Georgia, eleven months after the treaty:

Worth had his hand in a box of ammunition.

It was a bruised, calloused hand with cracked nails and a scabbed bite mark between the thumb and forefinger. He didn't used to have hands like this, back before he turned into some kind of fucking revolutionary, odd-job man. He thought about that as he rummaged around for a .45 caliber bullet.

He wondered why the bite wasn't infected yet.

It'd been three days, three days since they last saw Hanna, three days since they left the hotel—the base, damn Hanna and his romantic tendencies—for a routine scouting mission. Three days since this clusterfuck exploded like a bombed armory. They'd been running since, outnumbered and out gunned by less than a dozen dipshit locals because it was a fucking scout mission. Fucking Hanna and his fucking diplomacy—hearts and minds his ass. If he'd known this was in the cards, he would have stayed in the goddamn hospital a state back—or at least packed extra rations.

His life is turning into a war movie. You know, typical weekday stuff.

"It's always us," Conrad grumbled from somewhere behind him. "We've practically got ninjas waiting the wings, and who gets to go out and die of exhaustion? Us, that's who. A hack doctor and a fucking artist."

"Grow a pair, Debbie," Worth bit out, "y' haven't been an artist since ya broke that piece'a shit laptop in California last year."

"What, you think I suddenly can't sketch because you broke the last computer in the new world? Newsflash Worth, we still have pencils."

"Nah," the doctor shot back, clicking a clip into his rifle. "I mean, you ain't been a artist, you've been Hanna's fuckin' call-boy, that's what you been. Welcome t' th' post-apocalyptic world of today, princess. Y' can stop bitchin' any time now."

"I'll stop bitching when you stop being the worst partner on God's green earth. I don't know why Hanna always splits us up like this. I think he must be under the mistaken impression that we like each other, or something."

"Aw, Connie, me thinks the lady protesteth too much."

"Oh, I'll show you what the lady—"

The blast of a gunshot punched through Conrad's response. A bullet whizzed into the bark of a close tree and Conrad dove backwards, cursing, as Worth tossed the pistol to him. Silence followed.

Slowly, Conrad slid up beside Worth and flicked the safety off. They'd gotten a bit indifferent with their guns in the last year, which worried Conrad (loudly) on occasion. Something about violence and humanity and whatever that other word was that Conrad liked to throw around. Recklessness? Tooth decay?

"Drop your weapons, spooks," a voice called over the hill, source invisible in the twilight. "We have you surrounded!"

Worth glanced over at his companion, feeling pretty amused. "Yanno," he called back, "I'm a human m'self."

"Don't you bother lying to us, we won't fall for it!"

Conrad hmmphed. "They never believe us. I don't know why you bother, you're a hell of a lot scarier than me. If anybody was going to pass as a human, it wouldn't be you."

"Ey, ya wanna talk to 'em? Be my guest."

Conrad peered out into the forest, trying to figure out where his opponent was hiding. "Look," he shouted, "if this is because I knocked over your house, I'm sorry! It was an accident, and in my defense, it wasn't built very well and I'm a lot stronger than I used to be!"

"It's about the principle of the thing!" the voice yelled back, a touch miffed. "We don't hold with spooks on our land, you hear me? Besides, my brother built that house, and now you gone and knocked the whole thing down so he's got to live with me! You damned well ruined my household!"

"I would be happy to help you rebuild it if you'll just stop chasing us for a bloody minute!"

"We don't hold with no spooks!" the stranger screamed.

Lying behind a rotted log with dead leaves caught in his ungelled hair, Conrad grit his teeth. "Double negative," he muttered.

Worth shot him a nasty look.

"We're coming down there an' killin' you," the voice informed them, a modicum of calm retrieved, "and you can't talk your way out of it!"

In the twilight, Conrad and Worth shared a quick glance. The beginnings of faint pinkish light framed the contours of the vampire's face, his straight nose and the grim line of his lips. These were the moments when he looked most alive. Wordless, the two of them slunk out from the corners of their makeshift campsite.

This had gone on too damn long.

Worth was always a good sneak, as far back as preschool when he was just a little bugger trying to steal the other kiddies' toys. Conrad, though, had taken a bit more practice—if by "a bit more practice" you meant three months of scaring off all the wildlife in a five mile radius that might have been dinner. He had gotten it in the end, of course—little fag was nothing if not meticulous.

"You come out with your hands up," the voice was saying, "and we'll kill you fast. Stay hidden and we kill you slow like."

A few steps up the side of the ravine, and the doctor spotted a silhouette highlighted against the first seeping purple of the sunrise. "Allow me t' return the favor," he muttered, and took the shot.

A deafening crack exploded in front of him and the silhouette clutched at its belly. On top of the hill, more silhouettes rushed into the patch of sunrise—a twin crack blasted from the opposite side of the camp, and another body hit the ground.

"Now," Worth called, "ya sure ya wanna fuck with us?"

There was a pause, and then someone up top shouted, "You killed Martin!"

"Motherfucker," Worth sighed. "If that ain't what they all say."

"Look," Conrad's unmistakable English impatience sailed across the ravine, "It's not like we want to kill you. Just go away and send somebody back to negotiate, we'll pay damages if you'll just act civilized for a minute."

Worth took the opportunity to slide a new clip into his rifle. You never knew when your next opening would be.

"Martin already told you! Non-humans—"

Worth fired off three rounds before he could manage another word; Conrad fired twice bare seconds afterward. Silence settled over the forest.

"Anybody else feel like negotiating?"

Silence continued.

Worth flicked on the safety and uncurled himself. The ash and charcoal remains of a recent forest fire crunched under his shoes as he made his way upwards—always sleep in a ravine, the fires never go that low. He could hear the twin shufflings of worn loafers in the shadow, some distance away.

At the top of the hill, he did a quick body count and checked for any stray pulses. One of the men he'd shot was curled some feet away, moaning softly. Worth poked him with one sooty leather boot.

