Run the Doldrums, 1/2
Masterpost - with warnings and notes - located HERE.
~~~~
They take his jacket, belt and boots first. Then he's shoved into a long concrete room with dripping showerheads, a room that smells of equal parts water, fear and rage, where a bored Bli drone tells him to strip. The clothes aren’t worth a taser burn, so Bob complies and puts up with the cold water and disinfectant. That powdery shit crawls up his nose, obliterating most other scents. He feels a sharp flare of panic, but forces it away. This isn't the first time he's gone through this process, after all, and he knows the disinfectant will clear out eventually. He sneezes a couple times, which helps. His clothes have disappeared by the time Bob can blink powder out of his eyes. He’s pissed about losing the lighter. It’s the last thing he had from Brian.
They give him grey to wear, a t-shirt and loose pants with an elastic waistband. The cotton’s thin and they don’t give him shoes or socks. Bob knows that’s meant to be demoralizing - the concrete floor is unheated and the air conditioning is turned up high, waking goosebumps on his bare skin. He fakes a shiver and sees a thin smile curl the drone’s lips. Bob’s dealt with worse conditions. Besides, bare feet are better than ill-fitting shoes.
The Bli grunts throw him in a solitary cell. The room's soundproofed and Bob can't hear much beyond the cycling air intake and the low buzz of the fluorescent. That mosquito whine is a constant unwanted presence in his ears when his hearing's already compromised, still ringing from the show and the beating after. The buzz covers any sound that leaks past the cell’s walls.
Bob's still snarling inside from the fight; the quiet adds to his frustration. He wants to pace, but knows better. For one thing, the movement would set off his cracked ribs. But Bob's more concerned about giving the watchers a show. And there are watchers - he searched out the camera as soon as they shoved him into this windowless room.
Bob draws in on himself. Keeping his movements small, he huddles down in the cheap-ass jail clothes and wills himself to heal slower. Let them think he's cowed. He doesn't want to give them anything worthy of further study. He doesn't love the ache of his ribs or having vision limited by black eyes, but the last thing he wants is to attract attention for being... unusual.
A huff of involuntary laughter escapes at that thought. Bob winces and cradles his side. He doesn’t want to attract any more attention than the band already has, anyway.
He really misses his hoodie. If he focuses on that, on the feel of the fabric against his arms, the concealing security of the hood, he can ignore other worries - like the meaning of a cell with excellent soundproofing, and how he can’t smell his band.
He’s not even sure he’s being held in the same building as the rest of the guys. They'd been culled out from the other detainees early and then he'd been singled out as soon as the riot van had pulled up to the gates. As he was being dragged away, Bob had heard Frank fight against his captors, curses and desperation blistering the air until the zap of a taser cut him off.
Bob understands the logic behind his isolation - it’s a divide and conquer maneuver. Bl/ind had luck breaking the last drummer and they think Bob's new, fresh on the scene. Bob wonders if they really are that stupid. Do they focus on the Bands, to the exclusion of support crew? Bob’s been running with Bands since he was young, ducking into the underground clubs, the back-alley rehearsal spaces and the rooms hidden behind them, since Bli /nd closed the public schools down. And that had happened...shit, when he was fourteen.
It’s not like he’s a guy that blends - blue-eyed and blond is pretty obvious coloring in Battery City. Bob’s pretty sure he has Brian - and probably Pete - to thank for his anonymity. One thing he’s one hundred percent positive about is that Bli/nd doesn’t have him in their Preternet database. If Better Living Industries has it in for the Bands, they have an extra-special hard-on for preternaturals. Brian had watched his back when he was young and stupid, but Bob learned extreme caution quickly. Bob's mostly heard rumors, stories whispered low, beneath the hearing of humans and hidden by the ambient noise in dive bars. But rumors are more than enough. If the words hadn't convinced him, the reek of primal fear the stories invoked sure as fuck did.
He's left alone long enough to lose sense of time. There’s no natural light here, just the constant glare of fluorescents caged in fixtures far overhead, and he's buried far enough in the complex that Bob can't smell outside air. Food and water appears at irregular intervals, but he can smell the meds tainting both and ignores them. He continues to think hoodie thoughts. The left cuff is starting to fray, because he picks at it when he gets bored during practice. It's still his favorite because of the image on the front. There’s a wolf and an eagle, pieces of wilderness that he can wear. The guys don’t understand why he’s so attached. Well, except for Mikey, who found it for him in the first place.
Bob's solitude continues and he starts to wonder if Bli/nd’s forgotten about him. The isolation is hard - especially since he’s fucking worried about the rest of his band - but he can push that aside. He’s mentally mapping the cracks in his hoodie’s image, when he hears the low bleat of an alarm.
He frowns, wondering if it’s just his imagination kicking into overdrive. No; it’s barely audible, but definitely an alarm. Booted feet run by. Bob tenses, but tries not to show his interest - he pulls his knees up to block the camera and scents the air. He’s rewarded with a whiff of smoke so faint it's almost memory.
The door to his cell is slammed open, breaking his concentration. Bli grunts burst in, bristling with tasers, backed up by Draculoids with more threatening weaponry. Bob tries not to stare; you don’t see a lot of Dracs in the City. They creep him the fuck out. Dracs just smell wrong, the medication, electronics and other scents twisting anything human away. He’s not given time to get to his feet on his own. Bob's dragged to an even smaller windowless room and tossed into a chair with built-in restraints. Then - finally - the questions begin.
In the sudden, relentless cycle of pain and questions, Bob figures it out.
They escaped.
He doesn't know how many - if all four of them broke out together, how many of them made it out alive - but from the direction of the questions, Bob is sure of one thing. Some of them escaped. It explains the hard edge to the questions, the growing scent of anger and frustration that the drones can't hide. And that realization is exactly what he needs to hunker down deep into his own silence.
Not that he can stay silent for long. Bli/nd is very skilled at information extraction. Luckily, Bob’s well prepared. Bob pushes all thoughts of his current life deep, settling back into his life two years ago. There’s a list of old hideouts and dummy stashes set up as sacrifices that he can inhabit. Not that he’s going to let that information be any easier to extract; Better Living Industries is going to have to work for every lie.
~~~
Bob had thought he’d lost track of time before the escape. It turns out that was just the tension of waiting. Now he’s got nothing to wait for and Bli/nd’s doing its level best to break him, to ferret out his secrets by tripping him up. Pain fragments any sense of time he still possesses. They try to keep his sessions with the extractors random, but there’s a pattern there too. Bob follows their direction, letting their expectations shape and strengthen the persona they expect to find.
This is a problem, though. He's trapped in their maze of featureless corridors, cells and endless interrogations and he gets lost, immersed too long in what they expect him to be. A rebel, a punk - but just human.
Bob's never been just human. But he’s had a lifetime to learn how to pass.
The habit's so ingrained that Bob forgets he's ever lived any other way.
Luckily, there have always been people in his life who knew better.
~~~
The desert surrounds the drive-in now. Originally, it had sat in the outskirts of one of the dead cities -Bob thinks it was named San something, but then most of the cities around here were. Not that it matters; the city broke down and dried up, blowing away in the drought and encroaching sand. He’s not sure how the drive-in's lasted - maybe it's just strange enough, just nostalgic enough to hold its own in an empty world.
”It's magic.” Bert says.
Bob frowns at him. “Excuse me?”
”No excuse for you!” Bert crows, and drums his heels against the cinder block wall of the snack bar.
Bob swallows his answering sigh but doesn't stop the eye roll, and waits. Bert leans heavily on his shoulder. Bob inhales a noseful of familiar scent - unwashed hair, something sugary, sweat, and dust - and relaxes. He hooks a thumb through Bert's belt loop; they aren't that high off the ground, but Bert won't let that stop him from falling. The grey gravel surrounding the snack bar is large and sharp-edged, and promises vicious road rash.
"You're wondering. I can hear it," Bert giggles and waves his hand in a sweeping gesture that almost ends with him smacking Bob in the face. “All of this is magic, that's why it's still here. And it's why this is safe too."
Bob has his doubts about the safety factor - because come on, nothing is fucking safe anymore - but he doesn't push the issue.
Bert cocks his head and gives him a sly smile. He tuts, and shakes his head. "It is a crime and a fucking shame, Bobert, that you have so little faith. Especially considering what you are."
Bob feels the breath catch in his lungs. It takes him an excruciating minute to remember how to exhale.
"What the fuck, Bert?"
Bert levels an unimpressed look at him, and utters a low, but passable imitation of a Fianin territorial call.
"No seriously. What the fuck?" Bob repeats, hating how his voice shakes. But as far as he knew, only Brian and Pete had any idea...
”Figured it out. Saw you a couple times, in the City,” he frowns at Bob. “Do rats taste good?”
”Uh... I... don't know if good is something that can apply to rats,” he finally manages. “There are worse things. And they' re a hot meal.”
Bert hums and looks thoughtful.
”Bert... you can't... no one can know.” Bob tries to put as much seriousness into the words as he can, while keeping his voice low and steady. Sweat is beading along his hairline. The breeze shifts, and the cool air off the ocean chills his skin.
Bert looks at him like Bob's lost all his IQ points, all at once. “Duh. You don't just go talking about magic.”
"I'm not magic.”
”Of course you are. That's why I can talk to you about this magic,” Bert replies.
He chews on his thumbnail and stares at the nearest screen. Sand has scoured sections of the paint away. But all of the disrepair is due to the elements, not vandals. The snack bar beneath them was the only place graffiti bloomed. Everything here is in far better condition than it deserves to be.
”This is old magic. It's fin-tail cars and teenage zombies night after night; dreams, hormones and b-movie screams soaking into the ground with the smuggled beer and spilled Coca-Cola. It's kisses on the merry-go-round when the stars come out and necking in the Ford's back seat, leaving big-ass hickeys on each other's necks as Vincent Price laughs, twenty feet high. This is the magnifying glass of the American Teen, focusing the silver screen fantasies that fed this entire coast for generations. It's rebellious, like us. More so, maybe and is definitely fucking magic.
”But yeah, I guess it's not the same as you.”
Bob stares out across the uneven lot at the humps of scrub grass where cars parked, at the poles with their corroded metal speakers. At the edge of his vision, there's a flutter of movement. It's the jerky flicker of film fed through a projector - he can almost hear the celluloid clicking through the machine. To the far left, Bob swears for a moment he sees a girl in a sweater set and poodle skirt cross the rows, moving with determined strides towards the snack bar.
"We were part of that too,” Bob says, as he watches her fade out of sight as she sets foot on the gravel. “It wasn't just humans that made movies.”
~~~
The memory slips away when Bob wakes. But the phrase magnifying glass stays with him, words sticking like burrs.
