Chapter 10 - Kenzi

As their car took a sharp turn and entered a dirt road in the middle of the endless grasslands, Kenzi slapped Bo's arm frantically and yelled "Bo-bo, look! Look! A coyote! Did you see that" while pointing to the outside.

"Stop hitting me, Kenzi! I'm driving!" Bo complained softly. She quickly turned to her right and took a glance, but the only thing she saw were endless rolling greens under the bright summer sky. She could see a few black spots afar under the shadow of the clouds. She assumed that those were bisons and they were just chilling out.

"I don't see no coyote," she said, turning back to focus on driving. "Are you sure it's not a rock or something?"

"It was a coyote, okay?" Kenzi argued. She stuck her head out and looked back, but it was too far behind. She couldn't tell if the grey spot she was seeing was the animal or something else.

She sighed, and started to play with the radio channel knob. However, she couldn't find a single channel. There was nothing but a silent buzz coming out from the radio, with an occasional burst of advertisement.

The white noise slowly drowned everything, and made her eyelids heavy. She heard Bo hum something, maybe an old song that they both loved, but she couldn't be sure because her best friend's voice suddenly sounded so, so far away.

Slowly she slipped into her dreams, but somehow she kept getting disturbed because the car went over bumps so frequently that it seemed like they were going over a bump back and forth, back and forth.

Bump. Bump. Bump. She was being thrown up and down. She groaned, grunted and mumbled, telling Bo to slow down, or at least stop driving like Bo intended to let her bite her tongue, but she got not response at all.

Bump. Bump. Bump. She reached for Bo, but touched nothing but a cold, metal bar. That was when she decided to open her eyes and take a look.

Leaves of all shades of red, yellow and orange entered her vision. They fluttered in the wind, like hundreds and thousands of butterflies. The sky high above was clear as crystal and blue as the ocean, with huge clouds floating and swimming in it.

Bump. Bump. Bump. She was thrown up, and immediately she fell back down. It made her butt sore and hurt her back. She knew she was lying on a flat, hard surface of some kind with a few layers of linens in between.

She heard the squeaky sound coming from the vehicle under her. The sound of the gears turning, chains pulling and wheels being forced to turn in the mud and away from the pebbles formed a weird harmony.

Kenzi squirmed under the layers of blankets that had buried her under. She wanted to sit up but couldn't because muscles were too weak and they refused to follow her mind.

She groaned and turned her head, only to see the rusty rails of the trailer she was in. There was a backpack beside her face. A big stainless mug daggles on the shoulder strap. It would occasionally hit the rail, adding an irregular clatter into the symphony.

She gathered every bit of strength she had to raise her head. There she saw a blonde woman riding a tricycle in front of her, and the tricycle was pulling the trailer Kenzi was in.

The back of the woman's neck was reddened by the sunlight, and patches of sweat stains were left on the back of her dark grey tank top. A sheathed machete hung on her belt, swinging back and forth as she rode.

"Hey..." Kenzi murmured, finding her voice shockingly weak and husky. She swallowed for a few times, before she called again, "hello."

The wind drowned her voice immediately, and the blonde just rode on without noticing her.

Kenzi tried to reach the rail. She found it extremely weird that even though her mind was telling her arm to move, all her arm did was jittering.

She kept trying, though, and finally succeeded. She pulled hard to sit up, and wrapped herself in the blankets. "Hey," she called again.

After she had repeated the hellos and heys for a few times, the blonde had finally heard her. The woman stopped pedaling and turned back. "Look who's awake," she commented with a smirk on her face.

Kenzi squinted her eyes and raised her hand to shield them from the blinding sunlight. She looked at the blonde closely through her fingers, before she hesitantly asked, "do I know you?" She thought she might have had some conversation with the other woman at some point, but she wasn't sure if that had been her dream. She tried, but couldn't find a name in her memory that would associate with that face.

The other woman didn't answer her question. She just took a glance at the sun and murmured, "I guess we should take break here."

Curling into the corner of the trailer, Kenzi watched her gathering woods to make a cooking fire right next to the trailer. "My name is-" she murmured.

"-Kenzi," the blonde interrupted her.

"So you do know me, but I don't...I don't think I know your name yet."

"It's Tamsin," the other woman answered simply. She glanced at Kenzi and continued, "are you feeling any pain? Any discomfort? Dizziness or anything?"

