Winter
Winter came out of nowhere, it seemed. But that was New England for you. Literally it was as if one day, there were various colored leaves lingering on the trees and being peacefully blown around the streets, and the next it was a snowy wasteland. Despite having lived in this weather for years, sometimes it still surprised me. Since we didn't have weather people or daily forecasts anymore, obviously, it was more unpredictable than ever.
I realized quickly that the shitty jacket Red had shoved into my pack while we were fleeing the Q.Z wasn't enough to provide much of any proper protection from the cold, so I had to go borrow one from the like communal clothes place that Warwick had. It was like a mini Salvation Army, where people would bring clothes that they had found or drop off old ones that no longer fit them. It was sort of weird to go there – it felt like I was "shopping", kind of, even though no currency was exchanged or anything.
The nights were long and the weather was extremely harsh. I seriously felt like if Red and I hadn't gotten to Warwick before this winter had come in, we might've just died from hypothermia out in the wilderness somewhere. I almost forgot what it was like to look outside and not see snow coming from the sky. A lot of the regular jobs just seemed like a lower priority now, and the majority of us had to spend our time trying to shovel the goddamn snow into manageable piles so that you could walk around still. The crops all died, of course, so we were left to live off of the pretty substantial non-perishables that Warwick had stored up in case something like this happened. I noticed, though, that even though we had stuff to eat still, I guess Raleigh was uneasy about delving into our reserves, since more and more groups of people ventured outside the walls now. Usually (key word, usually) they came back with packs full of stuff instead of with wounds/less bullets, which was reassuring. They were just scavenging, right? I mean, what else would they be doing?
The days all sort of melded together and I quite nearly lost track of any sort of time. In fact, if there wasn't a regularly updated calender in the hallway of the house we stayed in, I wouldn't have even a slight idea of what month it was.
After that night when I came back from the bar, things were a little different between Red and I. Not by much – to any onlooker we seemed exactly how we normally would: joking, teasing, the usual. But they weren't there at night, when it was just the two of us up in our room. Although being indoors was far more preferable than roughing it outside, the insulation was pretty bad, so more often than not we wore our jackets to sleep. On the especially freezing nights we just slept in the same bed together to preserve our body heat, and even then we would both be shaking like leaves. I saw some of the first nearly physical conflicts happen over people fighting for the spare blankets. Red and I stayed out of it, assuming we could deal, but sometimes I regretted that decision.
I started to have trouble sleeping. It was almost like clockwork – I'd go to sleep with considerable effort and numerous failed attempts, then wake up not long after with a start, breathing rapidly. It would always disturb Red, sometimes to the point that she'd get up too, which made me feel terrible despite her insisting upon it not bothering her. I honestly don't remember what the dreams were about, but they were bad. Left me always trembling slightly, whether or not it was especially cold in the room. After those I rarely ever got back to sleep without help, so Red would usually just hold a conversation with me until I was lulled into a light slumber by the sounds of our gradually slurring voices – drowsiness overtaking us after a while. She got a haircut too, which was weird to me. Sure, she had gotten trims before back in the Q.Z, but this time she cut it so that it stopped around her mid-neck. It was just odd, having only ever seen her with her long hair tied back, or down all the way to her shoulders.
Unfortunately, reliving everything that had happened with Violet after I had spent so many years consciously burying it deep within the recesses of my psyche proved to be damaging. It wasn't just the nightmares, though, in general I would sometimes have to excuse myself from wherever I was to go and retreat to a place I could be alone, because I accidentally thought about her for too long and got all ferklempt. I had thought I had gotten past this – the intense grieving stage, the bereavement, the guilt – but that turned out to be untrue. It was all still there, I had just suppressed it. Acted like it wasn't happening. Did my very best to forget about her completely, which in hindsight was just absolutely impossible. How could I even dream of being able to forget about someone who was that important to me for so long...?
Red and I's old attachment and bond had gotten fully restored and even a little bit stronger. After Clarice had showed up, I'll admit I felt a little like I had gotten put on the backburner, which was understandable. I think that, subconsciously, it bothered me more than I was letting myself believe, because when Red came back and returned to being around me as much as possible, it was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders that I hadn't even known was there in the first place.
