The Fineshrine Gospel

by Z.Zonkky

You say to yourself, "just one more day". That's all I need. Just one more day, and I can make it. Then bad things happen, and everything's falling apart, and you say, "I don't think I can take one more day" - but you find a reason. You vow to survive one more day, but not for yourself - you survive for them. Sometimes you make it. Sometimes you don't. DarylxOC.

1. Prologue

A/N: I haven't written a story in quite a while, and that was mostly because of exams, which meant that all motivation had been drained from my brain. Except I've been itching to write this story for a long time and I hope that whoever reads it really likes it, because I feel my writing is rusty and given that I haven't updated in a long time (sorry, Abducted, I'll write for you again eventually), I worried a lot about even posting this, but I did. I did and all I can do is hope it's enjoyable! I must say, writing about the weather in Georgia is always a problem because I live in a country that is pretty much permanently cold - if I'm inaccurate about anything concerning Georgia (and also guns, I know nothing about guns apart from whatever I've heard from television shows) in general, then my apologies, but I tried! I'd like to add that 'Fineshrine' is actually the name of a really great song by Purity Ring. Also, given that it is The Walking Dead, I do warn you that it'll be pretty gory sometimes and there'll be cursing, but then if you watch the show I don't really know why that'd surprise you. Anyway, here goes!

. THE FINESHRINE GOSPEL .

I

Bruises have blossomed along its collarbone, flowering in pale ivory patches and rich purples, scratches blooming along its flesh in bright scarlet; its pearl swivels wildly about in its socket, a milky eyeball eager to find something, anything, to eat. It crushes a twig beneath its boots and startles itself with the sound, standing still and staring about in confusion. Its empty socket seems swollen and sore at the edges, but that pearly eye darts about, seemingly disappointed when it discovers it's entirely alone. So it stumbles with its stubborn limbs, arms swinging dumbly at its sides, its mangled mouth moving as if muttering to itself. The tatters of its torn coat snags on a stray branch and it bumbles about in an attempt to free itself, fumbling stupidly until it tumbles towards a bunch of bushes and brown leaves that collapse inwards when it stomps on them, its body falling forward with a harsh thump that echoes around the forest.

You can hear its legs crunch from the impact, its snarling seeming confused, fingers clawing at the dirt - when falling into the pit, its bones burst from its flesh, meaning it can barely crawl, but still it tries. Oh, how it tries. It tries even harder when it hears my heavy boots crunching leaves and crinkling wildflowers from above, its pearly eye drinking in my silhouette from where I stand at the edge of the pit, a gun swinging loosely in my left hand. It snarls, sneers, struggles; it tries reaching for my boot when I sit at the edge, but with broken legs it can't quite manage it, stretching its arm but barely even brushing the soles. I simply stared at it, head slightly cocked in consideration, feeling a strange sense of curiosity. Its eye ached with ravenous hunger, gnashing its rotten teeth together in frustration.

When gazing into that greedy pearl, it's hard to imagine it was ever human - but it was, and I suppose I'm doing it a favour, fingers trailing along my gun and finding the trigger with ease, raising it slowly. Then I shut one eye, in the hopes of hitting a clean shot through the front of the skull, frowning when I wonder if we appear similar, given I shut one of my eyes and, well, it only has one. If we did, then the illusion was cut short by the bullet shot through its brain, a spurt of blood streaming with it, faintly splashing my legs and the hem of my pants. Its hand, which had been trying to grab a hold of my boot, slowly trailed along the dirt wall it had been trying to drag itself on, cold fingers still stretching but just beginning to curl inwards as it collapses with a thud. Strangely enough, I feel kind of sorry for it, when it crumples like that. I guess it was simply sad; that's what Elijah said. He said, we always wonder why it is that we're suffering like we are, and maybe we should wonder. Maybe someday, someone will figure out what it's all for, but I figure it's just sad. Sad that we do, and sad that we can't do anything about it.

II

Along a dirt road, dusty and doleful, we had signs that said things such as WARNING and DANGER and then, finally, WELCOME TO FINESHRINE. When the military were scouting for survivors and still trying to contain what they were very stubbornly calling an 'aggressive virus', they found Fineshrine crawling with Biters and shot them all, abandoning it with a couple of signs and a staggering amount of corpses behind them. When the stitches that were still holding society together had been brutally torn apart, we had found Fineshrine and swept away the dust and the dead, but still the signs remained in the ruins of what had once been - because the danger had, too. All around Fineshrine, we had meadows of wildflowers that would blossom in the sunshine, bristle in the wind and tremble in the rain, with the distant rush of the river rumbling from behind the forest that hid us from the rest of roads.