Kenzi shook her head. "Just...weak and hungry, I guess," she murmured. After staring at the blonde's face closely, she blurted, "did we...I kinda remember you feeding me food."

"Yeah, I did, cuz you were in and out and couldn't eat on your own," Tamsin told her, "but since you are fully awake now, why don't we see if you could hold a spoon again, hmmm?"

Kenzi nodded as she slowly rolled the corner of the blankets together so she could rest her head on it.

Tamsin didn't say another word. She took out a big mug from her backpack, poured some water into it from a flask, and poured in a bag of white powder.

The powder quickly dissolved, making the liquid thin and opaque. The blonde threw in a bag of beige granules and some dark flakes. She waited patiently, till everything boiled down into a light brown mush. She stirred it with a spoon, and let it sit on the ground for a while to cool it down, before she handed it to Kenzi.

"Eat this," she commanded.

"What is this?" Kenzi asked as she carefully smelled the mush. She smelled dairy and grain, with a hint of meat.

"Just eat it, okay? It's not like it's poisoned or anything," the other woman told her and gave her an eye roll. "You should eat more food so you can heal faster."

Kenzi looked at the mush again and stirred it with the spoon Tamsin had handed her. She carefully tasted a little, and confirmed her guess. It was a mug of milk cereal, with meat flakes and a little bit of fruit bits. Everything was cooked to the point where they just blended together completely.

It was a strange combination, but she didn't plan to complain at all. She ate a spoonful, and her stomach immediately screamed for more. She inhaled everything, and scraped every bit of mush off the mug with her spoon.

Tamsin took the mug and the spoon back, and went to wash it in the creek not far away from them. Kenzi would give her a smile when she turned back to check on the petite girl every time.

She came back quickly and started to cook her own food. Kenzi stared at the burning flames numbly, before she murmured, "I remember...patient beds...all the doctors and nurses and...needles, lots of needles..."

"It's good that you actually remember things," the blonde smirked, before she started to eat her own meal.

"And you a member of the Anti-Zombie Division of the army too?" Kenzi asked as she eyed the other woman. "Are you like transferring me to...a base or something?"

"No, and no," Tamsin replied. "There's no more Anti-Zombie Division. There's no more bases either. Well probably the bases are still there, occupied by different people, or things."

Kenzi frowned. "What do you mean by there's no more A.Z.D?"

"It means that there's no more A.Z.D," Tamsin told her. "US army no longer exists. In fact, the US government no longer exists. Our nation has fallen, lady, but don't worry, cuz all the other nations in the world have fallen too. Right now, we only have this bullshit government without border stuff."

When she saw the shocked look on Kenzi's face, she started to explain, "I don't know what happened to you, but it seems that they claimed that you were M.I.A a long time ago. You somehow stayed unconscious under a canyon for years maybe. A lot of shit happened when you were out."

"I don't...understand. What do you mean by I stayed unconscious under a canyon for years, blondie?"

Tamsin sighed. "What was the last thing that you remembered?" She asked.

Kenzi bit her bottom lip and furrowed her eyebrows. She tried to sort out her memories by figuring out which ones were real and which ones were her dreams.

After a while, she said, "I remember...I was with my A.Z.D squad. We were doing our daily sweep, and that day we encountered a huge herd of walkers. The captain made a shitty decision and got us cornered. We tried to call for help but somehow the communication wouldn't go through or something...we retreated into the woods, and soon we were out of ammo, so we started fighting the walkers with knives and rocks, you know, anything we could get our hands on."

Tamsin nodded, and Kenzi took a deep breath before she continued.

"The walkers outnumbered us, and one of them grabbed me. I struggled, and lost my balance. I tumbled downhill and fell into a river, and...I guess I was carried down by the current and fell down along a waterfall maybe? Then...I don't remember much...just bits and pieces I guess, until-" she waved her finger back and forth between her and Tamsin.

"So the last thing you remember is falling down along a waterfall," Tamsin concluded. "Well there was this stream in that cave...maybe the underground stream carried you all the way there or something…."

"What cave? And you said I was unconscious for years?"

"Yep, about 6 years probably, since the government sent your friend, Bo, a notice saying that you were M.I.A 6 years ago," Tamsin said, feeling her heart clench painfully when that name slipped out from her lips.

