17

Owen checked the corpse they had bought him and explained the bullet had severed her spine, a clean kill that would ensure no resurrection. These people were …. Efficient. He realised the kids had not really seen a human killed like this and explained that a headshot mean reanimation was not gonna happen, not if it was a good one.

Aunty Tosh had managed to recover the old security footage on the discs she had found in the guard house. Without thinking she put it on the big screen in the auditorium for everyone to watch.

Hope cringed as a pack of Zs, running on all fours like animals, charged a restaurant and used their sharp claws to tear into the patrons.

The images were gross, but she wasn't affected by the sight of dead humans. Strange. Was she becoming too used to this? She made a note to ask her Dad, his own ability to close off emotions in a time of battle known to her.

Tosh pressed a device and stopped the footage. Immediately, another one started up. This one showed a captured Z, savagely frothing at the mouth and snarling. The beast was strong, stronger than the captors, and when its teeth was within reach of the captor, it snapped and severed the captor's fingers clean off.

"Well, I got word. Ianto and Jack are incoming and they have cleared the path, let's get ready to move to the train!" Rhys yelled. People started jogging in all directions carrying backpacks stuffed to the brim with weapons and tat.

"How can they be dominant?" Robin asked. "Their numbers can't be massive. Humans are very good at wiping anything it chooses to off the face of the planet. Why did we fail at this?"

"I can't believe we were so stupid." Samuel began pacing. "We should have expected something like this. Humans creating something they could not control. They did this to themselves, the literal shooting themselves in the foot."

"Because we didn't care. Call it selfish, but when the world ended as we knew it we focusing on 'me and mine'. People like me had distanced ourselves from everyone else." Sean explained "We were not into the politics, the charity, the compassion. It's straight out survival. Live or die. We can't afford to let outsiders in who'll threaten our way of life. This was all training for me. We were too few to change what was happening, we could only affect our own destinies."

"Cults think like that."

"Then we're a cult." Liam shrugged. "I even got a cult name."

Hope laughed, in spite of herself. "Okay, I'll bite. What's your cult name?"

"Oh, is that a pun because we're in the Z apocalypse? Now I don't like you at all. My cult name is Pandora. Yeah, someone else opened the box but it was our world they opened up. We are Pandora … the last of the stewards or whatever."

"Here they come!" Mickey yelled as he went to greet the two men who seemed to be moving too slowly. Of course they were. Mickey cursed softly as he finally detected the child in Ianto's fur with his goggles.

They had found a nest alright … just not the sort they had expected. Although … Zs were there.

A lone survivor that had been snatched to safety in big Wolfling arms when the Zs overran the Survivalist camp was now clinging to the back of his rescuer for grim life.

A child who had never really been one.

An orphan now.

.

.

.

.

They started to move, Tommy picking up speed and as Jack stood watching the town disappear, leaving only smoke as an indicator of the hell they had seen, Ianto gently gave the child over to Samuel who was trying to check him over.

"Hi there little man, I am Sam. Hey, that rhymes." He joked and the silent stare back told him it might rhyme but it's not exactly funny.

"Hi" Dean tried, being closer in age to the little one and the child's eyes widened as he saw another child. "I'm Dean."

"Beau" the child whispered "I … where are we going?"

"Away" Dean replied "Far away so they will never find us. Is that Ok?"

"Yeah" the little boy slumped "Yeah. Good. Yeah."

"So … hungry?" Samuel offered a sandwich and Beau's eyes widened as he accepted it, groaning as he ate it with the grace of a hippo on ice-skates. Not just hungry. Starved. Samuel rustled about for some more food that might not be too harsh on an empty stomach and the child looked at him with gratitude. Probably the first real kindness he had known since being taken.

Bonny kept looking back to see if everything was OK and finally Hope slid to the drivers bay, sitting next to her as she told her what had happened, knowing she needed the truth … not the version the others would be told when they got home.

Bonny was horrified, her own babies so precious and she knew they would never move on this piece of track again. She pulled the map out and marked it as unsafe, already looking for an alternate route if they needed to move past to return.

Hope really liked her. She thought like a Wolfling.

"At least someone does" a voice said and she turned to find her Tad standing behind her, not running with her Dad out on the track like she had thought. Behind her Dean grimaced, telling her Taddy knew what she had been doing out there.

Shit.

Busted.