Y:the Last Man: Again with the cannibals (1/1)
Title: Again with the cannibals
Author: schmevil
Fandom: Y: the Last Man
Characters: Alison, Yorick
Summary: Capuchins are the natural enemies of cannibals.
Word Count: 2553
Notes: written for cathybites during yuletide. Also available on the Yuletide archive.
The Philippines, early morning.
Alison never dreamed that at 36 she'd be traveling the world with two trained killers, an amateur magician and a capuchin. Make that one secret agent/trained killer, one Australian spy/sometime killer, an amateur magician who also happened to be the last man alive, and a shit-flinging, ex-pirate capuchin.
Dr. Alison Mann, this is your life.
She looked up from her hands to see Yorick, extended in a awkward twist, throw something over their tractor-cum-fortification. "Fire in the hole!" he yelled, covering his ears and sliding back down beside her.
"What?" she yelled back at him, half disbelief, half confusion. Pressed close together like this she could see his eyes; see excitement and nausea fighting for control.
"Haven't you see any war movies? It's when-"
"I know what it means."
"Down" Rose grabbed the back of her shirt and shoved her into an awkward sprawl across Yorick's side. A hail of bullets skimmed the top of the tractor. When they stopped, Rose and three-fifty popped back up, firing almost blind over the hood.
"Who let Yorick near live grenades?"
"Necessity is the mother of all invention, love," Rose said, obviously distracted. 355 nodded at her. Rose extended from her crouch, pressed her body against the side of the tractor and her weapon over the hood. The sound of her assault rifle firing came fast, shots blurring together.
"I'm out," Rose called over her head. She and three-fifty ducked down, letting their pursuers take their turn at trying to kill them. 355 threw a cartridge, or magazine - whatever - over the huddled mass that was Alison, Yorick and a passed out Bonny, tucked between them. Rose caught it neatly and slammed it into her rifle, then fiddled with something until she looked satisfied.
"Hey, I wasn't aiming at anybody." Yorick turned his wounded, yet too proud to admit it puppy eyes on her. Alison was glad for the distraction.
"Ever heard of shrapnel? Besides, you shouldn't be anywhere near live ammunition-"
"Grenades aren't ammo, doc. They're explosives."
"Whatever. Indulging your Rambo fantasies isn't nearly as important as keeping you safe. What if it went off in your hand?"
"Rambo? He's a pansy. You can call me Rock, Sgt. Rock." Alison rolled her eyes.
"As entertaining as this is," 355 hollered down at them. "Shut up and-" She ducked behind the mangled cover of the tractor's empty hood. The sad remains of the windshield - less than the bottom half had been left when they'd made camp - finally shattered. Alison closed her eyes, heard shards of glasses skittering across the hood. The sound was annoying, like a hundred tiny pieces of chalk on a blackboard, but it wasn't gunfire.
"I think it's time for the big guns," said Rose. 355 nodded her agreement. They started assembling what Yorick had called their art project. When it had become clear that their pursuers were heavily armed, and their escape route chancy at best, they'd decided to do whatever it took to improve those chances. Camped out all night, in the back forty of what they'd thought was an abandoned farm, they had been able to do a lot.
"What? Why?" Yorick twisted, inadvertently pressing Bonny's damp fur against Alison's neck, and peeked over the hood. His eyes went wide and he ducked down again, closer than before.
"What is it?" she hissed. Yorick was white. Whiter than normal for a guy who spent most of his time hiding behind a gas mask.
"Cover your ears," said 355. Alison clamped her hands over her ears but the explosion of sound from 355's makeshift grenade launcher-mortar-thing got through, seemingly straight to her eardrums. Finding out that, in the words of Yorick, Rose could MacGyver a grenade launcher from the detritus of the abandoned farm, was almost as disturbing as the thought of an armed Yorick Brown.
Silence, that went on and on, until fire erupted from the bushes again. Rose and 355 reloaded. Returned fire. When had she started to pick up the lingo?