I suppose it seems idyllic, all that I'm telling you, but what we did was militarize those meadows - stuffing traps between the trees or in the flowerbeds, digging deep trenches near the river for roaming Biters to collapse in and never climb out of, pits for them to fall in and perish in, even tripwires that could drop a net from the trees or set off a shotgun if you weren't careful. You always had to be careful, that's what Elijah told us. I tried, even though what I had to do wasn't exactly easy. What grisly things I did, my gang had a bad habit of calling it a cleansing - only there wasn't really anything clean about it. What I did was scout the forest for Biters; if I found them trying to tug themselves free from traps or simply wandering around without reason, then I did what I had to do.

I put them out of their misery in order to ease my own, I guess.

If you did manage to miraculously dodge everything we had in the meadows and the forest, then all you had to do was find a wooden door along a yellow wall, its paint rusty-red and rotting, thin vines trickling along its splinters and scratches. Then what you had to do was give it a hard shove with your shoulder, because it couldn't quite close properly and when you did that then you'd probably stumble into a garden with grass high enough to tickle your thighs with every step you took towards the house. Our house was small and something of a struggle to squeeze us all in, but we did it.

Though we never said it aloud, Elijah Bradbury became the leader after having found it when he was wandering around all alone, as I had. He had taken in Lyudmyla Maksimov, an elderly Russian woman, who had been in a nursing home because of her brittle bones and bad arthritis. One night, the nurses give them their medication, they help them into bed, and they say goodnight. When Myla and her friends haul themselves from their beds the next morning - or at least, the ones that can still crawl from their beds without breaking their bones - they're confused because the nurses didn't return and after a day or two they realise that they never will. Myla gets in a car that happens to be nearby when she leaves the nursing home, and in that car is a woman called Cecilia, whom she has never met, and her daughter, Ava.

Cecilia tells Myla that the city isn't safe, so they drive. They drive and they drive even when the gas light flickers and fades and the car goes chuga-chug-chug. Then it slows, sputters, stops. They climb out, all crying and convinced they're going to die when Elijah finds them. He says he has a home they can stay in, though it isn't much, and so they do. They stay with him, even when he finds Richard and Lily Rivers, struggling and starving, and Myla frets about the food that is quickly disappearing from the cupboards because of the swelling amount of survivors in the house. They stay with him when he says he's found a girl that's good with a gun and who seems sweet enough, and that means I stay with him too. He finds Theo and his three boys when foraging for food in a supermarket and Theo holds a gun to Elijah's head because his boys are starving and he's becoming desperate, and while gaunt and grim though they are, Elijah still says he has a home, that they aren't alone in this. Theo's boys - Joshua, Cam, and Oliver - they're scared because they believe Elijah's the bad sort that'll trick them and take what he can, but he doesn't do that and so they stay too. And while it was tough sleeping on a mattress with Ava and sharing everything from water to a can of beans and occasionally you felt the onslaughts of claustrophobia, that was the thing about Fineshrine - you still felt safe, because you weren't alone.

Whenever Elijah said someone could stay, that we could trust them, then we did, because he said we could. And that was it. That was all we had. That was Fineshrine, for what it was worth.

III

I found a supermarket once, before I had found Fineshrine and my fellow survivors, with cartons and corpses strewn around its aisles. It had Biters too, blindly bumping against one another and staring blankly into an abyss I prayed I would never be privy too. I was starving and desperate and that made me dumb, too. I made a mistake, made too much noise. That meant I was having trouble escaping them, stupidly trapping myself in this small office, heart thumping and head spinning from fear because I couldn't escape, couldn't do anything but stare at that door. I'm standing with sweat beading along my skin, breathing heavily and trying to stay calm but I can't. Then I hear this sobbing, soft whispers and sniffling coming from a closet in that office, and slowly I open its door to find this woman sitting on the floor between beige mops and a buffer machine.

She's bitten.

