Alight friends, bit of housekeeping I need to address before we move on to the story. Firstly, thank you as always for reading. But secondly, I wanted to warn you that the upload schedule for this story might be changing slightly moving forward. Today is my first day of a new job, and because of the new schedule, I might not be able to continue uploading these chapters in the morning. Most likely, they will have to go up after I return home in the evenings. I live on the American west coast, so depending where you live in the world, this will affect all of you in different ways. For most, the change will hardly be noticeable, I'm sure. But I wanted to at least give you the heads up that it will be happening. I am going to try to keep my uploading on an "every other day" schedule, so that will hopefully stay the same. But if I falter on it a little bit, I apologize.

So that's my news. Just wanted to inform you guys of the situation in case it affected any of you. Thank you for your attention. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.


Chapter Nine: Supply run

There's a period, on the island of St. Marie, where the world it at its quietest. In the earliest lights of the morning, the sounds of the nocturnal creatures have died away but have not yet been replaced by their diurnal counterparts. On mornings like these, the gentle breeze is the only thing awake, as the rest of the island sleeps. Except this morning, something else was there to disturb the quiet jungle: the rhythmic, steady footfalls of a small band of people, descending the mountain in a lazy zigzag.

As he marched along with the others, Richard's mind took a nagging problem off of its shelf and began to examine it, as Richard's mind was prone to do.

The cryptos could not easily tunnel through the igneous rock of Mount Esmée, but that didn't mean that they couldn't comfortably traverse the distance surface side, a fact made painfully clear by the five cryptos who had pursued Camille's team all the way to the cave. Richard preferred it if the beasts would go on thinking that the mountain was inhospitable to their digging and therefore not worth exploring. And luckily, the only five to have ever come close to the survivor's cave were now dead, so the species was not as likely to learn from their discovery. Still, it made Richard a little nervous knowing that at least a few of the creatures had figured out how to tackle the mountain. And if anymore survivors on the island followed the beacon of the X, it's fair to imagine that one or two of them might have a horde of cryptos on their tails again.

He quietly shared these concerns with Ronnie and Camille as they led the group down the mountainside, and the three of them began discussing the possibility of employing some kind of barricade around the perimeter of the camp.

The conversation died down as they approached midday, the ground leveling out beneath them as they made their way into the outskirts of Honoré. They had a large group, and lots of footfall all at once was one of the ways cryptos were alerted to the presence of prey in the area. Knowing this, Camille advised that they only move in two groups at a time once they reached the city, with a group of three leading the way, and then holding their position as the second group of four joined them. With this strategy, they worked their way through the city of Honoré like an inch worm. It took time, but they eventually made it to the primary school a little after noon.

They made it onto the property and Fidel quietly closed the chain-link gate behind them. Ronnie led the team into the school through the gymnasium, through the boys' bathroom, into the hall, and then around three corners until they made their way into the lunchroom. From there, it was just a turn around the lunch counter and then through the large accordion doors into the pantry.

"Oh wow," Camille whispered in awe, her eyes climbing the numerous, long shelves, fully stocked with food. "I can't believe this has been sitting here all this time."

"Right," Richard said under his breath, shooting a glance over at Ronnie. For the first time, he understood why the other man had been so upset at having to leave this here last time.

"Okay listen," Ronnie said. "Richard, you should go stand look-out by the lunch counter. That's the only entrance, so if we have that covered, we should be fine. Everyone else, get your bags ready and come with me."

The group obediently opened their satchels and pulled out more bags, then followed Ronnie into the deep pantry. Richard and Camille both turned to each other in quiet hesitation. It was something they never discussed outright, but ever since their reunion, neither one of them was very keen on the idea of separating. Richard was shocked by how easily his anxiety peaked at the mere suggestion of doing it now, even though he knew there would be no danger for her in there. Still…

"Will you be alright out here?" Camille asked him, and Richard could only assume she was experiencing the same dilemma.

"Oh, I should think so," Richard answered, trying to seem casual while looking out at the eerily empty lunch room.

He looked back at her and tried to smile reassuringly. Camille hesitated a moment, reaching out to grab his forearm. She squeezed him gently as he looked down at her hand. When he looked back up and caught her eye, he smirked a little and said, "I know."

Camille nodded minutely, then her eyes skipped past Richard and she noticed a collection of paper bowls on the counter. Releasing him, she walked over and grabbed one of the bowls from the pile and crouched to place it on the ground. "Here," she said, unscrewing her canteen and pouring some water into the bowl.

"Umm, thank you. Except you do know I'm not a spaniel, don't you?"

Camille gave him a look and then explained. "Watch for ripples; it will tell you if there is any tunneling around us."