"We're all going to go deaf," she muttered. "We're going to be four deaf females and a deaf y chromosome wandering the earth."
"Coulda been a sitcom."
"Shut up Yorick, and stay away from the grenades."
"I needed to distract them long enough for Rose to get her AK unjammed."
"AK?"
"47. I used to spend a lot of time on Wikipedia."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?"
"Because you're a gentlewoman and a scholar." Alison frowned. "Oookay, rhetorical question. I can dig it."
Alison shifted away from the rock that had been pinching her left breast for the last ten minutes. Bonny groaned in protest at the move, but thankfully didn't wake. Alison reached up and awkwardly petted her head.
"Are you ok, doc?" Yorick asked, his eyes wide, face soft with concern.
"Fantastic. We're getting shot at by an army of cannibals, why would anything be wrong?"
"At least it's not giant robots."
"Or a... giant moth."
"What?" Yorick mimed a loudspeaker.
"A giant moth!" The sound of gunfire was louder than ever.
"Moths are the natural enemies of monkeys," he said, petting Bonny.
"I thought bombers were the natural enemies of monkeys."
"Only the giant kind."
"Of course." Whatever he said in response was lost in the roar of the 'art project'.
The cramped space behind the tractor was filled with smoke and quiet. Bonny's laboured breathing filled Alison's ears - at least I'm not deaf, she thought. Yet. 355 and Rose peered over its side, looking for something. Alison could barely see Yorick and Bonny - she didn't know what they thought they'd find.
"Go." said 355, eerily calm.
"What do you mean, go?" asked Yorick. "You can't go out there."
"It's only a matter of time before they punch through our only cover," 355 pointed to the tractor. "We need to neutralize the threat and get away from their stronghold - fast."
Yorick moved out of his crouch but 355 stopped him, with a hand on his chest. She pushed him back down. "But-"
"Stay here Yorick." His mouth opened in protest - she cut him off with a terse "Stay."
Rose pulled out her handgun, and an extra magazine and put them down. "Just in case." Then 355 and Rose disappeared around opposite sides of the tractor, guns up and ready.
Since she'd met Yorick and Agent 355, Alison had spent an obscene amount of time hiding from armed and angry women, and too much of it in close quarters with the last homo sapiens y chromosome still walking (and unfortunately talking). Yorick seemed to have a special talent for attracting insane women. Almost as uncanny as Alison's own knack for attracting straight girls.
This was the second time the women were cannibals. Though to be fair, it wasn't Yorick who'd got them into this mess, but Bonny. The formerly friendly, now homicidal cannibal farmers had been willing to let them pass through their territory unconsumed until they'd seen Bonny.
Apparently capuchins were the natural enemies of cannibals.
"So, Mothra. Nice."
"Hn."
"Has Rose been improving your disgustingly inadequate knowledge of pop culture?"
"No, I... I saw it years ago, with a friend." With Mercedes.
Yorick, for once, let that pass without comment. Abruptly the gunfire stopped and he kneeled up, peering into the smokey battlefield.
"Can you actually see anything?" she whispered.
"Yeah, but-" his voice caught. "I can't see Rose or three-fifty."
"Maybe they're-" A shot. Followed closely by another, that didn't sound like Rose's weapon, or 355's handgun. There was silence again - just the sound of wind in the mabolo trees' leaves. The sun was rising but the birds that lived on the farm were quiet.
Alison kneeled up beside Yorick. The smoke was starting to dissipate, enough that she could see grass and trees, mangled by 355's grenades, and bodies. A lot of them.
"Did you know that the mabolo tree is an endangered species," she said absently.
"What?" Yorick's coping mechanism was babbling - exactly when had she started adopting his habits?
They knelt, silent and waiting. And waiting. Finally even the wind stopped and all she could hear was Bonny breathing in Yorick's arms. She sounded better, Alison thought. Probably an herbal sedative. No doubt her mother would have identified it immediately. As it was, once they were safe, Alison would have to try to flush whatever the farmers had given her, out of Bonny's system and hope for the best.
