wouldn’t have gotten as much out of it,” Eames interjected. “Besides, I never get caught.”
“You nearly did,” Arthur jabbed, tension flowing back into his shoulders as he stood up a little straighter.
“Yes, well, I didn’t, Arthur. And because of that, we each got over ten million. Or had you forgotten that part?” Eames had narrowed his eyes now, and was regarding Arthur with a silent challenge in the air between them.
“Forgotten? Forgotten seeing you nearly get dragged away to spend twenty years or more in a tiny prison cell with no hope of bail or probation? How the hell could I forget-” Arthur stopped talking and scrubbed a hand across his eyes.
Ariadne watched with a slightly open mouth, blinking rapidly and trying to get off the emotional rollercoaster she seemed to have unwittingly stumbled onto. One minute these two were reminiscing about the ‘good old days’, and the next they were tearing each other apart!
Looking at them now, Ariadne knew why Arthur had never looked at her twice, even when she’d hoped he would. They must have been seriously in love for the fallout to have been this bad.
“Darling, how long has it been since you slept?” Eames asked suddenly, gently, further surprising Ariadne with the simple depth of the concern in his voice. He crossed over to place an unobtrusive, supporting hand on Arthur’s lower back, and the hacker leaned into him instinctively, savoring the warmth.
“Too long,” was his only answer. “It’s been a hell of a day.”
“A hell of a day and three hours,” Ariadne corrected, somewhat cheekily, rolling her shoulders in a stretch. She and Eames had taken turns napping earlier, so she sympathized with her obviously over-tired friend. “You know, it might be a bad idea to suggest this, but why don’t we all go together? I mean, Colorado and LA are in the same direction. Wouldn’t it be safer for all of us to travel in the same car? Watch each other’s backs and all that?”
She watched as Eames considered this, his hand rubbing distracted, soothing circles on Arthur’s back until the hacker had all but collapsed against him, leaning his head into the junction of Eames’s neck and shoulder.
“Well, I suppose you have a point, pet,” the conman finally conceded, laying his cheek against the top of Arthur’s head for a brief second before straightening a little. “Come on, Arty,” he whispered. “You can sleep in the car. Come on.”
For a moment, the only noise Arthur made was a grudging one as he shifted a little closer to Eames, who laughed. Then Eames gently shook Arthur’s shoulder until the slighter man wearily blinked his eyes open. Ariadne expected-well, to be honest, she expected a dramatic leap away. But instead Arthur just sighed, not even making a move to get Eames’s hand off his back.
Together, the two men began loading the guns into a bag, talking quietly with each other as Ariadne finished packing the rest of the food into a box. The way they oriented their bodies towards each other was interesting. Maybe she’d been wrong about their relationship.
Maybe they’d never broken up.
The walk to the car was surprisingly uneventful, with only two or three infected to deal with. Arthur muttered something about greener pastures as he helped load the guns and food into the backseat before Eames all but shoved him into the car.
“Sleep,” Eames said, taking off his coat and laying it over Arthur. “I’ll drive.”
Arthur protested quietly, but subsided quickly enough, absentmindedly tugging the coat closer around his shoulders and shifting into a more comfortable position before suddenly sitting up again.
“Here,” he said, pulling a lighter out of his pocket and handing to Eames. “You forgot this, in Prussia. I-I’ve kept it for you.” He settled back into the seat again once the lighter was safely in Eames hand, turning his face away so he wouldn’t have to look at Eames and whatever expression he was making.
Eames’s eyes were soft again as he gently shut the door, and then turned to Ariadne.
“Coming, then?” he asked, and she nodded. Climbing into the passenger seat, Ariadne glanced at her apartment building in the rearview mirror. Then she buckled her seatbelt and turned to Eames in driver’s seat.
“Let’s go.”
-ooo-
When Arthur woke, it was because the car had stopped. He checked to make sure that his gun was still tucked into his holster, and then flicked his gaze to the faintly glowing display of the car’s digital clock.
Nine, just about.
So, he’d slept for six hours, give or take. He didn’t feel all that rested, but he did feel a little clearer. He jumped a little when there was a tap on the glass. It was Eames, leaning into view with a smile on his face. Past him out the window Arthur could see Ariadne, mouth pressed into a thin line.
“Time to get up.”
Arthur could barely hear him through the glass, but he got the general gist of the statement from the smirk on Eames’s face. After a second of disgruntled shifting, Arthur got the door open and stepped out into the weak autumn sunlight.
“Why have we stopped?” he asked, shaking off the hand Eames had put on his elbow to steady his half-asleep legs.
“Ariadne has to go to the bathroom. I wasn’t going to let her go in alone, and I wasn’t just going to leave you sleeping in the car, even If I did crack a window…”
“Yeah, uh, can we go now?” Ariadne asked, shifting her weight from foot to foot irritably. “We can chat later.”