That…actually made a lot of sense. "Oh…right," Richard faltered, feeling appropriately embarrassed. "Very clever."

She gave him another look, this one accompanied with the slight tug of a grin, and she started heading towards the pantry to join the others. As she passed him, she reached out and pinched the fleshy part of his hand, just below his pinkie. That made him smile and he watched her with that soft smile all the way until she disappeared into the pantry.

Richard turned and assumed his role as lookout, instantly feeling his spirits drop when he got another look out at the wreckage of the abandoned lunchroom. There were several trays of half-eaten, soiled meals lying abandoned on the tables, with some chairs overturned or otherwise skewed. It elicited an image of utter pandemonium as school children and faculty alike rushed to reach safety amidst a crypto attack. He wondered if the beasts had ever made it in this far, or if a mere alert that they were in the area was enough to force an evacuation of this lunch room. He hoped it was the latter, but his mind still played out scenes of the former, with terrified children and woefully unequipped school teachers running for their lives, the high ceiling of the cafeteria echoing their own screams back at them. Richard didn't know that he believed in god, but he found himself praying that they had made it out safely, somehow.

Camille, Ronnie, and the others all made quick work of the pantry, coming out with several bulging bags apiece, as well as several more items secured together with rope. Ronnie and Camille both held smaller loads, but they had grabbed a few light items for their journey deeper into Honoré.

"That was quick," Richard muttered as Camille picked up the bowl and pierced its bottom to let the water pour back into her canteen. The team regrouped for a moment to confirm the plan: Richard, Ronnie, and Camille would carry on their journey while Fidel would lead the remaining members of the team back to camp. Richard told Fidel of their earlier discussion about creating a barricade around the cave to keep the cryptos from showing up on their doorstep again. He charged Fidel with the task of communicating this plan to the rest of the group and beginning construction on it while Richard and the others were away. Fidel accepted this mission and heartily shook the hands of his three friends. After this brief meeting, Fidel and the other three from the food team quietly retraced their steps to exit the school property and Richard, Ronnie, and Camille carried on to search the rest of the school.

Specifically, Ronnie wanted to search the nurse's office again. During his last excursion to this school, he had only been looking for consumables, medication that would be useful to Dr. Holden and his patients back at the camp. He hadn't been looking for supplies that might be useful in a surgery. Richard agreed this was a good idea and so the three of them quietly made their way through the deserted halls of the school. In the nurse's station, they found tongue depressors, sterilization swabs, medical tape, epinephrine pens, and even a small AED kit.

"Ah, good show," Richard had stated excitedly when he pulled the latter from the cupboard.

"What is that?" Ronnie asked, not recognizing the meaning of the letters on the front of the rounded box kit.

Richard unzipped the unit and pulled out the components to make sure it was all there. "It delivers a measured electric shock to the heart in cases of cardiac arrest," Richard explained, flicking on the power button and marveling when the control screen came to life. He instantly turned it off again to preserve whatever power it retained.

"Oh, a defibrillator?" Ronnie asked as Richard snapped the small kit closed again.

"Precisely," the detective said. "A portable one."

Next, Richard wanted to check out the science classrooms. He had remembered doing dissections in his school as a boy, so it was possible that they might have some surgical supplies secured somewhere. No such luck. Camille reasoned that perhaps the children at this school were too young to be learning about dissection. They did find several microscopes however, and Richard imagined Holden would very much appreciate being able to examine a blood sample from Trevor under the scope. But the device was just too heavy, and it required electricity to function, so in the end, they had to abandon the idea. The rest of the classroom proved mostly useless apart from a few small items.

They made their way back out to the open, and as Ronnie closed the door to the school, Richard walked up to Camille who stood with her shoulder to a wall, peering around the corner towards the rest of Honoré.

"This is madness," he heard her say. She was obviously aware of his presence, but without turning to look back at him, she added, "Seems like I've just left this place."

Richard's heart fell in guilt, but outwardly, he only nodded and squinted out at the bright, sun-baked city. "It's not too late to turn back," he said, noticing how she finally turned to look at him. But he refused to meet her gaze. "Catch up with Fidel and the others. They're weighed down pretty well; would be making pretty slow progress, I shouldn't wonder." He finally hazarded a side-eye in her direction. "You shouldn't have to spend one more second out here," he said solemnly, his brows furrowed in a way that pleaded for her to accept this offer.

But instead, she reached forward and laid a hand on his cheek. She looked over his face for several seconds, long enough that he began to wonder if this was meant to be her only reply. Then finally, she spoke.

"Would you go back?" is what her lips said, and "…with me?" is what her eyes added.

