Us vs. the Apocalypse
Title: Beating the Odds
Word Count: 2294
Author's Note: Non-canon, from a previous version of the novel.
My grandmother told me once that waiting by a window for your lover to return is bad luck. Something about cursing them to get lost on their way home. When the lover in question is driving home through a dying city packed full of deranged cultists and raging undead, the odds of that happening are pretty good, so having my grandmother's stern voice whisper out of my memory was the last thing I needed. As it was, the crew was a solid four hours late, and nothing had come over the radio for the last three.
Both Dixon and Avery came to try and convince me to get some sleep. Both of them were sent scampering back to their rooms with their tails between their legs and their ears burning, my livid words hanging in the air of the small office. My temper had barely started to cool down when I heard the door open again, and I pushed myself off the desk with an irritated sigh, ready to turn and rip someone's face off.
"Easy Cap," Mason said, placing a thermos of coffee and a blueberry muffin on the desk beside me. "Just bringing food, maybe some conversation. Misery loves company, and all that shit."
"I'm not very hungry," I told him, returning my gaze to the window. The sky was cloudless, and the half moon brought the parking lot into a brilliant contrast. "But you're welcome to stay."
"You need to eat," he said. Not the sympathetic tones that most people would pull - Mason was all business. I knew that if I resisted too long, he was apt to pin me down and shove the food down my throat.
"Mase..."
"Mase, nothing. You're lucky I'm letting you pine like some apocalyptic Juliet. Don't try my patience."
Muttering something about drill sergeants under my breath - which only made him grin - I poured some coffee into one of the chipped porcelain mugs he'd brought and sipped it absently. It was like drinking sludge mixed with napalm. No doubt he'd dumped some of Eli's moonshine into the mix. As much as I felt like a child being told to eat her vegetables, though, I had to admit that after picking at half of the muffin top and drinking a little more coffee-flavored slime, I was feeling a bit better. Mason seemed to notice it, too, because he smirked with self-satisfaction and leaned back in his chair, looping his arms behind his head and watching me drink my coffee. After a few minutes of silence, I noticed him looking out the window, his smile fading.
"What are you thinking?" I asked, scanning the road for what felt like the thousandth time since I'd sat down.
"Wishing I didn't let him go," he replied. I sighed, biting my lip.
"You didn't get much of a say in that," I finally told him.
"I could have. Just didn't."
"Doug would have shot you."
"Not if I shot him first."
"Then we'd all be dead."
He was silent at this for a long time - so silent that, when the radio beside me lit up in a blast of static, the two of us went clear out of our chairs.
"Base? Base, is anybody there?"
I lunged for the radio, but Mason grabbed it off the desk before I could get to it, shaking his head at me. I was ready to take the chair off the floor and smash him in the face with it before I realized that Doug would have my head on a pike for "injecting myself" - which really just made me more angry, and my hands clenched around the edges of the desk so hard I felt my fingernails crack.
"Holy shit, Eli, is that you?" Jared's voice was, as usual, too loud and enthusiastic, but something about his unchecked joy made me feel a little better. At least I wasn't the only one sitting up all night, waiting. "Where are you?"
"About five minutes out." I could hear other voices talking in the background, but the shoddy quality of the radios made it difficult to understand what they were saying. "We're coming in light, and injured. Wake the docs."
Mason and I shared a knowing look, and though he opened his mouth to speak - likely to give some sort of warning about the aforementioned "injecting myself" - I was out of the office and running down the hallway. For a moment I considered waking Dixon, but no sooner had the thought entered my head than I saw him running down the stairs ahead of me, heading for the lobby.
My heart was crawling into my throat by the time I reached the thick floor to ceiling windows that made up the curved face of the lobby, and leaned against them, panting, tears pooling in my eyes as I waited for the trucks to hit the lot. Four minutes felt like another four hours, until finally Eli's battered black pickup turned the corner, lights off, a shadow in the dark. I darted over to the door and had my fingers around the handle when I felt an arm slide around my waist.
"Hold on, kit," Dixon murmured in my ear.
"No, no Dix, I can't -"
"Hold. On." He was pulling Mason's no-nonsense act, though admittedly far more convincingly because I simply wasn't used to Dixon's firmness. "This isn't our show. Give them a moment."