Poisoned capuchin wouldn't have made for a good appetizer.
A crack that sounded like a branches breaking, and then a scream. Another, that sounded like "Three-fifty!" Yorick pushed Bonny at her. "Here, doc." With his free hand he picked up the pistol Rose had left behind.
"What? No." She pushed the capuchin back at him. "Don't be an idiot. You don't even know what to do with that thing." He looked down at the gun, his face set. Something hard that she didn't like, in his expression. "Yorick." She grabbed his arm.
Yorick looked up at her and there was something in his eyes, she thought, that she wasn't used to seeing anymore.
"We'll go together," she said. A deaf geneticist, a sedated capuchin and an amateur magician, with one gun between the three of them. Alison wasn't 100% certain, but thought this might be their worst plan yet.
"All clear," came Rose's voice, from the trees. The sound of weapons fire, in the distance, belied her claim. "Mostly." Still, she thought. Still, it was the best sound she'd heard all day.
Alison stared at Yorick, still cradling Bonny in one arm, the gun with the other. "Yorick."
"Everything all right back here?"
"Gah!" Alison jumped. Yorick didn't. He was very still.
"Sorry," said Rose.
"It's ok, lieu, the doctor and I were just enjoying the quiet." He held the gun down at his side, pointed to the ground, and Bonny, tucked under his chin. Alison didn't see anything in his eyes.
"Well, I hate to intrude, but you two need to get ready for another run."
"Oh god," groaned Alison.
"Super agent thinks there are more of these freaks out here."
"The tracks? She said they were most likely made by farmers."
"If by farmers she meant monkey-loathing, cannibal, farmers, than she was probably right. Where's my gun?"
"Uh." Yorick handed it to her and Rose tucked it away, without comment. The magazine went back into one of her pockets.
"Anyway, cannibals are getting old." Yorick frowned. "I think it's time that communist guerrillas had their day."
"There's no government left for them to rise against," said 355, who materialized out of nowhere, even more silently than Rose. "Let's go. There could be more of them out there."
"Yeah, Rose filled us in. Remember when I said those tracks were suspicious? Who's the super agent now?"
"Yorick, your suspicions were based on their shoe prints." 355 examined the remains of the grenade launcher and left it where it was - apparently MacGyvered weapons weren't designed for sustained usage. Instead she just pulled on her pack. Motioned to the others to do the same.
"It's a well known fact that squiggly lines on a shoe print are sure indicators of criminality."
The look 355 gave him was impressive for just how much disbelief it contained.
"What? I learned that on CSI."
"Yeah three-fifty, Grissom solves cases based on squiggles all the time."
"Thanks Rose. You know, you're my only human friend."
"Us humans need to stick together. Watch out for pods."
Yorick huffed his agreement. Even with all the running they did, he still had the body of an English major.
"I don't even know what you're talking about," three-fifty said.
***
Later.
Alison had a recurring dream of being in a lab. Not even a good lab, just something with 60% functional equipment. Moderately clean. Nothing living in it but lab specimens, tucked away in their petrie dishes. And absolutely no monkeys.
The men were alive, somewhere, but before the gendercide, the only man (outside of faculty meetings and classes) who she had any meaningful contact with on a regular basis, was Sunil, her lab assistant. He was in her dream, but only tangentially - he was always on his way with an ambrosian espresso from the Italian place down the street. Alison had no clear idea of what the Italian place looked like, but every dream needed a great little Italian restaurant.
It was her favourite Neverland fantasy. No pressure. Mindless work. No monkeys.
Her waking dreams these days mostly revolved around not being shot at, and not being chased by Amazons, pirates, Israelis or cannibals. She very frequently wished she'd never met Yorick Brown.
The sound of a sneaker scuffing the floor made her look up. Yorick was looking in on her makeshift clinic, for approximately the millionth time. "How is she, doc?"
"Asleep. The same as she was five minutes ago."
"I just wanted-"
"It's ok, Yorick. You can come in. Just don't touch anything."