"What? I was out for 6 years?!" Kenzi exclaimed. "Seriously? 6 years?! Wait, you said Bo. You know Bo?! Is she here? Where is she?"

"No she's not here," Tamsin said, trying to swallow the bitterness back. "She ummm...yeah I met her when she umm...came all the way up here to look for you."

She then briefly explained to Kenzi why Bo had been convinced that she was still alive, and how they had found her.

"Ooookay, so I somehow slept under the bottom of the canyon, inside a cave, for 6 years, but I'm still alive," Kenzi said. "That sounds fake, like totally fake."

"It does, but it's the truth," Tamsin said simply. "The doctors couldn't explain it either. Pretty lame, huh?"

"So where is Bo?" Kenzi pursued. She nearly bit her tongue when she saw the painful look in Tamsin's eyes.

Tamsin pulled the spoon out from her mouth, and licked her lips. "She...after we pulled you out from the canyon, there was this big earthquake and...when it happened, she was still...under the canyon," she explained. After pausing for a long time, she added, "she...you know…didn't get out in time."

An unbearable silence consumed both of them. The petite girl turned sideways as she bit back her tears.

"Why the hell did she come looking for me?!" She eventually squeezed those words out through her clenched teeth with bursting tears. "Why couldn't she just...why can't she just stay where she had been and just live her fucking life?"

Tamsin huffed out a scoff. She wanted to say something snarky, but could come up with nothing. The pain of losing Bo was too overwhelming, and she had to grit her teeth to force her tears back.

They didn't say another word to each other for a long, long time. Tamsin gathered their things, put out the fire and resumed their journey.

The next day they arrived at the canyon area before nightfall. Tamsin numbly looked at all the rubbles, dead trees and animal remains.

The lifeless emptiness tore her apart. It smashed her heart violently and repeatedly, until it no longer existed. She wanted to scream, to yell, to question each and every deity she had ever heard of. She wanted to ask the world why it had to be Bo, but she knew it wouldn't matter. She knew that anything they had felt, experienced, or cherished, even her, or Bo's very existence, wouldn't mean a thing to this cruel world.

They were nothing but two grains of dust, and one of them had fallen and disappear, leaving her in the wind clinging desperately to whatever she could grasp to survive.

Survive. Survive. Survive. It was something she had kept telling herself so she could actually stay alive, but all of a sudden, she found it meaningless, pointless and stupid, because there was no light at the end of the tunnel. The light had touched her once, before it slipped through her fingers and could no longer be seen.

Tamsin took a few deep breaths, and started to set up a temporary camp. She built a fire to repel the darkness that started to shroud everything.

It was a starless, moonless night. The only light in the entire world, was coming from the burning flames.

They both sat in the trailer, staring at the fire for hours. Tears, agony and sorrow burdened their hearts, burying any hope that they had once had deep down.

"You should probably get some rest," Tamsin whispered to the other woman in a sigh, her voice so light as if she didn't want to disturb whoever that was sleeping underneath the rubbles.

"I'm good," Kenzi replied. She curled up in the trailer under the blankets, staring at the dark sky.

"So...what happened during the past 6 years?" She eventually asked. "Did we...get rid of all the zombies? Did any brilliant scientist at least figure out a vaccine or a cure yet?"

"Yeah, all of those happened, and now we are in a world without hunger or war. It's just forever peace," Tamsin grunted.

"I'm serious, blondie," Kenzi hissed as she punched Tamsin. It felt like nothing but a soft nudge to the blonde, though.

"Well," Tamsin started. "That A.Z.D shit didn't last long, because they ran out of recruits. I think at that time they realized that there was no way we could win. They gave up. People started to run away from the cities and into the wild, fighting for resources on the way, killing each other or being killed by zombies. A lot of people died because of fear, plague and despair. The whole system started to break down."

Kenzi nodded quietly. "I can't believe this is real, dude," she murmured in a whisper. "Like...how could any of this shit be real?"

Tamsin mumbled something that Kenzi didn't quite get. Then the blonde cleared her throat and continued, "anyway, I think there was a discussion about whether we should nuke the shit out of the flesheaters, but apparently it's not possible cuz they are everywhere. I think they even came up with plans like...having volunteers lure zombies into a place and nuke that place to kill them all, but...there are just too many of those damn fuckers."

"That's...crazy," Kenzi said. "It's...just crazy."