"But -" My lip was quivering as I twisted in his grip, trying to decide whether to break down and cry, or turn around and knee his testicles up into his chest cavity.
The second truck pulled in, the old silver quad-cab that Mason had oogled the day we arrived, also with its lights out, and I heard a collective concerned murmur behind me. It startled me back to reality - the fact that this wasn't our base, and these weren't our people, and I wasn't the only person feeling this horrible panic and dismay and...
You know what? Fuck them. My breath shuddered in my lungs and my eyes were burning and my knees were ready to give out but fuck them. If it weren't for the fact I could barely see through the haze of tears, I was ready to march up to Doug's little private room and tear his goddamn face off. He said I did this to myself, that I was the stupid one and that I was so lucky he didn't report me back to Haven, have me ripped off the team, but the reality of it was that he did this to me. To us.
The final truck pulled in, the front end smashed in and the engine making a horrible grinding that we could hear across the lot, and crawled up beside the other trucks before all three shut their engines. I tried to move toward the door, but again Dixon pulled me back, holding me tight against his body.
"Not yet," he whispered to me. I heard a horrible noise escape me, somewhere between a moan and a sob, and I sagged against his arm - if it hadn't been for him, I would have ended up on the floor.
It was just too much.
Did I do this to myself? Was I stupid?
I flashed back to that afternoon on the roof, the day before Balewood, Keenan's cool lips against mine.
"Please, Dix, please..." I was shivering, sobbing, watching the dark forms climb slowly from the trucks and move to the tailgates. Medics and crew pushed quickly past us, moving out into the darkness, making it impossible to tell who was who. I thought maybe they were going for supplies, the precious cargo that Doug was so insistent they bring back, but then they reached into the bed of the truck and started pulling out what could only be bodies. That brought the tears on in a flood and now I wasn't just tugging, I was struggling against Dixon's arms. "Let me go!" I cried, my voice high-pitched and full of desperation, alien to my ears.
I saw them move the bodies against the building, rest them in a pile in the landscaped garden, and counted the bodies despite being too horrified to know.
"Oh God," I whispered. "There's..." I was clutching his arm to keep myself upright, so tightly I could feel his muscles twitch with discomfort.
"I know, kit, I know."
"There's eight of them."
"I know," he repeated, and now his own voice was trembling. He carefully released me but slipped his fingers into mine, taking my hand and pulling me toward the door. "Come on."
My feet suddenly felt like lead. Only five minutes ago I'd been ready to ensure the world would never see Dixon Junior, but now I was terrified to step out into that parking lot. As if by staying in the lobby, I could keep everything out there unreal. As if the glass between us could negate the fact that over half of Eli's squad hadn't made it home.
How many times could I win this horrible lottery? Balewood, then Crayberg, then Black Creek... I'd already beaten the odds when everyone I knew had been kicked in the teeth by them.
Could I take it if I walked out there and I'd finally lost?
Eight dead. Five survivors. My heart was choking me.
"Hey, kit." Dixon tugged my arm, but there was no firmness this time - just sympathy in his tanned face, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.
My feet moved, and a horrible numbness spread through me. I passed through the doors and all the voices crashed into me. Jared eased past us, a limping member of Eli's squad leaning on his shoulder, his face caked with blood. I stared at him, studying his face, and counted.
One.
Another trudged past me, the redhead who had sparred with me in the gym, the one with the sharp black tattoo of a wolf on his calf.
Two.
I saw Eli leaning against the hood of the silver truck, his gear tossed in a heap at his feet, his face in his hands and his fingers knotted in his hair. One of the medics was talking to him, trying to pry his hands away, and Eli swung blindly at him, demanding to be left alone.
Three.
Despite the sick chill in my body, the tremble of adrenaline in my joints, the night air was cold on my skin. I let go of Dixon's hand and he glanced at me, concerned, but I just stood there and rubbed my arms, feeling like I could never possibly be warm again. Dixon moved away from me, toward Eli, but was pulled aside by the medic who had been speaking to the distraught Captain. They spoke for a moment, and then Dixon walked to the rear passenger door and opened it, leaning inside. It took me a moment to realize that he wasn't just leaning into the truck, he was helping someone out of it.
