Liz is driving when they head back out onto the road again. They start slowly, inching their way out of town – having to take their time carefully weaving their way in and out of various blockades; abandoned cars; potholes. It's a new landscape, one that none of them recognise. Nothing like the old roads they used to know.
There's a strange atmosphere inside the confines of the car, too. Patty sits contently in the back, next to Maka, giggling periodically. Nobody asks her what she's laughing at. Liz and Soul are making awkward conversation in the front seat, and Maka's mind is racing.
Maka herself opts for staring out the window in silence, hearing snippets while Liz and Soul attempt a conversation in the front seat. She tunes into it every now and then, but they're talking about jazz music and she doesn't quite understand. It's like… her brain can hear the words, but she can't quite seem to understand them. She should be thinking about their kiss, earlier. She should be obsessing about every detail, like a normal girl. She should be happy. It had been a good kiss; hell, amazing even.
But a strange feeling has come over her; her body and her brain, and she's not herself. Not remotely herself, even. Her fingers independently tremble on her legs as she struggles to make sense of her thoughts. It's jumbled, messy inside her mind.
She's just anxious, she tells herself.
There's a deep throbbing coming from her injured arm; one that she's not felt for a week or so since it started to heal.
"You think you could play, now? Like, have you forgotten?" Maka vaguely hears Liz ask, at one point. She can barely hear the sound of their voices over the sound of her own panting breath.
Panting… like a dog…
Is she hot?
She's temporarily distracted from her thoughts while Soul, in the front, hesitates before answering. "Uh… probably. It's not something you really forget," he answers, seeming a little embarrassed. "I wouldn't want to waste time with it anymore, though. And it's loud – it attracts attention." He shrugs, his eyes flitting up to look at Maka again through the rearview mirror. When he catches her staring out the window, sullenly, his brows knit together in a frown. He wonders if he'd crossed a line earlier, if she was somehow mad at him.
He opens his mouth to ask but as soon as he does, Liz is down his throat with more questions. He resolves to keep an eye out on her through the mirror.
Maka, oblivious, stares out the window, trying desperately to suppress whatever seems to be happening to her body and mind. She feels on the edge, despite being relatively safe. Her arm throbs numbly beneath the bandages and her throat closes up.
Was that it? Was it her arm? Her mind swirls with the possibility as she wonders if perhaps the water had gotten into the bandages and messed with her wound.
It can't be, she thinks. Soul's injury was more recent – and he was totally fine.
Although… hers had been a damn sight deeper.
Out the window, she focuses hard on a black blur which seems to be getting bigger in the distance. It's keeping up with the car's pace, she thinks absently. What the hell is that?
With a gasp of recognition, she realises that it's a black cat.
A black cat? Seriously?
It looked to the world like the very same one that she had been hallucinating back at her old place, before this whole journey had started out.
She frowns at it, and she swears that on it's face she can make out an almost imperceptible little grin.
Shudders travel through her shoulders and down her spinal cord.
In the front seat, Liz smiles, placated. "Well, I'd love to hear you someday. The way you talk about it is fascinating."
"It's a shame that my brother's dead. He's a violinist, one of the best in America," Soul boasts, allowing himself to feel just a little proud. Liz recoils in response to his blasé statement about his brother's death.
"You know he's dead for sure?" she asks, her voice soft.
Soul hesitates, and then nods. "Yeah," he swallows.
There's no more discussion of the matter. Liz tentatively coughs. "Well, it's a shame I never heard him play. I love the violin."
"Do you play?"
"I sing a little," Liz answers honestly. "But I'm not really smart enough to learn an instrument."
Soul shrugs. "I could probably teach you, if you really wanted."
She shrugs. "Maybe… once we get to this place in Nevada," she tells him, tightening her steely grip on the steering wheel.
Maka's heart thuds in her chest, wondering if there will be anyone alive in Nevada at all. She swallows the nausea rising in her stomach and tries her best to stay positive.
The cat is gone.
Hours tick by in the car.
Maka seems to drift in and out of consciousness for a little while, and loses track of the time., and when she wakes up, it's Liz next to her instead of Patty. Soul sits in the driver's seat while Patty and Liz continue to snore away, soundly napping.
"Soul," Maka hisses, looking around her at the scenery – mostly open roads and desert. "How close are we?"
"Couple hours more," he grimaces. "Are you okay?" he glances at her, a little concern on his face. "You look rough."
She doesn't answer that question. She doesn't want to think about it. "Do we have enough fuel?"
"I think so," he answers. His lack of surety sparks a further bout of anxiety in her heart.
"Well, do we have enough food? Water?"
"We're pretty low on both, honestly," he says. "We just need to get there, now. There'll be supplies at Shibusen."
"How are you so sure these guys are still alive?"
Soul shrugs. "Trust me, they'll be fine. I know… I know these guys."
Maka reaches between the gap between the seats and touches him on the forearm. "I don't… I don't feel that well, honestly." She admits. "I haven't for a few miles."