Although it was nearly impossible now to ever know the real day that it was, considering all of the daylight savings, leap years, and other weird shit that had been forgotten because, well, apocalypse, you could make a pretty good guess most of the time. Warwick reminded me that it was trying really hard to have a semblance of how things used to be before the outbreak, and in order to do that it needed to at least try to celebrate the holidays.
Christmas hadn't ever been my favorite thing for a good chunk of my early life, only becoming fun and exciting when I was in my late teen years and early adulthood. Shortly after, the world fell apart, so yeah. Warwick went all out though. People hung wreathes around, mistletoe was scattered on a few doorways, someone attached little sleigh-bell things to the wind chime, and a few people resorted to using tinsel for insulation for the gaps underneath their front doors, which was both festive and resourceful. Charlie strummed classic Christmas tunes lazily whenever people were at the bar, which even started to serve eggnog for Christ's sake. The kids were psyched about it, too. Although they weren't likely to get presents considering the condition of the world, you couldn't deny that the holiday spirit was pretty contagious. Finn kept a fake Christmas tree that he had found in someone's basement, and he set it up in the library. It was a big event for the whole town as people decorated it, even strung it up with lights that we used the generator for. To this day, seeing that tree sparkle and twinkle with ornaments, tinsel and that star at the top was one of the most refreshing things I had ever see in my life.
Raleigh had been showing up less and less around town, I noticed. Normally I'd at least see him once a day, now it was really rare. Whenever he did show up, though, he seemed to be lacking something. Not a physical thing, I mean he seemed a little empty. I had next to no interactions with him, granted, but it was just a vibe that I got. When I talked to Red about it she agreed, and she used to have full on conversations with him. Also, according to Finn, Raleigh "liked Red's spunk". I had seen her have drinks with him and his closest buddies at the bar. I knew that it didn't concern me, and that I shouldn't be thinking much about it, but since he was the technical "leader" of the town and all, it had been reassuring to know he was involved – not some shadowy figure that hid behind closed doors.
Finn was the closest with Raleigh, at least out of everyone I personally knew. He was the town's sole long-distance smuggler, since he was the only one willing to venture out so far past the walls, and the only one who could somehow always manage to come back. Finn and I spent a substantial amount of time together, too, he was really easy to talk to, and now that he couldn't go anywhere on account of the weather conditions, he hung around the bar a lot. Coincidentally, I did too.
He wouldn't talk much about Raleigh. If I had to pick a word to describe it, he seemed a bit scared of him. Intimidated, at the very least. The only useful information he willingly gave up was when he was drunk. And it was scarce – hard to put together, but I managed. I desperately wanted to understand what was going on around Warwick.
From what I could gather, Raleigh was getting disorganized and coming unhinged. The added pressure of the snow was making it harder and harder to keep track of where he sent scavengers, and we were losing people with no way of finding out where they were. Our supplies were running low, a previous increase in population back in the summer made it harder to keep everyone warm, and things in general were just getting more and more hard to handle for him. He was doing his best, apparently, but Finn hinted at some questionable leadership choices that were causing tension amongst the other people sort of "in charge".
I didn't let this bother me, even though Red seemed pretty concerned about it. She had a bit more reason to be, because even in our short stay here (having only been at Warwick for about four months) she had managed to get quite a sway amongst the community here. It was mainly from her prominent, reassuring presence that just made people feel safe I guess. Not to mention she greatly helped wherever she could and had quickly formed a sort of rapport with Raleigh.
One day, two of Raleigh's guys came up to me on the street and nonchalantly explained that I was going to be heading outside the walls later. I was pretty rattled by this information, but they had walked off before I got the chance to ask any of my questions. I knew how it worked, simply by watching these groups leave some of the time. They seemed to gather by the main gate one by one over the course of like, half-an-hour at around noon. Not knowing what else to do, I decided to follow suit.