"Deal." He came in and sat across from her, Bonny between them.
As far as Alison could tell it had been an herbal sedative and Bonny would be fine. The capuchin had thrown up the first sip of water Alison gave her, but since then, seemed much better. She was keeping water down, and had even eaten a handful of nuts. She was sleeping now.
Alison watched Bonny sleep, ignoring Yorick.
"Did you know that the natural enemies of capuchins are falcons, snakes and cats?"
"Yes."
"Oh. I looked it up. This place has a wicked library. No food, no bath products but the looters left all the books."
"What would looters do with books, Yorick?" He didn't say anything in response.
They were holed up in another abandoned farmhouse, two days run/walk from the cannibals. With what 355 called security advantages. Like the road, still blocked several miles away, by a pileup. And the moat.
"You know, this is one weird town, and after everything we've seen, that's saying something."
Silently, Alison agreed. A town populated by choosey cannibals with a pathological hatred of capuchin monkeys, was easily one of the strangest things she'd encountered in the past few years.
"You know, I was kind of worried about Bonny."
"She's fine, Yorick."
"No, I mean, she's been almost preternaturally well-behaved. Ampersand never prepared me for the possibility."
"And now that she's been responsible for our nearly dying she's what, one of the gang?"
"She popped her cherry."
"First times are generally traumatic." She looked up to find Yorick frowning at her. "What?"
"Doc, I'm-" He stopped short, like something was caught in his throat, and looked away.
"Really bad at emotional scenes."
"Well, I am a dude." He laughed. "What's your excuse?"
"I'm the world's foremost expert in genetics."
"Ok, you win." He looked down at Bonny, sheepish.
"Damn right."
"Is she waking up?"
Bonny shook her head and rubbed at her eyes with a balled up paw, looking for anything like a heavily furred human baby. Creepy.
Yorick screwed up his face. "Creepy. Yet cute."
"Hn."
"About earlier-"
"Yorick, I don't ever want to have this conversation again. Once was painful enough."
"Ok."
They sat together for awhile, watching Bonny wake up.
END
Author: schmevil
Fandom: Y: the Last Man
Characters: Alison, Yorick
Summary: Capuchins are the natural enemies of cannibals.
Word Count: 2553
Notes: written for cathybites during yuletide. Also available on the Yuletide archive.
The Philippines, early morning.
Alison never dreamed that at 36 she'd be traveling the world with two trained killers, an amateur magician and a capuchin. Make that one secret agent/trained killer, one Australian spy/sometime killer, an amateur magician who also happened to be the last man alive, and a shit-flinging, ex-pirate capuchin.
Dr. Alison Mann, this is your life.
She looked up from her hands to see Yorick, extended in a awkward twist, throw something over their tractor-cum-fortification. "Fire in the hole!" he yelled, covering his ears and sliding back down beside her.
"What?" she yelled back at him, half disbelief, half confusion. Pressed close together like this she could see his eyes; see excitement and nausea fighting for control.
"Haven't you see any war movies? It's when-"
"I know what it means."
"Down" Rose grabbed the back of her shirt and shoved her into an awkward sprawl across Yorick's side. A hail of bullets skimmed the top of the tractor. When they stopped, Rose and three-fifty popped back up, firing almost blind over the hood.
"Who let Yorick near live grenades?"
"Necessity is the mother of all invention, love," Rose said, obviously distracted. 355 nodded at her. Rose extended from her crouch, pressed her body against the side of the tractor and her weapon over the hood. The sound of her assault rifle firing came fast, shots blurring together.
"I'm out," Rose called over her head. She and three-fifty ducked down, letting their pursuers take their turn at trying to kill them. 355 threw a cartridge, or magazine - whatever - over the huddled mass that was Alison, Yorick and a passed out Bonny, tucked between them. Rose caught it neatly and slammed it into her rifle, then fiddled with something until she looked satisfied.
"Hey, I wasn't aiming at anybody." Yorick turned his wounded, yet too proud to admit it puppy eyes on her. Alison was glad for the distraction.