Soul stares hard at the hand that reached out and touched her for a second and his features burrow into a deep frown.
"Maka…" he stutters, slowing the car down. "Your arm."
She blinks twice; confused. Then it dawns on her that a strange, greenish brown substance is soaking through her bandaged arm. "O-oh," she says, quite faintly. "I guess that explains a lot."
Soul brings the car to a complete and total stop as he twists around, staring at Maka with an inscrutable expression on his face. He doesn't say anything; he doesn't have to. Internally, his mind is in overdrive.
Had her wound opened?
Was she infected?
Had... he infected her?
His face was white as a sheet. He hadn't thought about it until now. He hadn't even entertained the possibility that... that he could be a carrier. That he could be spreading the virus. He'd had no idea what his status was, except that he never showed any symptoms, beyond minor ones when he was first bitten.
He racks his brain, trying to think back to what had happened to him, when he was first exposed. A fever, sure. Maybe a headache.
He glances back at her, his heartbeat speeding up as he remember that the incubation period for the virus is around 20 days, give or take.
20 days, he thinks. Has it been 20 days? More? Less?
"Maka," he says slowly; quietly.
"Y-yes?" she looks up at him, terrified.
"Tell me how you are feeling." His voice is hard, rigid. Not quite angry, but something on the way there. Panicked, definitely.
"I feel… I feel drowsy. I feel ill. I want to vomit. Soul, I think I'm carsick. My arm hurts," her words come out in a jumble and Soul's heartbeat speeds up.
He yanks the handbrake on the car in an aggressive fashion and swings open the front door, running to the back in a sort of crazy sprint. When he opens the door, the first thing he does is ask her for her arm.
She presents it to him, still a little confused about what's got him so panicked. It must be the drowsiness, because she's having trouble keeping up.
He unwraps her bandages, which makes her wince a little, and then stares at the injury on her arm. "No, fuck…" he stares. It's infected, badly. It's a whitish green substance; the same thing that had happened to his bite wounds when he'd first been bitten. "It can't be..." he backs away, his mouth agape.
She almost laughs at his hysteria before she looks down at her arm, too. "Oh," is the only noise that comes out of her mouth.
"It's... infected," he says through clenched teeth. "Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me how you were feeling? Why didn't you tell me it hurt?"
"I didn't realise anything was wrong. I felt fine 'til only today," she says honestly. "Soul, am… am I going to be okay?" her eyes fill with tears. "It hurts," she says again. "It's just a normal infection, though, right? I can just... disinfect it? My body will fight it?"
"It's... gonna be fine," he says, but his eyes are blank and his face is unreadable.
Liz wakes up from the noise and frowns at the two of them. "Why… why did we stop?" she asks, groggy. She's rubbing her tired eyes. "Why aren't we- Oh my GOD, your arm!" she wails, suddenly awake and spotting Maka's infected arm.
"It's fine, Liz," Soul hisses, jerking a thumb towards a still-sleeping Patty. "We're going to sort it out. No panic, yeah?"
He tells her to keep her arm stretched outwards and not touching anything while he runs round to the back to the trunk of the vehicle and rummages around in their supplies. He eventually comes back out with three bottles of water and an almost-empty tube of hand-sanitizer.
She looks up at him fearfully. "But.. that's the last of the supplies," she says, her worry carving lines in her forehead. "Don't you need something for your… injury?" she points at his torso but he shakes his head.
"I'll be fine. You need this more than me."
She nods, tearful. Soul hands a scrap of cloth. "Put this in your mouth. When it hurts, bite down on this, okay?"
She does so, as he dumps the last of the hand-sanitizer into her wound and begins to clean it out with nothing but the cleanest rag he can find and carefully poured out spring water.
She scream-cries into the cloth, sobbing through the searing pain. Her flesh is on fire; it's like he's burning away at her to the bone with every movement. Liz soothes her in one ear, whispering relaxing sentences and holding her other hand. "It'll be over in a second, Maka. You've got this. Well done, girl," she says, her voice low and mellow.
"Okay, I'm gonna wrap this up now," Soul says to no-one in particular – Maka is too in shock to hear anything anyway. He uses the cleanest scrap of cloth he can find and wraps it around, covering the wound. He then takes off the plaid shirt he's wearing and wraps it around Maka's neck and her arm, like a sling.
"That should do," he mutters, staring at his poor handiwork and sighing. He looks back up Maka, who is green in the face. "How are you feeling?"
She leans forward, her hand grabbing onto his shoulder for support before emptying her guts out right onto the floor by his feet. Vomit splashes everywhere, including all over his shoes.
"Why is she being sick?" Liz asks, concerned. "Soul, what the hell is wrong with her?"
Soul's face is white but he makes a severe face. "I would hardly say it's a good sign," he narrows his eyes, staring at the road ahead of them. "We need... to get to Shibusen, now." He decides, gently placing Maka's swaying torso in Liz's hands and jogging back over to the driver's seat, strapping himself in with more urgency than before.
