Gasping for Life
Those Hard to Kill Habits
Shane knew exactly what Blair was doing when she declared that they were going to be walking together, Titan trotting just ahead of Blair at all times. He wasn't a fool. The Scot didn't trust him one bit, and he knew that it was largely in part to do with what had happened on Hershel's porch when she'd first arrived at the farm.
He could feel her eyes following him, the stormy, gunmetal-blue tracking each of his moves whenever he was within her view. It was a surprisingly familiar feeling; it reminded him of his academy days with Rick, when they'd always had someone breathing down their necks and marking each move they made before they were allowed out in the field.
King Country may have been a small town, but the old guys that came before them weren't about to hand the reigns off to just anyone. Blair having come from a military family and serving her own time, she was probably a hell of a lot more acute with her attentions than the old cops he and Rick eventually replaced. And for someone to have reached the level of Gunnery Sergeant, she would have to have amazing leadership skills and almost terrifying knowledge of weapons.
The rasp of a walker cut through his thoughts, directing Shane's attention over to where Titan had stopped walking. The dog's warning had been so low, he hadn't even heard it. But the mutt was on alert and Blair was already pulling one of her machetes from the sheaths on her back. Most of the time the people of his group went at a walker with excessive aggressiveness—especially Andrea, he'd come to notice.
Blair barely batted an eye as she swung her machete from above, down at an angle so the side of the walker's head was sliced off completely.
She'd turned to leave before it even hit the ground.
"Good boy," she praised when she approached Titan again, holding the soiled machete away from the mutt as she scratched at his ears with her free hand. "That's a good lad." Titan preened at the attention, furry tail swishing from side to side excitedly as he basked in the attention. Turning to Shane again, she met his eyes for only a moment before beginning to walk in the direction they had been heading originally. Titan fell in step beside her this time, on the opposite side of her still drawn machete, and neither seemed to give a damn about Shane's eyes on them.
"You play well with others, Sergeant?" Shane suddenly asked from behind her, drawing Blair to glance over her shoulder briefly before she turned her attention forward again.
"That's Gunnery Sergeant to you, officer." Her flippant dismissal of his question caused Shane's jaw to lock, but he knew better than to try for her again. So, instead, he turned his vigilance to the area around them so that no walkers could sneak up on his ass. He was already carrying one container of fuel that they'd been able to fill up, with the hopes of getting a second one before they had to turn back to meet with Daryl and T-Dog.
Blair's senses were very sharp, to the point that she was usually only a few seconds behind Titan with hearing a walker coming from somewhere nearby.
"So, Shane, will the relationship between you, Rick and Lori make things difficult for everyone else, or not?" she called over her shoulder after a brief silence, carefully checking around the side of the house they were passing as she did so. "Because there are a lot more people to think about than you three, and I don't need your shit to deal with, too."
Shane glared at the back of her head until she suddenly stopped and turned to face him, any softness or mirth usually in her expression completely absent.
"Well?"
"I don't have to answer to you," he snapped back in annoyance, approaching her in four long strides. However, the attempt at intimidation didn't work with Blair, as she simply offered a sneer and stepped closer to him until they were toe to toe, eye to eye.
"Is that what you think?" she questioned in a tone that bordered on teasing. "Here? Maybe not, not with any ground to stand on at least, but if you come with the rest of us to my base, with my family, you can be damn sure that you'll answer to me. And if not me, my brother." Tipping her head to the side as a snide, condescending smile touched her lips, Blair could see the irritation and anger welling up inside him. His eyes told no lies; he absolutely hated her. "You might have come across as some kind of…protector and noble leader with a group who can't protect themselves, but that ends. Now."
Stepping back from him, she put enough space between so she could lift the machete still in her hand, coated in the blood of the walker, and pointed it directly at his chest.
"What're you gunna do, huh?" Shane taunted back, the moment between them a battle of subtle strength and physical prowess. She held the machete with a still hand, the blade not even trembling against the threat to her person; and he held firm in the face of that danger. She had to silently applaud him for that; he didn't back down easily. It was something that she could respect from another person, especially after her line of work.
"Nothing, if you keep in line. But don't doubt for a second that I won't make the hard choice if it comes down to it." The sharp tip of the machete touched his chest to further prove her point. "You're not gunna like what happens when you step on the wrong toes."
Pulling back, Blair removed the blade from against his chest and flashed a fake, media worthy smile.
"But, like I said, nothing to worry about if you keep in line." As abruptly as their weird, threatening conversation started, she turned it around on its head in an instant. "Come on, that car looks locked up and intact." Striding away from him, her mutt followed loyally. However, there was slowness to his gate as he seemed to glare at Shane on his way passed him.
Growling in irritation, he could do no more than trail after the two of them toward a Toyota that looked better than most of the cars they'd seen so far. All of the windows were intact and the paint wasn't even scratched. "Even if this thing has gas, what're we gunna put it in?"