"Hanna's going to be so pissed off," Conrad muttered, shielding his eyes from the first light. "If we were going to kill them we might as well have done it two days ago before they nearly blew our brains out. God… fucking sunlight. I don't know how I ever stomached it."

The good news and bad news about humanity is that it's just not nocturnal. Bad news because they can hunt your ass down while you and count Fagula are out for the count, good news because you can do the same to them. It's like phone tag with guns.

If there were any phones left, anyways.

They'd been doing a pretty good job of keeping hidden up until this morning, but Christ it was hard to defend a campsite when your partner is dead to the world in a low-pitch blackout tent. They were lucky, he admitted, that Conrad was a young vampire and the daylight was still relatively easy on him. Headaches were the worst of it, before the sun actually came up.

Worth nudged the bleeding local again. Didn't look old enough to be shooting anything, but then again, there's something about taking a slug of lead to the gut that tends to make everyone look like a squalling baby.

"'Ey," he said, kicking the man, "you ain't dead yet. Uncurl yer spiteful ass already."

The huddled mass tucked in tighter and clenched his eyes closed. Worth rolled his eyes.

"Connie, you go get yerself outta the sunlight before I'm stuck cleanin' up bloodsucker jerky. I'll take care of the bleedin' fuckface here. I'd tell ya you're on dishwashin' duty to pay me back, but I know how much you like them womanly type chores."

Conrad opened his mouth, glanced at the creeping sunrise, and hmmmphed instead. "I know you won't kill him," he said, half warning and half confidence.

"Don't be so sure, sweetheart. Gimme a kiss and I'll drain off a couple pints for ya."

"Go fuck yourself," the vampire muttered, rubbing his temples. "Ugh. I'll see you tonight."

As his partner stumbled back down to the now secure campsite, Worth turned his attention to the boy lying at his feet.

"Racist assholes," the doctor sighed, feeling a bit worn at the edges, "you just gotta make things difficult for everybody, eh?"

He knelt and unbuckled the flask of medical alcohol at his hip. The boy struggled weakly as his fetal position was forcibly unfurled, thinly bloodied hands batting at the intrusion.

"Don't be a sissy, I hardly snapped yer collar bone. Man th' fuck up."

With a dose of alcohol drying on his hands, Worth went to work digging out the pellet lodged between a shattered strip of bone and a shoulder blade. Well, this wasn't one he planned on bragging about come tomorrow. He might as well have missed.

"What's yer name, kid?" he asked, digging in his jacket pocket for the tequila-soaked thread he kept handy.

"John," the boy rasped, and from the voice he couldn't have been a day over fifteen.

Worth made a non-committal noise. Centimeter by centimeter, the bloody gash on the boy's shoulder closed. The morning came pouring over treetops and turned the Doctor's pale hands yellow like molten gold. He doused his handy work with one last helping of sanitizer and stepped back.

"Stand up, kid," he ordered, rebuckling his hip flask. "You ain't hurt, stand up or I'll leave ya where you sit."

A couple minutes of goading and pushing found Johnny boy lying near comatose on a black tarp under a cypress canopy. Worth shucked his jacket somewhere in the process, feeling the southern heat beginning its inescapable trickle downwards into the green cleft, and reached for a cigarette.

After a silent moment—as silent as possible anyways, with the damn birds going on like a couple bat-shit grandmas—he picked himself up and slid a hand underneath the heavy white plastic of Conrad's portable cave. He dug underneath the black sleeping bag he knew waited inside and felt for the slender length of the vampire's lukewarm fingers.

Satisfied, he collapsed underneath a tree and slept for ten hours.

-A-

They showed up at Hanna's latest camp the next night, Worth lugging all their compounded shit and Conrad lugging the pitiful fucker who didn't have the sense to die properly when he was shot, and who had passed out after an hour of forced march. Conrad had not been pleased with this arrangement, probably because someone had finally out-sissied him.

Worth tossed his own dead weight in the backseat of the Cadillac as they passed it, heading for long-awaited shelter, and glanced up at the shabby bed-and-breakfast with its kitschy hand-painted "Speak Friend and Enter" sign over the back entrance. Hanna's RV was parked between the building and the wobbly looking stable behind it, just as it had been when Worth and Conrad had stepped out four days ago. Runes scribbled on its new, pale wood walls glowed faintly purple when he passed by—homing spell, he guessed. Those hadn't been there when he left.

"C'mon princess," he called, half turning, "Hanna's prob'ly ruptured somethin' looking for us. Better check the damage before we're stuck lugging two brain dead fuckups along."

"If you want me to move faster," Conrad yelled back, "why don't you give me a hand already?"

He had the kid pulled off his shoulders now, his moon-white arms wrapped around the dirty flannel of the boy's torso. Sneakers dragged in the mud of the yard, and Worth decided he didn't particularly feel like getting that all over his jacket.

"Who's the superhuman around here, Fagula? Christ, suck it up. You oughta be good at that."

Conrad grumbled as he passed. "Is that a gay joke or a vampire joke, fuck it, I don't even care right now—"

Worth grinned to himself and fell into step behind his pissed off compatriot. He dug through his pockets for the last of his cigarettes, quickly finishing an assessment of the scenario. Too quiet, he decided, and reached casually for the holster at his hip.

Conrad pulled the inn's screen door open, and found a shotgun pressed against his head.

"Who ya'll think you are?"

Conrad tripped backwards off the step and landed in a heap with their unconscious prisoner. The double barrels glinted blue in the shadow of the doorway. The doctor lit up as Conrad cursed and untangled himself at his feet.

"We're friends, y' shift-sleepin' sonuva bitch," Worth replied, seeing that Conrad wasn't going to be answering any time soon, and with one thin finger he pointed upwards at the kitschy hand painted sign above the entrance.

