All she could do was watch wordlessly, her hand to her mouth, as the camera was swallowed by the earth, taking with it the last shred of evidence of their experiences on the island that night. Her attention was directed to the figures that loped toward her, silhouettes in the light of the van's headlights, tattered flesh and rotten clothing dragging against the dirt, and she bit back a scream when she felt a hand close around her wrist and wrench her backward forcefully.
"Come on," whispered a voice, and somewhere in her panicked mess of a mind, she was able to sense that yes, this voice was someone she knew and trusted. The man with the voice said to follow him, and she nodded, lost in a fog where the only thing she could feel were the warm fingers on her wrist and the vague impression of the dirt under her shoes as she ran. The sound of her own blood rushed through her ears, and she thought distantly that it reminded her of the noise a television makes when it isn't connected to anything. Her vision was grey and grainy, going black at the edges, and she opened her mouth to speak but wasn't able to form any words. The ground was coming closer, she was going slower, sinking to her knees on the soft ground, and she felt a weight on her shoulders and the voice shouting at her frantically.
It was her name. He was saying her name. Please, the voice said, please stand up. She tried to apologize, and although she felt the air pass through her lips, she couldn't hear the words that came out of her mouth. She was sinking to the forest floor, her eyes were closing, and she told the voice that she was sorry. She couldn't understand the response, but she felt an arm around her shoulders and a pressure at the back of her knees as she was lifted up, and then she felt nothing more for some time.
"Daphne, please wake up," came the voice again, and she opened her eyes. It was so dark she could barely see what was in front of her, but she felt a softness beneath her neck and a hand at her shoulder. The fogginess in her mind had lifted, and she was able to recognize the voice this time.
"Oh, Fred. Wh-what happened?" she asked, her voice hoarse for a reason she couldn't quite remember. She reached up, groping in the darkness for some sign of him, and his hand found hers, his thumb stroking across her skin.
"Honestly? I couldn't tell you," he said, and she knew he was shaking his head slightly, "I hope I'm just having a nightmare. Wake me up, if you can."
"I mean, what happened to me?"
"You blacked out. I guess it was the shock... You remember what you saw, don't you?"
Daphne nodded, and realizing that he probably couldn't see her in the darkness, she spoke, "Yeah. Zombies. Real zombies."
She heard him swallow noisily, and his hand squeezed hers a little more tightly, "Can you run?"
"Like hell," she said, rising to her feet and steadying him as he followed suit.
"Good. Listen, we have to get back to the house. It'll be safe there, and I bet that's where Shag and Scoob will be heading." Fred surveyed their surroundings, taking it all in before turning back to her. He paused for a moment, looking to the ground as if he were fighting a battle within his own mind, and when he looked up again, she could see a faint glint in his eyes by the dim moonlight, "Daphne, if they get me, I want you to just keep running, okay? Don't stop for me. Just get away."
"Freddie, I won't—"
"Please," he said, and she remembered how the voice had pleaded with her when they had lost the camera. Please, it had screamed, a sort of primal pain tearing through the words, please don't give up. She realized now, it had been Fred's voice begging her to get up and keep running, telling her that he wouldn't leave her behind. He had taken her in his arms and carried her away from the horde of zombies. He had hidden her away from their blood stained teeth and cracking bones. And he was now asking her to leave him to die if it would save her life.
"You wouldn't leave me behind, why would I leave you?" Daphne said, crossing her arms across her chest, and there seemed to be a split second where Fred wasn't sure how to respond. In the end, he smiled and took her into his arms.
"I should've known better than to try and tell you what to do," Fred laughed, and from where she was pressed against his chest, Daphne could feel a sort of tension in his throat that unsettled her. She squeezed him a little tighter.