"Plenty of garages around here; there's gotta be someone who has another container," Blair responded, glancing around at the houses in the close vicinity. "Probably skip over any that are open, usually means that whatever was inside has already been raided."
"Thought you stuck to forests?"
"Not many canned goods or other supplies found in the trees, Shane. I avoided roads, doesn't mean I don't know where to look for supplies." Blair didn't even wait for Shane to try and make another snarky remark about her way of travelling, and instead began toward the house across the street that had the garage door closed.
Thankfully it wasn't an automatic, so she just had to grab the handle in the middle of the door and pull to lift it. She made sure to only lift a couple of inches and give Titan the time to sniff the exposed space. When he showed no signs of picking up on a walker, she hauled the door open entirely. Shane stepped up behind her before he completely recoiled, the stench of rotting bodies almost causing Blair to gag while covering her nose with her forearm.
Hanging from one of the support beams further back, a man and a woman dangled from thick cords of rope they had wrapped around their necks. Blair narrowed her eyes against the sting that accompanied the burning smell, looking over the decomposing, shrivelled bodies. They hadn't tightened the cord in the correct place, so they didn't die quickly.
"They did it wrong," she mumbled quietly, lowering her arm as the open door helped to air it out quickly.
The man beside her looked from the bodies to her, suspicion on his gaze. "What?"
Blair glanced back at Shane briefly. "They hung themselves wrong; it just cut off their air supply—that's a slow way to go. Hanging yourself, you'd want to break the bone, make it quick."
Shane recoiled slightly at her blunt way of speaking, but he also knew that she was telling the truth. He'd heard about it before, he knew that she was right, even if it was something morbid to point out. Turning back to her previous task, she stepped over some of the junk that littered the ground toward the back corner of the garage, picking up the bright red gas container that he had yet to even notice.
She had indifference toward the dead, it seemed.
It wasn't that she didn't care about what happened to people, he could see the remorse in her eyes at the sight of two more people who'd given up, but she must have seen enough of it that she no longer batted an eye.
"Let's go," she ordered as she walked passed him, machete in one hand with the empty container in the other. Shane stared after her for a moment before he pulled the garage door back down—hopefully there was be some supplies they could find when they came back with vehicles.
Titan walked in a wide arc around her, keeping vigil even as Blair let her guard down just enough to kneel by the side of the truck to prepare siphoning out the fuel. Shane stood a couple yards back, keeping vigil around their location, just in case her dog missed anything. Their first container of fuel sat at his feet, freeing his hand as he held his shotgun with both. Blair didn't seem rusty as she siphoned the gas, her motions filled with ease with what she was doing. One machete remained drawn, lying on the ground next to her foot so it was easily accessible.
"We're running out of time," Shane called over to her, keeping his voice low enough that it wasn't going to draw attention to them. His eyes lingered on the lowering sun, nearly reaching the tops of the trees.
"We'll head back to meet with the guys after this," she proposed, pulling the tube from the tank and knocking as much as possible into the container.
Titan suddenly whined low, hunkering down as he bared his fangs. Blair's head snapped in the direction his nose pointed, but her eyes picked up nothing and no sound reached her ears. Shane, too, went on alert and raised his gun as his eyes darted along the trees in an attempt to see why the dog was giving warning. "Why's he doin' that?" he asked quietly, stepping in closer to Blaire as she picked up her machete and slowly rose.
"That means biters," she answered just as quietly. Titan stopped growling, but he remained with his hackles high and took small steps backward, in Blair's direction.
However, neither of them could see the biter that had apparently caught Titan's attention. Blair finally moved forward, motioning Titan to stay back and quiet, and approached the trees cautiously. Shane remained where he was, gun raised to fire—if Blair didn't know that she was in the path of that bullet, it was all the same to him.
Faster than he anticipated, Blair spun around with her machete and sliced through the head of a walker that he hadn't even seen emerging from around a cluster of trees, the largest of the trunks masking it from his sights. The top half of the walker's head hit the ground and rolled in a spray of blood, further coating her machete with coagulating death.
Titan sniffed carefully, but he eventually relaxed as Blair leaned down to wipe the blood from her machete on the walker's clothing. "All that for one," she mumbled, turning back to retrieve the container. "At least it waited until I was finished."
Shane scoffed, but he lowered his gun and turned to head in the direction of the meeting place, bending to pick up his container.
"Stop."
Blair's head whipped around so fast she was sure her neck as likely to snap, her eyes landing on the man that had emerged from behind a nearby building, a small revolved trained on Shane, but moving over to point at her a moment later. "Gotta be fuckin-"
"Shut up!" the man interrupted Shane, training the gun back on him. Blair's eyes narrowed as she watched the man's overly twitchy movements—it reminded her of an addict who'd been too long without a fix. "Put down the fuel, and your weapons," he ordered shakily. He was sweating and pale; she was half-certain that if he fired that gun he'd miss them anyway, with the way that his hands were shaking.