The world tilted. I was holding my breath. Please, I begged silently, a prayer to a God that had clearly given up on us a long time ago. Please, just one more time, I can't lose yet, please...
The too-bright moonlight illuminated the silver bands around the sleeve of his jacket, and my legs gave out. I wanted to run to him but my body just wouldn't work, and I sobbed with relief and frustration and exhaustion and all of the horrible and wonderful feelings that welled up inside me, buried my face in my hands and just broke down. I heard footsteps, slow and aching, heard a rustle of fabric and a hiss of discomfort, and then I felt hands against my bare arms, heard his voice.
"Aura." His voice was hoarse, strained and rough, but it was still his voice. "It's okay, it's okay." He pulled me against him and I knotted my hands into his jacket and buried my face in his neck and for a moment lost the ability to breathe. It was just too much - the terror and despair and horrible loneliness staring out that window, and the relief, the incredible relief, and the fact that just loved him so much, too much.
I pulled back and pressed my hands to his face, rubbed my thumbs across his cheeks, feeling the dirt and blood caked across his skin, the tears that ran down as he knotted his hands in my tank top. It made him real, somehow, and I grinned stupidly as I threw my arms around him again, easing up only when I felt him flinch in pain.
"Are you okay?" I asked him, and felt him nod, just slightly. "How bad was it?"
His arms tightened around me, and even through the thick fabric of his jacket I could feel him tremble.
"It was close," he whispered. "Noemi, she... I had her, and they just..." He was fighting so hard against the tears that he couldn't even speak, and I stroked his matted hair, kissed a patch of skin at his temple that wasn't spattered with blood. "I love you," he told me. "And I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said what I did, I... I just..." I could feel the tears against my shoulder, now, as he struggled to speak. "I don't ever want to go like that again," he finally said. "I don't want to leave it unsaid, it was stupid of me and I -"
"Shh." God, just when I thought I didn't have more tears to cry. "I love you, it's okay."
And it was.
For a few days.
The odds can't be in your favor forever.
Word Count: 2294
Author's Note: Non-canon, from a previous version of the novel.
My grandmother told me once that waiting by a window for your lover to return is bad luck. Something about cursing them to get lost on their way home. When the lover in question is driving home through a dying city packed full of deranged cultists and raging undead, the odds of that happening are pretty good, so having my grandmother's stern voice whisper out of my memory was the last thing I needed. As it was, the crew was a solid four hours late, and nothing had come over the radio for the last three.
Both Dixon and Avery came to try and convince me to get some sleep. Both of them were sent scampering back to their rooms with their tails between their legs and their ears burning, my livid words hanging in the air of the small office. My temper had barely started to cool down when I heard the door open again, and I pushed myself off the desk with an irritated sigh, ready to turn and rip someone's face off.
"Easy Cap," Mason said, placing a thermos of coffee and a blueberry muffin on the desk beside me. "Just bringing food, maybe some conversation. Misery loves company, and all that shit."
"I'm not very hungry," I told him, returning my gaze to the window. The sky was cloudless, and the half moon brought the parking lot into a brilliant contrast. "But you're welcome to stay."
"You need to eat," he said. Not the sympathetic tones that most people would pull - Mason was all business. I knew that if I resisted too long, he was apt to pin me down and shove the food down my throat.
"Mase..."
"Mase, nothing. You're lucky I'm letting you pine like some apocalyptic Juliet. Don't try my patience."
Muttering something about drill sergeants under my breath - which only made him grin - I poured some coffee into one of the chipped porcelain mugs he'd brought and sipped it absently. It was like drinking sludge mixed with napalm. No doubt he'd dumped some of Eli's moonshine into the mix. As much as I felt like a child being told to eat her vegetables, though, I had to admit that after picking at half of the muffin top and drinking a little more coffee-flavored slime, I was feeling a bit better. Mason seemed to notice it, too, because he smirked with self-satisfaction and leaned back in his chair, looping his arms behind his head and watching me drink my coffee. After a few minutes of silence, I noticed him looking out the window, his smile fading.
