Lara's sitting near the window, keeping watch. She's silhouetted by the predawn light, just a shadow tense in repose. I sit up and watch her. "Lara, Sweetie. Get some rest."
She looks at me, then shakes her head, her hair falling in loose strands down her back. Sighing, I get up and walk over to her. I kiss her shoulder, and the back of her neck, then sit down and hug her from behind. I find all my favorite places to touch her. Her scars, her muscles, a stretch of skin that had been burned.
She's got scars. A lot of them. I spend hours sometimes just touching them. There are the old ones. The puncture wounds and cuts and slashes from Yamatai a lifetime ago. There are the newer ones. Cuts on her hips, a gash across her shoulder blade, and worse.
I think I have an effect on her, because she leans back against me, her body sagging. It's been like this for...well forever. She doesn't sleep well. If she's in the mood I just wear her out, but lately she's just been so morose. I get it, this isn't the life either of us wanted. I get it, she doesn't feel whole.
The epidemic had been raging for months when she got bit. I panicked. She didn't. She looked at me, looked at how I was freaking out and then she just...fucking hacked her right arm off and cauterized the wound with a blowtorch. But that wasn't even the end of it, no. It was 'Sam, I need you to tie me down, I need you to end it if I start to turn.' I mean the alternative was her shooting herself in the head but...I don't think I could have done it. If she'd turned. Or if I had done it, I would have ended myself right after.
After everything we've been through I can't do it without her. It took me weeks to forgive her for putting me into that position but I got over it. I didn't really have a choice, without her I'd be dead. Without her I'd want to be dead. I wonder sometimes if she blames me for needing her that much.
That was years ago. She's not the only one that's battlescarred. She taught me to fight and I earned my fair share of hurts. It just gets harder every day. And it looks like it's only going to get worse.
More and more infected have been getting into the Quarantine Zone lately. It isn't safe anymore, but try to tell that to the authorities. We have some weapons, not supposed to, but we do. I don't know how much longer we'll stay in the QZ. She's been making rumblings about finding another place. Like there's anywhere else in London that isn't swarming with infected.
She drifts off in my arms finally. I'll get stiff but if Lara gets some rest it's worth it. I manage to fall asleep too, until alarms startle us both awake. Alarms that we never, ever wanted to hear. This isn't one or two infected. Over the din we can hear them.
"Where's the military?"
Lara's voice is grim. "They've abandoned us."
Where do you go when there's no where safe? The city is one big deathtrap. The Thames started to flood years ago, and with no one to repair the barriers whole sections of London can't be traversed. Trying to get into the country is almost as hard. We'd still have to cross miles and miles of abandoned buildings and cars, and they're crawling with infected. London had eight million people before the outbreak. Five years later the living population is under a million, spread through six QZs. There'd been seven until recently. Now with ours overrun there are five. Maybe less. Maybe the infected figured out how to get in and dine on us. I don't know, but part of me wonders how much longer before we go extinct.
There was a man I'd talked to a lot in the QZ. Old and grizzled, missing half his teeth, his left eye and two fingers on his left hand. He kind of reminded me of a dark-skinned Grim in a lot of ways. He told me once that he thought the planet worked in cycles. Humans came along like some kind of cleansing machine, but we got out of control. So now we're being cleansed instead. Can't really argue with him. Nature is already starting to reclaim the cities. In a few hundred years there are going to be places swallowed up completely and forgotten, like all those old tombs and temples that Lara had wanted to visit.
Lara finds an old boat. The engine doesn't work, but we're able to push it away from shore and anchor it in the river, tethered to shore. We huddle there, while we listen to the Quarantine Zone die. Gunshots and screaming, the occasional explosion. It's the screaming that gets to me. All those people, screaming. All those infected, screaming. This constant sound that I can't escape no matter how many things I pile onto my head.
On the third day, I catch Lara crying. It's a huge relief to know I'm not the only one affected. That she's still human enough to feel, that we haven't gotten used to this. It doesn't last too long before she turns her emotions into something productive. She pries up the engine and starts to look through it.
"I thought you said it was shot."
"I did," She says, her voice hollow from her head being inside it. "But I'm looking again."
It takes her several hours of inspection, cleaning and working, but she finally figures something out. She collapses on the floor next to me, covered in oil and grease. "We need parts. I know where we can get some. You're not going to like it."
She doesn't even need to tell me where. I already know it involves going into the QZ or the city or some place swarming with infected and spores. "Fuck that. Fuck that! We'll row!"
"Sam, we need power. Even with a working engine trying to go anywhere is going to be dicey, but we can't stay here. We'll starve." Lara puts a dirty hand on my shoulder, and I lean into it. "We need those parts, we need food and water, and some more ammunition would be welcome."
"Lets try not to blow up any ships this time," I tell her, but I can't find any humor. Alex was lucky. I never thought I'd say that, but Alex was so, so lucky. I help Lara with the tether, and when we're close enough to the shore we hop onto land.
Lara checks her rifle while I kick the boat away from shore and hide the tether. I'm just not as good a shot. She's tried endlessly to teach me, but it's better to just give me something with a spray and let me point in the general direction of what I'm trying to hit, so I run around with a sawed-off shotgun. Old me, before the outbreak, would have thought I looked so hot with it and my ratty leather jacket. Post-apocalyptic chic.
New me still thinks I'm hot.
She has a fake arm. It's really just an old prosthetic we'd looted, that she's reinforced with some metal plating and some grooves. It lets her have a rest for her rifle so she could steady her aim. It's pretty heavy, too. It's missing the hand entirely. I forget where we lost it but we'd tried jerry-rigging something to let her hold a bow and draw the string with her left hand. It failed miserably, but I'm always trying to think of ideas to help her. I'm thinking taping a machete to it.
The screaming is farther away. There's less of it now from the people, and it makes it easier to hear the clicking. We both freeze.
One..two...three…I suddenly can't hear anything over the pounding of my heart in my chest. Lara's head is tilted, and I hold my breath. She's always had this amazing ability to pick out the least visible signs and least audible sounds. She points at me, then signs. 'Move, now.'
There's six of them now, and Lara guides me past them with her hand signs. I crouch, hiding and trying to not hyperventilate while I wait for her to sneak past the clickers too. I keep getting visions of them ripping her apart and when she appears at my side I nearly jump out of my skin. She slaps her hand over my mouth before I can make a sound and we remain silent and unmoving for several minutes. I make a note to send a prayer to Roth and Grim for teaching her that stuff.
"Ready?" She whispers.
"No. But lets get going anyway." I lean over and pick up a brick. Hey, you never know when it'll come in handy.