~~~
Some time later - a couple weeks, a month - Bob's being hauled to another session with the extractors. His guards take him down a back hall; the short cut gives them time for a smoke break after the escort. They pass a door that's normally closed. This time, however, it's been left open and Bob can see another whitewashed corridor. There's a different scent in the air though, something acrid and astringent that catches in the back of his throat. His guards pause to pull the door closed, but before it shuts, a howl echoes up the hallway. It's a long, drawn-out sound, full of pain and hopelessness. For a second, Bob just stops. He can't breathe, can't think. All he knows is that cry of true despair. Then he's listening, listening as hard as he possibly can to the nuances of the howl, trying to identify the voice.
"Fucking animals. Look, even tough guy knows they're monsters," The guard at his left says and shakes him, wakening the pain in the fresh break in Bob's wrist. "Finally found something that scares you, eh, tough guy? You should be scared. That animal would tear out your throat and eat your intestines for lunch."
Bob feels a wave of calm settle over him. For the first time in weeks - maybe months, maybe longer, he can't be sure - he feels awake, like himself. But mostly he feels relief.
That howl doesn't belong to anyone he knows.
"They should put the damn thing down."
"What, don't tell me you're scared, Clancy."
"Damn right I'm scared! That fucking monster killed eight guys before they tranq'ed it. Since it's been here, it's torn the shit out of five scientists."
Bob doesn't realize he’s smiling until a gloved hand backhands him.
"You think that's funny, tough guy? I think we should put you in with that fucking monster and see how tough you are then."
"Clancy..."
Bob knows what's coming. He takes the gut punch and doubles over, so he can grin at his feet for an instant before schooling his expression when his handlers wrestle him upright again. The blow doesn’t matter. These assholes don’t matter. That howl drove a splinter of ice-cold awareness into him. No one’s coming for him. If they aren’t dead, they think he’s dead. But that’s no reason for Bob to give up.
After all, his mother didn’t raise him to die in a cage.
~~~
It's not long after he hears the howl that Bli/nd moves him. Bob knows that this is the only chance he's likely to get to break free, so he's ready. They take precautions of course - the drones dope him up and put him in restraints. But despite his reputation as a tough guy - a nickname that always woke a low roil of dread in him - they hadn't uncovered Bob's most important secret, so the sedative dosage is wrong. His metabolism tears through it faster than Bob would like actually, since it also takes the edge off the grinding pain left from his interrogations. He needs time out in moonlight to kick the healing up properly, but the sweet relief of muted pain helps. The restraints are solid, but just standard issue steel and not laced with silver. He bides his time, letting them hustle him into a wagon. The rush of fresh air washes the rest of the sedative out of his system. Bob ignores the renewed sharp snarl of pain in his joints and the ever-present throb in his hands and wrists, and instead focuses on the crunch of gravel and sand as the wagon starts to move.
They leave the compound in darkness, so Bob doesn't have any external clues to tell him where he's being taken. There are countless twists and turns, with periodic stops as they pass through a ring of checkpoints. Then the road changes, growing bumpier. Between the patter of pothole fill kicked up by the wheels and the long straight drive, Bob knows their destination. Bli/nd is moving him out-zone, to their desert facility. Once they get him out there, there’s no hope he'll ever break free.
Bright terror has Bob moving, before he's thought the actions through. Two sharp heaves and the wall chains break. He rolls off the seat, shifting to four legs as he falls. The now-loose restraints tangle around his limbs and he snarls in frustration as he slips his paws free. The guards with him start shouting, an eruption of noise and chaos in a too small space, as they reach for their weapons. He doesn't give them time to re-group; Bob’s fangs-deep in the throat of the nearest guard as soon as he can lunge. Blood spurts hot in his mouth, soaking his fur. The unexpected heat is a shock after months of cold, and it focuses him.
Around him, the fumbling for weapons starts to sound more controlled. The last thing Bob needs is a ray gun burn or a bullet wound. He shakes his head, tearing cartilage free with a snap and is on the next guard before his gun clears leather. This guy's a little better prepared; he gets his hand up to protect his neck. Bob savages his wrist and closes around his jugular when the guard screams and grabs his arm. Bob has a brief flash of the interrogation room and the scalpels slicing into his own wrists, the pain and sheer terror of never being able to drum again, or even to feed himself, almost more agonizing than the pain. He growls, shaking off the memory. Before the other two guards can react, Bob shifts to mid-form and pivots on one heel, grabbing a guard's arm and tearing it from its socket. Still alive, motherfuckers.The thought is savage and is followed by a brutal jerk and twist, and the low crunching grind of breaking bones as he snaps the last guard’s neck. Bob grits his teeth around a triumphant howl.
The van jerks to the left and Bob slips in the blood on the floor, hitting his shoulder hard against the wall. The supernova burst of pain does wrench a snarl free. The van swerves again, but this time he's ready and uses the momentum to slam against the door. He hits hard enough to buckle the metal and pop hinges. It doesn’t open. He bears his teeth and kicks at the door lock. Two kicks and the lock breaks, door swinging wide. Out!
For a breathless instant he's airborne, wind ruffling his fur. Then Bob's rolling on asphalt, tumbling into the sand overtaking the highway's edges. Bob shifts in the midst of his roll and runs four-legged for cover as fast as he can. With a squeal of brakes, the van stops. He's already ghosting out of sight. Bob's lucky - and thank fuck, it's about time luck started working in his favor - and finds cover close to the van. It's just rock and scrubby growth, but it's enough. He catches the scent of rattlesnake, lizards, and something small and furred he can't identify under the reek of exhaust and burning rubber.
The moon is new; the only light is the stark brilliance of the Milky Way and the van's headlights. He can hear the low murmur of rushed conversation, the click of metal on metal as guns are checked and loaded. Bob is still, crouched belly-low in the shadow between rock and cactus. He breathes and watches.
The wait isn't long. Both of the remaining guards slip out of the van, shotguns in hand. Bob watches them, creeping closer to the open door. He slips around the front of the van, careful to keep his nails from clicking on the asphalt. He shifts to mid-form and breaks the driver's neck, straight arms the shotgun up out of his face in time to avoid the blast. He's glad for the Bli masks for once; it feels like he's tearing into the company's flesh. Scent gives Bob personal markers so the anonymity is fake - he doesn't know the man holding the tranquilizer rifle, so his death is brutal but quick. But the driver is one of Bob's personal guards. Bob takes grim pleasure in crushing his hands before taking his gun, and savors the screams of pain before ripping out his throat.
Then he's left with the sound of the engine ticking as it cools and the slow drip of blood in the back of the van. A slight breeze ruffles Bob's fur and he just breathes, flexing his hands. The radio flares bright with static. Its crackle makes him aware of the constant low growl rolling out of his throat.
Fucking focus, Bryar or you're going to get ghosted. Brian's voice snaps through his thoughts. Follow protocol.
Protocol. Right.
He shifts back to skin, grabbing his shredded clothes out of the back. His pants are saturated - when he pulls them free blood streams down his bare arms. The remains of his shirt are relatively clean; one arm had wrapped around the wall chains, keeping it out of the worst of the mess. Bob wipes as much blood and gore off his skin with the rags as he can, playing special attention to his hands. Then he pulls the gloves off of the nearest corpse and starts the shakedown.
It helps that Brian's in his thoughts, taking him through procedure. His voice has wavered in like a radio station on a bad transmission throughout Bob's imprisonment. Whenever shit got especially bad with the extractors, Brian's words would slip out of memory, pulling Bob free of the present for a while. Apparently what it took for that station's signal to come in strong and clear was an impromptu jailbreak.
Check bodies first to make sure they are bodies. Search and strip - all gear is useful. Low-level grunts have tracker implants, double check gear anyway. Clear the room - look for bugs, cameras. Search and destroy - do not leave broken tech behind. If you can't take transportation, make fucking sure the enemy can't use it either.
It's a comforting litany, a mental checklist that Bob has carried for years. He hasn't worked a direct raid since his second year with My Chem, but the procedures are planted deep. Which is why he'd put so much time into training. Bob's far from being in good condition - the specter of a truly spectacular crash and burn is looming large, just past the thrumming adrenaline rush that's riding him. But hour upon hour of practice, Brian a furiously smoking, perpetually sarcastic shadow prodding him through the steps, has made this efficient body memory.
Bob doesn't remember the last time he's had to shift between all three forms in such rapid succession. He knows moons have passed, but he doesn't know how many. He needs to spend time in fur, but he can't rifle through the guards' shit shifted. It's enough that he feels the moon prickling on his skin, even though it's young. It's painful, even as it feels like he's coming back to life, similar to drinking all the clean water he can.
Bob sets aside boots that look like they'll fit, a jacket only partially bloody, belt and holsters. He pulls the boots on. They are a tight fit, but will work for what he needs to do.
Following the scent of soured plastic, Bob finds GPS markers in the guards' belt buckles. It's a new trick, but one that Pete had predicted years ago. They pop free of the metal easily. Despite the fear thrumming its own path through him, Bob realizes he's missed this kind of work. Fuck, he misses Brian. Bob shoves that disastrous train of thought away and just keeps breaking things down.
He moves as quickly as he can, piling up weapons, the first aid kit and any other supplies he can find just outside the passenger door. He shifts to mid-form to stack the bodies into the van once they're searched. There’s a ton of ordinance in the van's front compartment. Which isn't much of a surprise, really, since this is the same kind of van used to break up club shows and the intercity riots. Bob's just never seen the interior, past the blast-proof steel.
The chatter on the radio is starting to get more and more urgent. He's running out of time.
He rummages through the ordinance, remembering lessons with Jepha and Andy. His hands move on automatic, improvising a bomb out of the mish-mash of explosives and the gas tank. He drops the scavenged gear a couple rocky bluffs over, scrounges a few fallen branches from the nearest Joshua tree, and follows his own trail back. Still moving quickly and keeping his ears cocked for the sound of incoming Dracs, Bob does his best to muddy the tracks around the van.
Quick quick quick and he's lobbing a grenade into the back of the van, slamming the doors closed and running. He's back to the scrub growth sheltering his supplies when the van goes up. The explosion's pretty spectacular; even in his protected location he can feel the rush of heat. Bob just hopes that the explosion and fire cover the signs of slaughter. He'd managed to pry the closed circuit camera box free from the van's interior, but knows that he's pretty well blown his cover. Imprisoned for all that time and he'd still managed to hide his nature from Bli/nd. Now... if they catch him now, he's well and truly fucked.
Dressed in Bli/nd gear, a duffel full of supplies and weapons strapped across his back, Bob high-tails it over the hills. He continues to brush away his trail as he heads off into the desert. Some distance from the crash, he finds something truly useful - a hot zone. He scrambles around, laying a confusion of tracks up to the field of broken stone. Bob breaks through the barbed wire next to the fallout warning sign, snagging fiber from his shirt on the barbs. Trail laid, he steps carefully on rockier ground, moving as quickly as he can in the opposite direction, following the faint scent of water. He hit a streambed - mostly dry, though he can smell damp rocks - just as he hears the sound of approaching engines. Once there, he jams the branches into a tangle of bushes, slips his stolen boots off, adjusts clothing and shifts to mid-form. With the water-worn rocks under his feet hiding his trail, Bob lopes off as quietly as possible, concentrating on putting miles between him and any pursuers.