"What are you thinking?" I asked, scanning the road for what felt like the thousandth time since I'd sat down.
"Wishing I didn't let him go," he replied. I sighed, biting my lip.
"You didn't get much of a say in that," I finally told him.
"I could have. Just didn't."
"Doug would have shot you."
"Not if I shot him first."
"Then we'd all be dead."
He was silent at this for a long time - so silent that, when the radio beside me lit up in a blast of static, the two of us went clear out of our chairs.
"Base? Base, is anybody there?"
I lunged for the radio, but Mason grabbed it off the desk before I could get to it, shaking his head at me. I was ready to take the chair off the floor and smash him in the face with it before I realized that Doug would have my head on a pike for "injecting myself" - which really just made me more angry, and my hands clenched around the edges of the desk so hard I felt my fingernails crack.
"Holy shit, Eli, is that you?" Jared's voice was, as usual, too loud and enthusiastic, but something about his unchecked joy made me feel a little better. At least I wasn't the only one sitting up all night, waiting. "Where are you?"
"About five minutes out." I could hear other voices talking in the background, but the shoddy quality of the radios made it difficult to understand what they were saying. "We're coming in light, and injured. Wake the docs."
Mason and I shared a knowing look, and though he opened his mouth to speak - likely to give some sort of warning about the aforementioned "injecting myself" - I was out of the office and running down the hallway. For a moment I considered waking Dixon, but no sooner had the thought entered my head than I saw him running down the stairs ahead of me, heading for the lobby.
My heart was crawling into my throat by the time I reached the thick floor to ceiling windows that made up the curved face of the lobby, and leaned against them, panting, tears pooling in my eyes as I waited for the trucks to hit the lot. Four minutes felt like another four hours, until finally Eli's battered black pickup turned the corner, lights off, a shadow in the dark. I darted over to the door and had my fingers around the handle when I felt an arm slide around my waist.
"Hold on, kit," Dixon murmured in my ear.
"No, no Dix, I can't -"
"Hold. On." He was pulling Mason's no-nonsense act, though admittedly far more convincingly because I simply wasn't used to Dixon's firmness. "This isn't our show. Give them a moment."
"But -" My lip was quivering as I twisted in his grip, trying to decide whether to break down and cry, or turn around and knee his testicles up into his chest cavity.
The second truck pulled in, the old silver quad-cab that Mason had oogled the day we arrived, also with its lights out, and I heard a collective concerned murmur behind me. It startled me back to reality - the fact that this wasn't our base, and these weren't our people, and I wasn't the only person feeling this horrible panic and dismay and...
You know what? Fuck them. My breath shuddered in my lungs and my eyes were burning and my knees were ready to give out but fuck them. If it weren't for the fact I could barely see through the haze of tears, I was ready to march up to Doug's little private room and tear his goddamn face off. He said I did this to myself, that I was the stupid one and that I was so lucky he didn't report me back to Haven, have me ripped off the team, but the reality of it was that he did this to me. To us.
The final truck pulled in, the front end smashed in and the engine making a horrible grinding that we could hear across the lot, and crawled up beside the other trucks before all three shut their engines. I tried to move toward the door, but again Dixon pulled me back, holding me tight against his body.
"Not yet," he whispered to me. I heard a horrible noise escape me, somewhere between a moan and a sob, and I sagged against his arm - if it hadn't been for him, I would have ended up on the floor.
It was just too much.
Did I do this to myself? Was I stupid?
I flashed back to that afternoon on the roof, the day before Balewood, Keenan's cool lips against mine.
"Please, Dix, please..." I was shivering, sobbing, watching the dark forms climb slowly from the trucks and move to the tailgates. Medics and crew pushed quickly past us, moving out into the darkness, making it impossible to tell who was who. I thought maybe they were going for supplies, the precious cargo that Doug was so insistent they bring back, but then they reached into the bed of the truck and started pulling out what could only be bodies. That brought the tears on in a flood and now I wasn't just tugging, I was struggling against Dixon's arms. "Let me go!" I cried, my voice high-pitched and full of desperation, alien to my ears.
I saw them move the bodies against the building, rest them in a pile in the landscaped garden, and counted the bodies despite being too horrified to know.