The man at the door squinted, pulled back his shotgun and looked down at Conrad.

"Mr. Achenleck?" he asked, eyebrows shooting up. "I'll be a... Mr. Achenleck, is that you?"

"Conrad, please," the vampire mumbled, hauling their comatose local up with him.

"Mr. Achenleck, by god, I am sorry. I didn't recognize you under all that… dirt. An' Doc Worth! Jesus, I must be sleepwalkin' or something."

The pale man between them shifted his grip on the still smaller body in his arms. "Uh, it's okay, Bill. At least you didn't… shoot us. I guess. Look, is Hanna still here? We need to talk to him now."

"Sure, sure," the innkeeper replied, quickly unloading his shotgun. "Come inside, before somebody hears ya'll."

With a quick, nervous flicker backwards over his shoulder, Conrad and his human baggage shuffled through the door and Worth kicked it closed behind them. The scent of fried food and damp wood settled over them all.

"Jesus," Bill repeated, "I'm so sorry. Ya'll look like you walked though a hurricane. Where's the bike? Coulda sworn you left here on a motorcycle."

Conrad rubbed self-consciously at the layer of mud and soot caked over his bloodless face. "We wrecked it outrunning some local KKK dumbasses. I though you told us there weren't any branches around here?"

"There ain't," Bill responded, visibly confused.

Worth flicked ash onto the worn carpet. "Tell that to short, pale and stupid over here," he suggested, pointing at their prisoner. "Yer gonna want ter talk to him before you say that again. I'm down a cartridge causa those dipshits, and poor Lady Conrad here had to drag his sorry ass up three hills and a swamp. Roit ruined her manicure, it did."

Conrad shot him an evil look, but he ignored it. If it looks like a bitch and it bitches like a bitch, it's a bloody fucking bitch.

Bill mumbled something about finding Hanna and disappeared up the stairs.

As the last creaks of footsteps faded upwards, Conrad collapsed into an armchair. Worth unlaced the worn and muddy brown leather that had been clinging to his ankles for days, tossing them somewhere across the carpet. A quiet settled over the house, that same unreal quiet that followed a do-or-die escape, filled with the buzzing memory of shots flying and the ache of still tense muscles.

"Oi, princess, you break a nail or sumthin'? That's a downright unladylike scowl ya got there."

Conrad looked up at him, face twisting underneath an inch of dried mud and irritation. The camouflage jacket he hated so much twisted too, over his hunched shoulders and tightly crossed arms.

"Oh, fuck you Worth. You're just irritated that the rain ruined your disgusting cancer stick. I'm too tired to deal with your shit right now, so check on your comatose patient over there or go get some sleep. You look like shit. If you stood next to the zombie I wouldn't be able to tell which of you died first."

"Nice ter see you so concerned," Worth replied, cocking a mud-stiffened brow. "I'll make sure to clean up good 'fore you take me to dinner at the country club tonight. Wouldn't want ter offend yer ladyship's delicate sensibilities."

The vampire groaned and stumbled to his feet. "That's it. I'm going to bed. You can explain the whole clusterfuck by yourself, I'm done here. Wake me up tomorrow night."

"Girl needs her beauty sleep," the doc snickered, throwing himself into the now vacated seat. "Nighty-night, love."

-A-

"So what you mean," Hanna said, head propped up on chin, "is that Conrad actually knocked down somebody's house."

"Tha's what I said," Worth replied, taking a last drag on his cigarette. "Wasn't much of a house, t' be honest. Built in the last year, my guess. Her highness saw a mouse 'r summat, had a goddamn spaz attack an' knocked out one of the walls. Woke up the whole town."

"And then the Klan found you," Hanna guessed. He looked up at his undead shadow. "Didn't Bill tell us there weren't any branches around here?"

The zombie shrugged slightly. "He did say that, but perhaps this one is new."

"This sucks," Hanna muttered, reaching for one of the crackers splayed out on the counter in front of him. "There goes the simple delivery mission." He stuffed the thing in his mouth and turned towards the fourth, silent member of their table. "Are you gonna be okay, Mr. Fell?"

Mr. Fell brushed dust off one shoulder of his pitch-black Armani suit. Truth be told, his presence set Worth's teeth on edge whenever they were in the room together, like the kind of high pitched buzz you could never trace back to a source. The man was impossible to irritate—he took everything with the same cool amusement of a sunning reptile, and half the reason Worth had set out on that disastrous scout mission was to get away from the cold-blooded bastard.

Besides, Worth had sort of gotten used to being the tallest bloke in the room. Fell's seven-foot-plus put a crimp in that.

"I'll be fine, Hanna," their guest replied, smiling faintly. "It takes a bit more than a few racists with pitchforks to frighten me."

"Where'd you get the telegram from, anyways?" the redhead asked, curiosity lighting up his blue eyes. "I know you said we could leave you anywhere along the Wassisa river, but since all this local business is flaring up we should probably get more specific."

"I didn't get a telegram," Mr. Fell responded, one black brow raised.

"Oh." Hanna paused. "Really? When you said you got a message I just assumed 'cause, yanno, they got a lot of those lines working out west, but okay, what was it? Phone call? I haven't heard of any long distance phone lines, but I guess you could have some kind of relay system if there was a high survival rate between here and there—"

"It wasn't a phone call."

"Uh. Letter?"

"I'm afraid not."

The first orange fingers of dawn slid across the table, creating monochrome stained-glass patterns across the black tabletop. Mr. Fell glanced back at the window and then back at his unnerved companions.

"Dawn," he observed, sliding gracefully out of his chair. "I have some business to attend to with one of the local farmers. I will meet you back here this afternoon—don't look for me, I'll find you. Have a pleasant morning."

His sharp figure slid through the back door and disappeared immediately into the shadows of the courtyard. Hanna sat tapping the tabletop for a few moments and then frowned up at his undead friend as if Worth had also disappeared from the room just as quickly.

