"What was that?" Julie's eyes were large, wary. I swung in the direction of the sound, wishing I was armed, like she was. Not that I could have done much with a gun, except potentially shoot myself in the foot.
"I h-heard it." I admitted, hating when I couldn't keep my voice steady. She moved up by my shoulder, even though I felt far better when she was behind me. If there was some threat to us here, out in the city where the odd Boney still roamed, I ought to face it first.
Tense seconds clicked by. I remained hyper-alert, my fingers balling into fists at my side. Julie's elbow brushed mine. A distant bird cawed. After almost two minutes, Julie let out a relieved breath. "It was probably just-"
The entire wall beside us, a boarded-up sheet of wood, exploded outward. I felt searing pain in my shoulder as shards of it stuck into me, heard Julie cry out, reached for her in the melee. A Boney shriek, then a second and a third overrode the splintering wood. I spun to find one of them right by me, but I was far more worried about Julie. "R!" She cried out, and I heard the fear in her voice.
I had to get to her! I had to keep her safe!
"R! Please!"
My eyes flew open the second time she said my name and I was transported back to the actual world. I looked around wildly - Julie and I on the couch, a crumpled-up blanket at our feet, her house, no Boneys. The fear didn't vanish though, and I gasped at Julie as I struggled with it, as it tore my stomach apart and ripped at my rationality. Was this normal? What was it!?
"R, it's okay. Hey, hey, you had a bad dream."
"A dream." I gasped, repeating the word - that made sense. A dream like I'd had when I was with Julie, Nora and Perry in the orchard, except that had been a dream of light and hope and this had been dark and despairing.
"It was real." I blurted out, panting. I wanted to focus on Julie, but my body refused to keep still - my eyes scanned the room for danger and my entire figure trembled violently.
"It wasn't, R. Nightmares are a normal human thing, and they feel real, but they aren't. Your fear is there now, but you can control it. Take deep breathes."
I thought it would be impossible, but I tried. It became easier to focus on Julie when I sucked in a huge lungful of air and released it again. She kept talking to me, her fingers firm and reassuring on mine. "That's it. It's over now R. Dreams can't hurt you. You're doing it. It's going away."
I couldn't bring myself to speak again until my heart had stopped slamming into my ribs, reminding me of the pain in my shoulder. I looked down and noticed a pink stain on the bandage. "Bleeding again." Julie spotted the same thing and let go of one hand to reach up and unstick the bandage. "You moved around a bit in your nightmare. Come on, come into the bathroom, I'll change the bandage."
I sat on the edge of the bathtub. Julie instructed me to take my hoody and shirt off - the shirt was grey and I wasn't used to it yet. It takes a lot of adjusting to new clothes after wearing something for as long as you can remember. I was just relieved I still had my red hoody.
"You okay now?" Julie carefully pulled away the old bandage and mopped up the slow seep of blood that had come from my bullet wound. I nodded, although I wasn't really. Was that going to happen again? I'd never felt so out of control. Well, maybe when the Boneys had us cornered, but there had been no time then to contemplate, to really comprehend the depth of the fear.
"Think so." Julie re-did my bandage, sticking the edges down carefully. She let her fingers linger on my chest for a moment longer and my thoughts shifted a little to one side. Less fear, more... interest. I tried to figure out the small smile on her face. "What?"
"You're not quite so pale." She commented, before handing me back my shirt. "There's a while before dawn yet. Let's go back to sleep. Before long I'm going to have to be up early to get back to work, so we should make the most of this."
Back to work. I'd miss Julie. What was I going to do then? Julie led me to her room and I sat on the edge of her bed while she drew the curtains, the sky outside still dark but lit with the odd orange streetlight.
I surveyed the bed with some trepidation. I guess I couldn't keep my shoes on like I did when I reclined in my plane's chairs so I stooped to pull them off one at a time. Julie yawned, snuggling into the covers beside me and drawing me down beside her. I felt better once I were lay nestled together, as if the act of having Julie in my arms and me in hers cast us into a protective bubble. I worried for a few minutes that I might have another of those nightmares, then the unfamiliar exhaustion snuck up on me and my eyes closed.
The next thing I knew Julie's voice was calling me away from sleep. "Cartbien for breakfast, I'm afraid." She apologized, pulling a face. I knew she hated every reminder of our enclosed lifestyle - the refined taste of carbtien, the armed guards marching by, the shadow cast by the wall.
"Yum?" I don't think I was convincing because she laughed. I winced, rubbing my shoulder ruefully as we went downstairs. Julie noticed. "Sore?"
"Yeah. How long will it t-take to heal?" Julie handed me a pill along with my bar of carbtien. "That will take the pain away. Karl wasn't sure - at least a few weeks, but your body is at a different sort of stage to most people's right now. He was surprised you progressed as quickly as you did, that's why he let you go home. Don't chew on that, put it in your mouth and take it with a glass of water." She pulled the pill away from my hand with an apologetic smile, like she'd done the wrong thing, not me.
After eating my bar and taking the pill, I rested with my elbows on Julie's kitchen table. "Still tired. Is that normal?"
"You did get shot recently, so I'm going to say yes. Again, it could be an effect of what your body has gone through. Just talk to me if you feel like anything's getting too much, okay? Do you want to sleep?"