Lets just say Red wasn't pleased with the position I was put into. I tried to mention where I was going in a casual way, like it was nothing, but as usual she saw right through the ruse and got just as nervous as I was, if not more so. She herself hadn't been outside the walls since we arrived in Warwick, and she seemed very adamant on me being able to say the same. Unfortunately, my fears of consequences arising from disobeying a direct order surpassed those of whatever laid outside the safety this place provided. I had been in danger before, obviously, but it had just been a while as all. Ever since that encounter with the Runners from that ranch house, I hadn't even seen any infected in about a month and a half at that point.
I was accompanied by mainly a bunch of stocky, muscular guys who looked a bit less armed-to-the-teeth as I normally saw them. That reassured me, because from what I could tell they looked a lot more like they were suited up for a scavenging run instead of a firefight. Carmen was actually with me too, and she was the same as always – toting her SMG and lugging her large backpack, which she wore even around town. Knowing that she was there too put me a lot more at ease, but I refrained from mentioning that. On our actual way outside, as we headed past the main gates, I glanced over my shoulder to notice Clarice stuck with wall duty. Our eyes met but neither of us acknowledged the other in any way.
Thankfully, Carmen's sense of humor that was pleasantly cohesive with mine didn't fade even when we were potentially in danger. One of the guys in our group kept trying to be cool and give us like, military signals so that we didn't have to vocally communicate, and Carmen told me that everything he was trying to sign to us was just totally wrong. She had been a soldier before, she said, and a smug smile came to her face whenever this dude did one of his inaccurate gestures. It was moderately relieving to have that lightheartedness around, considering everyone else with us was dead serious about the situation (which we probably should've been too, but if you didn't take the chance to laugh once in a while you'd go fucking insane).
Surprisingly enough the little venture was pretty uneventful. There weren't any infected that spotted us, although I did notice some around – we didn't make enough noise for them to be alerted. There was a convenience store, pharmacy thing that we went into and found a decent amount of stuff in. Whether or not it'd actually be useful, I didn't even care, I just wanted to get back to Warwick so I could breathe without a tightness in my chest.
Unfortunately, our return didn't relieve me in the slightest. On our way back, we all nearly jumped out of our skins at the sounds of gunfire. A lot of it. Okay, if there were infected outside the walls, it was usually a one-shot kill and that was that. Now it sounded like goddamn assault rifles were being fired, which Warwick didn't even have on hand. After exchanging some brief worried looks with one another, we took off running. We weren't nearby, though, and the sprint there seemed like it took forever. Were we being attacked or something? Had someone hostile gotten inside the gates? My concern was starting to absolutely eat me alive at the thought of these mysterious assailants bursting straight into town and dropping survivors like flies. The image of Red being among the corpses made my throat clench up.
By the time Warwick was in view, the gunshots had died down and completely stopped. There was still a general sense of chaos lingering around though, I could feel it and I wasn't even there yet. Now we could sort of hear frantic shouts and hurried commands. My worry was actually managing to make me go faster than the others, it was as if it were physically propelling me like a goddamn motorboat. I got there first. And boy oh boy, was I greeted by a pleasant sight.
The entire ground seemed to be coated in a layer of blood and shell casings. Bodies were scattered about too, some with familiar faces, some not. The main gate had been literally blown open, by what, I have no idea at all, and its doors now laid in pieces strewn around. It was probably irreparable unless built all over again from scratch. The corpses weren't strictly within the walls of Warwick, some were outside, but those were almost all ones that I couldn't recognize. Warwick got new people every now and then, yeah, but after being here for so long I could at the very least have a vague catalog of everyone's faces in my head.
I quickly entered, looking around frantically, for Finn, Clarice, hell, even Hopkins, but everything was too all over the place for me to pick their faces out of the crowd. And of course I was looking for Red. That's just a given. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears as the adrenaline coursed through me like blood, fear biting at my core tangibly, terrified that the next corpse I stepped over might be hers. If there was a firefight, you could bet your ass that Red would get involved without question. And it wasn't that I didn't have faith in her abilities to hold her own, or anything like that at all, it was just some of the bodies I noticed were those of the people who I personally considered the most hardened survivors here. I was right to be scared.