They had been running for so long, she thought her legs might disintegrate and her lungs might burst. But she kept running, the zombies tearing after the two of them in a wave of flesh and blood through the bayou trees, her legs covered in mud and dirt and her hand gripped firmly in Fred's as he led her across a wooden plank that served as a bridge over a swampy sort of stream. They had managed to take a couple of the monsters down despite their lack of weapons, swinging a branch at a pair and knocking their torsos from their legs, and she would have been sickened if she hadn't been so frightened. Fred had managed to bash in the skulls of a couple of the beasts with a heavy branch, which he held in his other hand, dripping with blood and bone dust. His eyes were wild and his breathing was inconsistent, and he only appeared calm when she held his hand in her own, as if her presence grounded him and kept him from losing himself.
He had slowed down considerably. She knew that he wouldn't be able to last much longer, and her own bones screamed at her, begging her to stop. They couldn't run anymore, and they looked at one another and quietly agreed that it would be best to hide.
There was no sign of the horde anywhere, so he took her hand and led her toward a patch of bushes, the only sort of cover that was offered in the bayou swamps, and they knelt in the dirt, the stained tree branch at their side, waiting for the moment it would be needed.
"I guess this is it, isn't it?" Daphne said softly, and she didn't dare look Fred in the eyes, focusing somewhere to the left of his shoulder instead.
He laughed almost bitterly, a short single laugh that sounded half like a sigh, "You know, you'd think we would've expected it to be something like this, with our line of work. It's bizarrely appropriate."
Every person had a moment where they hazily wondered about the time of their death, and Daphne was no exception. She had hoped it would be in her sleep at an old age, but still beautiful in a graceful sort of way, her life full of adventure and, in her opinion, complete. But here she was, facing her death before her life had really begun.
She bit her lip, and she suspected she had appeared upset, because Fred held out his arms to her, a sad half-smile on his lips. "C'mere."
Daphne obeyed the gesture, falling against him and squeezing her eyes shut, blocking out the rest of the world, and she heard a sob escape his lips as he clutched her tightly to his chest, his arms encircling her shoulders completely. Fred was shaking violently, and she realized that she had never seen him so scared in all the years she had known him, his heartbeat pulsing in her ears and his fingers digging into her shoulder, as if he were worried she would fall apart right there in his arms.
At that moment she realized, that through all of the dangers they had faced, he had never really left her side. Even when the gang had gone their separate ways, he had gone with her, assisting her by acting as the one-man crew for Coast to Coast, and now here he was, holding her in his arms as they confronted death together.
The realization stirred something within her, and she broke. She stifled her own sobs, burying her face in his shirt and breathing in the scent of sweat and dirt and a faint whiff of the cologne he had worn at dinner. He kissed the top of her head and rocked her back and forth a little, and she whispered, "I don't want to die here."
"I know, I know," he said, voice thick. There was a sound in the distance; the moan of some creature drawing closer, and they both stiffened.
"I love you," he gasped into her ear, as if he were frantically trying to get the words out while he still could, and her breath hitched in her throat. No, not now, why now? Part of her was angry with him for waiting so long to say those words to her, and part of her was torn apart by the reality that he had been there the whole time and she had been too gutless to say those words to him. But the fact of the matter was they were both to blame.
She wanted to call him an idiot, but she didn't have the heart to, and instead she kissed him, her mouth open and the kiss infused with all the passion she could in case they didn't survive the night. If she didn't live to see the sun, she wanted to at least live to tell him that she loved him back. His hands ran down the curve of her spine and his tongue stroked across hers as they heard the footsteps come closer, and she broke the kiss, throwing her arms around his neck and leaning in to whisper in his ear before it was too late.
"I love you, too," she breathed, her lips grazing his ear, and he buried his face in her neck.
They clung to one another, waiting for the horde to descend upon them and snuff out their lives, but it never came. Instead, a voice cut through the thick bayou canopy like a knife; a familiar voice that floated through the trees and wrapped them up in a warm feeling of protection.
It was Velma.
Fred pulled back and looked at Daphne, and he smiled brightly for the first time since they'd left the van. He called out in a hoarse voice, and Velma and the gardener came rushing through the underbrush to where the pair had been hiding out, lanterns in hand.
Perhaps, Daphne thought as she rose from the dirt and took Fred's hand, they would survive the night after all.