“Right,” Arthur said, and reached back into the car for his axe. He’d grown rather fond of it, and it was useful. He checked his gun’s magazine, put another one in his pocket, and nodded for them to lead the way.
The rest stop was seemingly deserted as they walked the long, bare expanse of the parking lot toward the building. Arthur checked every car, though, just to be safe. They didn’t need any nasty surprises, no matter how badly Ariadne had to go to the bathroom.
Luckily for them, it seemed that most of the zombies had moved on, leaving only seven or eight of them behind in the building. The companions managed to sneak past three of them, not wanting to shoot for fear of alerting the rest to their existence.
They were noticed anyway, of course.
Eames ducked around the tackle of a maintenance man who had come at him too quickly for Eames to take aim. There was no time for Eames to even raise his gun before the zombie charged at him again, almost knocking him off-balance.
“Eames!” Arthur shouted from where he was prying his axe out of the juncture of a shopper’s neck and shoulder. “Catch!”
Eames looked up just in time to see the crowbar Arthur was throwing come flying at him. Luckily, it missed his own head and hit his attacker in the throat, sending it back the few inches Eames needed to get his footing again.
“Where the hell did that come from?” Eames barked in irritation. “And more importantly, why the hell did you throw it at my head?”
“Shut up and use it!”
Eames dipped down to snatch the crowbar from the floor, straightening in time to catch the maintenance man with the backswing. The hook of the bar made a rather unappetizing sound as it dug into the infected’s skull, but it had the effect Eames was hoping for.
The zombie dropped and stopped moving.
Eames huffed and looked up from checking to make sure it was dead to see how the other two were faring. Ariadne had finished off one zombie with a few bullets to the brain and was currently beating the head of another against the fake brick wall. Arthur was dissecting his third with rather messy efficiency, eyes narrowed and completely focused on the task at hand.
He was lucky that Eames saw the last two infected come vaulting over the counter of the Auntie Em behind him.
“Duck!” Eames screamed at him, and Arthur didn’t even think before he dropped to his knees on the ground to give Eames the space he needed to take out the last two undead, silencing their breathless shrieks forever.
He couldn’t help but grin at the face Arthur made when a bit of the resulting gore hit him in the back of the head as the zombies collapsed around him.
“You all right, Ariadne?” Eames asked, lowering his gun and looking over to where she was just letting her last kill fall to the ground.
“Yup,” she said. “You?”
“I’d be better if Arthur hadn’t tried to kill me,” Eames responded, but his voice held nothing but a light tease as he extended his hand to help Arthur up.
“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Arthur snorted, accepting the hand and releasing it a second too late. He forced attention away from his slightly colored cheeks by nodding to the crowbar now protruding from a zombie’s head. “See if you can get that out. It could be handy.”
Eames walked back over to it and pulled, bracing his foot on the infected’s temple. After a few tries and once of Arthur’s beautifully slim eyebrows raising, he finally got it free with a sick kind of squelch.
“Where did you even find this?” he asked, turning back to Arthur with the crowbar over his shoulder. “I’m one hundred percent positive you didn’t have it with you when you came in.”
Arthur shrugged. “On the floor. Some poor bastard probably dropped it while he was busy getting his flesh ripped off.”
“Well that’s a wonderful image, Arthur, thank you,” Eames muttered, his mouth twisting.
“You’re welcome, Eames. And as for another thing-”
“Okay, this is all great, but I have to pee,” Ariadne interrupted, suddenly. “So if you two don’t mind, I’ll meet you back here in a few.” With that, she quickly jogged past the sign reading Women, leaving Eames and Arthur alone.
After a few seconds of awkward silence, Arthur sighed, “Well, we might as well get cleaned up, at least. And thank you for the wonderful addition of zombie blood to my hair. I’m sure it looks great.”
“You look fine,” Eames said, grinning. “Always.”
-o-
Arthur leaned back against the counter of the McDonald’s when he and Eames returned from the men’s room, trying in vain to stop the yawn he could feel creeping up on him. When he lost the battle, Eames chuckled and earned himself a glare.
“Oh come off it, darling,” the conman sighed. “Just because we don’t like each other doesn’t mean we have to fight all the time.” His eyes bored into Arthur, willing the younger man to respond.
“It’s not that I don’t like you, Eames,” Arthur said, sounding a little exasperated. “It’s just that we don’t get along.”
“Well, you could have fooled me, Arthur,” Eames said irritably. “And what, pray tell, is the difference between those two things? Especially with you?”
“What do you mean ‘especially with me?’ I’ll have you know that there are very distinct differences! I do like you. I’m only arguing with you because you’re arguing with me.” Arthur wasn’t leaning against the counter anymore. He was standing firmly, eyes locked on Eames.