She says it between shaking breaths and snorting sobs, hyperventilating and hurting and clutching her collarbone where the bite sits bloody red and raw. She says her name is Anna, she is twenty-four and she'd been hoping to have been an accountant by twenty-five but things aren't really working out for her. She was bitten when foraging for food, and she'd been sitting in the closet because the Biters had been chasing her, and eventually they forgot she was there at all because she hadn't made a sound, but that had taken hours. Hours in which she had been bleeding, heavily. It was a puddle, pooling beneath her bottom and soaking the cream carpet that had become a startling scarlet. She had a gun but she wasn't really any good with it and it had fallen from her hands when she tried fighting off the Biter that was sinking its teeth into her flesh with unforgiving strength before bolting into this room .

She says, "Can you do it? Can you shoot me, before I become one of them?"

And all I can tell her is, I'm Maisie Bellerose and I've never murdered anyone before. At least, not anyone still living.

"But can you?"

I'm struggling. Struggling with the fear of what is thumping against those doors and with the fear of having to do what Anna is asking of me, of what she is begging for me to do even with bleary eyes and bloody hands taking mine in hers.

She says, "I don't want to be one of them."

Then she tells me that there is a window in the office that I mightn't have seen because it's covered with curtains and a wooden board, but I'd need enough strength to pull it down, strength she didn't have when she had been bitten, her shoulder screaming in pain when she'd tried. She hid in the closet instead. She didn't want to die, but if she had to, she was doing it how she thought it should be. Permanent. Eternal. Never to return again.

Then she says, with her voice trembling and her fingers violently crushing mine, "Please. Please, please, please, puh-lease!"

I take her trembling hand, putting my gun in her palm and wrapping her fumbling fingers around it without a word. She tries to grip my shirt, tries to tug me towards her again, but she can't. She just doesn't have the strength. I tell her, "I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry that this happened to you. I'm so sorry."

It seems stupid, giving a dying woman my gun when I'm about to attempt to bust that wooden board and bolt in the hopes the Biters won't hear it, that the bang of the gun distracts them - but really, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't kill this woman who I did not know and now would never know. Not when she was about to do what I could hear in between furiously kicking the wooden board with forceful thumps, hearing her prepare by whispering a prayer. The board busts at its edges and I cut myself raw trying to rip it apart, but I manage it. I tell her I'm sorry again beneath my breath, feeling cowardly because I can't even bring myself to turn around, can't even bring myself to glance at her again, because I'm afraid it'll be the moment she pulls the trigger. Instead I run, run far from the Biters and the bitten, towards trees I can hide in. Then I hear it, this almighty bang and I'm breathing hard because her blood still coats my trembling hands, crying hard and barely able to-...

IV

I don't know why I'm telling you all of this or why it even matters at all. It doesn't matter. She died and I didn't, that's all. Only that particular memory had dredged itself from where I had buried it somewhere in my brain, meaning that no matter what I did, I couldn't smother it even though I was trying my best to do just that. All I could do was sit with Myla, whom I had a real fondness for, while the rest of our friends sat playing poker in the candlelight at the kitchen table, finally having a bit of fun pretending to gamble once the children were safely in bed, sleeping and snoring. Myla sat stitching patches on torn clothing, her nimble fingers twinging with arthritis, but still she didn't complain because she was afraid. Afraid of something never said aloud; she was afraid of becoming dead weight, the sort that would have to be left behind in a hurry, because she couldn't run or hide very well. She knew this not because she thought we would do this to her if we had to, but because it'd already happened to her in the nursing home. That seems cruel, saying it so bluntly, but it's the truth. You had to understand these things. Even if they hurt you.

We didn't have much choice in what we wore most days. If it was clean and kept you from being cold, then you wore it. I said I'd do the laundry tomorrow night, which really meant sloshing clothes around in a bucket by hand, in the sort of murky water that made you wonder if you were really even cleaning them at all. We hadn't been to the river in a while, but I thought I might make the trip myself tomorrow if I had time, even if it meant lugging a bucket. I could bring one of the boys along. I was helping Myla thread needles because her eyesight wasn't the best, balancing on her armchair and biting the strings with my teeth to tear them rather than find scissors. All I could hear in my head was echoes of please, please, please and it was making me miserable, thinking about it. Sometimes you can't help yourself. Sometimes you had to sit and simmer in it, waiting for that moment when you can swallow it all and simply breathe again. I was waiting for that moment.