"Wait till I tell you hear the crazier," Tamsin said with a scoff. "4 years ago maybe? A nuclear bomb was dropped on the west coast."

"What?! Are you serious?" Kenzi exclaimed as she propped herself up on her elbows.

"Yep, I heard it on the news channel on the radio, followed by a long, stupid discussion of who dropped it. Some thought that it must be Russia or China. Others claimed that it was a mistake made by a panicking official who still had control over the system, or simply because of a system malfunction. Some didn't believe it at all, saying that it was totally fake and they were trying to make us panic."

"Did they really drop a nuclear bomb?"

"I think they did. I've seen a few survivors who used to live close to that area. They looked exactly like the survivors of Hiroshima so...I guess that shit is probably real. The west coast is definitely a no go now"

"That's crazy," Kenzi commented. "It's just...unbelievable. I mean...a nuclear bomb?"

"I heard that we fired back or something," Tamsin continued, "dumped a couple of them over that side of the pacific ocean. I don't know if that was real, though."

Kenzi was too shocked to say anything. She just quietly lolled there for a long time, before she breathed, "so what's the deal now? Are we just…."

"Now? There's this new, government without border thing setting up settlements," Tamsin shrugged. "Of course a lot of people don't give a shit about that. We just survive on our own terms."

Kenzi nodded. "Good call," she commented.

She pondered for a long time before she asked, "what exactly happened to me? How can I just...be unconscious for 6 years? That doesn't make sense."

"I don't know," Tamisn shook her head. "The doctor said that it might be some sort of dormancy or whatever, but...hey, you are still alive, with all your fingers and toes attached. Does that really matter?"

"Good point, blondie, good point," Kenzi agreed.

They went quiet for a while, both staring into the fire, until Kenzi whispered, "is she really...gone?"

Tamsin swallowed hard and closed her eyes. It took her forever to push that one word through the lump in her throat. "Yeah," she replied, feeling the last bit of hope in her heart being shattered and crumbled. She fisted her hands, letting her nails digging into her own palm. A sigh came out from her mouth, filled with despair.

Kenzi sat up and buried her face into her arms. A few broken, muffled sobs came out from her. She tried to control them, but she couldn't. Her whimpers turned into cries and wails.

Tamsin sighed again, and held the other woman's shoulder firmly. She pulled Kenzi to her chest, and closed her eyes.

Kenzi called Bo's name in vain, till her voice reduced to a gagged whisper. "Why? Why?" She asked repeatedly, but got no answer.

Eventually crying exhausted her, and she slipped back down into the trailer after falling asleep. Tamsin fisted her right hand and shoved it against her own nose and mouth.

She finally burst into tears, crying silently and breathlessly in pain.

When Kenzi woke up the next morning, Tamsin was already putting out the fire and gathering their things.

"So what am I gonna do now?" Kenzi murmured.

Tamsin shrugged. "The only thing you can do, survive," she replied. After examining the tricycle to make sure it would still run perfectly, she added, "there are government settlements, if that's where you'd want to go."

Kenzi shook her head. "I just...I want to go home," she murmured, and the word "home" wedged into her heart like a thorn. She realized that she had no home to go back to. The only person that she considered her family had been gone.

"Sure," Tamsin nodded slightly. "You mean that old house you and Bo-"

Kenzi immediately nodded. "I just...It's been almost ten years since I left there, I kinda…."

"I understand," Tamsin told her. She bit her bottom lip for a while, before she asked, "where is umm...the house of yours?"

Kenzi told her the city it was in, and Tamsin raised one eyebrow in surprise. "Wow, that's very close to Brazenwood."

"Umm...Brazenwood?"

"It's the shitty community I live," Tamsin explained simply. "Anyway, it's a 2-3 week trip. We need supplies."

"Yeah, where can we get supplies when we are in a zombie dominated world and...with nothing but a tricycle and a bag?" Kenzi tried to joke, but only made her own heart heavier.

"I know a place," Tamsin replied and hopped on the tricycle.

"What kinda place might that be?" Kenzi slid under the blankets and held the rail firmly with her right hand.

"An old camp I used to live in" was the blonde's answer before they took off.

A/N: sooo...some Kenzi and Tamsin bonding time. I always love those :) buuuuut, what happened to Bo and where is she now? Hmmm, I think there will be some answers in the next chapter.

Thanks for reading!