"Do you think we've ever seen that guy sleep?"

"I haven't," the green man answered, "and I've had ample opportunity."

Worth rapped the table hard enough to make his knuckles sting, and was gratified when the two of them flinched a little in surprise. Or Hanna at least.

"Look, Hanna, I'm just here to make sure none a' you dumbasses slits his wrist on a can a' tuna so I don't really give a shit what you do 'bout Mr. Antichrist one way 'r another. But it seems ter me you'd be better off dumpin' his ass and getting' the fuck out while ya still can."

The ginger waved him off. "Aw, Worth, you don't really get the whole 'duty bound' thing. That's okay! I have enough honor and all for both of us! And Polk here, him too."

Behind the kid, a dry, green mouth quirked upward in a tender half smile. Worth made a mental note to test himself for diabetes the next time he had a chance. This shit was getting ridiculous.

"Hanna, I understand y' ain't quite right in the head, but this time that honor bullshit's most likely gonna get you killed an' I don't wanna be the guy who mops it all up. These redneck bastards 'r too fucking inbred to remember their own names, y' can't reason with 'em. Don't even try. I don' want another Seattle."

If Conrad had said something like that, Hanna would have spent the next ten minutes lecturing him on stereotypes and tolerance. Seeing as it was Worth, Hanna probably hadn't even been listening. He had half a mind to strangle the little dipshit.

"Don't worry about it," Hanna insisted, grinning like a motherfucking clown, "The Wassisa is, like, not even two days south of here. We'll be there before you can say constant vigilance!"

"I don't say that," the doc grumbled, "you do, for all the good it does anybody. All the fucking time."

"Exactly! So it's decided, we'll load up tomorrow—um, this afternoon and we'll hit the road as soon as Connie wakes up! Sounds like a plan. Great. I'll see if the stable guy needs any help washing off those protection runes. Lee, would you start packing, please?"

As the magician ran up the stairs—probably waking everyone in the building in the process—Worth took a moment to steel himself against whatever terror and stupidity, which Hanna would inevitably label an "adventure", was waiting for them up ahead. He looked at the zombie.

"Oi, General," he said, "you think there's somethin' wrong with a man who throws 'imself in fronta every gun he kin find?"

"The world needs soldiers, doctor," the zombie replied, unblinking with his eyes like neon vacancy signs.

"He thinks he's doin' penance," the living man growled.

"I know."

Pale yellow sunlight crept through the windows, and it seemed almost alien after living by moonlight and candle light and electricity here and there, as it always did when Worth managed to make it till sunrise.

"I wish there was a way to convince him it wasn't his fault," the Zombie said, softly. "It's been a year now. Anyone else can see that it would have been impossible—the disease came too quickly, and we found the cure too late. We did all that we could."

"I know that an' you know that, but Hanna don't know the meanin' of the words 'not my problem'. This can't end pretty. He won't be happy till he's strung up like the motherfuckin' messiah of the new new testament."

In that brief moment, the shadow of quiet despair flickered over the undead man's lineless face. "I know," he said. "I know."

-A-

Something woke Doc Worth at six or so in the afternoon. He reached for the scalpel he kept under hotel pillows—no sentimental bullshit, he just happened to know his way around a scalpel and they were a whole lot easier to hide. Nothing moved in the room, though the drapes at the window were thick enough to hide a woman or a small man. His gun rested on the besides table, untouched since last night, still loaded. Shifting as little as possible, he slid it off the table and into his hand.

Nothing moved.

His undershirt was still damp from throwing it on as he stepped out of the shower last night—and damn Bill's Nazi housekeeper, while he was thinking about it, tell him when to take a fucking bath would she?—and one of those unpredictable March afternoons wrapped cold fingers around him as he stood.

Nothing moved.

He check behind the curtains, and then inside the closet, and then under the bed. Nothing. So he sat down on the mess of sheets and counted his cigarettes as he adjusted to the soft yellow light of the late afternoon. Something woke him. Something was off.

After a moment, he put away his smokes and walked out into the hall, ears open, and headed for Conrad's room at the center of the building. No windows. It had been a sort of common room, so the artist was curled up in some kind of blanket nest for lack of bed. Hanna had been loudly envious of that. The doctor pushed the door open and stepped inside—one step, just past the doorway.

The room was silent, and empty of everything but two chairs and a nest full of pale skin so still it could have been a corpse's. In a less symbolic sense, at least. Worth stood there for a moment, searching for something wrong, fingers sliding over the barrels of his revolver. His rifle felt better in his hands, but it wasn't much use in close quarters and even less likely to fit on his bedside table. Rifles you can use to shoot a deer—pistols are made for killing men.

When nothing out of the ordinary struck him, he contemplated shaking sleeping beauty awake just to see whether he'd bitch about being woken up or Doc Worth's state of undress first. Something was still off, though, so he stepped back out instead and left the house without diversion.

Hanna was awake—you could hear his voice somewhere a ways away, as soon as you went outside—which meant the dead man was out playing shadow, which meant that nothing had gone wrong in the conventional cosmic ass-fuck sense. The doctor passed one of the local guys carving off Hanna's dulled runes, grabbed a pair of somebody else's shoes lying empty by the stable and dropped them when they turned out to be too small for him. Saw that one coming.

"…Does not… never…. You just…"

Huh?

"…next…. Regret your…"

Worth followed a familiar voice to the back of the building and found Mr. Fell going at one of Bill's workers. Yellow eyes flickered. Teeth gritted. That was more emotion than Worth had ever dreamed of getting out of the self-satisfied motherfucker.

"—And furthermore, if you insist on such idiotic—oh," he paused, turning to face Worth mid-sentence. "My. Up a bit early, aren't you? And… so well dressed. It's a wonder you're ever attacked at all, with a stunning presence like that."