Sleep was still an unfamiliar passtime, and after my bad experience with the nightmare it wasn't high on my priorities. I lifted my chin. "No." She looked amused by my determination. "Okay. Let's do something else. Let me go put the main power on and we can watch a movie."
"Movie?" I remembered the DVD cases from the plane. She showed me the collection of the same kind of things. "You'll see. You'll enjoy this. Pick one of these." She tapped the cases. I crouched down beside the shelf, running my fingers experimentally over the plastic covers. A bright yellow one caught my eye and my fingers stopped.
"Good choice. This is actually a remake, apparently there was an older one in the 60's with Michael Caine in it. I never saw that one though, we never did salvage a big range of DVDs. I've got most than more people, thanks to Dad."
I didn't understand half of what she was saying, but I enjoyed the sound of her voice, and I enjoyed the way she leaned on my shoulder after she put the movie on, holding my hand as he nestled on the couch.
The movie fascinated me. I had always imagined stories for my fellow zombies, but I had never imaged a whole complex tale like this one. Julie watched me as much as the screen, smiling at my transfixed state.
"Did you like it?" She asked when the credits began scrolling by. I nodded emphatically. "Yes. I l-liked how it showed... them before the job, what they did to get to where they were."
"It made you laugh, too." It had, at that - I had laughed so hard that I couldn't stop, until the act of laughing only making the situation funnier. Julie had paused the movie and laughed as well - though I thought it had been with me, not at me.
"The bit where he spoke like his friend." I smiled, remembering, the line that had made me laugh coming into my head so easily. I used to struggle to remember little details like that.
Julie prepared something better to eat for lunch. I watched, almost as fascinated by the efficient way she prepared things as I had been by the movie. She multi-tasked, chattering away to me as she cooked - more little things, about the movie we'd watched and how when she was a little kid her parents took her to the 'movie theater' where people watched movies on a giant screen as tall as her house was. I couldn't picture it. Julie promised to let me watch more movies, saying I had a lot of them to catch up on.
"Can I help you with that?" I nodded to her cooking. She was using a knife to chop potatoes. Julie motioned me over. "Okay, just take it easy. Here, take a potato and cut a slice off it, then put it on the flat side you made, like this. Then it won't roll when you're cutting the next slices. Then you cut those into sticks about this big."
I followed suit, a whole lot more clumsily and slowly than Julie had managed, but I felt proudly productive when I finished, even if my fries didn't turn out like her even lengths. Julie had poured a some oil into a pan which sizzled sharply, and we cooked the fries in it. Julie wouldn't let me help with that part. "When you're a bit steadier. You're getting there, but I don't want to add any burns to that bullet hole."
Different preparation to the meals I'd been used to.
"Are they ready?" I was analyzing the way the scent of the cooking food stole into my stomach, making me feel hungry. Julie was fishing the fries in bunches from the pan and putting them on a plate. "Yep, looks like." At once I reached for one and put it in my mouth. And yelped.
"R! That's hot!" Julie exclaimed, taking the half-a-fry out of my fingers- it was burning those now as well as my mouth. She hastily shoved a glass of water at me. "Drink!"
"Sorry." I said sheepishly, and Julie shook her head at me. "Freshly cooked food needs to cool down for a minute or two before you start eating." She scolded, taking the plate and me meekly in tow back to the television.
I would remember about hot food next time.
With the second movie almost finished, my sleepiness returned, to my annoyance. The fries were delicious. I told Julie that and she kissed my cheek. The movie, like the first, was exciting, but I was blinking heavily by the end.
"Okay, I'm going to go check on Nora and see if there's any news from Dad's team." Julie pulled on a denim jacket.
"Can I come?"
"You ought to get some rest. If you run around, it'll take forever to heal." Her fingertips brushed my shoulder sympathetically, but her expression was firm. I thought for a moment and she waggled a finger at me. "Pull out those puppy-dog eyes and I'll blindfold you." she threatened, her eyes sparkling. "Go on, I'll show you around the city properly once you're better."
The house felt unwelcoming and empty without Julie. I wandered up the wide staircase and into her bedroom, sitting dismally on the bed for a while. I lay back, but even though I was tired, my body, or maybe my mind, couldn't find the off switch. After a while of lying stiffly on my bed thinking just how much like a Corpse I must look with my eyes wide open, I rolled over onto one side. There was a bedside table with a drawer and I pulled it open, wishing that I could remember how to read. That might make me sleepy.
I pulled a sketch pad from the drawer and froze, my fingers digging lightly into the paper.
It was me. Julie had drawn me, and not just any me. I looked a lot like I had in the polaroid shot in the house in the suburbs. My heartbeat quickened. The most logical time Julie could have drawn that was after she left me there. She'd been thinking about me, even then.
Whatever had gotten caught up inside me and stopped me sleeping untied itself. I settled back, caught a faint scent of Julie's hair on her pillow, and closed my eyes.
A/N - Well, here we are at the start of a new adventure for Julie and R. For those new to my fanfiction this is based around the movie version and characters. Bit of a slow start here, but R is a bit housebound for now so instead I focused on some of the emotional challenges he and Julie will be facing together.
Every review I get makes me want to drop what I'm doing and get writing, so please, if you enjoyed this, leave me even a few words :)
Bonus points - who knows which movie R and Julie watched? :D