Sirens are gathering in the distance. The unending drone fades slowly as he runs.
~~~
At first, he's just focused on getting away. The ground's uneven enough that he has to pay close attention to his path. It's been a long time since Bob's been able to stretch his legs like this - even before the Desolation Row riot, the band had needed to lie low, which translated to the five of them living in close quarters. It had gotten pretty tricky to sneak away for even a brief run. He slips on river rocks a couple times, before his instincts click in and the going gets easier. Bob's running on fumes now. He has just one definite direction - away, and one goal - safety. He slips into a daze, moving as silently as he can, and ignoring the spasms as his leg muscles cramp. The desert life falls silent as he passes by. It's not as dramatic as a forest silence - from what he can remember anyway. His mom had moved them to the City when he was seven, and Bob's not seen a forest since. He doubts the standard Bli grunts will notice the difference in the desert. But he's in the zones now, which means Dracs. They would probably notice. That thought keeps him moving and continues to push his trembling muscles on.
When he can't hear the sirens even when straining, Bob risks stopping to track down some water. It takes some time, even though he's been following the streambed, but he's eventually successful. The water's mineral heavy and thick with silt, but it's fresh, untainted by meds. He even manages a more thorough scrub of his hands and arms with a damp rag before the shrill prod to runrunrun kicks in again.
Dawn is slipping close when the pain of his injuries finally becomes more urgent than his flight instinct. Bob focuses on finding a place to hole up for the day. He catches the scent of metal nearby, a lot of it. Cautiously climbing up out of the gully, he finds he's on the edge of an abandoned pump station. The corroded remains of the pumps and tanks still tower, a field of rusting hulks that look skeletal in the light of false dawn. Bob's more interested in the lack of fresh human scent-trails nearby. He heads towards a burnt out tractor-trailer that's crumpled against the security link fence. Inside, it smells of trapped heat, animals - coyotes had denned here several months ago - and old fire.
All that Bob cares about is that it's shelter. He hauls his gear in, builds a little nest in the sand out of his clothes and shifts to four legs. Then exhaustion pulls him under.
He doesn't wake once during the day.
~~~
Even though Bob has lived in the City for years, he hasn't spent much time in the zones. Brian changed that quickly.
Today though, they're sitting on the wall, far from the tunnel leading to Bli/nd's headquarters, facing the desert. Bob's watching an animal move carefully though the shadows under a stand of cacti. It's just far enough away he can't identify it beyond 'furred, not a rat'. Most likely it's a feral cat, but he wants it to be a jackrabbit.
With the familiar snick of metal and flint, Brian lights another cigarette.
“The zones are our biggest advantage over Bli/nd.” Brian says. His tone's casual, but when Bob looks over, his expression's intent. “As much as those fuckers want to think they can control the zones, they can't. There’s too much out there that's beyond their control. There are roads out there that have never been marked on maps. The desert's been eating and hiding civilization for as long as people have crossed it and attempted to tame it. It's always been a sanctuary of rebels.”
Bob grins. “Why don't you live out there?”
“The fight's here,” Brian says with a shrug. "Besides, it's been changing.”
“What do you mean?”
“The desert, it's..,” he scowls out at the sand.
Bob follows his line of sight - a dust devil has moved up from the west and is twirling its way towards the City on a lopsided, ovoid path. Out to the far southwest, pale green foxfire dances out around abandoned oil rigs.
“It's taken on an uncanny life of its own. There are things out in the desert, things that happen in the desert that are just...” Brian rubs at the back of his neck and grins a little at Bob. “Well, werewolves wouldn't be much of a surprise out there.”
Bob's eyebrows rise. "Did you really call werewolves uncanny?"
Brian's grin turns into laughter. Bob grins reluctantly in turn - because seriously, uncanny? - but he doesn't miss how quickly Brian's laughter dwindles when he looks back out at the desert.
~~~
When he finds a familiar road the next afternoon, Bob's wary. Following it will definitely help shake his pursuers; Dracs, for some reason, have always avoided Route Guano. He is well aware, however, that there's more than Dracs to watch out for out here and a road is risky. Particularly for someone walking and wearing a Bli/nd uniform. The lengthening shadows offer equal measures of protection and danger. He conceals his gear and goes four-legged to scout out the road.
But he finds he can't stay on the asphalt - it feels wrong under his paws. He also is constantly looking back over his shoulder, scanning the area, because it feels like he's being watched. And not by a single pair of eyes; it feels more like a silent, staring crowd. The sensation fades when he retreats to the berm, but being near the road still makes his skin crawl.
He has a feeling that it will just get worse at night. After an afternoon of jumping at shadows, Bob doesn't want to see what worse looks like. Besides, he's had about as much worse as he can possibly stomach for a while. He shifts and grabs his gear, heading back in the wilderness.
Roads never marked on maps, Bob thinks as he moves as fast as possible away from Route Guano.
That night Bob dreams of ghosts, with long fingers and wide, hungry mouths.
~~~
Despite the fact that their secret headquarters are located deep in the zones and that endless drought has the zones reverting back to desert, Bli/nd has shit-all for decent desert gear. The grunts' uniforms are uncomfortable in the heat and relentless sun, and offer poor camouflage, though they aren't as obvious as a Draculoid's white suit against the sand. In any event, he hasn't seen anyone wearing Bli/nd's monochrome - aside from himself - for days. Bob is pretty confident that he's lost any pursuers. Of course, now he's lost in the desert too, which sucks. After turning his back on Route Guano, he's been unable to find any familiar landmarks. At least he has some survival skills, rusty as they are, to draw on.
This isn't the first time Bob's had to lay low in the desert. The pack gatherings had moved out here, back before he and his mom had arrived in the City, and when he could risk the runs, he'd spend full moons out in the dunes. But now he's far from known territory. He can't seem to stop following the trail of destruction, evidence of the continuing battle between the zonerunner gangs, City refugees and Bli/nd, It's as if he's been sensitized to the damage created by Bli/nd.
~~~
Five days into his escape, Bob stumbles onto a road, one of the old highways.
There's a billboard just off the cracked blacktop, its ad shredded and hanging from the metal frame, picture faded by the relentless sun. Someone has tied a department store mannequin to the upper struts, zebra strips of paint still visible in places on the plastic torso. Bob looks around, searching the landscape. He sees a cactus with a bent left arm on a rise, across from the billboard.
Fuck. He knows where he is.
It takes some searching, but he finally finds the turnoff. The road's crap, though that's nothing new. But the sand's settled deep in the tire ruts and part of the roadside bluff has collapsed. It twists and turns, narrows down to a barely visible double track in places. He can't imagine trying to take a car on this now. Bob slows as he nears the next turnoff. If there's an ambush, this is where it will be.
He creeps around the bluff and sees a rusted out Winnebago. There's still no sign of habitation, aside from desert life.
Bob continues on, following the vanishing track up a pair of buildings squatting low in scrubland.
There's no one here, hasn't been anyone out here for some time. Bob ignores the disappointment that twists in him at that realization. Sand is gritty under his feet as he moves cautiously around the main room. Dust, sand and blown-in debris have formed tiny drifts in corners. There's a single china cup under the pile of milk crates and boards that used to be an improvised table. Bob fishes the cup free, dumping the accumulated sand. It hisses out in a thin stream, and Bob runs a thumb over the red dragon painted on the porcelain. The silence is overwhelming.
He leaves clean trails on the metal bookcase as he shoulders it aside to get to the safe room. Bob checks the safety markers on the concealed door; no one's been there lately either. Brian did a good job of hiding it. He drops his gear and all but collapses on the army cot set up in the corner.
~~~
The zones are fucking huge and it makes no sense that Bob's found this bolt hole again.
Back when he was running with The Used - back when Brian was still around and Bob thought he'd maybe found himself a pack in the City - they'd had a bad run of raids and needed to find someplace to lie low out-zone. Bert had known about a place in Zone Three where they could hide and wait for Bli's interest in their activities to wane. Bob had been pretty surprised by how sweet the hideout had turned out to be - this was Bert after all. Bob had expected a falling down shack straight out of a western ghost town, made of rusted out metal and sun bleached wood. Which is what it looks like - a couple of rusting abandoned shacks leaning against one another, with an equally trashed Winnebago parked by the turnoff. But inside the main shack was a well-disguised hatch and behind that hatch was an old school, 80's style bomb shelter.
It turned out that this had been a hideout for a zonerunner Bert knew years ago, a paranoid motherfucker that took a shine to Bert. The 'runner had apparently been a trucker back in the day, before the Pig Bombs made long distance travel damn near impossible. He'd seen where things were headed and started moving more than legal cargo, skimming off of the legit shipments and stockpiling as much as he dared. Bert said he'd been taken out in the first wave of water riots. Wrong place, wrong time. Bob isn’t surprised by that news - though he’d been surprised that no one else had gotten to the cache first. Well, until he'd gotten a close look at the hatch's steel door and complex locking system. It showed signs of tampering - slivery scratches along the door edges, a faint imprint of a crowbar, even some scorch marks. But the door remained intact.
The first time Bob remembered seeing Brian speechless was when Bert swung that hatch open and revealed the supplies stashed within - food, water, ammo, enough booze to get Battery City drunk for a month.
They'd barely made a dent in the supplies when Brian had gotten the all-clear from Wentz.
Not that this helps Bob now. He can't remember the combination to the fallout shelter - and honestly wonders if it's information he ever really had.
~~~
Once he's found shelter, Bob doesn't know what to do with himself. The air inside the bolt hole is close, stuffy. It smells hot, with faint traces of his past caught in the corners. The blankets smell strongly of Bert and Quinn; he catches whiffs of Jepha, though he's not sure where they originate. Brian is there, but only in memory. His insomnia had gotten bad the first month out and Bob had learned to fall to sleep to the rhythmic sound of Brian's boots pacing in the front room. There's a certain pattern to the creak of the floorboards. When his head gets too loud, Bob paces out those steps - shorter than his own, but he's used to spaces he can't stretch out in, so even the abbreviated strides have comfort. It's just Bob and his ghosts - though, with all the shit that knocks around in the zones, Bob hates calling them ghosts at all. That seems like bad luck, assuming that they are still out there, somewhere. He doesn't want to jinx them. But they feel like ghosts. His memory drifts, and is foggy in the strangest places.
The first acid rain underlines his problems all too well. The storm takes him unaware - he didn't have time to hunt down food and or find water. It lasts far longer than he expects, two full days of pattering wet, with a hissing undertone that has him sticking to shelter. He feels trapped. Mid-way through the first afternoon the walls start to close in, and Bob has to sit with his head between his legs, trying to catch his breath. By the time the storm finally dies out and the sun has baked the ground back to safety, Bob's lips are cracking and he's lightheaded from thirst. He barely remembers to check for interlopers - luckily, that's something that Brian drilled into his head, so he manages to right his mistake. Not willing to risk himself further, he shifts to fur and sets out in search of the nearest underground spring. It's not far - the 'runner was pretty smart when building his refuge - but it takes Bob longer than it should to track down the scent.