"You're a cheater, Eli!" Theo blurted, blushing a little bit when Cecilia hushed him lest he disturb the children.

"Oh don't be a baby," Elijah snickered, trying to stifle his smile. "We're betting with pieces of paper, Theo. It's not like you're gonna go to bed broke or anything."

"Ah, but it's all about the principles of it all, the principles," Theo replied, but he was smiling too. "You shouldn't try to cheat a friend."

"Says you," Lily muttered. "We all know you cheated the last time we played this, you had way too many papers! I figure you just picked 'em from the floor and pretended."

"Now Lily, I resent that statement, you're slandering my reputation!"

"What reputation?" Cecilia asked, giving his shoulder a playful shove.

Theo shrugged. "Smart, handsome, all around nice guy. That reputation."

"Moron," Richard muttered, sighing at his dwindling pile of papers. "Can't we play another game?"

"Why, because you're losing too? Bunch a' sore babies," Elijah laughed, leaning backwards in his chair, before letting it fall with a sharp clang against the wooden floorboards. "Fine. I'm getting tired of poker anyway, that's all we ever play. You'd think we could find a board-game, like Twister or something. Can't cheat at that. We could try and find something to play, scavenge the houses nearby again."

"You want us to risk dying for a stupid game like Twister?" Cecilia asked incredulously.

"It's either that or we die of boredom," he shrugged, grinning when the rest of the group groaned. "And I know which way I'd rather go. What d'you say Maze? Wanna go with me?"

They all turned to look at me from where I sat tying a piece of string around my finger, the flesh turning a light lilac. I smiled at him, swallowing that sadness when I saw how hard Elijah was trying to make them happy. To make us happy. "Why not?"

"That's my girl," he murmured, tossing his cards on the table. "That's my Maisie."

I could breathe again.

V

The Biters, you could hear their bones crunch when they hit the hard ground of the pit sometimes; you'd find them crawling around on that dusty floor, still trying to claw at the dirt and drag you in with them. In the mornings, after inhaling mouthfuls of tea that didn't quite taste right and eaten bread with soft spots of mold that I couldn't complain about because it was all we had, I'd stroll through the forest and find them. I was standing near a pit again, empty except for one Biter that surprisingly hadn't broken his legs from the fall, but who was still scratching feebly at the dirt trying to drag me in with him. I was sipping cold tea, considering the best method to begin this stupid cleansing with when I heard a twig snap. I spun around, my gun in hand and aiming for the forehead of this stranger, when they fell in surprise, shrieking. My eyes trailed towards the woman scrambling along the wet leaves with her hands, apparently not afraid of stuffing them in mud and shuffling backwards on her bottom, babbling and begging me not to shoot. I was staring at her, somewhat baffled by her.

"I-..."

One word, that was all that left my lips, and she was shrieking again. Twisting around, I gazed at the Biter below who was getting quite excited by all this, and gave him a small shrug. Glancing down at her again, I gave a small sigh, wishing Elijah would emerge from the bushes around us and deal with her instead.

"Stop shrieking," I stated flatly, and her simpering eased slightly, though she was still snotty and taking gasps of air as if she was suffocating. "I'm not going to shoot you, and if I was I'd have done it already because you're bringing Biters on us, shrieking like that. It's stupid."

"I'm sorry," she sniffled, wiping her sleeve against her nose. "I-I was afraid if I startled you or shouted at you, you'd shoot or-..."

"You shouldn't shout or startle anyone," I agreed. "That's also stupid. Standing behind them without saying anything is even more stupid."

"Well, I guess I'm stupid then."

A tiny bit sharp, that tone of hers, but I didn't mind too much. I gave her a shrug and said, "I guess you are. What's your name?"

"R-Rose Campbell," she replied cautiously, eyeing me warily. "What's yours?"

"Maisie Bellerose. Are you alone, Rose?"

"Yes."

"I'm thinking you aren't as stupid as you say, Rose. Which is why I feel you won't lie about something like being alone," I said, voice steely and strong. Then I did something that, to most, seems shameful but that I'm not ashamed of because felt I had to do it. I grabbed her by her blonde hair, scratching her scalp, hearing her shrieks and dragging her to the edge of that pit where the Biter stood frantically clawing at the dirt because he could finally see us. He was hideous, drooling blood and biting at her, but I held her even when her nails dug into the skin of my hands and she was begging me not to drop her, so that she knew I could do that within a heartbeat.

