AN: Special thanks as always to my beta gameovaries :)
Chapter 4: Time Goes Away
Jordyn felt like she was in a daze. She didn't know if it was the rhythmic motion of the car travelling along a dirt road, the warm but comforting breeze that swirled through the truck's open windows, or even the fragrant smell of spring in the air, but she felt almost intoxicated.
It had been awhile since she'd travelled in a car simply to travel. The last time was their unsuccessful trek back into Atlanta to get Merle, and every time before that was a supply run and she'd only been on a few of them. Shane didn't like taking too many people away from the group at one time. But driving for hours at a steady speed on empty, open roads felt almost like a dream.
They were travelling through an abandoned small town when Daryl broke the silence. "You got the time?"
Jordyn blinked a few times, she'd been daydreaming, and checked her watch. "Midday... ish." She replied.
"That all?" He huffed adjusted his grip on his steering wheel. "Feels like we've been driving forever."
Eyes on the horizon, Jordyn wondered how far away from her home they were. How far away from the bar...
"You don't talk much, do ya?"
"Sometimes, if I drink too much." Jordyn answered. She hadn't intended it as a joke but she saw Daryl smirk. It was then noticed the car had a clock that read the same as her watch, and wondered if Daryl had just asked her the time to have something to do.
"You don't wear a ring." Daryl said a few moments later.
Jordyn glanced over at him. "I'm not married."
"So who's Connor?"
Sighing, Jordyn stared at the horizon. The sun was hanging gloriously in the air lighting up the mountain peaks. It was peaceful. She could shut up, not say another word. But Daryl would keep asking, and she preferred he knew the truth and left her alone than kept on bugging her. Even if the truth was the reason for the hollow ache in her heart. "He was my little brother." She said distantly. "And I killed him."
"She bit you?" Jordyn took Connor's arm and inspected the bite mark. It was deep, she didn't know how Connor wasn't crying because it looked horribly painful. "Why?"
"I-I dunno." Connor sniffled, spotting the headless body of the woman. "Is that her?"
"Ok, stop, don't look." Jordyn spun him around, covered his eyes with her hand and led him back upstairs, kicking shut the basement door behind her. Sitting him at the bar, Jordyn's eyes drifted out the open window. The sirens were still blaring and the back door was swinging back and forth.
"She came in there." Connor said. "What's wrong with her?"
Jordyn locked the back door and grabbed the first aid kit from under the registers behind the bar. "She's sick." Jordyn told him, not sure how else to say it. She took a stack of bandages from the kit and grabbed the cordless phone, dialling 9-1-1 as she approached her little brother. "You'll be fine." She took an empty jug and filled it at the sink, holding the phone between her shoulder and ear.
"We're sorry. Due to a high number of calls, we cannot process your request at this time. Please try again later."
Puzzled, Jordyn hit redial and waited again, only to get the same response. "Come on." She tried once more, and this time all she got was an engaged signal. She gave up and focused on Connor's arm, even with three layers of bandage, the blood still seeped through. Pulling off his sweatshirt she held it against the wound to staunch the bleeding.
"Jordie, I'm thirsty." Connor said, sniffling.
"Ok," Jordyn secured a compression bandage around his whole forearm and hopped of the bar stool to thoroughly wash her hands, tossing the stained sweatshirt into the trashcan as she walked. Grabbing the phone again she dialled her mother and step-father's home number and was met with a novelty family answering machine message. Her mother, Olivia, and stepfather, Michael, had gone out for lunch and a movie hence Jordyn taking Connor for the day, so she didn't expect them home until late afternoon.
Calls to their cell phones ended in two voicemail messages, Jordyn assumed they were in the theatre. She didn't know how to get a hold of Marnie's teacher, her baby sister was at a school play rehearsal otherwise she would have been with Connor and Jordyn.
From the bar fridge Jordyn took a bottle of juice and dialled her bosses cell phone number. "Ted, hey, it's Jordyn." She said when she heard him pick up on the other end.
"Jordyn, are you alright?" Ted was yelling. "Where are you? Tell me you're out of the city!"
"No, I'm at work." Jordyn felt an odd feeling creeping up the back of her neck, she could count the times Ted had yelled on one hand. And all of them involved his favourite team losing a game. "Connor's hurt and I can't-"
"Are you watching the news? Jordyn, get out of the city!"
Jordyn thought he must be making a joke because he sure wasn't making sense. "Are you serious?"
"Look; Jordyn, I gotta go, my wife needs me to call her sister and we only have the one cell. Get out of the city, okay?"
"Ted-"
"Dani says she'll call you when we get to my folks house. Just get somewhere safe. And don't let them bite you!" He hung up on that dramatic statement.
Even more confused, Jordyn hung up. Dani had been her friend for a few years, it was through her that Ted gave her the job at the bar. Dani worked at the bar on alternating days than Jordyn. A miniature version of Ted, Dani took most of her traits from him except for the glorious red hair she'd inherited from her mother, Annie. Partially deaf after a bad car accident, Annie still continued giving piano lessons to children, Connor and Marnie Emery being two of her students.