The dreams start that night.
Well, they aren't really dreams, not at first. They start out as memories of his imprisonment. Pain and blood, the crack of bones breaking, the heat of cuts being cauterized without any kind of numbing agent to stop the burn. There were days when all he could smell was the baked sweetness of his own seared flesh.
Through it all, the information they wanted sat behind a wall in his mind. He didn't know what Bl/ind most wanted - the names of allies, places that the bands went to ground. They were always careful to not tell him if his band was alive; instead implied or outright lied saying that they'd died, that he was all that was left, and if he wanted to prevent any more deaths, giving up information was the only way. Bob could smell the lies on them, so he could cling to his silence.
Well... not to silence. He didn't have anything to prove by being a tough guy who didn't scream. They just worked harder if you didn't scream. And he'd planned for this, gathering up information to spill with the tears, sweat, and blood their questioning created. But none of it was useful; and frustration soon joined the stench of lies swirling around his torturers, making his head swim. They battered away at him but he curled tighter and tighter, wanting relief from the pain.
Bob dreams things that didn't happen. He dreams of losing his hands, of his wrists not healing, and being unable to get his fingers to close. He dreams of limbs lost, of losing his temper and forgetting himself. He dreams of Dracs coming into his cell and moving him down to the labs, putting him in a cage and experimenting, pushing to get him to shift and stay shifted. In his dreams, they have a drug that forced Shifts. In his dreams there's no chance for escape.
For days he wakes huddled in the corner behind the cot, curled up as small as he can get, panting and smelling of terror. It takes him weeks to get past the need to plaster himself against the wall, hiding in the darkest and most defensible places. Even after he runs a couple of nighttime patrols and confirms that this place is hidden and secure, Bob is reluctant to leave the safe room.
Then he starts dreaming of Brian.
The Brian in his dreams stalks him. He wears the uniform of a Drac. Bob isn't even sure how he knows that it's Brian in his dreams, since he's wearing the same white suit, the same plastic horror movie mask as all the rest of the squad. Well, he is a little shorter than the rest. Brian the Draculoid stays in the background; he's part of Bob's guard, but never gets close enough to touch. He just watches. But Bob knows that his secrets are safe and even though the torture continues, it feels less immediate.
During the day, Bob spends more and more time outside.
The Brian in his dreams changes. He stops wearing white suits and masks. Now he wears the uniform of management - dress shirt and tie, shined shoes, slacks. A proper Bl/ind badge hangs from his belt, next to a company issue ray gun. His hair is tamed flat. There’s no sign of his piercings or his tattoos, which is somehow the most horrible thing about his appearance. Brian still doesn't involve himself in Bob's torture - he still stands back and watches, eyes flat, face expressionless. Sometimes a tall, bald man is there with Brian, watching the Dracs work with a hungry predatory gaze. Bob wants to shout warning, tell Brian to run. But he needs all his breath for screaming.
~~~
Bob's spending the majority of his days on four feet, pacing out his territory. He runs for hours. The bolt hole remains at the center of his world. He might be walking a fine line with sanity, but self-preservation sits deep in him.
But there's a comfort to being in the wilderness. That comfort stays even when the sun is blazing down, and he can't find decent shade or a breeze, so Bob feels like he's baking alive in his fur. It's there even when he's deep in the desert, when the most he can find to eat are lizards. There have been too many days like that, skinny days that make him reluctant to shift, even if it might be slightly cooler to wear skin instead of fur. He doesn't want to see how defined the curve of his ribs has become and the constant gnaw of hunger is worse when he shifts.
Bob wonders if his hunting instincts have been blunted by all the time he spent in concrete cages. Back in the City, he'd spent a lot of time tracking rats to their nests by their runs. They never nested close to any of his apartments - rats are fucking smart and know better than to try and raise young around large predators.
He'd spent the weeks between Brian's disappearance and The Used's departure for the far coast running out-zone, a furred ghost among the glossed out wave heads. It was the only way he'd been able to deal with the turmoil in him, running feral and steering far from humans in the night. Dayside, he'd started putting feelers out for something new. He didn't want to stay in Battery City - he was considering heading back to the Great Lakes again, actually - when Pete and Patrick who had been keeping an eye for him, found him work. Found him his band. For all the good that did him in the long run.
That thought has him turning away, running so fast each step kicks dust in his wake, like cartoon smoke, like -
flash of a flickering television, gleaming in basement murk, the sound of guitar strings racing along with a freight train's inevitability, frantic soundtrack for a roadrunner's run. The goose honk of Gerard's laughter, followed by Frank's high-pitched giggle. Mikey a warm weight on Bob's feet, shifting his bony ass as he settled deeper into the snagging cushion. It's warm and dark; Bob breathes in the mingled scent of his pack and is content.
~~~
The past is a raveled thread. If he pulls at it, teasing out connections, more pieces tumble loose. Bob already feels undone. His captivity has left holes, gaps in the fabric of memory and thought, dangling threads where important pieces have sheared away. He knows this, but doesn’t know what to do about it. He’s not sure if he wants to do anything with it, really. Fur is comfort, fur is healing; it becomes easier to trust instinct and work out old injuries, to let his mind rest.
Sand settles deep in fur, staining white nicotine yellow. It’s better for camouflage, turns him into a ghost appropriate to the surroundings. Dust veiling and protecting. He misses the City, though, more than he thought possible. Of course, there he had to wrap darks close, pin shadows to battered jackets. No need for jackets here - he's in fur more often than not, forgetting for days at a time to shift, let alone bother with clothes. But here the dirt's kinder on his paws than asphalt ever was, even taking thorns into account.
~~~
It's moonrise and he's curled up under a rock ledge, tail across his nose keeping cold away. The rock around him is radiating its stolen heat. He's comfortable. Dusk hunting was good - couple lizards, a rangy jackrabbit surprised from cover. Simple contentment fills him; he's warm and full, not overly thirsty. He's upwind from the road and garage, dividing time between watching that and the stars.
The sound arrives first, faint but enough to have him scenting the cold desert air. It's not long before he catches the first whiff - dirty fumes, tar and dust. An old car, coming this way. It’s the closest anyone's come to his place below since he'd found his way back. He thinks about leaving, thinks about defending his territory. Indecision clouds instincts, man slipping in front of wolf.
A battered Trans Am slips over the rise. Still showing good lines despite hard use, there's solid speed and power rumbling under the curved hood. It's not car trouble that has the driver this far off the highway. Bob watches as the car takes the turn off, pulling into the shadows between garage and shack. Twin engines whine high in his ears; on the road, two bikes practically leap over the hill and follow the car's dust up the drive. Bob whines at the sound and then silences himself.
Double car door slam and the sudden cut of bike engines cast the silenced night forth. There's a murmur of voices as four people gather, draw weapons and check the premises. Bob watches carefully; they don't seem dangerous - to him - but he still not sure if he wants to share space with them.
Then the wind shifts, bringing the strangers’ scents his way. And Bob's slinking down the hills before his mind overcomes his shock.
He's trotting down the slope to the garage, quick as he can without stumbling. Bob has gotten good at stealth in the time he's been out here; even moving quickly, he doesn't kick up much dirt. Out of habit he sticks close to the shadows, keeping upwind as long as possible. When he slips over the next rise, he's struck with a fresh wave of scent. Some of it's familiar - he'd know the scent of Ways, of Ray and Frank anywhere and it smells like it's been some time since any of them have bathed. They smell of gasoline, the ozone snap of charged ray guns, stale cigarette smoke, the harsh ammonia and bleach blend of fresh hair dye; of dust and old sweat and blood. Bob's lips peel back in a snarl at the last - not all of the blood scent is old. It smells like Mikey and Frank have fresh injuries. But beyond all of that cacophony of scent there's something else, something new that makes Bob freeze in the shadows of a tumbleweed patch and just breathe.
No, it's not that the scent is new, he decides. He’d simply thought it was...well, a memory. It's the scent of comfort and belonging and HIS that Bob had known back in the City, when all of them had been forced to lie low in Gabe's under-basement. He had thought the scent wasn't real, or that maybe it was the scent of his own connection, the unspoken and unacknowledged bonds of his pack. But that was years and a full lifetime ago... and here he is, scenting that on the wind.
What the fuck.
He tries to wrap his mind around it, but he's been living too long in fur. His instincts are strong and loudly insisting PACK. Bob heads out around the last rise, slipping carefully past the Trans Am.
Should fit in the back. There are tarps for the bikes...
He rounds the back of the car and almost walks into Mikey.
Mikey throws his head up, nostrils flaring, before staring at Bob. His irises blaze a familiar gold that steals all thoughts right out of Bob's head. All, but for one.
Eclipsed!
Then, Yes.
Mikey takes a couple deep, shaky breaths. "Wow. Hi."
Bob moves a little closer.
"You found this place first." Mikey says, watching Bob steadily. "Well, I guess that answers the safety question."
"Hey Mikes, who are you talking to...holy fuck." Frank freezes, his eyes widening as he stares at Bob.
Bob watches his hand slip slowly down towards his holster. He rumbles out a low growl.
"Frank, leave the gun holstered." Mikey says.
"What?" But he's stopped moving at the growl.
"We thought you were dead." Mikey says.
Bob can't hear any obvious emotion in Mikey's words, but he doesn't need to - he can smell the tangle of guilt, fear, grief and relief in his scent.
"Mikey...," Frank says.
Mikey crouches down, forearms resting on his thighs as he balances on the balls of his feet. Bob absently notes that he wouldn't have been able to maintain that kind of easy balance before.
"Are you mad? I hope you're not..."
All right, that's enough of that. Bob huffs and knocks Mikey on his ass, so he can climb right on top of him. Bob hears Frank curse viciously, but he's more interested in Mikey's quiet laugh and how he clings tight, tangling long fingers in Bob's fur. Bob sticks his nose against Mikey's ear, making him laugh outright, before he licks along his neck. Mikey leans his forehead on Bob's shoulder, his fingers finding that itchy spot right at back of Bob's neck that Bob never seems to be able to reach. Bob feels him relax, some of the worry fading from his scent.
Then they both still at the sound of a ray gun powering up. They turn their heads in unison, and Bob finds himself staring up the barrel of Frank's favorite gun. It's been recently re-painted.
"Frank, don't shoot."
"What the fuck are you on, Mikeyway?" Frank's voice climbing in fear.
Bob can hear movement at the door of the shack.
"Frank, what the fuck is going on?" Gerard's voice is sharp with exhaustion.
Mikey sighs in Bob's ear as both Ray and Gerard appear behind Frank and swear in unison, their guns sliding free of holsters.
"Um... you probably should..." Mikey's fingers tighten in Bob's fur.
He huffs in agreement and wriggles around to face the others directly before he shifts to skin.
"If any of you assholes shoot me, I'm going to be really fucking pissed." Bob says, his voice rough from the lack of talking.
In the abrupt silence, Mikey slips his jacket off and into Bob's lap.
The only other sound is of three guns hitting the dirt.