"Ever heard of shrapnel? Besides, you shouldn't be anywhere near live ammunition-"
"Grenades aren't ammo, doc. They're explosives."
"Whatever. Indulging your Rambo fantasies isn't nearly as important as keeping you safe. What if it went off in your hand?"
"Rambo? He's a pansy. You can call me Rock, Sgt. Rock." Alison rolled her eyes.
"As entertaining as this is," 355 hollered down at them. "Shut up and-" She ducked behind the mangled cover of the tractor's empty hood. The sad remains of the windshield - less than the bottom half had been left when they'd made camp - finally shattered. Alison closed her eyes, heard shards of glasses skittering across the hood. The sound was annoying, like a hundred tiny pieces of chalk on a blackboard, but it wasn't gunfire.
"I think it's time for the big guns," said Rose. 355 nodded her agreement. They started assembling what Yorick had called their art project. When it had become clear that their pursuers were heavily armed, and their escape route chancy at best, they'd decided to do whatever it took to improve those chances. Camped out all night, in the back forty of what they'd thought was an abandoned farm, they had been able to do a lot.
"What? Why?" Yorick twisted, inadvertently pressing Bonny's damp fur against Alison's neck, and peeked over the hood. His eyes went wide and he ducked down again, closer than before.
"What is it?" she hissed. Yorick was white. Whiter than normal for a guy who spent most of his time hiding behind a gas mask.
"Cover your ears," said 355. Alison clamped her hands over her ears but the explosion of sound from 355's makeshift grenade launcher-mortar-thing got through, seemingly straight to her eardrums. Finding out that, in the words of Yorick, Rose could MacGyver a grenade launcher from the detritus of the abandoned farm, was almost as disturbing as the thought of an armed Yorick Brown.
Silence, that went on and on, until fire erupted from the bushes again. Rose and 355 reloaded. Returned fire. When had she started to pick up the lingo?
"We're all going to go deaf," she muttered. "We're going to be four deaf females and a deaf y chromosome wandering the earth."
"Coulda been a sitcom."
"Shut up Yorick, and stay away from the grenades."
"I needed to distract them long enough for Rose to get her AK unjammed."
"AK?"
"47. I used to spend a lot of time on Wikipedia."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?"
"Because you're a gentlewoman and a scholar." Alison frowned. "Oookay, rhetorical question. I can dig it."
Alison shifted away from the rock that had been pinching her left breast for the last ten minutes. Bonny groaned in protest at the move, but thankfully didn't wake. Alison reached up and awkwardly petted her head.
"Are you ok, doc?" Yorick asked, his eyes wide, face soft with concern.
"Fantastic. We're getting shot at by an army of cannibals, why would anything be wrong?"
"At least it's not giant robots."
"Or a... giant moth."
"What?" Yorick mimed a loudspeaker.
"A giant moth!" The sound of gunfire was louder than ever.
"Moths are the natural enemies of monkeys," he said, petting Bonny.
"I thought bombers were the natural enemies of monkeys."
"Only the giant kind."
"Of course." Whatever he said in response was lost in the roar of the 'art project'.
The cramped space behind the tractor was filled with smoke and quiet. Bonny's laboured breathing filled Alison's ears - at least I'm not deaf, she thought. Yet. 355 and Rose peered over its side, looking for something. Alison could barely see Yorick and Bonny - she didn't know what they thought they'd find.
"Go." said 355, eerily calm.
"What do you mean, go?" asked Yorick. "You can't go out there."
"It's only a matter of time before they punch through our only cover," 355 pointed to the tractor. "We need to neutralize the threat and get away from their stronghold - fast."
Yorick moved out of his crouch but 355 stopped him, with a hand on his chest. She pushed him back down. "But-"
"Stay here Yorick." His mouth opened in protest - she cut him off with a terse "Stay."
Rose pulled out her handgun, and an extra magazine and put them down. "Just in case." Then 355 and Rose disappeared around opposite sides of the tractor, guns up and ready.