Jordyn felt an odd relief that Dani was okay; odd because it suddenly dawned on her that something was very, very wrong. She retrieved the remote for the flat screen TV and clicked it on. A local news bulletin was streaming with a headline that read PANDEMIC ALERT: EVACUATION IN PROCESS.
"Pand... Panda..." Connor squinted at the words on the screen and tried to sound them out. "Panda-mike? What's that mean?"
Jordyn pushed a juice bottle into his hand. "Drink this." She instructed him as a list of Mandatory Instructions came up on the television screen.
1. If you're inside; stay there and lock all doors and windows.
2. Don't let anyone (family/friends included) inside your home.
3. Don't let an infected person bite you.
4. If infection does occur, isolate said person until authorities arrive.
"Jordie, I was bitten!" Connor cried as the newsreader read through the list.
"It's okay," Jordyn said, although her hammering heart said otherwise. "Just... sit there. Stay there, okay?"
She left her brother fidgeting with his bandage and scurried around the room, shutting and locking every door and window. The bar was on the corner of a relatively unpopular street; but right now it was as busy as Jordyn had ever seen it. Cars were speeding past, people were screaming, and sirens were still echoing throughout the city. As she was shutting the high window above the jukebox, Jordyn saw a line of dark green army jeeps thunder through the streets filled with armed men in full military uniforms. It looked like a scene from a SWAT movie.
"Jordie?"
Jordyn hopped off the chair she'd used to reach the window and went to double check the back door. "Hang on."
"Jordie, I feel sick."
Tipping up a table on its side, Jordyn pushed it up against the back door. "Sick how?" She did another round of checking the windows.
"Just sick. And hot. And thirsty."
"Ok, buddy," Jordyn dashed back behind the counter and took an icing cup from the freezer. They kept the beer glasses in there so the beer was really chilled for the customers. Filling the glass with ice and then water, Jordyn set it in front of her brother. "There." She reached out and touched his forehead. "You're hot."
"I know." Connor said, gulping down the water.
"Connor, look at me." Jordyn held his chin in her hand and inspected his eyes, brushing strands of his honey blonde hair away from his face. His eyes were cloudy, like he'd just woken up or was coming down with a flu. He was sweating through his shirt and his skin on his injured arm was going an odd gray colour. "You need a doctor."
"Jordie." For the first time, Connor looked scared. His big brown eyes were tearful and he was breathing in deep breaths. "I want Mum."
"Come here," Jordyn plucked him up in her arms and hugged him to her body. "You'll be fine, buddy, you'll be fine." Holding him, she felt the heat emanating from his small body. "We'll go home soon, we just have to stay here for awhile, ok?" He didn't want to be set back down, so Jordyn carried him around the back of the bar and grabbed the phone again.
Twice more she tried her mother and stepfather with no answer. She wondered if they had been cleared out of the movie theatre. Maybe they were on their way to get her and Connor? Maybe they were picking up Marnie first, and then they'd come for Connor and Jordyn.
A loud crash made Jordyn squeeze Connor tight to her. Someone had thrown a garbage can through the front glass window. Two young men jumped inside, they each had a weapon but they didn't seem to notice Jordyn until Connor cried out.
"Where's the money?"
"The safe in the office." Jordyn told him, backing away from the door. "The key's on the second shelf under the countertop." The basement wasn't ideal seeing as how the headless woman was still in there, but she wasn't going to risk their lives for the few hundreds in the safe when Connor needed her.
The two men grabbed for bottles of liquor as well as the keys and continued on their thieving way. Jordyn backed into the basement and hovered on the top step, locking the basement door and holding still to see if the men had heard or seen her sneak away. After a few seconds of silence broken by the fizzing of open beer cans, Jordyn decided they were fine and hurried down into the basement with Connor clinging to her body.
Then someone screamed.
Bottles cracked to the floor, a man screamed out in pain, and more glass broke. Snarls and growls soon overtook the screams and suddenly, that's all that was left. The same noises White Dress had been making before Jordyn had decapitated her. Infected people were converging on the bar. And now with the front window clean open, there was nothing keeping them away.
"Jordie..." Connor was crying, staring at the headless body huddled at the bottom of the stairs.
"Don't look at it." Jordyn covered his eyes with her hand, feeling the searing heat come off his skin. She wished she'd grabbed the ice water, the first aid kit, the shotgun under the bar; she'd taken nothing useful with her. "Connor; I have to put you down, okay?"
"No." Connor gripped his arms around her neck.
"Just sit here." She placed him on the desk and put his small hands over his eyes. "I want you to time me, okay? Just start counting and when you get to thirty I'll be right back here with you."
With a shaky, timid voice, Connor started counting. Jordyn grabbed the desk chair and flew up the stairs with it, jamming it under the handle of the basement door. In the corner where Izzy had been hiding there was a stack of oiled rags, Jordyn grabbed them and tossed them over the severed head. The hammer she'd wielded before was still there so she armed herself with it again and also picked up a wrench off the shelf. It was rusted pretty good; but it was heavy.