~~~
Part Two
~~~~
They take his jacket, belt and boots first. Then he's shoved into a long concrete room with dripping showerheads, a room that smells of equal parts water, fear and rage, where a bored Bli drone tells him to strip. The clothes aren’t worth a taser burn, so Bob complies and puts up with the cold water and disinfectant. That powdery shit crawls up his nose, obliterating most other scents. He feels a sharp flare of panic, but forces it away. This isn't the first time he's gone through this process, after all, and he knows the disinfectant will clear out eventually. He sneezes a couple times, which helps. His clothes have disappeared by the time Bob can blink powder out of his eyes. He’s pissed about losing the lighter. It’s the last thing he had from Brian.
They give him grey to wear, a t-shirt and loose pants with an elastic waistband. The cotton’s thin and they don’t give him shoes or socks. Bob knows that’s meant to be demoralizing - the concrete floor is unheated and the air conditioning is turned up high, waking goosebumps on his bare skin. He fakes a shiver and sees a thin smile curl the drone’s lips. Bob’s dealt with worse conditions. Besides, bare feet are better than ill-fitting shoes.
The Bli grunts throw him in a solitary cell. The room's soundproofed and Bob can't hear much beyond the cycling air intake and the low buzz of the fluorescent. That mosquito whine is a constant unwanted presence in his ears when his hearing's already compromised, still ringing from the show and the beating after. The buzz covers any sound that leaks past the cell’s walls.
Bob's still snarling inside from the fight; the quiet adds to his frustration. He wants to pace, but knows better. For one thing, the movement would set off his cracked ribs. But Bob's more concerned about giving the watchers a show. And there are watchers - he searched out the camera as soon as they shoved him into this windowless room.
Bob draws in on himself. Keeping his movements small, he huddles down in the cheap-ass jail clothes and wills himself to heal slower. Let them think he's cowed. He doesn't want to give them anything worthy of further study. He doesn't love the ache of his ribs or having vision limited by black eyes, but the last thing he wants is to attract attention for being... unusual.
A huff of involuntary laughter escapes at that thought. Bob winces and cradles his side. He doesn’t want to attract any more attention than the band already has, anyway.
He really misses his hoodie. If he focuses on that, on the feel of the fabric against his arms, the concealing security of the hood, he can ignore other worries - like the meaning of a cell with excellent soundproofing, and how he can’t smell his band.
He’s not even sure he’s being held in the same building as the rest of the guys. They'd been culled out from the other detainees early and then he'd been singled out as soon as the riot van had pulled up to the gates. As he was being dragged away, Bob had heard Frank fight against his captors, curses and desperation blistering the air until the zap of a taser cut him off.
Bob understands the logic behind his isolation - it’s a divide and conquer maneuver. Bl/ind had luck breaking the last drummer and they think Bob's new, fresh on the scene. Bob wonders if they really are that stupid. Do they focus on the Bands, to the exclusion of support crew? Bob’s been running with Bands since he was young, ducking into the underground clubs, the back-alley rehearsal spaces and the rooms hidden behind them, since Bli /nd closed the public schools down. And that had happened...shit, when he was fourteen.
It’s not like he’s a guy that blends - blue-eyed and blond is pretty obvious coloring in Battery City. Bob’s pretty sure he has Brian - and probably Pete - to thank for his anonymity. One thing he’s one hundred percent positive about is that Bli/nd doesn’t have him in their Preternet database. If Better Living Industries has it in for the Bands, they have an extra-special hard-on for preternaturals. Brian had watched his back when he was young and stupid, but Bob learned extreme caution quickly. Bob's mostly heard rumors, stories whispered low, beneath the hearing of humans and hidden by the ambient noise in dive bars. But rumors are more than enough. If the words hadn't convinced him, the reek of primal fear the stories invoked sure as fuck did.
He's left alone long enough to lose sense of time. There’s no natural light here, just the constant glare of fluorescents caged in fixtures far overhead, and he's buried far enough in the complex that Bob can't smell outside air. Food and water appears at irregular intervals, but he can smell the meds tainting both and ignores them. He continues to think hoodie thoughts. The left cuff is starting to fray, because he picks at it when he gets bored during practice. It's still his favorite because of the image on the front. There’s a wolf and an eagle, pieces of wilderness that he can wear. The guys don’t understand why he’s so attached. Well, except for Mikey, who found it for him in the first place.
Bob's solitude continues and he starts to wonder if Bli/nd’s forgotten about him. The isolation is hard - especially since he’s fucking worried about the rest of his band - but he can push that aside. He’s mentally mapping the cracks in his hoodie’s image, when he hears the low bleat of an alarm.
He frowns, wondering if it’s just his imagination kicking into overdrive. No; it’s barely audible, but definitely an alarm. Booted feet run by. Bob tenses, but tries not to show his interest - he pulls his knees up to block the camera and scents the air. He’s rewarded with a whiff of smoke so faint it's almost memory.
The door to his cell is slammed open, breaking his concentration. Bli grunts burst in, bristling with tasers, backed up by Draculoids with more threatening weaponry. Bob tries not to stare; you don’t see a lot of Dracs in the City. They creep him the fuck out. Dracs just smell wrong, the medication, electronics and other scents twisting anything human away. He’s not given time to get to his feet on his own. Bob's dragged to an even smaller windowless room and tossed into a chair with built-in restraints. Then - finally - the questions begin.
In the sudden, relentless cycle of pain and questions, Bob figures it out.
They escaped.
He doesn't know how many - if all four of them broke out together, how many of them made it out alive - but from the direction of the questions, Bob is sure of one thing. Some of them escaped. It explains the hard edge to the questions, the growing scent of anger and frustration that the drones can't hide. And that realization is exactly what he needs to hunker down deep into his own silence.
Not that he can stay silent for long. Bli/nd is very skilled at information extraction. Luckily, Bob’s well prepared. Bob pushes all thoughts of his current life deep, settling back into his life two years ago. There’s a list of old hideouts and dummy stashes set up as sacrifices that he can inhabit. Not that he’s going to let that information be any easier to extract; Better Living Industries is going to have to work for every lie.
~~~
Bob had thought he’d lost track of time before the escape. It turns out that was just the tension of waiting. Now he’s got nothing to wait for and Bli/nd’s doing its level best to break him, to ferret out his secrets by tripping him up. Pain fragments any sense of time he still possesses. They try to keep his sessions with the extractors random, but there’s a pattern there too. Bob follows their direction, letting their expectations shape and strengthen the persona they expect to find.
This is a problem, though. He's trapped in their maze of featureless corridors, cells and endless interrogations and he gets lost, immersed too long in what they expect him to be. A rebel, a punk - but just human.
Bob's never been just human. But he’s had a lifetime to learn how to pass.
The habit's so ingrained that Bob forgets he's ever lived any other way.
Luckily, there have always been people in his life who knew better.
~~~
The desert surrounds the drive-in now. Originally, it had sat in the outskirts of one of the dead cities -Bob thinks it was named San something, but then most of the cities around here were. Not that it matters; the city broke down and dried up, blowing away in the drought and encroaching sand. He’s not sure how the drive-in's lasted - maybe it's just strange enough, just nostalgic enough to hold its own in an empty world.
”It's magic.” Bert says.
Bob frowns at him. “Excuse me?”
”No excuse for you!” Bert crows, and drums his heels against the cinder block wall of the snack bar.
Bob swallows his answering sigh but doesn't stop the eye roll, and waits. Bert leans heavily on his shoulder. Bob inhales a noseful of familiar scent - unwashed hair, something sugary, sweat, and dust - and relaxes. He hooks a thumb through Bert's belt loop; they aren't that high off the ground, but Bert won't let that stop him from falling. The grey gravel surrounding the snack bar is large and sharp-edged, and promises vicious road rash.
"You're wondering. I can hear it," Bert giggles and waves his hand in a sweeping gesture that almost ends with him smacking Bob in the face. “All of this is magic, that's why it's still here. And it's why this is safe too."
Bob has his doubts about the safety factor - because come on, nothing is fucking safe anymore - but he doesn't push the issue.
Bert cocks his head and gives him a sly smile. He tuts, and shakes his head. "It is a crime and a fucking shame, Bobert, that you have so little faith. Especially considering what you are."
Bob feels the breath catch in his lungs. It takes him an excruciating minute to remember how to exhale.
"What the fuck, Bert?"
Bert levels an unimpressed look at him, and utters a low, but passable imitation of a Fianin territorial call.
"No seriously. What the fuck?" Bob repeats, hating how his voice shakes. But as far as he knew, only Brian and Pete had any idea...
”Figured it out. Saw you a couple times, in the City,” he frowns at Bob. “Do rats taste good?”
”Uh... I... don't know if good is something that can apply to rats,” he finally manages. “There are worse things. And they' re a hot meal.”
Bert hums and looks thoughtful.
”Bert... you can't... no one can know.” Bob tries to put as much seriousness into the words as he can, while keeping his voice low and steady. Sweat is beading along his hairline. The breeze shifts, and the cool air off the ocean chills his skin.
Bert looks at him like Bob's lost all his IQ points, all at once. “Duh. You don't just go talking about magic.”
"I'm not magic.”
”Of course you are. That's why I can talk to you about this magic,” Bert replies.
He chews on his thumbnail and stares at the nearest screen. Sand has scoured sections of the paint away. But all of the disrepair is due to the elements, not vandals. The snack bar beneath them was the only place graffiti bloomed. Everything here is in far better condition than it deserves to be.
”This is old magic. It's fin-tail cars and teenage zombies night after night; dreams, hormones and b-movie screams soaking into the ground with the smuggled beer and spilled Coca-Cola. It's kisses on the merry-go-round when the stars come out and necking in the Ford's back seat, leaving big-ass hickeys on each other's necks as Vincent Price laughs, twenty feet high. This is the magnifying glass of the American Teen, focusing the silver screen fantasies that fed this entire coast for generations. It's rebellious, like us. More so, maybe and is definitely fucking magic.
”But yeah, I guess it's not the same as you.”
Bob stares out across the uneven lot at the humps of scrub grass where cars parked, at the poles with their corroded metal speakers. At the edge of his vision, there's a flutter of movement. It's the jerky flicker of film fed through a projector - he can almost hear the celluloid clicking through the machine. To the far left, Bob swears for a moment he sees a girl in a sweater set and poodle skirt cross the rows, moving with determined strides towards the snack bar.
"We were part of that too,” Bob says, as he watches her fade out of sight as she sets foot on the gravel. “It wasn't just humans that made movies.”
~~~
The memory slips away when Bob wakes. But the phrase magnifying glass stays with him, words sticking like burrs.
~~~
Some time later - a couple weeks, a month - Bob's being hauled to another session with the extractors. His guards take him down a back hall; the short cut gives them time for a smoke break after the escort. They pass a door that's normally closed. This time, however, it's been left open and Bob can see another whitewashed corridor. There's a different scent in the air though, something acrid and astringent that catches in the back of his throat. His guards pause to pull the door closed, but before it shuts, a howl echoes up the hallway. It's a long, drawn-out sound, full of pain and hopelessness. For a second, Bob just stops. He can't breathe, can't think. All he knows is that cry of true despair. Then he's listening, listening as hard as he possibly can to the nuances of the howl, trying to identify the voice.