“That doesn’t make sense!” Eames exploded. “I’m not arguing with you! I don’t want to argue with you! In fact, I think I like you better with your mouth closed. Darling.”
From where she stood about five yards away, partially concealed behind a blood-spattered rack of cheap sunglasses, Ariadne watched and shook her head. The only thing wrong with these two was their lack of communication. She wondered if they’d ever figure it out.
“Oh do you?” Arthur spat. “Well maybe you’d like it if I-oh, Ariadne.” Arthur tugged his vest straight again, absently, as if he were trying to smooth out his aggravation with Eames. “All set? Time to go, then.”
He turned on his heel and left the building.
-oooxooo-
November 7, 2013: 12:00 pm, 960 miles from destination
“So, where exactly in Colorado are we going?” Arthur asked, finally breaking the hours-long silence that had settled between him and Eames while Ariadne napped in the back. It wasn’t that he particularly wanted to talk to Eames, it was just…he wanted to talk to Eames.
Really talk. Not argue.
He hoped that didn’t make him as pathetic as he felt.
“A tiny town called Bonanza. It only has a population of 14 people, and one of them is the man I’m looking for.” Eames steadily handled the car around another empty van left in the middle of the road, not looking at Arthur.
“And who is that, exactly?” Arthur prodded, sounding a little accusing. He hated not knowing things. “You were less than forthcoming with information earlier.”
“I just didn’t think you’d want Ariadne here to know about your criminal activities, Arthur,” Eames said, rolling his eyes. “She knows I’m one, and I figured that was enough of a shock for her already.”
“Yeah, fair enough I guess,” Arthur said, shrugging a little. “That still doesn’t change the fact that you haven’t told me who he is.”
“His name is Yusuf,” Eames said. “He was a chemist who worked with the government before he ruffled a few feathers and nearly got spirited away in the back of a black van.”
“I assume you’re responsible for that,” Arthur said, crooking a half-smile at Eames before catching himself and turning his frown back at the dashboard. “Why are we going to find him?”
“Because he’s brilliant. If there’s anyone who can make a cure for this…this thing, it’s Yusuf.” Eames slid his gaze over to Arthur, looking at him out of the corner of his eye. “And I’ll have you know, the trouble he got into was of his own making, no help from me.”
“I see,” was all Arthur had to say to that. Silence fell, smothering, until he sighed. “So, Bonanza? That’s…nine hundred and sixty miles from here, just about.” Arthur kept his eyes fixed out the window, not looking at Eames. He was a little startled by Eames’s laugh.
“Only you, darling,” the conman chuckled, and just like that, the tension was broken. “Only you would know how many miles from here it is to a Podunk town in Colorado.”
“Well, forgive me for wanting to know how many hours I’m going to be stuck in a car with you,” Arthur said, but his words held nothing but amusement. “God forbid I have to be here longer than necessary.”
“Oh yes, God forbid.” Eames laughed again, and glanced over at Arthur. He was infinitely pleased to find the hacker’s mouth pulled into a smile, and grinned wider when he caught Arthur’s eye. “How long has it been since we roadtripped, Arthur?” he asked, levity dancing in his words.
“Do you mean for fun, or for work?”
“It was always fun with you, darling,” Eames answered, and they both paused. There had been an uncomfortable amount of truth in that statement, and not just about traveling. So, instead of looking at each other, Eames focused on the road in front of them and Arthur counted the number of zombies he could see shambling along in the line of tress by the edge of the highway.
“I’d place it at about…eleven months ago,” Arthur said, finally, and Eames took a minute to wonder if he was just throwing a date out there before Arthur continued. “Beirut. We were stuck in the car together for twelve hours, running from the police. Remember?”
“Of course I do, darling. But wasn’t there that time in San Diego only a few months ago?”
“That doesn’t count, since we were only driving for half an hour.” Arthur argued lightly, more teasing than anything else.
“It does too count!” Eames protested, and then they were off again, both too angry to really be fighting over what did or did not count as a roadtrip, based on driving time and distance covered. ‘Do you remember that time we were driving from here to there, and we were so happy?’ every barb seemed to say. ‘Do you? Why you’d have to go and ruin it? Why did I?’
Silence settled thickly over them once the snarking had stopped. It seemed more permanent than the one before, and had the potential to bleed into uncomfortable at any second. But then, after a moment’s hesitation, Eames reached over and laced his fingers with Arthur’s, keeping the other hand firmly on the wheel and his eyes forward.
After a minute, Arthur curled his fingers around Eames’s hand and turned his eyes out the window once more.
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Next Chapter
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So far, this one's my favorite. :) A HUGE thanks to towel_master for getting me out of repetitive combat! I had fun with that crowbar. ;)
Hope you all enjoyed, and see you next week!