DampishPoet 'fans' xD sure fam. And god I hope Quinn does that soon too.
Quinn didn't remember a lot of the previous night, not after Nick had the idea to churn up a cactus and eat it. Quinn remembered it tasted disgusting, and didn't quench their thirst at all, and that the needles stuck them in places needles should never stick anybody, but once the vomiting began, everything became strange and terrible. Hye was there. She called them "WILD THING!" like in that bedtime story Quinn used to be afraid of. And Quinn yelled back, "I'LL EAT YOU UP!" and then they went where the wild things are. The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.
"And now," cried Quinn, "let the wild rumpus start!"
Only, after a while, Quinn didn't want to be there anymore.
Oh, please don't go! the wild things cried. We'll eat you up—we love you so!
And Quinn said, "No!"
The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws but Quinn waved good-bye and stumbled away in and out of time, for hours, through weeks and months and years, until they washed up cold and burning and hungry and nauseous at the foot of an old, run-down truck, under the blazing sun, in the middle of the desert.
Nick was passed out beside them, dried puke around his mouth and something suspiciously brown in his hair. Quinn's legs felt queasy when they tried to stand. Their backpack was gone. Nick's too. All lost.
They would have thought about this for a lot longer, had it not been that moment when Quinn realised them and Nick were not alone. Two dogs were prowling. Roaring their terrible roars and gnashing their terrible teeth. The moment Quinn tried to smack Nick awake, the dog lunged forward at Nick's foot. Quinn searched desperately, and by some divine holy intervention, found their aluminium baseball bat sitting under the truck behind them. They grabbed it and swung it and metal connected to dog-shoulder and there was a howl and a growl and a bark. Quinn swung again, hit a leg, and the dog backed off, but Quinn wasn't fast enough to stop the second dog from ripping deep into Nick's calf. He had a rock, bashing it in the side, but it finally let go when Quinn sent aluminium through its spine.
Nick grabbed them then, shoving them up onto the roof of the truck. The first dog bit and leapt after their heels and the second dog limped a bit but was well enough to bark from the ground. Nick and Quinn knelt on the roof, exhausted and terrified and trying to think what to do.
They heard the moaning in the distance, infected attracted to all the noise. The dogs ran for them immediately. They bit into arms and tore through throats but quickly the geeks overpowered them. Nick was smiling. Quinn just tried to catch their breath.
They waited on the roof for a while. If they waited long enough, the geeks would wonder off. They knew the guts from yesterday had sweated off by now, so they weren't safe to simply climb down and keep walking yet. Only, as Nick sat up to look at his wounds, he knocked some rocks off the roof and they clattered down across the truck bonnet.
"Oh no..."
Heads turned and Quinn's chest fell out of their asshole. Nick put his head down and preyed. And then a horn blared. And there was gunfire in the distance. And the geeks turned and ambled away.
Nick sat up. Quinn helped him climb down. He still staggered to the ground in a heap. He crawled on hands and knees to the dog carcasses. Quinn'd retrieved their bat and followed him. The meat was torn into, but still edible (hopefully), so the two dug in on the parts that weren't too bit up.
One stray geek who couldn't walk, and was crawling, had noticed them and come back. Quinn tapped Nick's shoulder to get him to look at it. Nick rushed for it, still on his hands and knees, and pulled its belt from its jeans, then returned to Quinn and made them tie the belt tight above his wound. Quinn was about to take care of the geek but Nick stopped them.
"No, we don't need to kill it," he said. "Just hold it down while I get the mess." Quinn glared, gritted their teeth, but did as they were told and knelt on the geek's shoulder-blades while Nick did his thing.
"Don't you mean sun screen?" they asked bitterly, and Nick laughed, rubbing thigh gunk over his face and arms and shirt. He smeared Quinn, too. When they were both done, Quinn let the geek go and jumped back out of its reach, then picked up their bat and helped Nick to walk.
"No," he whispered. "You can't be too close. Not while we're in the herd."
Quinn stopped, the crawling geek snarling a few feet away.
"In the herd?"
Hours later, they were still with the herd, walking like they were part of it. Quinn figured their newly-junky hip was good for keeping up the act, but after long enough the pain was just miserable. It also didn't help when Nick started muttering under his breath—Quinn was sure last nights' psychedelic experience hadn't yet worn off of him; he'd managed to stomach a lot more than Quinn could. Quickly, Quinn kicked a rock at Nick's foot and he snapped out of it.
After another few hours, they heard honking and a car engine, like before. They recognised the truck immediately. La Manas. Sunglasses and Big Guy stepped out, while Tall-and-Muscly took aim from inside the jeep. They opened fire across the herd. Quinn flinched. Nick took their wrist. He just took it and held them in his hand, just like that, while all around them bodies dropped like sacks of bricks.
Sunglasses noticed them both after a few moments after he'd emptied his magazine. He stared at Nick and Quinn and recognised where he'd last seen them, and as he reloaded, his fingers slipped and stumbled and his shells scattered across the cement. He wasn't fast enough to set it all up again. One geek tore into him, then another, and another ten buried into Big Guy.
Quinn and Nick watched.
La Madas screamed. Except one, Tall-and-Muscly. He got away in his jeep. But the others. Nick and Quinn crowded around and waited while the herd feasted, until they were done, and they kept walking.
Soon, Nick grew weak. His leg was swollen. He needed rest. There was nothing Quinn could do while Nick slacked behind the herd and eventually collapsed, except stay with him, which they did. They sat with him all night, right there, as he slept and they cried and he slept some more. And then it began to rain. To really rain. Right from the sky as if God was crying. Nick woke up to the drench on his face and began drinking it from the air. Quinn, too. They drank and they laid down and they soaked in all the wet, and it charged them up like they were attached to a plug.
Come morning, Nick's leg wasn't doing any better but he was in higher spirits. The got to walking again, and before long, found a small, deserted town, passed an apartment building with howling dogs on the banisters, and a little further on, a store, with a big arrow saying something Spanish on it except for the big, orange: DRUGS.
They both looked inside, but found nothing. Quinn knew it was rude to ask Nick what exactly he was looking for, or at least they knew that no matter how they asked it, it would come out offensive, so they kept their mouth shut.
Finally, in a dead barber shop, similar to how Quinn remembered Daniel's, Nick snatched some duck-tape and pliers and used them to wrap up his leg.
Quinn heard footsteps. They spun around and saw a woman standing in the doorway. She was tall, her skin light brown (and blood smeared), her hair dark and tied back, and a machine gun in her arms.
The woman stepped inside the store, weary. Quinn lowered their bat and let her approach because she hadn't threatened them yet, which they appreciated. Nick had his arms up. The woman looked at them both, then Nick. She said something in Spanish. Then one of the two men who'd followed her inside said something else.
"Infectado?"
"No, no, no, no, no," Nick said. "No, no infectado. It's a dog. A dog! Um..."
"Perro," Quinn said—they liked dogs so could remember that, at least. And, come to think of it, after this morning they weren't sure they liked dogs at all anymore. Regardless, they had the right word.
"Perro!" Nick said. The woman kneeled down and examined his wound. "Um, por favor?" Nick asked. "Agua?"
She motioned to her men and they handed over a silver flask. Quinn drank first, just a little, then handed to Nick. He took a few gulps and then the woman took the flask back from him.
She said something to them both in Spanish—Quinn didn't get it, but understood what she meant as she left and said, "Vamos."
Notes
The stuff at the beginning was taken almost directly from the children's book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (which I studied last week in YA class). And no, I don't know what a 'wild rumpus' is.
Also, oh my fuck, the finale! Fuck.
Happy reading.