A/N:
Angmclure and hmmille, from Sparkly Red Pen, preread and beta'd this chapter. If they hadn't, it would be a disaster. Thank you so much, ladies! :)
You already know it, but still…
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the intellectual property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of Stephenie Meyer. No copyright infringement is intended.
**C~W~M**
His muscles were tense.
Bella was sure that if she reached out her hand and poked his bicep, it'd be the same as doing it to the wall she was leaning against. Except warmer. And apparently softer.
Focus. She took a deep breath. Why was she thinking about his arm when they were supposed to be checking the place for walkers?
Edward took a few steps forward, moving a tiny bit away from her, knife at the ready, leaving the door balancing on its rusty hinges behind him.
She had a blade of her own which had been thrust upon her against her will. She'd rather have a gun; it was easier to kill the freaks and they wouldn't get so close. Close was dangerous. But Edward said it was too noisy and might draw attention from the walking dead lurking in other buildings, even though the town had turned into a fucking wasteland a couple of years back. They could get surrounded pretty fast. So, knife it was.
A fucking desert, Bella? Not a desert to fuck, just like…a ghost town. She really needed to start speaking properly…or at least thinking properly.
She followed behind Edward, their feet thumping on the hardwood floor the only sound filling up the place. The pub looked empty. Pilfered. Broken. Most of the bottles were gone, the furniture was spread around, half-ruined and half-neglected. Why were they in a pub with missing windows that left gaping holes and offered no resistance to the outside world, when there was a perfectly intact building standing across the street? One with layered bricks where there must have once been a window and a single door that appeared less fragile than the pub's barely hanging on the frame one.
Bella was curious, but she wasn't going to ask. Edward had to know what he was doing, didn't he?Either he had a very good reason to drag her there or she was going to kick his ass. His perfect, squeezable a—stop it!
She looked around the space again, everywhere but at Edward. There were no walkers in sight. In fact, she was pretty sure there were none inside the pub at all. It didn't smell like it. Of course, the smell of rotten bodies had assaulted her senses since they'd approached town, letting them know exactly what they were getting themselves into. And after a while, she'd become immune to it, but a rotten body up close stinks. Like, really reeks.
Edward bent over to check under the counter, giving her a nice view of his—focus.
Was she supposed to check out the bathrooms? It appeared to be the only other room in the place. She chanced a glance at Edward again, who was now engaged in a struggle with some kind of furniture behind the counter. She could only hear metal knocking against wood.
She squeezed the knife's handle harder and walked to the back, towards the door with the picture of a little man and woman on it. He could handle himself for five minutes. A toilet was a luxury that they didn't come by that often, and she was going to take advantage of it since her bladder had decided to make itself known. You know when you feel just fine and don't even remember you have one until you think about a toilet or hear the sound of running water? Yeah, Mrs. Bladder was a traitor.
"If you just…" Edward huffed.
Her body stopped immediately at the sound of his voice, just as her heart skipped a beat. Maybe two. Obviously, her legs hadn't gotten the memo that told them to stop being pussies. Just because the guy talked, didn't mean something was wrong. She looked back over her shoulder; Edward was still behind the counter.
"Why doesn't this open?"
Now he was just plain whining. He actually sounded like a kid who'd dropped his ice cream on the floor. Was he going to start crying next?
It was a good possibility. What was for certain was that her bladder was going to cry if she didn't go to the bathroom.
Bella vacillated between walking back to the counter to help him and going on a quest for the holy toilet. The porcelain throne won.
**~C~W~M~**
"Whew…for a minute I actually thought there were walkers inside that stall."
"What?"
The unruly top of Edward's copper hair showed from behind the counter.
"I didn't think pipes could smell as bad as those things—"
"And…just a bit more…"
Hmm? What the hell was he talking about? Had he even heard her?
Bella approached him on her tiptoes, not wanting to draw attention to herself. Kneeling on the floor with his butt up in the air, Edward was trying to pull something out of the floor. The sound of metal hinges creaking and wood giving way accompanied his cries of victory, as if he'd won the world championship. As he sat back on his heels, Bella was able to see what he'd been doing.
There was a hatch in the wooden floor that led into a dark hole. She could only see the beginning of a ladder.
"There!" Edward beamed.
"What is it?" she whispered.
"An old port in a storm. Come."
"What?"
"We're going down there."
He was definitely crazy. "You can go down there. I won't."
"Why not?"
"Are you nuts? There's no light in here! Our flashlights don't have batteries. You can't see shit! What if there are lurkers in there? I know it doesn't smell like it, but you can't go just by that. And how in this shithole did you find an old port in a storm?"
She knew she'd regret it as soon as his face contorted, marred by hurt. It was his Achilles' heel and she knew it. She'd known him for all of three weeks, and he'd been every bit as obsessed with safety now as he was on day one, especially hers. Maybe even more.
"You think I'd put you in danger?"
"Of course not," she explained. "Not intentionally, at least."
"I'm almost sure there are no lurkers there. It's… a safe place. But I'm going down first, just to be positive."
And…there was the guilt. She was about to speak, but he kept going; as her mouth opened, he rushed.