Since she'd met Yorick and Agent 355, Alison had spent an obscene amount of time hiding from armed and angry women, and too much of it in close quarters with the last homo sapiens y chromosome still walking (and unfortunately talking). Yorick seemed to have a special talent for attracting insane women. Almost as uncanny as Alison's own knack for attracting straight girls.
This was the second time the women were cannibals. Though to be fair, it wasn't Yorick who'd got them into this mess, but Bonny. The formerly friendly, now homicidal cannibal farmers had been willing to let them pass through their territory unconsumed until they'd seen Bonny.
Apparently capuchins were the natural enemies of cannibals.
"So, Mothra. Nice."
"Hn."
"Has Rose been improving your disgustingly inadequate knowledge of pop culture?"
"No, I... I saw it years ago, with a friend." With Mercedes.
Yorick, for once, let that pass without comment. Abruptly the gunfire stopped and he kneeled up, peering into the smokey battlefield.
"Can you actually see anything?" she whispered.
"Yeah, but-" his voice caught. "I can't see Rose or three-fifty."
"Maybe they're-" A shot. Followed closely by another, that didn't sound like Rose's weapon, or 355's handgun. There was silence again - just the sound of wind in the mabolo trees' leaves. The sun was rising but the birds that lived on the farm were quiet.
Alison kneeled up beside Yorick. The smoke was starting to dissipate, enough that she could see grass and trees, mangled by 355's grenades, and bodies. A lot of them.
"Did you know that the mabolo tree is an endangered species," she said absently.
"What?" Yorick's coping mechanism was babbling - exactly when had she started adopting his habits?
They knelt, silent and waiting. And waiting. Finally even the wind stopped and all she could hear was Bonny breathing in Yorick's arms. She sounded better, Alison thought. Probably an herbal sedative. No doubt her mother would have identified it immediately. As it was, once they were safe, Alison would have to try to flush whatever the farmers had given her, out of Bonny's system and hope for the best.
Poisoned capuchin wouldn't have made for a good appetizer.
A crack that sounded like a branches breaking, and then a scream. Another, that sounded like "Three-fifty!" Yorick pushed Bonny at her. "Here, doc." With his free hand he picked up the pistol Rose had left behind.
"What? No." She pushed the capuchin back at him. "Don't be an idiot. You don't even know what to do with that thing." He looked down at the gun, his face set. Something hard that she didn't like, in his expression. "Yorick." She grabbed his arm.
Yorick looked up at her and there was something in his eyes, she thought, that she wasn't used to seeing anymore.
"We'll go together," she said. A deaf geneticist, a sedated capuchin and an amateur magician, with one gun between the three of them. Alison wasn't 100% certain, but thought this might be their worst plan yet.
"All clear," came Rose's voice, from the trees. The sound of weapons fire, in the distance, belied her claim. "Mostly." Still, she thought. Still, it was the best sound she'd heard all day.
Alison stared at Yorick, still cradling Bonny in one arm, the gun with the other. "Yorick."
"Everything all right back here?"
"Gah!" Alison jumped. Yorick didn't. He was very still.
"Sorry," said Rose.
"It's ok, lieu, the doctor and I were just enjoying the quiet." He held the gun down at his side, pointed to the ground, and Bonny, tucked under his chin. Alison didn't see anything in his eyes.
"Well, I hate to intrude, but you two need to get ready for another run."
"Oh god," groaned Alison.
"Super agent thinks there are more of these freaks out here."
"The tracks? She said they were most likely made by farmers."
"If by farmers she meant monkey-loathing, cannibal, farmers, than she was probably right. Where's my gun?"
"Uh." Yorick handed it to her and Rose tucked it away, without comment. The magazine went back into one of her pockets.
"Anyway, cannibals are getting old." Yorick frowned. "I think it's time that communist guerrillas had their day."
"There's no government left for them to rise against," said 355, who materialized out of nowhere, even more silently than Rose. "Let's go. There could be more of them out there."