"Fucking animals. Look, even tough guy knows they're monsters," The guard at his left says and shakes him, wakening the pain in the fresh break in Bob's wrist. "Finally found something that scares you, eh, tough guy? You should be scared. That animal would tear out your throat and eat your intestines for lunch."
Bob feels a wave of calm settle over him. For the first time in weeks - maybe months, maybe longer, he can't be sure - he feels awake, like himself. But mostly he feels relief.
That howl doesn't belong to anyone he knows.
"They should put the damn thing down."
"What, don't tell me you're scared, Clancy."
"Damn right I'm scared! That fucking monster killed eight guys before they tranq'ed it. Since it's been here, it's torn the shit out of five scientists."
Bob doesn't realize he’s smiling until a gloved hand backhands him.
"You think that's funny, tough guy? I think we should put you in with that fucking monster and see how tough you are then."
"Clancy..."
Bob knows what's coming. He takes the gut punch and doubles over, so he can grin at his feet for an instant before schooling his expression when his handlers wrestle him upright again. The blow doesn’t matter. These assholes don’t matter. That howl drove a splinter of ice-cold awareness into him. No one’s coming for him. If they aren’t dead, they think he’s dead. But that’s no reason for Bob to give up.
After all, his mother didn’t raise him to die in a cage.
~~~
It's not long after he hears the howl that Bli/nd moves him. Bob knows that this is the only chance he's likely to get to break free, so he's ready. They take precautions of course - the drones dope him up and put him in restraints. But despite his reputation as a tough guy - a nickname that always woke a low roil of dread in him - they hadn't uncovered Bob's most important secret, so the sedative dosage is wrong. His metabolism tears through it faster than Bob would like actually, since it also takes the edge off the grinding pain left from his interrogations. He needs time out in moonlight to kick the healing up properly, but the sweet relief of muted pain helps. The restraints are solid, but just standard issue steel and not laced with silver. He bides his time, letting them hustle him into a wagon. The rush of fresh air washes the rest of the sedative out of his system. Bob ignores the renewed sharp snarl of pain in his joints and the ever-present throb in his hands and wrists, and instead focuses on the crunch of gravel and sand as the wagon starts to move.
They leave the compound in darkness, so Bob doesn't have any external clues to tell him where he's being taken. There are countless twists and turns, with periodic stops as they pass through a ring of checkpoints. Then the road changes, growing bumpier. Between the patter of pothole fill kicked up by the wheels and the long straight drive, Bob knows their destination. Bli/nd is moving him out-zone, to their desert facility. Once they get him out there, there’s no hope he'll ever break free.
Bright terror has Bob moving, before he's thought the actions through. Two sharp heaves and the wall chains break. He rolls off the seat, shifting to four legs as he falls. The now-loose restraints tangle around his limbs and he snarls in frustration as he slips his paws free. The guards with him start shouting, an eruption of noise and chaos in a too small space, as they reach for their weapons. He doesn't give them time to re-group; Bob’s fangs-deep in the throat of the nearest guard as soon as he can lunge. Blood spurts hot in his mouth, soaking his fur. The unexpected heat is a shock after months of cold, and it focuses him.
Around him, the fumbling for weapons starts to sound more controlled. The last thing Bob needs is a ray gun burn or a bullet wound. He shakes his head, tearing cartilage free with a snap and is on the next guard before his gun clears leather. This guy's a little better prepared; he gets his hand up to protect his neck. Bob savages his wrist and closes around his jugular when the guard screams and grabs his arm. Bob has a brief flash of the interrogation room and the scalpels slicing into his own wrists, the pain and sheer terror of never being able to drum again, or even to feed himself, almost more agonizing than the pain. He growls, shaking off the memory. Before the other two guards can react, Bob shifts to mid-form and pivots on one heel, grabbing a guard's arm and tearing it from its socket. Still alive, motherfuckers.The thought is savage and is followed by a brutal jerk and twist, and the low crunching grind of breaking bones as he snaps the last guard’s neck. Bob grits his teeth around a triumphant howl.
The van jerks to the left and Bob slips in the blood on the floor, hitting his shoulder hard against the wall. The supernova burst of pain does wrench a snarl free. The van swerves again, but this time he's ready and uses the momentum to slam against the door. He hits hard enough to buckle the metal and pop hinges. It doesn’t open. He bears his teeth and kicks at the door lock. Two kicks and the lock breaks, door swinging wide. Out!
For a breathless instant he's airborne, wind ruffling his fur. Then Bob's rolling on asphalt, tumbling into the sand overtaking the highway's edges. Bob shifts in the midst of his roll and runs four-legged for cover as fast as he can. With a squeal of brakes, the van stops. He's already ghosting out of sight. Bob's lucky - and thank fuck, it's about time luck started working in his favor - and finds cover close to the van. It's just rock and scrubby growth, but it's enough. He catches the scent of rattlesnake, lizards, and something small and furred he can't identify under the reek of exhaust and burning rubber.
The moon is new; the only light is the stark brilliance of the Milky Way and the van's headlights. He can hear the low murmur of rushed conversation, the click of metal on metal as guns are checked and loaded. Bob is still, crouched belly-low in the shadow between rock and cactus. He breathes and watches.
The wait isn't long. Both of the remaining guards slip out of the van, shotguns in hand. Bob watches them, creeping closer to the open door. He slips around the front of the van, careful to keep his nails from clicking on the asphalt. He shifts to mid-form and breaks the driver's neck, straight arms the shotgun up out of his face in time to avoid the blast. He's glad for the Bli masks for once; it feels like he's tearing into the company's flesh. Scent gives Bob personal markers so the anonymity is fake - he doesn't know the man holding the tranquilizer rifle, so his death is brutal but quick. But the driver is one of Bob's personal guards. Bob takes grim pleasure in crushing his hands before taking his gun, and savors the screams of pain before ripping out his throat.
Then he's left with the sound of the engine ticking as it cools and the slow drip of blood in the back of the van. A slight breeze ruffles Bob's fur and he just breathes, flexing his hands. The radio flares bright with static. Its crackle makes him aware of the constant low growl rolling out of his throat.
Fucking focus, Bryar or you're going to get ghosted. Brian's voice snaps through his thoughts. Follow protocol.
Protocol. Right.
He shifts back to skin, grabbing his shredded clothes out of the back. His pants are saturated - when he pulls them free blood streams down his bare arms. The remains of his shirt are relatively clean; one arm had wrapped around the wall chains, keeping it out of the worst of the mess. Bob wipes as much blood and gore off his skin with the rags as he can, playing special attention to his hands. Then he pulls the gloves off of the nearest corpse and starts the shakedown.
It helps that Brian's in his thoughts, taking him through procedure. His voice has wavered in like a radio station on a bad transmission throughout Bob's imprisonment. Whenever shit got especially bad with the extractors, Brian's words would slip out of memory, pulling Bob free of the present for a while. Apparently what it took for that station's signal to come in strong and clear was an impromptu jailbreak.
Check bodies first to make sure they are bodies. Search and strip - all gear is useful. Low-level grunts have tracker implants, double check gear anyway. Clear the room - look for bugs, cameras. Search and destroy - do not leave broken tech behind. If you can't take transportation, make fucking sure the enemy can't use it either.
It's a comforting litany, a mental checklist that Bob has carried for years. He hasn't worked a direct raid since his second year with My Chem, but the procedures are planted deep. Which is why he'd put so much time into training. Bob's far from being in good condition - the specter of a truly spectacular crash and burn is looming large, just past the thrumming adrenaline rush that's riding him. But hour upon hour of practice, Brian a furiously smoking, perpetually sarcastic shadow prodding him through the steps, has made this efficient body memory.
Bob doesn't remember the last time he's had to shift between all three forms in such rapid succession. He knows moons have passed, but he doesn't know how many. He needs to spend time in fur, but he can't rifle through the guards' shit shifted. It's enough that he feels the moon prickling on his skin, even though it's young. It's painful, even as it feels like he's coming back to life, similar to drinking all the clean water he can.
Bob sets aside boots that look like they'll fit, a jacket only partially bloody, belt and holsters. He pulls the boots on. They are a tight fit, but will work for what he needs to do.
Following the scent of soured plastic, Bob finds GPS markers in the guards' belt buckles. It's a new trick, but one that Pete had predicted years ago. They pop free of the metal easily. Despite the fear thrumming its own path through him, Bob realizes he's missed this kind of work. Fuck, he misses Brian. Bob shoves that disastrous train of thought away and just keeps breaking things down.
He moves as quickly as he can, piling up weapons, the first aid kit and any other supplies he can find just outside the passenger door. He shifts to mid-form to stack the bodies into the van once they're searched. There’s a ton of ordinance in the van's front compartment. Which isn't much of a surprise, really, since this is the same kind of van used to break up club shows and the intercity riots. Bob's just never seen the interior, past the blast-proof steel.
The chatter on the radio is starting to get more and more urgent. He's running out of time.
He rummages through the ordinance, remembering lessons with Jepha and Andy. His hands move on automatic, improvising a bomb out of the mish-mash of explosives and the gas tank. He drops the scavenged gear a couple rocky bluffs over, scrounges a few fallen branches from the nearest Joshua tree, and follows his own trail back. Still moving quickly and keeping his ears cocked for the sound of incoming Dracs, Bob does his best to muddy the tracks around the van.
Quick quick quick and he's lobbing a grenade into the back of the van, slamming the doors closed and running. He's back to the scrub growth sheltering his supplies when the van goes up. The explosion's pretty spectacular; even in his protected location he can feel the rush of heat. Bob just hopes that the explosion and fire cover the signs of slaughter. He'd managed to pry the closed circuit camera box free from the van's interior, but knows that he's pretty well blown his cover. Imprisoned for all that time and he'd still managed to hide his nature from Bli/nd. Now... if they catch him now, he's well and truly fucked.
Dressed in Bli/nd gear, a duffel full of supplies and weapons strapped across his back, Bob high-tails it over the hills. He continues to brush away his trail as he heads off into the desert. Some distance from the crash, he finds something truly useful - a hot zone. He scrambles around, laying a confusion of tracks up to the field of broken stone. Bob breaks through the barbed wire next to the fallout warning sign, snagging fiber from his shirt on the barbs. Trail laid, he steps carefully on rockier ground, moving as quickly as he can in the opposite direction, following the faint scent of water. He hit a streambed - mostly dry, though he can smell damp rocks - just as he hears the sound of approaching engines. Once there, he jams the branches into a tangle of bushes, slips his stolen boots off, adjusts clothing and shifts to mid-form. With the water-worn rocks under his feet hiding his trail, Bob lopes off as quietly as possible, concentrating on putting miles between him and any pursuers.
