"Shadow, do you want to stay in the car?" asked Rachel, putting her hand on her door handle.
"No, I…" Shadow insisted. "…I-I'll be…"
He moved one inch and let out an even more pronounced groan than before.
"No, you are not moving from here, mister," Amy snapped. "Sonic, Rachel, you go find stuff. I'll keep Mr. Stubborn here."
By this point, the aforementioned fox and hedgehog had already stepped out of the car, and then closed their doors. As they walked toward the farm, they heard Shadow's muffled protests, and then the click of all the doors locking.
Rachel gave a snicker of amusement… but Sonic felt just a bit sick. And it wasn't the deathly smell pouring from the house, either.
He looked back. Amy had just sat down from locking the doors. It was just the two of them… sitting, right?
Suddenly, an unfamiliar voice spoke to them in a raspy shout. Rachel and Sonic looked toward the side porch of the house, where there was an elderly man giving them a death stare with his one green eye. He looked more like a cat than anything else.
"'Ey!" he shouted. "Don't ye dare touch my food!"
Rachel was prepared to respect the man's wishes… but Sonic wasn't having any of it.
"You've got SO much food back there!" he snapped. "Can't you share just a bit with us?"
Rachel, meanwhile, was whispering "Sonic, you idiot…" in preparation to lose life right here.
The man thought for a bit before shouting "NO!" again. "And if y'all don't get out of my property, I'll put a bullet up yer arses!"
Yup. Death.
"Isn't there something we can do for you?" asked Sonic. "Bodies to bury, supplies to trade…"
The world stopped.
"…Well…" the man replied, putting his finger on his chin and thinking to himself. "…My grandson passed away a while back. Could ye bury him?"
"Yeah!" Sonic nodded. "…Yeah, of course!"
"Great," the man smiled. "His flesh is starting to make my chair get all moldy."
Oh, of all things to aggravate Rachel's nausea… it was going to be a dead body… but Sonic was no longer quite the idiot, and they could continue life. Wow…
"There's a shovel out back, I think," the man instructed. "Don't bury him too deep. Actually… can ya bury him by the lettuce?"
"Will do," Rachel obliged, dashing for the shovel. "Sonic, I'll dig. You get the body."
"Why me?!" asked Sonic.
"I WILL get sick if I have to touch that thing," Rachel cried, in a desperate scrape to keep the digging job.
Sonic was tempted to shout at her again, but then remembered something rather important and walked away to go find the body.
By the time that Sonic walked out with the green, decrepit corpse of the man's grandson, Rachel had been working hard to dig a hole that was roughly three feet deep.
Sonic locked onto the sight of this hole, dashed over to it, and threw the body in. He then proceeded to keel over and gag a couple of times. Rachel had to look away to keep her guts in her body as well.
After a bit more time, Rachel had covered the body with dirt again, and Sonic had two armfuls of various fruits and vegetables.
Gladly, Rachel placed the shovel back where she'd found it and sprinted to follow Sonic back to the SUV. She got back into the driver's seat while Sonic loaded up the back with this new-found food.
While Sonic was doing this work, he glanced over the pile at what he could see of Shadow and Amy.
They were alone in the car, so what? Why did this even freakin' bother him so much?!
"How do you feel?" Rachel asked.
"Oh, fantastic," Shadow snapped.
Yeah… this had only just happened, hadn't it?
Wait… is that a bunch of gauze, tape, and sticks on his leg? A medkit was wide open and empty between him and Amy. An emergency cast. Good.
This team really was a capable bunch, wasn't it?
…Team… One of them had up and left… and could potentially have bitten the dust. This felt so empty now.