"You're right. I can't put you in danger like that."
He bent forward and reached his arm inside of his bag, taking a candle out of it. She wanted to go with him, to make sure he was safe, to protect him if need be. She didn't realize she'd grown that attached to him. Maybe it was just the guilt, right?
She felt around in her pocket and pulled out the plastic lighter, sparking it up for Edward.
"Thanks."
She smiled, but it wasn't real. Her teeth worried her bottom lip. Fear, Bella realized, was catching up to her. So, as Edward turned around and placed his foot on the first step, she took a deep breath. The worn wood creaked under his weight. He stopped to gauge its stability while Bella strained to hear any noises coming from the basement. Edward descended fast after that. Step after step, and soon she'd heard his feet hit the ground. A small yellow glow came from below, but she could only see a small circle dimly lit by the candle. Everything else was pitch dark. The small circle moved around, first to the left, then to the right, and finally disappeared from her view, accompanied by Edward's echoing steps.
He stopped walking, and stayed that way for a while. A few minutes had gone by when he finally spoke.
"Bella?"
Her heart raced. What was down there? "Yes?" she croaked.
"You can come down."
Oh, good. She took a deep breath, relaxing her muscles. The same step that objected to Edward's weight bounced with her foot, but it didn't take long to get down there. It was cold and smelled musty, like mold. The candle was on top of a small table, and Edward was standing near it. Suddenly, another candle came on. He moved across the room and lit another one, giving Bella enough light to gauge her surroundings. She was in a cement room, a sort of basement. In front of her was an old desk with a computer on top, and in the corner was a shabby old bed. It was a small room with only one door, and it seemed uninhabited. Edward climbed the ladder and closed the hatch, isolating them from the outside world above.
"How did you know this was here?"
Edward shrugged. "I've been here before. It was a friend's."
"Was?"
He nodded. He didn't want to elaborate, so she wasn't going to push him. It was his choice not to talk about it. After all, he didn't push her either.
Bella didn't feel comfortable walking around, but still felt the need to check under the bed and behind the door. She didn't expect to find an arsenal of canned food and guns in there, but she did feel grateful for it. She tried to down a whole bottle of water in one sip, but Edward took it out of her hands. It was bad for her, apparently.
They'd eaten a can of peaches and another one of tuna, with Bella lying down on the surprisingly soft bed and Edward with his back against it when he finally spoke. Her eyes were closing, heavier than usual because she hadn't felt that comfortable in a while.
"I was here when it happened."
At first, she wasn't sure he'd spoken because his voice was so low. But he kept going.
"We were upstairs, downing bottle after bottle. We'd been laid off that day; the factory was closing. There were rumors there'd been strange attacks and the news talked about a new kind of virus, but we'd never paid much attention to it."
She sat straighter in bed, trying to listen to everything. She wanted to ask him to keep going, but didn't want to interrupt him.
"Emmett, the owner of the pub, mentioned there were some animal attacks nearby and that old Clearwater had died. But we didn't pay much attention to it. We'd never been close to the Quileutes," he sighed.
"But then…the door opened and a couple of guys from the factory came in. And behind them, came Harry Clearwater. Dragging himself, with blood on his face and the weirdest look…like he was empty. He…" Edward stopped talking and grabbed his hair, a nervous habit Bella had noticed.
She wanted to comb it with her fingers, caress his scalp. Would he let her?
"Well, let's just say only three of us survived. Emmett pulled me and Jasper down here, because we were closest to him. He was about to grab Leah, his bartender and Harry's daughter, when Harry got to her. You can't imagine…the look on her face."
His shoulders were shaking.
"And…"
He didn't talk for a long while, so she finished for him, very matter-of-factly.
"Once the freaks get to you, you're fucked."
He nodded and sighed.
"She hated me. But I can't get her out of my mind."
There was a long pause, and just when Bella thought he wasn't going to tell her more, he continued.
"We were here for a week. At that point there was still electricity, and we'd been connected to the web, watching the news on that old computer, twenty-four/seven. This was one of the first towns to be decimated. The army had no means to take care of it and decided to fix the problem by killing every single moving thing—dead or alive. When they said it was a safe zone, we waited a couple more days. Let me tell you…it was ugly upstairs when we finally got out. Then…we left. I parted ways with Jasper and Emmett in Atlanta. Never saw them again."
"Why did you part from them?" she whispered.
Edward just shrugged. Another one of his secrets.
"When we got out of here, the situation was already out of control. People—living people— were outnumbered five thousand to one. It seemed everyone was infected with the virus. When, for any reason, people died, they'd come alive again. Sort of. The CDC had no idea what was going on, as you probably remember."
Bella turned her body towards his and neared the edge of the bed. Her hand, as if on its own accord, reached to caress his face. But Edward chose that moment to move, lying down on the floor, still with his back towards her. She didn't get to touch him, to tell him that she understood.
"Tomorrow, we'll raid the pharmacy," Edward stated.
Silence took over the room. With Edward at arm's length—and yet so far from her—it took a while for Bella to drift off to sleep. That night was the first she dreamt about him.
**C~W~M**
A/N: So.. What will happen next?