Worth watched the relieved stable hand slink away and rolled his eyes. "Yeah yeah, if y' wanna suck my dick you better get in line behind her ladyship Achenleck. I ain't got time for it right now. What're you chewin' out the local for anyhow?"

"He made a mess of my papers," the taller man replied, resuming his usual imperturbable smirk. "And then when I tried to correct him, he pulled out a crucifix of all things. Imagine the nerve. A crucifix on me."

"Yeah," the doctor responded, "imagine tha'."

Mr. Fell raised one perfect eyebrow in a way so condescending it probably would have made Conrad orgasm from sheer faggot-envy.

"I am not your typical guest, my good doctor," he observed, "or hasn't Mr. Cross told you?"

"What, y' got a big nasty secret? Yer suit's a knockoff? Oh, spare me the horror."

"He really hasn't told you," Mr. Fell mused, in a voice that was just begging for a fist in the windpipe. "Perhaps he doesn't know. I merely assumed…"

"Christ, if yer gonna tell me then tell me already. I got places t' be."

"A crucifix is the least of my worries, that's all. And by the way, you do actually have somewhere to be. The boy you dragged here last night woke up about ten minutes ago—he's waiting in the den, as the locals so quaintly put it."

Mr. Fell grabbed his carpet bag and strode off into the woods, and God only knew what a man like that was up to out there.

-A-

Three types of people survived the plague. With the smokers, you can hear it in their voice, see it in their skin if you look for the right shit. Smoker's families, they came through best. Still sound normal, still look normal. The immune ones, though, the ones that fought it off when the rest of the world was hacking up bits of organs and choking on their own blood? You can see it in their eyes. The little blue veins that heralded the first stages of the disease never fully faded, they just thinned.

Johnny-boy had eyes like the pale marble countertops of the house Worth grew up in.

"Yer a real piece'a work, kid," Worth muttered, eyeing the restraints on his unwilling patient.

"Let me go," the boy growled. "Don't you touch me, you slime sucking sonuva devil."

Worth patted the kid's bloodless cheek. "As I told yer illustrious douchebag mate, I ain't nothin' special. I'm a regular old human, same as yerself. A bit better lookin' though, as you can see."

"That makes you a traitor," John spat, pulling his head so far to the other side that the cords in his neck stood out like white lines.

"Kid, have y' even hit puberty yet? Th' fuck d'you know 'bout traitors?"

The doctor pulled a thermometer out of his bag, the former a gift from a latch boss in Arizona and the latter a relic from his days working in a back alley clinic.

"I know that those abominations got us sick and now they want our land and women, and you're helping them."

"There's so much wrong with that sentence, I ain't even sure I know where t' start."

"You're not helping them?" John guessed, lighting up like a fucking mega-watt bulb of sheer stupidity.

Mother of god. "O' course I'm helping 'em, moron. Didn' I shoot you clean through?"

The white ties around the kid's arms stretched taut, thinner and paler than his compressed lips. He had blue eyes, like Hanna's, blue as the midday sky that Worth rarely got to see any more.

"Why are you helping them? What did they promise you? They're liars, you know, you can't trust anything they tell you."

"Now," Worth replied, "that's a bloody sight different from what I've seen. Even the goddamn Devil, he can't tell you anythin' that ain't true one way 'r another. Humans now, humans 'r the only ones who can lie to yer motherfuckin' face without battin' an eyelash. It's a nice gig, bein' a daywalker."

"They promised you something," John insisted, shaking his head.

"Oh, sure," the doctor said, leering down at his patient. "Promised me as many babies as I could eat, an' plenty of Tabasco sauce. I tell ya, nothin' beats a fat li'l baby on a Sunday afternoon. Good with whiskey."

"Don't make fun of me! What did they promise you? Power? Women?"

The older man snorted. Some distant part of his consciousness muttered that he hadn't gotten nearly enough sleep to be dealing with this shit.

"Oi, y' take me fer some kinda politician? That's a dumb fuckin' waste of a soul if y' ask me. If'n you were gonna sell out, y'd better bargain fer somethin' ya couldn't get yerself."

The kid looked at him with blue-shot blue eyes. "What was it then?"

Outside, the sun was starting to sink—you could see the molten rim sliding behind the treeline through the old lace curtains of the inn. Time was running short. Conrad would be up in half an hour and Hanna was already gunning to go, racing back and forth across the yard outside like a retarded Labrador. Worth lanced up at the grandfather clock—once a relic and now a godsend—and decided it was time to get finished.

He shoved the thermometer into John's mouth and silently dared him to say something else.

For his trouble, Worth received the ugliest look he'd seen in days.

"Kid," The doc mused, "lemme tell ya something yer Daddy musta forgotten ter pass along. Until ya can look inta some poor motherfucker's eyes an' know he's just as scared an' pissed off as you, ya sure as shit don't have the right to kill 'im."

The murderous look remained, but the kid kept his mouth shut.

"Y'don't know these people," Worth went on, "so don' talk about what y' don't understand. Makes you look stupid. Now, Hanna won't let me leave ya here to rot, fer some reason, an' judgin' by those eyes I'd say yer an orphan. Anyway, I ain't takin' ya back to that bloody village 'cause I don't wanna get shot up like yer sorry ass. Hanna says yer comin' with us down ter the drop point, an' we'll leave ya here on the way back up. It don't matter to me one way 'r another, but I don't feel like talkin' sense inter Hanna right now."

"Oo's Anna?" the kid asked, visibly buzzing with curiosity.

"Keep yer mouth shut," Worth snapped. After a moment, he turned and took a step towards the window, pulling back the heavy pattern of lace. "Y'see the little ginger kid? That one's Hanna. He runs shit 'round here, since Connie's too busy bitchin' an' the dead guy's too busy makin' sure Hanna don't run 'imself through with a toothpick. The kid's got a plan, at least. Y'can't lead without a plan."