"Liz, watch her, please," he says in a desperate-sounding plea, starting up the ignition for the car and slamming his foot down on the gas pedal.
His foot doesn't come off the ground for a good forty minutes. If Patty had woken up, she probably would have been quite surprised by the scene – Liz cooing into Maka's ear and stroking her hair, while she alternated between moaning in pain and falling almost completely unconscious – all while they zoom along at a hundred miles per hour due to Soul's white-knuckled disregard for speed limits.
"She's running a fever, Soul," Liz tells him after twenty minutes. "She's looking kinda bad."
"Liz," he says, quietly, looking at her in the rearview mirror. "I think she's infected." Ke keeps driving. Forward, he looks forward. He needs to keep going forward.
She squeaks, moving an inch away from Maka. "Infected with what?"
"The zombie virus, I think. Don't freak out."
Liz blinks, staring at Soul like he's grown three heads. "Uh, what? She hasn't been bitten... it's just a knife slash. I thought you said that you cut her with your blade...?" she wonders. "I don't get... wait, are you saying...?"
"I'm immune. I think I might be a carrier." he admits. "I didn't even think about this until now. Listen, Liz, we just need to get there, Liz. Just keep an eye on her. Please. Shibusen will help us. They might even have... a cure, or something..."
"I am, but at this pace you're going to run out of gas… or, or crash us!" Liz exclaims. "Just slow a little bit," she begs. "Jesus, Soul. We can't keep travelling with her. What if she turns into one of them and starts lashing out at us? These symptoms, they're exactly the symptoms that the news broadcasts said preceded rapid transition," she points out. "We're getting her out, now. We're leaving her behind. Now."
"No!" he exclaims. "We're not leaving her," he grits out, speeding up the car. "We can sort this out. We can get there before she turns... besides, I don't know for sure..." he trails off, unable to argue.
"Oh, for God's sake, why are we risking our lives for hers?!" Liz explodes. "You've got your priorities all screwed up." she snaps. "Slow the fuck down! I'm kicking her out!"
"Stop it, Liz!" Soul scoffs. "So you just want me to leave her to die? Well here's the picture: if you want to leave her, then you'd better leave me too. I'm not in the business of leaving anyone to die in the desert."
"I didn't say that." Liz crosses her arms. She might be angry, but she knows that they need Soul to survive, right now. Patty cracks one eye to observe the argument, and then slams it closed again, pretending to be asleep. "I just don't want to get infected myself, idiot. Soul, you're acting irrationally. You aren't thinking things through, and just because you want to get into Maka's size 0 pants!" Liz accuses and Soul rolls his eyes.
"Fuck you, Liz – next time I'll ask for your advice on the plan, shall I?" he spits. "Go on, what should we do?" he says, voice laden with sarcasm.
"We should have… have taken two cars…" she sighs, angrily. "For fuck's sake," she runs a hand through her hair. "I can't believe you're going to stick with her."
"Thanks for the 20:20 hindsight, Liz," Soul growls. "Any more advice? Maybe Maka shouldn't have gotten an infection, huh? Maybe none of this bullshit should have happened in the first place, how about that?" he retorts, his voice raising just a modicum.
Liz flinches. In the short time she's known him, she's never known him to be anything less than laconic.
There's a brief silence which follows, and then he takes one hand off the steering wheel to run a hand through his greasy hair. "Sorry, Liz."
She sighs, mellowing out. "It's okay," she says, her teeth still clenched against her best efforts. "But if she even looks like she might be slightly turning into one of them... I'll kill her myself."
There's a heavy silence which follows that silence. Liz adds: "Thanks for slowing down."
Soul swallows, his throat thick with fear. "Uh… that's not me, actually."
Liz's heart leaps in fear. "W-what?"
The car makes a few clunky noises, and rolls helplessly to a stop while Liz and Soul internally sweat bullets.
Patty tries even harder to pretend to be asleep.
"Y-your foot… it's on the gas?"
"Yes," he grits out, irritated. "Shit." Soul starts the ignition again, beginning to swear profusely, but the car won't turn on. "Fuck, fuck. This seriously can't be happening now."
As if to punctuate his point, Maka moans from the backseat in pain and fever.
"What's wrong with it? Is it out of gas?" Liz asks, her voice trembling; bordering on hysterical.
"Shouldn't be. It had only just started flashing," he kicks his foot angrily against the floor. Liz can see the sweat sheen from his forehead as he tries once again to get the car to start. His efforts are met with deafening silence, and then: "Dammit!"
Soul's head falls into his hands helplessly.
"Soul," Liz says hoarsely. "What are we going to do?"
He twists round to look at her and Maka, still feverish and not fully lucid. "I… I don't know." His voice is exhausted, defeatist and pathetic. It's like nothing Liz has ever heard, and something about it makes her head clear a little.
She clenches her fists.
"Soul." She says, gathering her wits together. "We're going to have to walk this,"