"Colleen?" Someone said my name over my shoulder and I was snapped out of my slight daze, but still pretty out of it. I knew that it wasn't Red, it was a guy that had spoken. I turned around to see Finn, looking thankfully no worse for wear – he had some blood splattered on his cheek but I could tell it wasn't his. He was out of breath and very frazzled looking, just like everyone else at the moment. It was sort of hard to hear him what with all of the commotion happening around us, but I managed.
He approached me and maneuvered us a bit to the side of the street – away from the craziness, "Sweet Jesus, you good?" He quickly scanned me up and down, not seeing any signs of injury, "Cool, alright, uh..." His eyes flitted to something behind me, presumably a person, because he gestured at whoever it was to give him a second, "...I don't have time to explain. Fuck, I don't even know what's happening right now. Just um... ask around, see if anyone needs help, yeah?" I had never seen him so jarred, it was weird. Understandable, of course, but weird nonetheless. I nodded a bit, since my overwhelming worry was still keeping me from vocal communication, and he clapped me on the shoulder before walking off.
I spun on my heel and resumed my desperate search for Red. Okay, I knew that she would most definitely have participated in this gun show, and if she was alive, where the hell was she? From what I had seen, there were only like three people in Warwick that had red hair, so I just scanned around for that – both amongst the survivors and the dead bodies. As my head swiveled on my neck so frantically it almost hurt, I spotted something in a nearby snow bank that I hadn't before. One of the fresh corpses had fallen there face down, blood tainting the otherwise pure snow. They were wearing a hat so I couldn't judge the length of their red hair from my distance, which just made things even more terrifying. That might be her. Oh God what if that was her? Feeling the panic starting to come on a bit too strong for me to reign in, I rushed to it, breath getting uneven and shallow. I reached forward, ready to grab the shoulder of this mystery person to flip them over, but I hesitated.
I wouldn't be able to deal if she died. There was just no way, and I knew that. The possibility of this being her was just automatically so awful that my denial suppressed it, but not all the way. If I flipped this body over and saw Red's face, I wouldn't be able to cope. I was still emotionally reeling from Violet, and that had been seven years prior.
Head starting to throb, I rubbed at my temples with my fingers and tried to calm myself down, subconsciously deciding not to reveal this corpse's face until I was a bit more stable. I let myself listen to the jumbled conversations of the other Warwick survivors. People were questioning what the hell had gone wrong, others were seeking medical aid, and of course there were those that were looking for their loved ones frantically – their concern almost making them incoherent.
I looked up to actually examine the scene and it was heart wrenching. I knew a lot of these people. There were families here, parents, aunts, uncles. One of the bodies that I recognized was a mother of three kids. Jesus I wouldn't want to be the one to deliver that news. Upon further investigation I spotted a few cautious children poking their heads out of windows, only to be hastily scolded not to look and to get back inside.
It was then that I picked a voice out of the crowd, one that was familiar, but hard to pinpoint because it was one amongst so many others. They were asking frantic, worried questions, which was probably what I would've been doing had I been able to speak. It was description stuff, like "they're about this tall", and, "brown hair, long". I didn't want to dive headfirst into the sea of people, so I just stood kind of on the outer edge of the cluster and looked around.
I saw a flash of orange. It was brief, but notable. My heart skipped a beat and my next breath got caught in my throat. Abruptly regaining my speech, I spoke up in a near-shout so that I may be heard by her, "Red?!" My voice shook, as did my hands (both from cold and intense fear).
It only took a few, dragging seconds – though it felt like years – for Red to burst from the side of the crowd and immediately spot me. Our relief was mutual and shown clearly in our expressions. She rushed towards me and hugged me so tight it almost hurt, a gesture I immediately returned, finally feeling like I could breathe now. It was brief, but greatly reassuring. I felt like things were okay. For a few, lingering moments, that is.
She released me first, scanning me for wounds of some kind while I did the same to her. She seemed totally untouched, not even a speck of blood anywhere on her, "Goddamn it Colleen don't you ever fuckin' scare me like that again." She said, sounding out of breath herself.
I scoffed at her, "Bitch how do you think I feel?" She allowed herself to smile and a grin of pure, utter relief came to my face too.
