Don't Quit Your Day Job

She figured she was dead - or should be dead – because it just wasn't right that her entire body hurt again. Breathing was starting to come back slowly and Jayne wondered how long it had taken her. The light-headed feeling could have been from the booze, the days on half-rats, or the strange certainty that she'd just seen Cahill below her. But at the moment, she had no control over any of her limbs and wasn't about to chase after a ghost.

"Is she alive?" Came a tentative voice from about five feet away. "I…I think she looks worse than me. Is that possible, Riley? That someone could look worse than me?"

"Yeah, Charlie. It's possible."

Jayne groaned then and tried to lift herself up. It wasn't solid ground underneath her, that was probably the only reason she'd survived the fall. As she realized that she'd landed on a carpet of dead zombies, well, she started cursing inside her head and before long she'd started on a general rant about the unpleasantness of the world as she pulled herself out of the rotting putrid mass of flesh.

"Is it friendly?" Came another more sarcastic voice.

She used one hand to smear something pulpy and entirely too mushy off of her face and tried to focus on the group arrayed around her. None of them moved to help. Considering the amount of gore that plopped off of her as she stood, Jayne wasn't sure she wanted to touch herself either.

Four men and one woman watched her with hooded eyes. Obviously they weren't about to take any chances on her. Weapons were close at every hand.

The man closest to her was blond, tall, and handsome in a sad serious way and to his immediate rear was a horribly scarred man, tissue warped all across one side of his face. He was tall and scarecrow thin as though he never got quite enough to eat. Jayne assigned the voice with questions to him, somehow it felt right, and continued to assess the group around her. The woman stood between the two groups of men, blond and pretty if you could discount the cold way that she looked at Jayne.

It was as her gaze passed over to the last two men that she felt the hammer punch strike her in the chest again. The first man was Hispanic with a slightly off-center smile smoking a cigarette as he watched her in amusement. Her eyes traveled down towards the unconventional weapon he carried on one leg and just for a moment she smiled in response. He'd modified a harpoon gun and she was curious as to how it would perform in action.

But it was the last man who caught and stole her attention. It was Cahill, years younger, but she couldn't believe the similarity. Black hair, a somewhat imposing nose and eyes that locked onto her with a combination of mirth and disgust. He wore full motorcycle leathers and had one hip cocked high as he stood with one boot resting on a pile of dead bodies.

"You know me?" He asked.

"I don't…" Jayne didn't know where to begin. "Are you…"

"What are you trying to ask?" The blond inserted. "You're Sgt. Canton? Right? We intercepted your call three days ago and came to help."

"I'm just." Jayne suddenly wobbled and sat down back onto the mess of bodies. "I'm – I've just seen a ghost."

"A ghost?" Charlie asked Riley. "But there's no such thing as ghosts."

"Not a literal one." She answered sadly. "He's…" Her hand shot out to cut the biker out from the crowd. "I knew Dan Cahill."

The biker's mouth dropped open and a bit of the tough veneer melted. "My father."

"Then who the hell are you?" She spat out.

"Blades." He patted the machete holstered on one leg. "You knew him?" The emphasis was on the verb and Jayne slowly nodded, her eyes never leaving this man.

"Yeah, I knew him."

"So the old bastard's dead?"

"Yes." The word took all of the energy Jayne had left and sucked it right out of her. She gave up and leaned back against the ground. The sky hung a vivid blue above her and she was suddenly so very tired. "I could really use a shower."

The team from Pittsburgh took over a small hotel in efficient fashion. Although no one really enjoyed the thought of staying in an unsecured location for very long, zombies were always drawn to live meat, they'd all been on the road for over twenty-four hours. Men went over their bikes with a keen eye for damage and gas cans were passed around the entire group. And inside the hotel, drivers caught naps as Jayne discovered to her joy that while the lack of electricity removed any hope of a hot shower, the water was still pumping fine.

It took her almost twenty minutes of scrubbing to get the biggest chunks off of her and another ten of solid soaping before she felt moderately clean.

