Disclaimer: I don't own Survivors, but I really wish I did.
Author's Note: Thanks, Daffy, for my very first review! I'm glad you're enjoying it so far. Bit of an awful chapter to write, this one, but the big reunion is almost here - in typical, dramatic Tomya style, of course!
May There Never Be An End
A Survivors Fanfic
Written by Silksteel
'I need some sort of alcohol; vodka, whiskey, something like that.'
'Which would you prefer?'
Anya looked incredulously at the young man that had been charged with acquiring medical supplies for her to deal with Danny's injury. 'It doesn't matter,' she told him slowly, enunciating the words for the benefit of his apparent mental deficiency. 'I'm not going to be drinking it.'
The boy mouthed a wordless Oh and rifled through what they had to find what she'd asked for. The lady of the house they'd taken over had, fortunately, been one of the strictly practical types with a kit for every eventuality. The first aid box provided her with gauze to stem the blood flow and bandaging for the wound; the sewing basket yielded a needle and the thread necessary for suturing. It wasn't perfect, far from it, and they had no antibiotics, but that couldn't be helped. For the first time in her life, and certainly the first time in her medical career, Anya wasn't invested in the patient. She wondered if this was how Tom felt all the time, completely detached from the people he considered a threat to his survival. The only reason she was participating in the charade was to buy herself a measure of time, to delay Marlon's plans for her. She wasn't naive; she knew exactly what he wanted from her - he'd made that clear enough back at the house - and was astute enough to understand that her life was more important than any possible violation. It was a struggle not to shut down completely; she needed every ounce of cunning she could muster to watch for an opportunity, a momentary lapse of concentration on the part of her captors, anything she could exploit to her advantage.
Danny groaned under her hands as she removed the gauze tamponade to inspect his wound. It was a ragged tear that bit deeply into the muscle; he'd been right - Naj's blow was significant to inflict such damage. Anya couldn't get the image out of her mind, the impulsive anger in the boy's face as he attacked the larger, stronger man with no regard for his own safety. Is that what they'd come to? Abby had said once that Naj was a part of their family with the same rights - did that mean he also felt that he had the same responsibilities? Tom hadn't helped that cause when he taught the boy to shoot a gun. She'd been so furious that day because she hated the idea that childhood wasn't going to be possible for the children of the new world if it remained as hostile as it was. Naj should never have been exposed to all these things; he'd seen far too much death and horror at such a tender age. Of course, Greg might have been dead but for his intervention, so it was a tragedy whichever way she looked at it.
'I haven't anything to give you for the pain,' Anya told her patient distantly as she threaded her needle and poised above the cleaned skin. 'So you need to lie still.'
'Get on with it,' Danny hissed, his hands clutching the undersides of the table, growling with the pain as she took him at his word and began to suture his wound. She took her time, setting neat and tiny stitches that would guarantee an almost flawless heal - if he lived that long. After a while, her patient seemed to exhaust himself so completely that the tension left him and he lay prone, twitching every now and then. Anya could feel the warmth beginning around the site, a sure indication that the infection was setting in. No real surprises there; the crowbar he'd been gored with was teeming with bacteria. It had been used for everything under the sun, from breaking into locked buildings in the city, to beating away intruders in the suburbs, via the odd commission as a mechanics tool.
'Well?' Marlon demanded as Anya finished and placed a sticky bandage over the site, sterilising her hands with the last of the vodka to cleanse them of blood.
'He needs antibiotics,' she said quietly, trying to step away as discreetly as possible, making it look as if she was clearing the area of her tools. 'The infection is already present. If we leave it, he'll die.'
Marlon indicated two of the remaining three members of their group with a finger. 'You two. Pharmacy, now.'
'Penicillin,' Anya added, by way of explanation. 'It'll be written on the box.'
The boy who'd brought her the vodka was to stay behind, and he sat in a corner, smoking a cigarette and sulking, a plank of two-by-four resting across his knees. Anya gave serious consideration to asking him for a tab, but Marlon had other plans for her. As soon as the door banged shut, he grabbed hold of her upper arm in a bruising grip.