We didn't have time for our usual banter that would've happened to sort of calm both of us down after such an emotionally driven, panic-inducing moment, because Red's worry seemed to engulf her persona all over again in the blink of an eye. She slapped the side of her head as if abruptly remembering something and I raised an eyebrow at her.
I watched in confusion as she looked over her shoulder at the crowd that was surprisingly enough dying down a bit and dispersing, "Fuck where is she?!" For a second I didn't know who she was talking about, but I'm thankful I didn't ask because I would've seemed like an asshole for forgetting. Clarice had presumably yet to be found, "She was on wall duty, right?" I nodded, and this confirmed information only seemed to further dismay her, "Christ that was the first place to get hit... girl can't shoot for shit either, fuck."
Just as I was about to try and rationalize the situation and ease her nerves, (although truthfully it made perfect sense why she was scared) Hopkins jogged over to us, looking very rushed and hectic. His shoulder was tied around with some type of fabric and blood was already soaking through the makeshift bandage. The color was drained out of his skin and he was in a cold sweat. Damn he did not look good.
"Red, hey, c'mon, Raleigh needs to talk to everybody." He took pauses in between his words to breathe, almost like if he didn't he'd just forget to and pass out.
I knew that he just wanted her, but honestly I wasn't very willing to let her out of my sight after the shit that just happened. I wondered if the feeling was mutual.
Red didn't seem to be fazed by what he was saying at all, "I gotta look for Clare, man, I ain't got no time for some fuckin' conference bullshit." Jesus her accent was showing through a lot. She was really upset. She waved her hand at him dismissively, sass still coming on strong despite the situation. I also tended to forget that she called Clarice that and I almost thought she was referring to someone else. I think it was something reserved for friends and family, though, so I never really used the nickname.
"Well, where was she before they got in?" He asked. I so wished that I knew who "they" were but I refrained from asking. Did I actually want to know? Part of me was a bit scared of what the answer may be.
Red fiddled with the bracelet tied on her wrist, something I hadn't seen her do for a while, but it showed me just how nervous she was, "Wall duty."
Hopkins's face fell instantly, which in turn made Red and I tense up, before he said in a very set tone, "You need to come with me." I could tell he wasn't taking no for an answer, but again, I didn't want to be separated from Red right after our reunion.
Thankfully she shared my mindset, because she reached over and clasped my hand determinedly, "Colleen's comin' too. No fussin', neither." I gently tightened my grip on her to show my appreciation and her eyes flitted to me for a second.
Hopkins seemed too exhausted to even try to protest this and just nodded weakly, beckoning us along with him as he jogged down the street. Red released me and was at his heels. He stopped at the town's old post office that was a fair distance from the main gate and headed inside, us following without question.
I was greeted by a slightly intimidating sight – a smallish room filled with some of the more notably standoffish survivors in Warwick, including Raleigh. Carmen and Finn were there too, sort of standing out amongst the others because of the fact I knew they weren't like these people. Carmen had put on a sort of tough face though, as if to better fit in. She noticed me and gave me a little nod but didn't allow herself to smile. I guessed that was appropriate considering the circumstances of this meeting. Everyone was arguing at varying volumes and our entrance didn't stop them in the slightest. In fact it seemed like Carmen was the only one who noticed us at all. Not even Finn looked our way. I seriously felt like I didn't belong there.
It was impossible not to eavesdrop on what was being said but it was also nearly impossible to understand what the fuck anyone was talking about, "Well we can't just sit here and wait for them to-"
"-We aren't staging a counterattack, we don't have the firepower or manpower to-"
"-You're saying you don't want to retaliate for this?! We lost dozens of people out there, and if-"
"-Who the fuck attacked us?!" Red piped up at a volume far surpassing everyone else's, wanting to be heard. She sounded really mad and I understood that emotion. I was kinda pissed off too. I mean, if Raleigh knew that something like this was even slightly capable of happening, he should've told people. Hell, who knows how many lives that might've saved if the others had just gotten a bit more of a heads-up?
A silence spread around after her words. What, were we both just like super out of the loop? I mean, yeah, compared to everyone else in the room we were the newbies, but still. We'd been there for a pretty good while, shouldn't we know that such a large-scale, devastating attack could occur? Had this happened before? No... no, judging by the reactions of people like Finn, who had been there a long time, I doubted this was something they'd dealt with before.