Connor was at twenty-eight when Jordyn arrived back to him. Pulling him into her arms, she again felt how hot he was as he buried his head in her neck and cried. "I wanna go home, Mummy."
"I know, so do I." She shushed him and rested back against the desk before she'd realized what he said.
"Mummy, when's Daddy coming?"
"Connor?" Jordyn pulled him out over her lap and cradled him. His eyes wouldn't focus on her. "Hey, Connor, I'm Jordie, you know that. Mummy's not here yet."
"Mummy, take me home." He said tiredly.
"Jesus." Jordyn swore and sprang up off the desk over to the dusted shelves that held a few pallets of bottled water.
Water wasn't a big seller in a bar; Jordyn thought she and Dani were the people who used it most just snagging a bottle whenever they needed one. Taking a bottle from a half-empty pallet, Jordyn opened it and put it to Connor's chapping lips. He coughed up most of what she poured in, so she tried again.
"Connor, you have to drink this, ok?" She poured some of the water over his head, but it didn't make a difference to his fever. His injured arm was lying uselessly across his body. It was a ghoulish slate gray colour. His eyes kept closing and his breath was laboured.
Jordyn felt helpless. Her car was out the front, her keys were upstairs in her handbag, and from the sound of moaning and shuffling upstairs it was clear she was outnumbered by infected people. She should have grabbed the First Aid Kit, it must have had some sort of antibiotic in it, a pill or capsule. Something. Anything. She'd have to make a run through the bar.
Gently, she kissed Connor's searing forehead and laid him down carefully on the floor. She grabbed the hammer and steadied her breath as she marched up the stairs for the basement door. Shifting aside the chair blocking the handle, she grabbed the doorknob and pulled the door open so fast she almost lost her grip on it.
The bar was empty.
Exhaling loudly with her heart racing, Jordyn cautiously stepped forwards, awaiting someone to jump out and attack her. A chilled breeze from the broken window blew strands of hair across her face. Jordyn could see her bag on the edge of the bar and the First Aid Kit was just sitting out where she had left it. Edging out slowly, Jordyn kept darting her eyes around either side of her, waiting for someone or something to appear.
As she rounded the bar, Jordyn saw the cash register had been knocked to the ground and all the cash inside was gone. The more expensive liquor had been stolen and the cheaper cans were scattered along the floor. One-handed, not wanting to lower her hammer, Jordyn packed up the First Aid kit and tucked it under her arm. She had just reached the strap of her handbag when she saw the infected man ducked behind the jukebox.
He was feasting on someone else, a woman in a bright pink caftan. He didn't see Jordyn, he was too busy burying his blood-covered mouth into his victims stomach. Even though his back was to her, Jordyn could see the skin of his arms was the same ghoulish shade of gray as White Dress in the basement, and she could no longer ignore that Connor's skin was turning the same colour.
Silently pulling her bag off the bar, Jordyn backed towards the basement door hammer still gripped in her fist. The man kept snarling before he chomped into the woman for another bite, so every time he made that grotesque eating noise Jordyn took more steps back.
In the doorway of the basement she quietly set the First Aid Kit and her bag at her feet and pressed the door closed. Shaking with adrenaline, she kicked the chair back into place under the doorknob, grabbed her bag and the kit and hurried back to Connor. Only he wasn't there.
"Connor!" Jordyn called out in a loud whisper. Swearing under her breath, she dropped her things on the shelf beside the water pallet and took her hammer with both hands. "Please, Connor, where are you?" She kept her voice quiet and low. White Dress's body was still there, her head still covered a few feet away. Something creaked behind her. "Connor?" She spun around.
He was standing up, but on a strange angle like his back was broken. His head slumped against his shoulder and his formerly sparkling hazel eyes were dull and dreary. His jaw was clenched tight but his mouth was open, growling like an animal as he stared at his older sister. He took a shaky step towards her.
"Connor, honey, it's okay," Jordyn could hear the terror in her voice. "You'll be okay..." She let her sentence trail off because she knew it was a lie. Here was her baby brother, ten years old and a perfect angel, and he was hunting her. He was just the same as White Dress, the same as the man eating the body upstairs. He was infected. And he made a beeline for her.
With a scream that emanated from deep within her, Jordyn gripped the hammer and took a fatal swing at her little brother's skull.
"You killed your own brother?"
Daryl's accusatory voice annoyed Jordyn. Daryl hadn't been there. He didn't know. But she didn't care to argue. It wouldn't make her feel any better. "It was either that or let him kill me." She didn't add that often in her nightmares, that's what she let happen. That she dreamt that she died right there with Connor.
Maybe if Shane hadn't found her when he did she would have died. Fate, some people might call it, is what saved her. She was meant to be found, meant to survive; but Jordyn didn't feel safe in a world where she was forced to live on after killing her brother.
"That why you came lookin' for Merle?
"Maybe..." Jordyn sighed and leant back against the headrest. Killing Connor was the reason for a lot of decisions she made in her life now. It was why she steered clear of Carl and Sophia, and if she was honest it was also the reason she'd put off going back and searching for Marnie. She'd faced one horrific consequence of this new zombie world already, she didn't want to have to do it all over again.