"If I find out you're lying, Rose," I said, very calmly, low enough for her to try to control her sobs in order to hear me, "...I'll drag you through this forest and find all the traps that we've hidden in it, even the shiny new ones that haven't been stood on and I'll make you stand on them. Believe me, there's a lot of them that are just itching to clamp down on a leg or an arm, if you were unfortunate enough to step on one - or two, or three. I'll make you feel every bit of pain that this Biter can't. Then, when you're bleeding and you're hurting, I'll toss you in with him, because I don't like liars. Do you understand what I'm saying, Rose?"

I gave her a harsh shake to scare her and she cried out with her voice cracking, "Y-Yes, yes I understand!"

I tore her away from the pit and she scrambled away from me again, staring at me in horror.

"Hm. Perhaps you aren't so stupid after all."

VI

Somehow, when welcoming another stranger into Fineshrine, I became the enemy within moments of their arrival; Elijah had heard how I had held her by her hair, dangling her above that Biter as if she was his dinner, and he was furious. He held that fury within himself when bringing Rose to the bathroom to bathe her cuts and bruises, apologising for the cold water and telling her it was all we had. He brought her blankets and told her that he had a mattress for her in Myla's bedroom if she was willing to share with Lily for the night, promising that he'd hunt all the houses in the area for another mattress for her in the morning. He held that fury in when Rose told him about her fear, how she truly thought I'd throw her in with that Biter and how alone she had been all this time. Then, when he had given her a smile and she had told him just how grateful she was for his hospitality, he gently shut the bathroom door and that smile slowly become a grimace, teeth grinding and jaw twitching. We could hear him all pleasant and welcoming to Rose and I thought that meant he wasn't too mad at me anymore. Wishful thinking. He found me leaning against a counter in the kitchen, lazily chewing an apple and listening to my friends' chatter about this stranger, and this is let his fury out.

"You wanna tell me what that was all about, Maisie?"

Things became silent, everyone staring at Elijah in surprise. Straightening my spine and feeling flush as if I was a schoolgirl being scolded in front of her entire school, I swallowed the pieces of apple I'd been eating and gave him a shrug. "I don't-..."

"Don't even try to make excuses, Maisie Bellerose. Admit what you did."

"Admit I held her above that Biter to scare her?" I replied, raising an eyebrow. "Is that what you want me to say?"

"You did what?" Cecilia gasped, and my heart did a strange sort of flutter, feeling very faint all of a sudden. I'll tell you that I was struggling to say something, and that in itself made me struggle even more - because I had never struggled with explaining myself to Elijah. In front of my friends in Fineshrine, I was almost always very quiet. Not shy, but simply quiet. Calm and always in control. In this moment, I was floundering and finding it hard to sputter even the smallest word without feeling foolish.

"I-I...Well, I thought she might be...dangerous. She's a stranger, Elijah," I finally mumbled, but he merely huffed and my heart felt as if it was tightening. "What was I supposed to do? Bring her to the house, as if that's still something you can do when there are...thugs around trying to-..."

"She was alone," he replied sharply. "Alone, Maisie, and afraid. Remember when you were alone, and afraid, and I found you?"

"That was different, I-..."

"When I found you, I gave you food, I gave you friends that could protect you and I gave you everything I had in this house, I gave you Fineshrine itself on a platter!" he hissed, pointing furiously at me.

"I do the protecting," I said flatly. When those words left my lips, I had a moment in which I saw his eyes becoming wide and his skin a milky white, and I wished I could see what I had said, that I could make my words tangible and tug them towards me again, greedily stuffing them in my mouth and swallow them all to stop him hearing them. But he had heard them, and I couldn't help myself. "I do the cleansing, if that's what you wanna call it. But you wanna know what I call it Elijah? A slaughter. Because that's what it is. You all stand around the house, but I'm the only one that goes into that forest to find the Biters-..."

"Maisie," he tried, raising a hand, but the words were spilling. Overflowing. Suffocating them as they had suffocated me for months.