"Oh God," I whispered. "There's..." I was clutching his arm to keep myself upright, so tightly I could feel his muscles twitch with discomfort.
"I know, kit, I know."
"There's eight of them."
"I know," he repeated, and now his own voice was trembling. He carefully released me but slipped his fingers into mine, taking my hand and pulling me toward the door. "Come on."
My feet suddenly felt like lead. Only five minutes ago I'd been ready to ensure the world would never see Dixon Junior, but now I was terrified to step out into that parking lot. As if by staying in the lobby, I could keep everything out there unreal. As if the glass between us could negate the fact that over half of Eli's squad hadn't made it home.
How many times could I win this horrible lottery? Balewood, then Crayberg, then Black Creek... I'd already beaten the odds when everyone I knew had been kicked in the teeth by them.
Could I take it if I walked out there and I'd finally lost?
Eight dead. Five survivors. My heart was choking me.
"Hey, kit." Dixon tugged my arm, but there was no firmness this time - just sympathy in his tanned face, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.
My feet moved, and a horrible numbness spread through me. I passed through the doors and all the voices crashed into me. Jared eased past us, a limping member of Eli's squad leaning on his shoulder, his face caked with blood. I stared at him, studying his face, and counted.
One.
Another trudged past me, the redhead who had sparred with me in the gym, the one with the sharp black tattoo of a wolf on his calf.
Two.
I saw Eli leaning against the hood of the silver truck, his gear tossed in a heap at his feet, his face in his hands and his fingers knotted in his hair. One of the medics was talking to him, trying to pry his hands away, and Eli swung blindly at him, demanding to be left alone.
Three.
Despite the sick chill in my body, the tremble of adrenaline in my joints, the night air was cold on my skin. I let go of Dixon's hand and he glanced at me, concerned, but I just stood there and rubbed my arms, feeling like I could never possibly be warm again. Dixon moved away from me, toward Eli, but was pulled aside by the medic who had been speaking to the distraught Captain. They spoke for a moment, and then Dixon walked to the rear passenger door and opened it, leaning inside. It took me a moment to realize that he wasn't just leaning into the truck, he was helping someone out of it.
The world tilted. I was holding my breath. Please, I begged silently, a prayer to a God that had clearly given up on us a long time ago. Please, just one more time, I can't lose yet, please...
The too-bright moonlight illuminated the silver bands around the sleeve of his jacket, and my legs gave out. I wanted to run to him but my body just wouldn't work, and I sobbed with relief and frustration and exhaustion and all of the horrible and wonderful feelings that welled up inside me, buried my face in my hands and just broke down. I heard footsteps, slow and aching, heard a rustle of fabric and a hiss of discomfort, and then I felt hands against my bare arms, heard his voice.
"Aura." His voice was hoarse, strained and rough, but it was still his voice. "It's okay, it's okay." He pulled me against him and I knotted my hands into his jacket and buried my face in his neck and for a moment lost the ability to breathe. It was just too much - the terror and despair and horrible loneliness staring out that window, and the relief, the incredible relief, and the fact that just loved him so much, too much.
I pulled back and pressed my hands to his face, rubbed my thumbs across his cheeks, feeling the dirt and blood caked across his skin, the tears that ran down as he knotted his hands in my tank top. It made him real, somehow, and I grinned stupidly as I threw my arms around him again, easing up only when I felt him flinch in pain.
"Are you okay?" I asked him, and felt him nod, just slightly. "How bad was it?"
His arms tightened around me, and even through the thick fabric of his jacket I could feel him tremble.
"It was close," he whispered. "Noemi, she... I had her, and they just..." He was fighting so hard against the tears that he couldn't even speak, and I stroked his matted hair, kissed a patch of skin at his temple that wasn't spattered with blood. "I love you," he told me. "And I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said what I did, I... I just..." I could feel the tears against my shoulder, now, as he struggled to speak. "I don't ever want to go like that again," he finally said. "I don't want to leave it unsaid, it was stupid of me and I -"
"Shh." God, just when I thought I didn't have more tears to cry. "I love you, it's okay."
And it was.
For a few days.
The odds can't be in your favor forever.