Finally, after a very lingering, bordering on awkward pause, one of the more taciturn stocky dudes in the room piped up in a voice that almost shook the ground at our feet it was so deep, "Fireflies."
What? Seriously? I had sort of assumed it was like, bandits or something – people that wanted to raid us for our supplies, not an organized, established group of actually trained in combat people with real guns and real explosives. No wonder it was such a goddamn massacre out there, the Fireflies were the real deal, and we were just scrounging up whatever we could find from abandoned buildings or cars on the road.
Honestly, I wasn't an expert on what the Fireflies were even about. All I knew was that the soldiers didn't like them, and they didn't like the soldiers. Back at the Q.Z there were a few little skirmishes that I can remember, but I didn't actually see any firsthand. The soldiers called them "rebels", and that's one of the more PG-rated names they tended to use. They had an ultimate goal that I didn't remember because I just didn't care, but Red knew more about them than I did. She had been friends with a few. They weren't bad people, I knew that much, I mean the soldiers were dicks so I totally understand why you'd want to pump them with lead or blow them up. So then why on earth were they attacking a little settlement of survivors just trying to get by? We didn't have like, endless caches of food all over the damn place, especially not now – in Winter. We had virtually nothing that they would want, from what I could see at least, so what the hell?
I was glad to see that Red was just as baffled as I was, "Why the fuck are the Fireflies attackin' us?! They're political, they go fer and G.I Joes, not places like this!" Now that she mentioned it, I had heard of some Firefly uprisings actually overtaking entire . They were really a force to be reckoned with and I most certainly did not want to get involved in any sort of conflict with them. Unfortunately, I had a feeling that I was inadvertently their enemy just because I lived in Warwick.
Finn took a step closer to her, looking a bit apologetic. Why would he be apologetic? Did he know this might happen too? "This isn't the first um... altercation we've had with the Fireflies, Red." Before she could express her confusion, which I'm sure she still had because mine hadn't faded at all, Finn kept talking, "But this is definitely the first time they've actually gotten through the walls-"
"-And the first time they've taken hostages." Hopkins interrupted him mid-sentence. Finn had sounded like his ultimate goal was to calm Red down a bit and ease her prominent nerves, but Hopkins seemed like he just wanted to get all of the information out there so we could process it all at once instead of in pieces. I wasn't sure which person's efforts I agreed with or appreciated more.
Red was so instantaneously distraught. It was unlike I'd ever seen her before as she turned her full attention to Hopkins, "Fuckin' what?! Hostages?! What- they- why- what?!" I understood why she seemed so scared. With Clarice being missing and having not seen her body anywhere amongst the corpses, the only plausible option was that she had been taken hostage.
This concept was absolutely preposterous to me. So, the Fireflies, an organized group of militarily trained people with a real political agenda, decided to risk their own troops to ambush a small settlement of struggling survivors, mow down a bunch of them with assault rifles, and grab a few to keep as hostages? Why?
Despite being nervous and feeling awkwardly out of place amongst all of these people who had pulls or history with the community, my impossibility to comprehend this was so frustrating I needed to just straight up ask. I took a step forward and forced my voice to be firm, "What the hell are their motives behind taking hostages?"
A response to my question was surprisingly enough pretty immediate, from a slightly frightening woman with large facial scars near the corner of the room, "They wanna push Raleigh's buttons."
I had sort of forgotten that Raleigh was there at all, but he was, just remaining quiet and looking kind of indifferent to everything that was being argued about. When this woman spoke up, though, his head whipped in her direction and he shot her an intense death glare, one that even startled me.
Thankfully, his attempted intimidation didn't faze her and she provided more information, "What?" She briefly addressed him before looking back at me, "They've got a vendetta against him. And hell, he's got one on 'em too. It's cute, they match." In any other scenario I would've allowed myself to smirk slightly at this woman trying to squeeze humor into this discussion, but the nearly unreal levels of stress in me made that impossible.
"Kim." Raleigh finally spoke up. It sort of sounded like he was scolding an impudent child, although it was still sort of scary how mad he seemed. I'd never really seen him mad.