"I'm twenty-two, Elijah," I continued, my voice cracking and tears escaping from my eyes without my consent, "...or I was twenty-two. I don't feel it. I feel as if I've been alive for a lot longer than that because of what I do in that forest. But I do it, because I thought I was protecting you. To protect the friends and the food you gave me, to protect Fineshrine. But apparently you weren't clear on what was a threat and what wasn't. Apparently the living are off the limits, but the dead, that doesn't mean anything. Apparently it's a bullet for a Biter and a blanket for the living even if-..."

"Maisie!" he shouted, and I shut my mouth immediately. I was shaking, feeling mortified because even Elijah was silent in the moments after everything I had said, all of them staring. That was probably the loudest I had ever been, the most I had ever said all at once. Then I couldn't take it, cursing them and stomping by him towards the hallway where I could hear Rose sloshing about in her bath. I hid in my bedroom, burrowing beneath my blankets. I didn't eat my dinner, deciding that Rose could enjoy it instead, an extra portion along with Elijah's because he probably sacrificed his to help this starving woman, always trying to save everyone. Which was exactly what I had been trying to do too.

I was still feeling sore about this when Ava, whom I had to share a mattress with, came crawling in and curled herself along my spine. And I was still sore about it when I heard footsteps creaking in the hallway, and my bedroom door softly swoosh open, and I saw Elijah standing with a candle in his hand and then heard him whisper, "Maisie?"

I was being stupid and I was being stubborn, but I was staying silent too, like I always did.

"Alright, Maisie, you're angry with me," he says quietly, "...I get it. I understand that. I understand that you didn't really want to hurt Rose, too. I...I shouldn't have shouted at you, either, that was foolish of me. About the cleans-...About the Biters in the forest - we'll discuss that in the morning, because I've been thinking about it and you're right, Maze. You shouldn't have to do all of that by yourself. I just thought...I just thought, if you didn't complain about it then you weren't really affected by it. That was foolish, too. But it'll change, Maisie, I promise. I know you're pretending to sleep because you don't wanna talk to me and I get that, I really do. But just know that I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Maisie. Goodnight, sweetheart."

When the door shut, I heard him stand for a moment before his boots made the creaky floorboards cry. I still didn't call out to him.

I was being childish. I was being stubborn. This is my downfall.

VII

Gasoline spills across the kitchen floor. It spreads, seeping into the splinters of the wooden floorboards and soaking the bundle of blankets that I had brought to the forest that morning and that I had carelessly tossed by the cupboards for Myla to stitch because they'd been torn and I was tired from hauling a squirming Rose to the house. I suppose it doesn't matter, not when a lit match was thrown and the blankets set ablaze. While they burn and the gasoline drinks it all in, spitting fire and smoke, the strangers slip into the hallway and shut the door behind them with bags of food and medicine stolen from the pantry we put them in. Through an open window, they shove them out towards another man who has been awaiting this and who then rushes off with everything we have ever found, or at least most of it. What they didn't steal is burning, smoke billowing from beneath the door they shut. Instead of running with him, of escaping this fire that's eating the wood of the door within seconds, they dart towards the stairs because they aren't finished yet. This is when they bust a bedroom door down and shoot Oliver and Cam, who had been sleeping. Oliver, being fifteen, and Cam, a measly thirteen, cruelly shot by men that did not care if they were children or not.

The gunshots startle the house from its slumber. I'm already scrambling from my mattress, trying to soothe Ava who is crying and calling for Cecilia, her mother, who had been sleeping beside us. I don't have a gun. Having held it to Rose's head last night when bringing her home from the forest, I had been told by Elijah to put that thing down because Rose was so afraid. I had done what I'd been told, leaving it on the counter and well, after my fight, I didn't think to bring it to bed with me. I'm cursing myself, especially when Ava is crying and Cecilia's still babbling.

Another shot screams through the silence and Ava clings frantically to my arm and I'm shaking, badly, but still trying to calm myself because I can hear footsteps in the hallway. Cecilia grabs her daughter and begs me to tell them what to do because she's petrified and she's trying not to cry but I'm not doing much better. I'm hauling Ava towards the window, our only option, when I hear fire, fire, fire! Whoever had been in the hallway thought better of it, bolting towards the bedroom where the boys had been shot. We had a porch beneath our bedroom that I had never really thought about being thankful for, because I never thought I'd be trying to push Ava and her mother towards it and telling them that if they fell, they'd be fine. Even if I couldn't possibly know if that was the truth or not, I tell them they'll be fine.