Sirens are gathering in the distance. The unending drone fades slowly as he runs.
~~~
At first, he's just focused on getting away. The ground's uneven enough that he has to pay close attention to his path. It's been a long time since Bob's been able to stretch his legs like this - even before the Desolation Row riot, the band had needed to lie low, which translated to the five of them living in close quarters. It had gotten pretty tricky to sneak away for even a brief run. He slips on river rocks a couple times, before his instincts click in and the going gets easier. Bob's running on fumes now. He has just one definite direction - away, and one goal - safety. He slips into a daze, moving as silently as he can, and ignoring the spasms as his leg muscles cramp. The desert life falls silent as he passes by. It's not as dramatic as a forest silence - from what he can remember anyway. His mom had moved them to the City when he was seven, and Bob's not seen a forest since. He doubts the standard Bli grunts will notice the difference in the desert. But he's in the zones now, which means Dracs. They would probably notice. That thought keeps him moving and continues to push his trembling muscles on.
When he can't hear the sirens even when straining, Bob risks stopping to track down some water. It takes some time, even though he's been following the streambed, but he's eventually successful. The water's mineral heavy and thick with silt, but it's fresh, untainted by meds. He even manages a more thorough scrub of his hands and arms with a damp rag before the shrill prod to runrunrun kicks in again.
Dawn is slipping close when the pain of his injuries finally becomes more urgent than his flight instinct. Bob focuses on finding a place to hole up for the day. He catches the scent of metal nearby, a lot of it. Cautiously climbing up out of the gully, he finds he's on the edge of an abandoned pump station. The corroded remains of the pumps and tanks still tower, a field of rusting hulks that look skeletal in the light of false dawn. Bob's more interested in the lack of fresh human scent-trails nearby. He heads towards a burnt out tractor-trailer that's crumpled against the security link fence. Inside, it smells of trapped heat, animals - coyotes had denned here several months ago - and old fire.
All that Bob cares about is that it's shelter. He hauls his gear in, builds a little nest in the sand out of his clothes and shifts to four legs. Then exhaustion pulls him under.
He doesn't wake once during the day.
~~~
Even though Bob has lived in the City for years, he hasn't spent much time in the zones. Brian changed that quickly.
Today though, they're sitting on the wall, far from the tunnel leading to Bli/nd's headquarters, facing the desert. Bob's watching an animal move carefully though the shadows under a stand of cacti. It's just far enough away he can't identify it beyond 'furred, not a rat'. Most likely it's a feral cat, but he wants it to be a jackrabbit.
With the familiar snick of metal and flint, Brian lights another cigarette.
“The zones are our biggest advantage over Bli/nd.” Brian says. His tone's casual, but when Bob looks over, his expression's intent. “As much as those fuckers want to think they can control the zones, they can't. There’s too much out there that's beyond their control. There are roads out there that have never been marked on maps. The desert's been eating and hiding civilization for as long as people have crossed it and attempted to tame it. It's always been a sanctuary of rebels.”
Bob grins. “Why don't you live out there?”
“The fight's here,” Brian says with a shrug. "Besides, it's been changing.”
“What do you mean?”
“The desert, it's..,” he scowls out at the sand.
Bob follows his line of sight - a dust devil has moved up from the west and is twirling its way towards the City on a lopsided, ovoid path. Out to the far southwest, pale green foxfire dances out around abandoned oil rigs.
“It's taken on an uncanny life of its own. There are things out in the desert, things that happen in the desert that are just...” Brian rubs at the back of his neck and grins a little at Bob. “Well, werewolves wouldn't be much of a surprise out there.”
Bob's eyebrows rise. "Did you really call werewolves uncanny?"
Brian's grin turns into laughter. Bob grins reluctantly in turn - because seriously, uncanny? - but he doesn't miss how quickly Brian's laughter dwindles when he looks back out at the desert.
~~~
When he finds a familiar road the next afternoon, Bob's wary. Following it will definitely help shake his pursuers; Dracs, for some reason, have always avoided Route Guano. He is well aware, however, that there's more than Dracs to watch out for out here and a road is risky. Particularly for someone walking and wearing a Bli/nd uniform. The lengthening shadows offer equal measures of protection and danger. He conceals his gear and goes four-legged to scout out the road.
But he finds he can't stay on the asphalt - it feels wrong under his paws. He also is constantly looking back over his shoulder, scanning the area, because it feels like he's being watched. And not by a single pair of eyes; it feels more like a silent, staring crowd. The sensation fades when he retreats to the berm, but being near the road still makes his skin crawl.
He has a feeling that it will just get worse at night. After an afternoon of jumping at shadows, Bob doesn't want to see what worse looks like. Besides, he's had about as much worse as he can possibly stomach for a while. He shifts and grabs his gear, heading back in the wilderness.
Roads never marked on maps, Bob thinks as he moves as fast as possible away from Route Guano.
That night Bob dreams of ghosts, with long fingers and wide, hungry mouths.
~~~
Despite the fact that their secret headquarters are located deep in the zones and that endless drought has the zones reverting back to desert, Bli/nd has shit-all for decent desert gear. The grunts' uniforms are uncomfortable in the heat and relentless sun, and offer poor camouflage, though they aren't as obvious as a Draculoid's white suit against the sand. In any event, he hasn't seen anyone wearing Bli/nd's monochrome - aside from himself - for days. Bob is pretty confident that he's lost any pursuers. Of course, now he's lost in the desert too, which sucks. After turning his back on Route Guano, he's been unable to find any familiar landmarks. At least he has some survival skills, rusty as they are, to draw on.
This isn't the first time Bob's had to lay low in the desert. The pack gatherings had moved out here, back before he and his mom had arrived in the City, and when he could risk the runs, he'd spend full moons out in the dunes. But now he's far from known territory. He can't seem to stop following the trail of destruction, evidence of the continuing battle between the zonerunner gangs, City refugees and Bli/nd, It's as if he's been sensitized to the damage created by Bli/nd.
~~~
Five days into his escape, Bob stumbles onto a road, one of the old highways.
There's a billboard just off the cracked blacktop, its ad shredded and hanging from the metal frame, picture faded by the relentless sun. Someone has tied a department store mannequin to the upper struts, zebra strips of paint still visible in places on the plastic torso. Bob looks around, searching the landscape. He sees a cactus with a bent left arm on a rise, across from the billboard.
Fuck. He knows where he is.
It takes some searching, but he finally finds the turnoff. The road's crap, though that's nothing new. But the sand's settled deep in the tire ruts and part of the roadside bluff has collapsed. It twists and turns, narrows down to a barely visible double track in places. He can't imagine trying to take a car on this now. Bob slows as he nears the next turnoff. If there's an ambush, this is where it will be.
He creeps around the bluff and sees a rusted out Winnebago. There's still no sign of habitation, aside from desert life.
Bob continues on, following the vanishing track up a pair of buildings squatting low in scrubland.
There's no one here, hasn't been anyone out here for some time. Bob ignores the disappointment that twists in him at that realization. Sand is gritty under his feet as he moves cautiously around the main room. Dust, sand and blown-in debris have formed tiny drifts in corners. There's a single china cup under the pile of milk crates and boards that used to be an improvised table. Bob fishes the cup free, dumping the accumulated sand. It hisses out in a thin stream, and Bob runs a thumb over the red dragon painted on the porcelain. The silence is overwhelming.
He leaves clean trails on the metal bookcase as he shoulders it aside to get to the safe room. Bob checks the safety markers on the concealed door; no one's been there lately either. Brian did a good job of hiding it. He drops his gear and all but collapses on the army cot set up in the corner.
~~~
The zones are fucking huge and it makes no sense that Bob's found this bolt hole again.
Back when he was running with The Used - back when Brian was still around and Bob thought he'd maybe found himself a pack in the City - they'd had a bad run of raids and needed to find someplace to lie low out-zone. Bert had known about a place in Zone Three where they could hide and wait for Bli's interest in their activities to wane. Bob had been pretty surprised by how sweet the hideout had turned out to be - this was Bert after all. Bob had expected a falling down shack straight out of a western ghost town, made of rusted out metal and sun bleached wood. Which is what it looks like - a couple of rusting abandoned shacks leaning against one another, with an equally trashed Winnebago parked by the turnoff. But inside the main shack was a well-disguised hatch and behind that hatch was an old school, 80's style bomb shelter.
It turned out that this had been a hideout for a zonerunner Bert knew years ago, a paranoid motherfucker that took a shine to Bert. The 'runner had apparently been a trucker back in the day, before the Pig Bombs made long distance travel damn near impossible. He'd seen where things were headed and started moving more than legal cargo, skimming off of the legit shipments and stockpiling as much as he dared. Bert said he'd been taken out in the first wave of water riots. Wrong place, wrong time. Bob isn’t surprised by that news - though he’d been surprised that no one else had gotten to the cache first. Well, until he'd gotten a close look at the hatch's steel door and complex locking system. It showed signs of tampering - slivery scratches along the door edges, a faint imprint of a crowbar, even some scorch marks. But the door remained intact.
The first time Bob remembered seeing Brian speechless was when Bert swung that hatch open and revealed the supplies stashed within - food, water, ammo, enough booze to get Battery City drunk for a month.
They'd barely made a dent in the supplies when Brian had gotten the all-clear from Wentz.
Not that this helps Bob now. He can't remember the combination to the fallout shelter - and honestly wonders if it's information he ever really had.
~~~
Once he's found shelter, Bob doesn't know what to do with himself. The air inside the bolt hole is close, stuffy. It smells hot, with faint traces of his past caught in the corners. The blankets smell strongly of Bert and Quinn; he catches whiffs of Jepha, though he's not sure where they originate. Brian is there, but only in memory. His insomnia had gotten bad the first month out and Bob had learned to fall to sleep to the rhythmic sound of Brian's boots pacing in the front room. There's a certain pattern to the creak of the floorboards. When his head gets too loud, Bob paces out those steps - shorter than his own, but he's used to spaces he can't stretch out in, so even the abbreviated strides have comfort. It's just Bob and his ghosts - though, with all the shit that knocks around in the zones, Bob hates calling them ghosts at all. That seems like bad luck, assuming that they are still out there, somewhere. He doesn't want to jinx them. But they feel like ghosts. His memory drifts, and is foggy in the strangest places.
The first acid rain underlines his problems all too well. The storm takes him unaware - he didn't have time to hunt down food and or find water. It lasts far longer than he expects, two full days of pattering wet, with a hissing undertone that has him sticking to shelter. He feels trapped. Mid-way through the first afternoon the walls start to close in, and Bob has to sit with his head between his legs, trying to catch his breath. By the time the storm finally dies out and the sun has baked the ground back to safety, Bob's lips are cracking and he's lightheaded from thirst. He barely remembers to check for interlopers - luckily, that's something that Brian drilled into his head, so he manages to right his mistake. Not willing to risk himself further, he shifts to fur and sets out in search of the nearest underground spring. It's not far - the 'runner was pretty smart when building his refuge - but it takes Bob longer than it should to track down the scent.