The thermometer beeped.

Worth snatched the hunk of sterilized plastic out of his patient's mouth. Temperature was normal, which allayed certain concerns. He peeled bandaging off of the wound and busied himself with re-dressing it, prodding with long fingers and once elbowing the kid in the face when he complained too loudly.

"Dunno why you dipshits 'r so against nightwalkers, anyhow," Worth muttered, at some point. "Shoot 'em if they show ya their teeth, give 'em dinner if they pull out a liter o' gas to barter. Same as it's always been. Humans make it too damn complicated."

"Why do you like them so much?" John whispered, the last word catching in a hiss when Worth doused him with hydrogen peroxide.

"Eh? Y' kin trust 'em, fer one thing. If they wanna rip yer guts out, they don't make bones about it. I killed my fair share 'a wolfies in the last year, plenty 'a fangs an' gen'ral spooks. They got a better appreciation fer life 'n death. Promises mean somethin' to 'em, too."

"You'd trust one of those… monsters with your life?"

"I don't trust nobody with nothin', kid. But I made promises of my own, an' I ain't got much else ter live for anyway. It's better'n what you've been doin' with yers, I figure."

Neither of them said anything else for the rest of the visit, but John kept looking at him with those eyes that were so much like Hanna's, and that mouth pressed as thin as Conrad's when he sat in the front of the RV watching the destruction of the world race by at sixty miles an hour.

As the doc reached for the door, bag in hand, the kid finally spoke up.

"You're in love with one of them, aren't you?" he demanded, quiet and drawn from the stress on his injury.

Worth cocked a brow back at him. "Well, now, wouldn't that be a convenient explanation?"

-A-

Conrad came downstairs as Worth left the den, the last vestiges of sunlight fading to magenta at the rim of the world. Worth asked him if he'd slept well, and Conrad turned annoyed and defensive so quickly that Worth didn't even bother following up with a crack about his ladyship's beauty sleep. That was funny enough.

Gotta keep 'em on their toes, anyhow.

Worth searched out the bottle of whiskey he'd started on days ago. Conrad inquired as to the health of their accidental hostage, and Worth ignored him till the aggravated vampire grabbed his jacket and stomped out the door, squinting painfully at the dissolving light.

The doctor watched him go, eyes on the hunched shadow stalking away from the screen, and knocked back a shot's worth of burning liquid.

Weight settled over his shoulders, reminding him of exactly how much he was carrying.

-A-

A smart man learned not to look out the windows when they drove through empty cities. The window was like a square incision in a cadaver's chest, pulled open to reveal all the desiccated ruin of death, and it was easier to sleep if you kept the window shut.

Hanna, though, had never learned that lesson. He kept his eyes fixed on the pane of smudged glass, drinking in the devastation and there wasn't a thing in the world that could break his concentration, except the sound of "do you want to talk about it?". The zombie had tried once. They all ended up eating motherfucking pancakes with no idea how it happened. The next day Hanna was back at the window, as they passed through another city, watching the heaps of bones and collapsing skyscrapers as they rushed by.

Hanna Falk Cross lives to mystify another day.

Conrad hadn't learned either. Maybe he would've—Worth couldn't quite balance the dead man's impressive denial skills with his abject squeamishness—if left alone, but he'd been tossed into the driver's seat since day one and even at night you couldn't ignore the endless, stretching reminder of everything the world had lost. Particularly when a heap of mummified human corpses was blocking the only working road through the city. Kind of hard to ignore that.

It had been easier in the early months, before the highwaymen set up shop along the interstates. You could still take them through deserts, plains, empty expanses that dotted the Midwest and the great lakes, but they'd learned the hard way not to take the paths most traveled these the last few months. Cities were death pits, most of them, but if you were insulated from the miasma of death and pestilence they had turned out to be the safest routes from here to there.

So every revolution of the tires brought them toward some new kind of nightmare for their viewing pleasure, and anyone who rode with them stayed well away from the windows—with the notable exception of Mr. Fell, who was now doing just the opposite. Hanna and Conrad though, couldn't seem to disentangle themselves.

The Zombie spent most of his time sitting in the seat beside Hanna, watching him watching with the cool concern of someone who knows that their own safety will never be an issue. And Worth, much to his continuing irritation and bemusement, spent most nights sitting in the passenger seat of the RV, watching Conrad watching with the cool interest of someone who knows that his own safety will never be an issue.

And generally making a nuisance of himself.

-A-

Early in the morning, maybe two hours from sunrise, Conrad slammed the hulking multi-ton monster to an abrupt stop. Hanna let out some kind of animal whine on the other side of the cockpit, and Johnny-know-nothing started yelling somewhere in the very back. Six passengers had the RV cramped as Hell after third-world coup d'etat.

"The fuck 'r you tryin' to do," Worth demanded, rubbing his forehead where the edge of the windshield had burst it open. "Give a man some warnin', would ya?"

"It's not my fault," Conrad replied, teeth gritted. "Somebody put a fucking break in the road. Look."

As he rummaged in his coat for a bandaid, Worth peered down at the yellow-lit road in front of them. There was, in fact, a foot-wide gap in the pavement not far ahead, so completely black that it had to be dug into the ground.

"Somebody doesn't want us driving through here," the vampire muttered, shoving the vehicle into park. "If I tried to go through there with anything less than four-wheel drive, I'd wreck myself. In this thing? We'd never get out."

"Pain in the ass," Worth observed, slapping on his grungy bandaid. "Whatcha think they're after?"

"Human flesh?" Conrad guessed, narrowing his eyes. "You never know when you'll run into a nest of them."

"Wendigos?" Hanna piped up, somewhere behind them, probably extricating himself from the spilled contents of the cabinets. "Aswang?"

"Okay, Hanna, I know we found that manan… manana…. That Philippine monster thing in Las Vegas, but it's seriously unlikely to happen again. Give up on the Aswang."