Another gunshot, and another. Shouts and then screams of agony. Another gunshot. Silence.

Then Theo is standing beneath the porch and promising Ava he'll catch her, which is the only thing that convinces her to just jump. Cecilia climbs out after her, clinging tightly to the slates of that poor porch for all she's worth, repeatedly glancing downwards to reassure herself Theo is still standing beneath with arms held out in anticipation. Cecilia was slipping, but her pale hand was still stretching towards me, eyes pleading because she's afraid of falling and hurting herself. I'm saying soothing things, like I'm right behind you and you won't get hurt, I promise. This is when the bullet hits her, somewhere in the chest or stomach, I can't be certain. This is when she coughs and blood dribbles along her chin and she slides along the porch, falling with a thump because Theo too has been shot and cannot catch her. From where I stand at the window, I can't see Ava, not even her shadow slipping through the thistles of the garden or being taken by these strangers. Whoever shot Cecilia and Theo tries taking aim again and ricochets against the frame of the window - but I'm already running for the river, which is where we're supposed to go, which is where Elijah told us to go if something happens. This is something happening, and so I'm running. Running for the stairs, slipping on blood in the hallway but not finding who it belongs to, running for a broken window in the living room. Running through the garden and towards the red door, its splinters and spots of rotting red paint a relief to find still standing even in this chaos, when I hear a shout and stumble, and finally cast a glance behind to find something terrifying.

Four shadows facing the house in front of them, kneeling with their hands held behind their heads, while a firing squad stands behind them. I'm crying and I don't even realize it, not really, because there are possibly twenty or more men standing by that burning house, aiming for the kneeling shadows - and they're laughing, like hyenas. One man shouts something and they are silent. Four of his men step forward. He shouts again. They aim for the shadows that I'm slowly understanding are my friends from where I stand with one hand holding the wooden handle of that red door, utterly terrified. The man shouts - I'm sobbing, afraid to run and afraid to stay - and he shouts again and then his men shoot. The shadows straighten for an instant and then sag, falling to the floor, hidden by the high grass, and I sort of whimper. Except it isn't a whimper. It's something I can't explain, a sound of horror and fear and guilt and regret. It's pain. It's terror. It's everything that I can't express in words. I choke on it, coughing and crying all at once. Then I run, because the men that shot the shadows turn around and I'm afraid they'll find me.

Running through the meadow and then the forest, with tears blurring what little I can see, I'm scrambling across broken branches and stray roots in shoes that aren't exactly the best for this sort of thing, but that I had worn because in the chaos I could find nothing better. I'm terrified I'll turn and find them trying to shoot from behind trees or hidden in bushes, but I don't - what I do see are flames flickering and smoke sailing for the inky sky above, and I know it will entice every Biter that beholds it. I'm getting lost, too, looping around because I'm disorientated and don't know which way the river is anymore. I'm sniveling and sobbing, still struggling to even breathe because of what I had seen and I can't remember where the river is but-...

Pain, hot and sharp and terribly sudden, takes a hold of the flesh of my calf and crushes it, making me crumple and cry out. Through my tears I can't tell what is holding me, believing it's a Biter about to chew my flesh apart and that all I can do it stuff my fist in my mouth, afraid that if I scream those men will hear it and hunt me as if I was an animal. It isn't a Biter - it's a bear-trap, its jaws splicing the bone of my calf and cutting it in half. Its metal mouth swallows mouthfuls of my blood which oozes from the wound, and its teeth grind against that gory bone sticking from the gash. I'm biting hard enough for blood to trickle from the knuckles of the fist still held against my teeth, trying not to scream. If the men raiding my home don't hear me, but the Biters definitely will.

There is a tree behind where I'm trapped, and I lean against it, letting out panting puffs and stuttering breaths, trying to soothe my pounding heart and smother the pain. The bear-trap has a chain that I tied to a branch when it was brought to the forest within my first month at Fineshrine and it clinks when I try to shift closer to the tree-trunk. When I had been scrambling to escape with Ava and Cecilia, I had taken shoes instead of boots and thought that stupid, but when sitting in that forest with a bear-trap swallowing my calf and cutting that bone in two, I thought it mightn't have been that bad a choice. Because I understood what I had to do. I understood that I had to suffer and not scream, because of Biters and bad men.

I'm already holding a shoelace between my teeth and undoing the other when I hear the bushes tremble.