Blair, unable to do anything, put the container and machete down as she glanced over to Shane. He growled low in irritation, but he couldn't do much else with a gun—shaking or not—trained on his head. So, he placed his gun at his feet as well.
"All of them!" the man shrieked, continuing to wave his gun. Blair sneered at the sound, but pulled her other machete free and lowered it down as well, letting the metal clatter down onto the cracking pavement. Shane pulled the spare handgun from the belt of his pants and put that at his feet as well. Blair's eyes flicked down to the handgun, keeping her hands lifting at waist height to give an impression of complacency.
Shane was only a couple of feet in front of her, the distance between her and the gun was shorter than her height. The man's eyes were directed at the canister she'd just filled from the car's tank, just to her left where she'd put it down. As he was distracted from them, his thoughts straying and his already scattered attention shifting further, the gun in his hand dipped slightly to the side—it was only a few inches, but it was enough that it wouldn't hit Shane if he fired.
Looking to the ex-cop, she could see the faintest bend in his knees as he prepared to crouch quickly in hopes of retrieving one of his guns.
She didn't give him the chance.
Lunging forward, the man before them was so startled with the action that his finger squeezed the trigger and the gun went off with a bang that echoed throughout the surrounding area. Blair knew that meant walkers and the others of the group would hear it. Her hand closed around the discarded handgun, one hand snapping the safety out of position while the other cradled the weapon with practiced ease and raised it as she simultaneously went down to one knee hard.
The second gunshot had Shane ducking on instinct, grabbing his shotgun as he hit the ground.
Blair could feel the immediate throb of her knee, knowing that her pants were more than likely torn from skidding on the concrete. The man's gun clattered to the ground before his body crumbled like a puppet with no strings, blood oozing from the remains of his right eye—where there was very little left of an eye. A long, slow exhale escaped Blair as her shoulders, once locked tight, were forced to relax while her hand continued to clutch the handgun in a death-grip.
Shane looked over his shoulder with wide eyes, the shotgun left unnecessary in his hands, and met with the gunmetal blue of Blair's eyes. "What the fuck?"
"It would have been too slow to grab your shotgun," she answered honestly. Her tone was like ice, lacking any of the minimal emotion she showed around him to that point. In that instant, Shane could see the soldier that had been trained and conditioned ruthlessly. She stood up fluidly, robotically, and snapped the safety back into place before she grabbed the barrel of the gun and held it out to him, handgrip first.
Shane's eyes darted from her eyes to the gun, hesitating as he looked at it in her pale hand.
Before he could grab the gun from her, the sound of running footsteps had him turning back around with his shotgun raised. However, he quickly removed his finger from the trigger when he spotted Daryl and T-Dog rushing from around one of the further houses, their own weapons drawn as they followed the sounds of gunshots.
Blair relaxed just a bit more before she placed the gun on the ground, still kneeling as she was, and turned to retrieve her knives. Titan was lying flat on the ground, his eyes looking up at her in silent question. The second the first gunshot had gone off, he'd dropped to the ground as low as he could get and remained that way until Blair motioned for him to stand. He'd jumped toward her, sniffing at her face while she combed her fingers through the fur at his shoulders.
The smallest of whines were coming from him, clearing sensing that something wasn't right with the woman he faithfully followed everywhere, and it broke Blair's heart to know that she was the cause. "It's alright, lad. It's alright."
"What the hell happened?" T-Dog snapped as he and Daryl spotted the dead man lying across the pavement.
"Tried to rob us at gun point," Shane explained as he bent to pick up the gun that Blair discarded. "Didn't work out so well for him."
T-Dog was carrying a similar container to Blair's, though slightly larger, and Daryl had what appeared to be a dead rabbit hanging at his hip. Blair didn't spare them much thought as she picked up their own gasoline and shook away the hair which had fallen into her face. "We should get back," she started blandly. "That'll have drawn in walkers." T-Dog looked ready to protest, but Blair walked passed him and Daryl without another word. The latter of the two noticed the bloodstain that was now marring her pants, the tear in the fabric not having been there when they'd split up. Titan trotted alongside her, much closer than he had when they were walking to the town.
The large black man looked to Shane. "How the hell did you manage to shoot the guy holding you at gun point?" he asked incredulously, motioning to the dead body as Daryl retrieved the revolver while he kept a discrete eye on Blair's quickly shrinking figure.
"I didn't," Shane answered roughly, also watching Blair as he returned the handgun, safety still on, to his belt. "She did."
I am so sorry that I haven't updated this story in such a long time! I don't really have much of an excuse; I was just not so motivated to work on my Walking Dead stories lately. Hopefully that's changed!