"It may be that they simply don't appreciate strangers," the resident Zombie noted, his cool baritone drifted up towards them. "Someone doesn't have to want to eat you in order to want you dead."

"Whatever," Conrad muttered, switching them into reverse. "We're getting out of here. There's got to be another road going this way. Hanna, get Mr. Fell up here, I need to talk to somebody who knows what he's doing—and Worth, leave already, would you?"

"Yeah yeah, lord knows we can't have ya breakin' yer concentration," Worth mused, stretching out over the passenger's seat. "Y'd prolly drive us into a barn."

Conrad reached sideways and yanked Worth off the chair and onto the floor, scowling like a bespectacled gargoyle.

"Fuck you, dirtball. I'm a good driver and you bloody well know it. Which of us crashed the motorcycle, huh? If you hadn't been such a dick about riding bitch, we never would've run into the fucking Ku Klux Klan at all, and we wouldn't have the junior intolerance scout seeping through his bandages in the back right now! Do you realize what a pain it is to have him around? It's like wearing a turkey dinner strapped to my head!"

From his place on the floor, Worth crossed his legs. "Uhuh. Tell us how ya really feel, Connie."

The vampire let out a noise that was half PMSing rage and half animalistic lowing for blood. Worth lay back and grinned as the Zombie grabbed his shoulders and dragged him physically out of the room. Mr. Fell swept by while the doctor was straightening himself out, more or less, and trying to decide whether it was worth it to lay into the dead guy for yanking him around.

Conrad's face appeared over the shoulder of his seat for a moment, twisted in vindictive rage, and then the curtain swished closed with all the force and screeching of a slammed door.

"Eh, I'll be back."

The doctor creaked to his feet and threw himself into a window seat, settling his eyes on what little he could see of a moonless night. Far away, the shape of a radio tower pressed lifelessly against the stars.

He felt the jolt of the floor moving into reverse, and started to count his cigarettes.

-A-

A mile down the next road, there was another gap in the asphalt. Conrad's racecar driving nearly hit that one. After a few minutes of heated debate between Conrad and Hanna, Worth got tired of waiting and stomped out the door.

A step or two ahead of the stalling vehicle, he crouched and examined the gap.

"Worth!" Conrad hissed, leaning just barely out of the door behind him. "Worth, get your ass back in here! You're always telling us not to leave the goddamn car, you goddamn hypocrite, try following your own advice for once!"

Nice try, but that advice was meant for idiots and/or total pussies, wise-guy. Worth stood, scowling, and turned to dangle something silver in front of him.

"That fucker's two feet deep," he announced, "an' it's fulla spikes, if yer curious."

Conrad's red eyes popped wide open.

"Well damn," he muttered, after a pause, "we are definitely not going through there."

-A-

Four more roads and four more gaps, and every passenger on the ride was wondering what exactly waited on the other side. The Georgia-Florida border was still miles away, and morning was coming quickly.

While they parked at the edge of a forest highway, Hanna revved like a sports car engine.

"I'm telling you, there's something weird going on around here and if we want to get through we need to find out what!"

Conrad rebutted, as he'd been doing for ten minutes. "That doesn't mean you need to go gallivanting through the woods and get yourself killed!"

Seemed like it was somebody else's turn to talk the superboy down.

"Hanna," the zombie said, placing a green hand on the kid's shoulder, "please think this through. You have no idea what's out there, if anything at all. You may very well get lost before you find anything untoward—doesn't it seem more reasonable to take a detour, or at least wait for daylight?"

"I know yer gonna get me killed one day," Worth interjected, currently lying on a table, "but I was kinda hopin' it'd be with more of a bang. Dyin' a starvation in some backwoods tourist trap seems a bit anti-climactic."

Hanna frowned, stiffening. "Whoever these people are, they're going really far to make sure they stay hidden. Whatever's happening on the other side of these lines is probably mega-bad, and if you guys won't help me bust them then I'll do it myself!"

Doc Worth sat up faster than he would've thought possible. "Oh no, ya little brat, I abs'lutely forbid it. You take one step off those stairs an' I'll paddle yer backside so hard you'll think yer in pre-school again."

The magician's blue eyes turned steely. "I'm twenty-five, Doc, and I think you ought to remember that."

And then the RV door was swinging closed and the zombie was grabbing his hat off the rack as he raced after his charge and Conrad was cursing, and Worth watched as half their insane little crew disappeared into the forest. Motherfucking perfect. When he got his hands on that little shit, a spanking was going to be the least of his worries.

From the corner, Mr. Fell cleared his throat. "Well, gentlemen, it seems that you woke up the resident hostage."

Scratch that, now things were motherfucking perfect.

-A-

Half an hour later, Conrad was cleaning something in the kitchenette and Worth was waiting for the Zombie to drag back a kicking and screaming, redheaded little monster, and he was willing to pull out the burlap sack they kept in the back if it would keep the kid more or less quiet till they could drive the fuck out of there. About five minutes earlier, Worth had decided that if it took much longer, he was going out there himself, burlap sack and all, and hang Conrad's bullshit about efficiency.

Well time's up.

As he was reaching for the pack of cigarettes on the counter, something that sounded too much like a muffled explosion for Worth's liking rang through the clearing around them.

"Motherfucker," he muttered, and turned towards the kitchenette. "Ya heard that."

Conrad looked whiter than usual. "Yeah. Whatever it was, it didn't hit—"

BAM

The front of the RV quaked with a fresh explosion, and feet away from the Doc, Conrad fell against the corner of a cabinet and tore a ragged line down the side of his face. As the last rattles subsided, Worth grabbed the younger man by his collar and threw them both out the door, leaving behind the remaining two occupants of the metal deathtrap that had seconds ago been their de facto home. They landed on slick grass and slid a few inches more.