'Now,' he murmured, pulling her forcefully around to face him. 'Let's skip to the good part, shall we?'
Abby didn't know whether to hit him or fold him into massive hug and cry into his shirtfront. The relief she felt at seeing Tom alive and well was unspeakable - especially now, when they were in such turmoil. Fortunately, she wasn't forced to make a decision one way or the other, because Al made it for her, bounding from the car to give the other man a powerful shove that would have sent Tom reeling were it not for his own vehicle.
'You bastard -' he railed, anguish in his face. 'Have you any idea what you put us through? What you put Anya through?'
Tom gripped the other man by the arms, his expression tightly controlled, unreadable. 'I saw the broadcast,' he said simply, no clue given as to his reasoning or location, the most he could give them being the sheer fact that he hadn't beaten Al to the ground. Restraint was actually one of Tom's better qualities, although it tended to go out of the window where Anya was concerned.
Al slumped in his hold, all the fight seeming to drain out him. 'She's been kidnapped,' he breathed, and Abby thought he should probably have timed it better, and perhaps gotten out of Tom's way, before giving him the information. Too late now. Al winced as he lost the circulation below his elbows.
'Willis?' Tom asked curtly.
'Thieves,' Abby told him with a shake of her head. 'They left one of their men behind, but he's -'
She didn't get even half a chance to finish what she was saying as Tom released Al in an instant and swept him aside without a second glance, striding determinedly up the front steps and into the house. 'Probably dead...' Abby finished in a plaintive murmur, joining Al by the black car as the passenger door opened, and a finely-attired older man climbed out stiffly.
'Well,' he said, looking at Abby through his round, gold-rimmed spectacles. 'I for one could murder a cup of tea. If you'd be so kind, madam.'
The reactions to Tom's homecoming were varied. Naj was ecstatic, of course. Greg and Abby were relieved. Al simply seemed dazed, exhausted and heartsick. But by far the oddest one, to Sophie's mind, was Peter. The boy took one look at Tom, let out a sort of strangled yelp, and ran from the room as if he was being pursued by demons. In truth, Sophie kind of understood where he was coming from. Tom Price was exactly what she should have expected from a man deemed a murderer and a thief: averaging out somewhere around six feet, he was brawny and menacing, and as of that moment, very, very angry indeed. He burst into the living room and barely glanced the other members of his party, moving directly to where she was monitoring the progress of their injured captive.
'Get lost,' he said shortly, barely gracing her with a glance, and Sophie decided not to argue with him. Although Abby and Anya had mainly focused on the good that Tom did for the group, Al had made an offhand comment about how Anya was the only one who could control him. When she wasn't here, apparently, he was just plain scary. Backing off immediately, Sophie went to stand in the doorway as Tom pulled a pistol from the waistband of his jeans and approached the sleeping prisoner, tapping it with no great care against his cheek.
Jamie woke, startled and disorientated, to find himself staring down the barrel of a nine millimetre. 'What -? Who are you?'
'Where's your base?' Tom asked, his voice taut with the threat that things were going to get worse if he didn't learn exactly what he wanted to know.
The younger man tried to scramble up, but he was still disorientated and dizzy, and Tom raising his eyebrows meaningfully didn't encourage him to go anywhere. 'I already told the woman, the old firehouse,' he muttered, slurring his words slightly with exhaustion.
'It was abandoned,' Al supplied as Tom looked up for confirmation. Abby had already herded the other survivors into the kitchen and could be heard making strained conversation with the new people who'd arrived with Tom. 'We think they might have moved on assuming we'd come after them.
Tom didn't even appear to be listening to Al. Instead, he was looking intently at Jamie as if waiting for the answer to a very important question. The only warning any of them had was the slight deepening of the crease between his eyes, before Tom brought his pistol in a smooth downward arc, pressing the barrel squarely into the gauze patch that covered the wound she'd sewn up, and applying pressure. Jamie's scream made the hair stand up on the back of her neck, and she moved as if to intervene as the wound tore once more and the gauze started to redden - but Al grabbed her and held her fast, shaking his head. 'I wouldn't,' he said under his breath. 'He only cares about Anya right now.'