My fingers fumble for a gun and find nothing, because I had forgotten I had nothing to protect myself with. Then I'm crying, but not from the pain of the bear-trap or the blood spurting from that wound - I'm crying because when a figure emerges from the bushes, I'm relieved to find it's Rose standing with a bag thrown over her shoulder and a gun in her hand and I'm thinking to myself, hallelujah! Hallelujah, because I am not alone! She stumbles, staring at me, eyes slowly falling towards the bloody gore that is my left leg, a hand flying to her mouth in horror. Rose is so revolted by it that she turns away, staring at the ground instead, her skin a ghostly grey. Though I may have been the one with a broken bone and skin split from a bear-trap, it was Rose who was shaky, her voice trembling but I thought that might be the blood and the visible bone that made her feel faint - then she vomited, coughing and clinging to a tree for support.

"I-...I'm sorry," she says. With a shoelace dangling from my mouth, I figure anything I say will seem muffled and she mightn't hear it. Instead I grit my teeth and prod that bone poking through my flesh, again biting my fist. Rose is in something of a daze when she says, "I didn't know they'd-...They said it was for food, for survival-..."

In my chest where my heart should be is a hollow cavity, having collapsed when I heard her words. My eyes trail to the bag on her shoulder, afraid of what I'm beginning to realise. Of what I should have seen. "You were with them? You...You stole from us?"

She nods and lets out this pathetic little whimper, holding a pale hand in front of her mouth again because her lower lip is wobbling and she can't even bring herself to see the fury in my eyes. "I- I didn't..."

"Get me out of this thing," I growled, shaking the chain angrily, the shoelaces falling from my mouth. I don't say what I'm thinking. I don't say, because I want to strangle you and feed you to the Biters. Her eyes flicker towards where the house should have been but instead there stood a smoking ruin, and she takes a step backwards towards the bushes behind her. I can't believe this. I can't believe her. She's going to run and leave me to die in this trap. She's going to leave me. "Rose-..."

"I'm sorry," she repeats. "I-If they find me, they'll kill me! I stole a bag of food from them too, I had to, I don't want to be with them anymore! You don't know them, there's thirty of them and-...

"You traitorous little bitch, you-..."

"I had to do it!" she hissed, standing defensively and daring to gaze into my eyes for only a split second. "You don't know the things I've seen, what I've had to do! If you did-..."

"You're a murderer!" I spat, and she flinched. "We gave you a chance, we trusted you! Elijah trusted you!"

"You don't understand at all," she interrupted, shaking her head. "You don't. Someday you will, you'll see the sort of things I've seen and-..." - she was walking away, towards the bushes, and I was trying to tug on that chain to get closer to her - "...and you'll understand that I did what I had to do to survive."

"You can't just...You can't just leave me here," I whispered incredulously, my hands clenching the chain tightly and shaking it as if to prove that to her. She was still walking away, and all I could do was stare at her helplessly, tears stinging my eyes.

"W-We took you in, we-... You can't just leave me here!" I screamed, my voice hoarse and hurting, but I screamed nonetheless. In that instant, I didn't care about Biters or the men that might still be burning Fineshrine. All I could see was Rose Campbell. "I'll die, you coward! You coward! YOU CAN'T JUST LEAVE ME HERE TO DIE! IF I EVER FIND YOU AGAIN, I WILL KILL YOU! DO YOU HEAR ME ROSE? I'LL KILL YOU, YOU COWARD! YOU CAN'T JUST LEAVE ME HERE!"

I kept screaming even when I knew she could not hear me. I kept screaming even when my voice became hoarse and my head hurt and my hands tried frantically to slow the blood flow that was seeping around the jaws of this bear-trap. Slowly, my screaming became a soft sobbing, because I understood that I was all alone again and my soul was awash with sadness, so much that it was suffocating and all I could hear was Elijah's words about suffering. I figure it's just sad. Sad that we do, and sad that we can't do anything about it.

In my heart, however, I felt something flicker, a defiant flame akin to those that had taken Fineshrine hostage and destroyed it - I'd survive if it meant catching Rose again, even if it meant crawling across the country with the bones of my calf cut in two, and I'd do what I had told her when dangling her in front of that Biter, a final cleansing of this forest and of Fineshrine, of its charred remains and the ruins of what had been, forever.