"What—"

Doc Worth took Conrad by the chin as he was staring horrified at the RV and gave his head wound a cursory examination. A trickle of thick vampire blood ran, already clotting—slower than for an older, better fed member of his race, but so much faster than a human.

"I don't believe it," Conrad was murmuring, face growing in shades along the spectrum from dismay to fury. "I don't believe it! That engine was one of a kind! It was a gift from a fucking warlock!"

Worth glanced over his shoulder and noticed a gaping hole in the metal above the front wheel. Smoke drifted out of it and disappeared into the starlight.

"Hanna ain't gonna be pleased," Worth mused, rolling to his feet. "Don't look like it's gonna blow, though. Got lucky, I guess. My jacket's in there. Shot had ter come from somewhere… got any theories, Princess?"

"Uh," the vampire started, looking up, "my guess? Two bucks says it was them."

Worth looked up too, and decided he never was much of a betting man anyways.

-A-

The four of them stood in a tense line, Johnny boy on the far end rattling like an electrocuted Chihuahua and Mr. Fell on the other, observing with a businessman's interested detachment. Moonless, the night seemed to swallow up the detail of the scene, leaving nothing but voices and movement.

A faceless line curled around their backs, and a lone figure strolled back and forth in front of them. Worth ran his thumb over the corners of the cigarette pack in his pocket, and watched.

"So," the figure said. "What have we here?"

At Worth's side, Conrad tensed as tight as a bowstring. "I hate that phrase," he hissed, the grimace pouring into his voice. "Of all the cliché…"

"Bet yer glad you stayed in the car this time, Conniekins," the Doc whispered.

"Shut up, Worth."

The figure in front of them turned on his heel. "Silence!"

Conrad went back to grumbling about wanna-be villain hillbilly douche bags under his breath.

"Now then," their captor began, sighing, "I want all of you to empty your pockets. I've got some of my boys cleaning out your vehicle as we speak, but I don't want to miss anything. If you've got any weapons, throw them over here. Anything else, you can drop at your feet."

The vampire and the doctor shared a glance. At the moment, neither of them posed as much of a threat to these guys as a basket full of kittens would. That could be remedied on Conrad's part, if the situation went sour. Worth pressed his thumb into the sharpest corner of his pack.

The figure stepped closer, close enough that the glitter of his eyeballs lit up the curvature of his nose. He pointed first at John, and then at Worth.

"You two are human. I'm rightly certain about your giant friend there, but it doesn't really matter. You're all together so you're all going the same place. Or. Hmm. You, blondie."

The doctor cocked a brow, although it was most likely invisible in the darkness. "Who, li'l old me?"

"Yessir, you." Immune to sarcasm, then. "You strike me as a smart one. The boss has me up to recruit anybody who seems useful—how'd you like to check out with these folks and get in with us?"

"Whadda I get out of it? Gift basket? New car?"

The figure crossed his arms. "Boy, I don't think you understand the predicament you've found yourself in. I'll make it real simple since I can tell with the way you talk you ain't from around here. Your automobile is busted. You're weaponless. My boys got you surrounded fifteen to four, and I'm about to have ya'll rounded up an' sent out to the capital in cuffs. Now, do you really think a gift basket is necessary?"

"Sorry," Worth said, "I don't make deals without free shampoo. My agent says it ain't good policy."

The figure's head tilted, and he took a step forward. "Maybe I'm not being clear enough. I'm about to take ya'll in as slaves. Any of these boys your brother? No? Then I cain't see why you're still standin' over there and not over here."

"Then yer not too bright, Sergeant Spacemonkey. It's cause yer hopin' I'll bend over fer ya the second I get outta this line, and I don't feel like playin' Tanto fer no small-time Ranger man. You must be retarded on top'a conceited."

The sky slid clear of clouds, and Worth's adjusting eyes locked on the figure's face, picking out the tight twist of an irate mouth.

"Well, then, friend, you better empty out your pockets. Those cigarettes look like the genuine article and there's no use in wasting 'em on spook-lovin' white trash like you."

There was the sound of feet shuffling closer behind him, and the air turned tense. Worth smiled, and he was pretty sure the man in front of him could see the shine.

"I don't think so, friend. See, I got two and a half packs to my name, an' I've been rationing those fuckers like it was World War Two come again, so if ya want 'em yer gonna have to smoke 'em off my bleedin', rigor mortis corpse, friend, cause I sure as shit ain't lettin' 'em go."

"I can arrange for that," the stranger announced. He snapped—motherfucking snapped, like some kind of hot shot SS officer—and Worth found a fist implanted in his kidney.

They went down in a tangle of limbs, the anonymous private and Worth, and the ragged edges of his nails scraped slippery corneas, knees in stomachs, and then another set of arms descended into the fray—and then another, and another, until Worth was pinned and thrashing. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Conrad straining against his own guard of privates, arms caught tight behind him.

A sourceless hand reached down and slipped the cigarettes out of Worth's pocket. He jerked one leg loose long enough to kick something in the gut, and watched the white packet fall to the grass inches away from his retrained hands. Son of a bitch.

"Ahem."

All heads turned left.

Mr. Fell tucked his hands into his pockets and looked upwards, like he was judging the hour. The snake couldn't even be bothered to pull those bastards off Conrad's back—fuck this, when they got free he was putting his foot down once and for all about Hanna's supernatural taxi service. And also beating the shit out of that guy.

"Ah, gentlemen," the towering man said. "It seems like matters are about to get rough, and so… I believe this is where we part ways."

There was just enough time for Conrad to squeeze out a wait, before Mr. Fell disappeared in a CRACK and a plume of dust. The dust cleared, leaving empty space behind. Their guards burst into a frenzy, the stranger started barking orders, and somewhere to their right John fell out in a dead faint.

"Fuck," said Worth. And, as he'd found it did in most situations, that seemed to say it all.

Hanna was definitely getting an ear full of this.

TBC