'Lie to me again,' Tom snarled, leaning over the injured man, intense gaze boring holes right through. 'I dare you.'
'P-please,' Jamie stammered, sobbing. 'Don't -'
She couldn't stand watching it any longer. Her concern was for Anya too, but the longer Tom terrified her patient to incoherence, the longer it was going to take to locate her. Breaking out of Al's grip, she rushed to the head of the table. 'It's alright, Jamie,' she murmured in the same calm tone she'd used to placate him earlier. 'Just tell him the truth. I can't fix anything if he shoots you.' In a way, she almost felt sorry for him. All he'd come for was some food, but had ended up being stabbed, left behind and now tortured.
Tom pressed into him once more, and Jamie emitted a gargled scream, sweat rolling down his grey cheeks, the veins standing out in his neck with the strain. 'Okay!' he shrieked. 'Alright! I'll tell you -' the breath rasped harshly in his chest as he panted and tried to get ahold of himself. 'Number eleven, Platt Lane, behind the church -'
Without even waiting for any further information, Tom spun around and made for the door. Al gave her a significant look before he, too, vanished from the room. She could hear them banging about outside, and the sound of an engine starting. Sophie looked at her patient. 'I hope you told him the truth this time,' she said quietly, unsticking the gauze to survey the damage. 'If he has to come back, I doubt there will be much left of your leg to patch up.'
Anya stumbled forward, catching herself with one hand on the bedside table as Marlon all but threw her into the bedroom. Her blood ran cold watching him lock the door, then turn around, a calculating look on his battered face. As he unzipped his dirty jacket and shucked it onto the floor, Anya's gaze was darting around the room wildly. 'It's alright darlin',' he smirked, advancing on her. 'If you're good, I might let you live.'
Bile rose in her throat. Grabbing at the ornate lamp off the bedside table, Anya swung it with all her might as soon as he was within range. Only his fast reactions saved the thing from breaking against his skull, catching the impact on his forearm as he shielded himself. Marlon roared in pain, a large piece of china embedded in his arm; she lunged for the door, fingers clumsy on the key and failing as soon as she felt him grab her hair and yank hard.
Anya let out a muffled shriek when he pulled her from the door and threw her bodily onto the musty, crumpled bed. Hot fury and terror were burning a path up the back of her throat; the last time something like this had happened, her assailant was smaller and she overpowered him with the element of surprise - he'd not anticipated her determination to fight back. Marlon was a much larger opponent, and he had her at a positional disadvantage. When he approached the bed, Anya kicked out hard, catching him in the stomach and winding him. She scrambled to get to the other side of the bed, but found herself dragged backwards by her ankles, flipped onto her back and pinned to the bed by the full weight of Marlon's body as he straddled her.
'Where do you think you're going, whore?' he hissed venomously, forcing her hands above her head and holding them there with one of his own. Anya twisted desperately, trying to get herself into a position where she could throw him off. Tilting her head back and to the side she sunk her teeth into the vulnerable, exposed flesh of his arm, biting down as hard as she could. He reared back but didn't let go of her, his free arm swinging around to backhand her hard across the face. A strangled cry escaped her throat, pain blooming along the line of her cheekbone, the whole of her skull vibrating from the impact. Anya didn't want to scream, and she certainly didn't want to give him the satisfaction of crying, but she was starting to get very frightened, breath heaving unsteadily in her chest, a sensation that was almost a sob bubbling up inside her.
Marlon leaned over her, suffocating her with the weight of his body. 'This is going to happen,' he told her, foul breath ghosting across her face as he reached for the neckline of her dress, ripping it down the line of buttons at the front to her navel. 'So you may as well get used to the idea.' Tears were clouding her vision now, making his ghastly features blur in front of her, obscuring the dark leer he wore.
The doorknob rattled.
'Fuck off, Sid,' he spat, not pausing for a moment as he transferred his free hand to her throat, squeezing just hard enough to let her know he'd have no qualms about killing her there and then. 'I'm busy.'
BOOM.
Final Note: Why yes, that's exactly what you think it is. Haha! See you next chapter...