The guard she'd been given was a nervous Charlie who stood just outside the door of the bathroom looking uncomfortable. They weren't sure they trusted her yet and Jayne wasn't sure of the opposite. The team had come because Kaufman, the man they answered to, wanted to know if Jayne could give them access to more of the military bases in the area. The only one she had access to was Area 13 and she wasn't sure that they'd survive the trip there and back again. She wasn't sure which place would be the greater evil, although Rhodes had really been making a run for the money. Pittsburgh sounded better than the other options, but only because they were missing out on the joy of mad scientists.

So she stepped out of the bathroom wrapped in the hotel towel and was surprised to see Charlie blush and drop his eyes away from her.

"Hey," she told him softly. "Don't quit your day job."

He turned redder if that was possible. "I'm still guarding you. I'm just not – just not looking at you right now. Partly because I can't tell if you're nice to look at."

She laughed despite herself. God knew he was right. Jayne had never realized how many bruises a person could have and still be alive. Here and there she could find a patch of clear skin, but most of them were more private than she was going to let a stranger see.

"These should be your size." The blond woman walked through the open door and tossed a set of clothes on the bed. "Stores in this town are for shit. Hope this works."

"You've been out in town?" Jayne asked as she picked up the clothes.

"It worked out pretty well." The other woman answered. "Most of the walkers were drawn to you and it wasn't a big town to begin with. Usually we have to come in at night and work on a schedule." She extended one hand to Jayne. "Name's Pretty Boy."

"Jayne."

They shook and Jayne scooped up the clothes. As she changed in the bathroom she realized that the woman had done her a huge favor. What was left of her clothing wouldn't be made sanitary with a few washings. It needed to be burned, or tossed off a high cliff. Jayne didn't even want to touch the trash bag she'd tossed it in, it was that covered with bodily fluids and chunks of exploded flesh.

Instead she found herself in civilian clothes for the first time in a long time. Jeans, an unflattering black top, and finally a sweater that cut the chill of the day better than she imagined. It had been so long since Jayne was clean and warm that she luxuriated in the feeling for a moment.

But as she emerged from the bathroom a second time, her guard had changed. The man who'd identified himself to her as Blades was sitting on one bed waiting for her.

"My name is Jamie Cahill, but I go by Blades." He said to her. "So how did you know the bastard?"

"He never said he had a son."

"I sure he didn't say a lot of things." A wicked grin. "He was the Sheriff. I'm more of the black sheep of the family. I ran with a big gang before the end of everything and he never liked to admit that he couldn't control me like he controlled the town."

She'd never found Cahill to be controlling but only because he'd been in charge. They'd needed someone to run the refugees inside of the Big Rock and Jayne had counted on him because of that strength.

"You liked him." Blades said it in a way that wasn't a question and gave a wry laugh. "So how'd he go?"

"He fell out of a helicopter during a rescue op. The dead got him."

"So he's not really dead."

"No," she said softly. "He is. I went out and put two bullets in his head. I had promised him that much. We had promised each other to take care of things if it ever came to that. I just never thought that I would lose so much while doing it." CJ's name was on her lips but she stopped herself.

"We've got a problem." She jumped. Riley had entered the room while she was lost in thought and she was startled by how scattered she'd become. Ever since Cahill died she'd had trouble with focus, but as he continued to speak, all of her focus came storming back to the front of her mind.

"The only person answering at your base is a man named Rhodes. He says that you're dead and the rest of the people up there are jailed for sedition."

"Jailed? I'm going to fucking kill him." She lunged to her feet as Blades shot one hand out and grabbed her elbow.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"You want weapons?" Jayne snarled back at him. "More than you'll ever be able to carry? Reloads for that beast of a rocket launcher, grenades, small arms ammunition. We've got it all."

"Where?"

"Sitting right underneath the bastard you just talked to."

"And he's just going to give it to us?" Riley asked.

"Hell, no. We're going to take it."