Personally, I wasn't sure what to do with this information. For one, I still had a lot of questions, like why this hatred even existed or why they hadn't tried to diffuse this situation for the safety of Warwick. I also got some answers though, like how I'd always wonder why those groups of people left armed to the teeth and came back wounded or not at all – they were probably off fighting some Fireflies somewhere. And my mind briefly flashed back to when we had first entered Warwick and I noticed those bullet holes on the walls that confused me. It was presumably the aftermath of some Firefly assault.
Red, however, seemed to know just what to do with this information.
Surprising everyone in the room, myself included, Red stormed up to Raleigh and got right in his face with a fearsome glare, nearly baring her teeth she was so enraged, "You shouldn't make other people get involved with this bullshit if its your own personal vendetta! It's personal cuz only you have to fuckin' deal with it, stop draggin' everyone else in to get hurt, taken hostage, or even killed you asshole!"
Since Red didn't seem scared at all, I was scared enough for the both of us.
An extremely tense silence followed Red's impromptu rant, one that made my shoulders feel weighted. I held my breath for a reason I wasn't sure of. I didn't know Raleigh as well as Red or Finn, but I knew that you shouldn't mess with him. Red hated authority figures and I don't think that mindset had left her at that point. Also, I knew she was just fueled by overwhelming concern for her cousin. But nobody else did.
Raleigh's face showed no signs of any emotion, anger included, so that was good at least. When I glanced at Finn, his eyes were so wide with terror I was worried they may fall out of his skull. He kept looking frantically between Raleigh and Red, neither of whom had moved an inch, almost like he expected one to pounce on the other at any second. Everyone else in the room kinda had the same expression, which was unnerving.
Surprisingly, Red was the next one to speak again, and she literally asked her question through clenched teeth, "Where. Is. Clarice?"
Raleigh seemed more than unfazed by this entire situation, it was like he was made of stone. Since he evidently wasn't going to answer, Carmen spoke up instead, not wanting to see an all out fist-fight like I felt was about to happen, "Little Clarie?" She asked politely. Were they friends or something? Red glanced at her and nodded frantically, "I saw her get snagged. They grabbed both of the people on wall duty, I think it was her and-" She halted her words when Red just spun around and headed straight out the door. I quickly followed, eager to get out anyways.
Once we got outside and weren't in view of everyone else, Red let her real emotions show through. She started to seriously panic, worrying me greatly. She kept trying to talk but she was just incoherent and jumbled, which just seemed to dismay her even more.
"Hey hey hey," I tried to soothe her by making my voice sound reassuringly steady, since one of us needed to be stable and it certainly wasn't her at that moment. Thankfully it caught her attention a bit. I gently grabbed both of her hands to sort of hold her in place, because she kept pacing in odd semicircles as she fretted, "It's okay. We'll figure all of this out. Remember what you said? The Fireflies are political, they wouldn't get anything out of hurting Clarice." I told her slowly.
Even in more dysfunctional states like she was in then, Red was very reasonable and she was genuinely listening to what I said. It seemed to calm her a little bit. She exhaled audibly and was already getting it together, "You're right, I just..." She shook her head back and forth and stared down at her feet, "...I don't know how to go 'bout this. I mean, I've gotta get her, but where is she? And I can't go in alone, I-"
"-I'll come with you." She locked eyes with me, "We'll get her out of there, I promise." My words meant a lot to her, I could tell just by the look on her face.
She opened her mouth to respond but stopped short when the post office door was opened up. Five people trailed out in single-file: Finn, Carmen, that woman named Kim, Hopkins, and lastly, Raleigh himself. I released my loose grip on Red and turned to fully face all of them.
Raleigh still sported absolutely no emotion on his face whatsoever, even as he spoke, "The sun's setting. Once it does, talk to Finn at the bar. He'll debrief you on what's going on. You're both coming." He started to walk off, followed by Hopkins and Kim.
I had one prominent question though, and I turned around and called it out before he could get out of earshot, "What're we doing?"
He merely glanced over his shoulder at me, "They attack us at our home base? Fine. The least we could do is return the favor."