"Yeah, Rose filled us in. Remember when I said those tracks were suspicious? Who's the super agent now?"
"Yorick, your suspicions were based on their shoe prints." 355 examined the remains of the grenade launcher and left it where it was - apparently MacGyvered weapons weren't designed for sustained usage. Instead she just pulled on her pack. Motioned to the others to do the same.
"It's a well known fact that squiggly lines on a shoe print are sure indicators of criminality."
The look 355 gave him was impressive for just how much disbelief it contained.
"What? I learned that on CSI."
"Yeah three-fifty, Grissom solves cases based on squiggles all the time."
"Thanks Rose. You know, you're my only human friend."
"Us humans need to stick together. Watch out for pods."
Yorick huffed his agreement. Even with all the running they did, he still had the body of an English major.
"I don't even know what you're talking about," three-fifty said.
***
Later.
Alison had a recurring dream of being in a lab. Not even a good lab, just something with 60% functional equipment. Moderately clean. Nothing living in it but lab specimens, tucked away in their petrie dishes. And absolutely no monkeys.
The men were alive, somewhere, but before the gendercide, the only man (outside of faculty meetings and classes) who she had any meaningful contact with on a regular basis, was Sunil, her lab assistant. He was in her dream, but only tangentially - he was always on his way with an ambrosian espresso from the Italian place down the street. Alison had no clear idea of what the Italian place looked like, but every dream needed a great little Italian restaurant.
It was her favourite Neverland fantasy. No pressure. Mindless work. No monkeys.
Her waking dreams these days mostly revolved around not being shot at, and not being chased by Amazons, pirates, Israelis or cannibals. She very frequently wished she'd never met Yorick Brown.
The sound of a sneaker scuffing the floor made her look up. Yorick was looking in on her makeshift clinic, for approximately the millionth time. "How is she, doc?"
"Asleep. The same as she was five minutes ago."
"I just wanted-"
"It's ok, Yorick. You can come in. Just don't touch anything."
"Deal." He came in and sat across from her, Bonny between them.
As far as Alison could tell it had been an herbal sedative and Bonny would be fine. The capuchin had thrown up the first sip of water Alison gave her, but since then, seemed much better. She was keeping water down, and had even eaten a handful of nuts. She was sleeping now.
Alison watched Bonny sleep, ignoring Yorick.
"Did you know that the natural enemies of capuchins are falcons, snakes and cats?"
"Yes."
"Oh. I looked it up. This place has a wicked library. No food, no bath products but the looters left all the books."
"What would looters do with books, Yorick?" He didn't say anything in response.
They were holed up in another abandoned farmhouse, two days run/walk from the cannibals. With what 355 called security advantages. Like the road, still blocked several miles away, by a pileup. And the moat.
"You know, this is one weird town, and after everything we've seen, that's saying something."
Silently, Alison agreed. A town populated by choosey cannibals with a pathological hatred of capuchin monkeys, was easily one of the strangest things she'd encountered in the past few years.
"You know, I was kind of worried about Bonny."
"She's fine, Yorick."
"No, I mean, she's been almost preternaturally well-behaved. Ampersand never prepared me for the possibility."
"And now that she's been responsible for our nearly dying she's what, one of the gang?"
"She popped her cherry."
"First times are generally traumatic." She looked up to find Yorick frowning at her. "What?"
"Doc, I'm-" He stopped short, like something was caught in his throat, and looked away.
"Really bad at emotional scenes."
"Well, I am a dude." He laughed. "What's your excuse?"
"I'm the world's foremost expert in genetics."
"Ok, you win." He looked down at Bonny, sheepish.
"Damn right."
"Is she waking up?"
Bonny shook her head and rubbed at her eyes with a balled up paw, looking for anything like a heavily furred human baby. Creepy.
Yorick screwed up his face. "Creepy. Yet cute."
"Hn."
"About earlier-"
"Yorick, I don't ever want to have this conversation again. Once was painful enough."
"Ok."
They sat together for awhile, watching Bonny wake up.
END