The dreams start that night.
Well, they aren't really dreams, not at first. They start out as memories of his imprisonment. Pain and blood, the crack of bones breaking, the heat of cuts being cauterized without any kind of numbing agent to stop the burn. There were days when all he could smell was the baked sweetness of his own seared flesh.
Through it all, the information they wanted sat behind a wall in his mind. He didn't know what Bl/ind most wanted - the names of allies, places that the bands went to ground. They were always careful to not tell him if his band was alive; instead implied or outright lied saying that they'd died, that he was all that was left, and if he wanted to prevent any more deaths, giving up information was the only way. Bob could smell the lies on them, so he could cling to his silence.
Well... not to silence. He didn't have anything to prove by being a tough guy who didn't scream. They just worked harder if you didn't scream. And he'd planned for this, gathering up information to spill with the tears, sweat, and blood their questioning created. But none of it was useful; and frustration soon joined the stench of lies swirling around his torturers, making his head swim. They battered away at him but he curled tighter and tighter, wanting relief from the pain.
Bob dreams things that didn't happen. He dreams of losing his hands, of his wrists not healing, and being unable to get his fingers to close. He dreams of limbs lost, of losing his temper and forgetting himself. He dreams of Dracs coming into his cell and moving him down to the labs, putting him in a cage and experimenting, pushing to get him to shift and stay shifted. In his dreams, they have a drug that forced Shifts. In his dreams there's no chance for escape.
For days he wakes huddled in the corner behind the cot, curled up as small as he can get, panting and smelling of terror. It takes him weeks to get past the need to plaster himself against the wall, hiding in the darkest and most defensible places. Even after he runs a couple of nighttime patrols and confirms that this place is hidden and secure, Bob is reluctant to leave the safe room.
Then he starts dreaming of Brian.
The Brian in his dreams stalks him. He wears the uniform of a Drac. Bob isn't even sure how he knows that it's Brian in his dreams, since he's wearing the same white suit, the same plastic horror movie mask as all the rest of the squad. Well, he is a little shorter than the rest. Brian the Draculoid stays in the background; he's part of Bob's guard, but never gets close enough to touch. He just watches. But Bob knows that his secrets are safe and even though the torture continues, it feels less immediate.
During the day, Bob spends more and more time outside.
The Brian in his dreams changes. He stops wearing white suits and masks. Now he wears the uniform of management - dress shirt and tie, shined shoes, slacks. A proper Bl/ind badge hangs from his belt, next to a company issue ray gun. His hair is tamed flat. There’s no sign of his piercings or his tattoos, which is somehow the most horrible thing about his appearance. Brian still doesn't involve himself in Bob's torture - he still stands back and watches, eyes flat, face expressionless. Sometimes a tall, bald man is there with Brian, watching the Dracs work with a hungry predatory gaze. Bob wants to shout warning, tell Brian to run. But he needs all his breath for screaming.
~~~
Bob's spending the majority of his days on four feet, pacing out his territory. He runs for hours. The bolt hole remains at the center of his world. He might be walking a fine line with sanity, but self-preservation sits deep in him.
But there's a comfort to being in the wilderness. That comfort stays even when the sun is blazing down, and he can't find decent shade or a breeze, so Bob feels like he's baking alive in his fur. It's there even when he's deep in the desert, when the most he can find to eat are lizards. There have been too many days like that, skinny days that make him reluctant to shift, even if it might be slightly cooler to wear skin instead of fur. He doesn't want to see how defined the curve of his ribs has become and the constant gnaw of hunger is worse when he shifts.
Bob wonders if his hunting instincts have been blunted by all the time he spent in concrete cages. Back in the City, he'd spent a lot of time tracking rats to their nests by their runs. They never nested close to any of his apartments - rats are fucking smart and know better than to try and raise young around large predators.
He'd spent the weeks between Brian's disappearance and The Used's departure for the far coast running out-zone, a furred ghost among the glossed out wave heads. It was the only way he'd been able to deal with the turmoil in him, running feral and steering far from humans in the night. Dayside, he'd started putting feelers out for something new. He didn't want to stay in Battery City - he was considering heading back to the Great Lakes again, actually - when Pete and Patrick who had been keeping an eye for him, found him work. Found him his band. For all the good that did him in the long run.
That thought has him turning away, running so fast each step kicks dust in his wake, like cartoon smoke, like -
flash of a flickering television, gleaming in basement murk, the sound of guitar strings racing along with a freight train's inevitability, frantic soundtrack for a roadrunner's run. The goose honk of Gerard's laughter, followed by Frank's high-pitched giggle. Mikey a warm weight on Bob's feet, shifting his bony ass as he settled deeper into the snagging cushion. It's warm and dark; Bob breathes in the mingled scent of his pack and is content.
~~~
The past is a raveled thread. If he pulls at it, teasing out connections, more pieces tumble loose. Bob already feels undone. His captivity has left holes, gaps in the fabric of memory and thought, dangling threads where important pieces have sheared away. He knows this, but doesn’t know what to do about it. He’s not sure if he wants to do anything with it, really. Fur is comfort, fur is healing; it becomes easier to trust instinct and work out old injuries, to let his mind rest.
Sand settles deep in fur, staining white nicotine yellow. It’s better for camouflage, turns him into a ghost appropriate to the surroundings. Dust veiling and protecting. He misses the City, though, more than he thought possible. Of course, there he had to wrap darks close, pin shadows to battered jackets. No need for jackets here - he's in fur more often than not, forgetting for days at a time to shift, let alone bother with clothes. But here the dirt's kinder on his paws than asphalt ever was, even taking thorns into account.
~~~
It's moonrise and he's curled up under a rock ledge, tail across his nose keeping cold away. The rock around him is radiating its stolen heat. He's comfortable. Dusk hunting was good - couple lizards, a rangy jackrabbit surprised from cover. Simple contentment fills him; he's warm and full, not overly thirsty. He's upwind from the road and garage, dividing time between watching that and the stars.
The sound arrives first, faint but enough to have him scenting the cold desert air. It's not long before he catches the first whiff - dirty fumes, tar and dust. An old car, coming this way. It’s the closest anyone's come to his place below since he'd found his way back. He thinks about leaving, thinks about defending his territory. Indecision clouds instincts, man slipping in front of wolf.
A battered Trans Am slips over the rise. Still showing good lines despite hard use, there's solid speed and power rumbling under the curved hood. It's not car trouble that has the driver this far off the highway. Bob watches as the car takes the turn off, pulling into the shadows between garage and shack. Twin engines whine high in his ears; on the road, two bikes practically leap over the hill and follow the car's dust up the drive. Bob whines at the sound and then silences himself.
Double car door slam and the sudden cut of bike engines cast the silenced night forth. There's a murmur of voices as four people gather, draw weapons and check the premises. Bob watches carefully; they don't seem dangerous - to him - but he still not sure if he wants to share space with them.
Then the wind shifts, bringing the strangers’ scents his way. And Bob's slinking down the hills before his mind overcomes his shock.
He's trotting down the slope to the garage, quick as he can without stumbling. Bob has gotten good at stealth in the time he's been out here; even moving quickly, he doesn't kick up much dirt. Out of habit he sticks close to the shadows, keeping upwind as long as possible. When he slips over the next rise, he's struck with a fresh wave of scent. Some of it's familiar - he'd know the scent of Ways, of Ray and Frank anywhere and it smells like it's been some time since any of them have bathed. They smell of gasoline, the ozone snap of charged ray guns, stale cigarette smoke, the harsh ammonia and bleach blend of fresh hair dye; of dust and old sweat and blood. Bob's lips peel back in a snarl at the last - not all of the blood scent is old. It smells like Mikey and Frank have fresh injuries. But beyond all of that cacophony of scent there's something else, something new that makes Bob freeze in the shadows of a tumbleweed patch and just breathe.
No, it's not that the scent is new, he decides. He’d simply thought it was...well, a memory. It's the scent of comfort and belonging and HIS that Bob had known back in the City, when all of them had been forced to lie low in Gabe's under-basement. He had thought the scent wasn't real, or that maybe it was the scent of his own connection, the unspoken and unacknowledged bonds of his pack. But that was years and a full lifetime ago... and here he is, scenting that on the wind.
What the fuck.
He tries to wrap his mind around it, but he's been living too long in fur. His instincts are strong and loudly insisting PACK. Bob heads out around the last rise, slipping carefully past the Trans Am.
Should fit in the back. There are tarps for the bikes...
He rounds the back of the car and almost walks into Mikey.
Mikey throws his head up, nostrils flaring, before staring at Bob. His irises blaze a familiar gold that steals all thoughts right out of Bob's head. All, but for one.
Eclipsed!
Then, Yes.
Mikey takes a couple deep, shaky breaths. "Wow. Hi."
Bob moves a little closer.
"You found this place first." Mikey says, watching Bob steadily. "Well, I guess that answers the safety question."
"Hey Mikes, who are you talking to...holy fuck." Frank freezes, his eyes widening as he stares at Bob.
Bob watches his hand slip slowly down towards his holster. He rumbles out a low growl.
"Frank, leave the gun holstered." Mikey says.
"What?" But he's stopped moving at the growl.
"We thought you were dead." Mikey says.
Bob can't hear any obvious emotion in Mikey's words, but he doesn't need to - he can smell the tangle of guilt, fear, grief and relief in his scent.
"Mikey...," Frank says.
Mikey crouches down, forearms resting on his thighs as he balances on the balls of his feet. Bob absently notes that he wouldn't have been able to maintain that kind of easy balance before.
"Are you mad? I hope you're not..."
All right, that's enough of that. Bob huffs and knocks Mikey on his ass, so he can climb right on top of him. Bob hears Frank curse viciously, but he's more interested in Mikey's quiet laugh and how he clings tight, tangling long fingers in Bob's fur. Bob sticks his nose against Mikey's ear, making him laugh outright, before he licks along his neck. Mikey leans his forehead on Bob's shoulder, his fingers finding that itchy spot right at back of Bob's neck that Bob never seems to be able to reach. Bob feels him relax, some of the worry fading from his scent.
Then they both still at the sound of a ray gun powering up. They turn their heads in unison, and Bob finds himself staring up the barrel of Frank's favorite gun. It's been recently re-painted.
"Frank, don't shoot."
"What the fuck are you on, Mikeyway?" Frank's voice climbing in fear.
Bob can hear movement at the door of the shack.
"Frank, what the fuck is going on?" Gerard's voice is sharp with exhaustion.
Mikey sighs in Bob's ear as both Ray and Gerard appear behind Frank and swear in unison, their guns sliding free of holsters.
"Um... you probably should..." Mikey's fingers tighten in Bob's fur.
He huffs in agreement and wriggles around to face the others directly before he shifts to skin.
"If any of you assholes shoot me, I'm going to be really fucking pissed." Bob says, his voice rough from the lack of talking.
In the abrupt silence, Mikey slips his jacket off and into Bob's lap.
The only other sound is of three guns hitting the dirt.
~~~
Part Two