Richard's own eyes bounced back and forth between hers, then his gaze fell to her lips for the briefest of moments before dropping to the ground between them. Regretfully, he shook his head, knowing that in doing so, he'd be making her decision.

"Alright," Camille said, after only a few seconds, and she said it in such a way as to dismiss all remnants of that kind of thought. Her hand dropped from Richard's cheek in the same moment that Ronnie approached the two of them, and she reached down to check the readiness of her weapon.

"Camille," Richard began to say quietly, still wishing there was a way for him to convince her to go, but she immediately looked up and started engaging Ronnie.

"Most of the city is built close enough together that people were able to construct bridge systems from rooftop to rooftop. There're a total of eight of these systems that spider-web to cover most of Honoré. These are the safest ways of navigating around the city because it keeps us off of the ground so we cannot be as easily detected. But, the first system does not start until Eleventh Street, so we'll have to move carefully. Can you whistle like a bird?"

Ronnie, who had been tracking with all of the information up until this point rather admirably, was noticeably thrown by that last part. After a few puzzled blinks, he eventually nodded. Ronnie dropped his jaw ever so slightly and curled his bottom lip up over his teeth. Then, doing something indescribable with the tip of his tongue and the roof of his mouth, he let out three impressive chirps. At least Richard felt impressed, as it did actually sound quite like a bird. (And for a moment, Richard was left marveling at what an odd life he led now. Suddenly, bird imitations seemed like a survival skill.)

The whistle seemed to impress Camille too, as she smiled at the other man wryly with a little glance at Richard as she confirmed, "That will do it." She told the men that the plan was to progress single file, as they had with the other group before Fidel led them away. She would go first, followed by Richard, and then Ronnie would bring up the rear. If Ronnie spotted any cryptos from the rear of the party, he was to let out a few chirps and the group would know that they had to move to safety. In which case, the plan was for them to immediately divert to the closest rooftop and attempt to either circumvent or wait out their enemy before progressing forward.

"What do I do if I spot one?" Richard asked, suddenly feeling like his whistle game was regrettably inadequate.

"Well, Ronnie will still be behind you, so you can get his attention visually, and then he can whistle to me," Camille said. Then, seeing the vaguely dissatisfied look on her boss' face, she added, "Short of that, you can always try clapping."

"You cannot whistle?" Ronnie asked, eyeing his friend with a bemused smirk.

"Never really could get the pucker right," Richard admitted with a pensive shake of the head, not noticing the way that Camille covered her mouth with her hand subtly. "While you are quite adept at producing a sound very much like a bird, mine usually comes out sounding more like…an unusually gusty tea pot." He puckered his mouth into a loose O and gave a few demonstrative toots before Ronnie stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

"I think the clapping is a good idea, my friend," Ronnie said, seeming to hold back a laugh.


True to Camille's prediction, it was slow work moving deeper into the city to make it to Eleventh Street. They encountered two packs of the cryptos in the span of less than a mile, but by hiding carefully in the bed of a truck for twenty minutes or so, the creatures eventually moved on to a different area and Camille felt confident enough to continue leading her team. When they reached Eleventh Street, Ronnie and Richard worked together to give Camille a boost up the side of a building, then she was able to let down a rickety ladder for the other two to use.

From the aerial view, Richard was able to take in his first clear view of Honoré since he had fled to the mountain all those months ago, and it was depressing. The effects of the cryptos and their constant tunneling were obvious. Many of the buildings were crumbling from their destabilized foundations, like they were slowly and unevenly sinking into the island. Large mounds curled and wound all across the city, like snakes under a bed sheet. There were no signs of humanity left, only shadows of the past: a child's bicycle, overturned and rusty; 6-month old magazines clipped to a string, hanging in a dusty window; vehicles abandoned in the middle of the street, with the doors still opened.

"It's disgusting," Ronnie said, giving voice to all of the group's thoughts.

"Come on boys," Camille said after a while. "If it's medical supplies we need, I have an idea of a place that might not have been looted yet."

The journey across the rooftops was much easier. It required a certain degree of patience and balance across the makeshift bridges that connected the roofs, but all together, the group could afford to move more quickly from place to place, and with less of a gap between them, which Richard preferred.

It took them the better part of half an hour, but they eventually came to where Camille had been directing them. She stopped at an air conditioning unit on one of the roofs and moved a large wooden sheet that rested against the wall next to the unit. The makeshift covering had been hiding the entrance to some kind of roof-access point. Camille pulled a small flashlight from the bag she carried and shone it into the darkness. Richard crouched next to her and watched as she lowered one of her feet into the hole, using the end of her foot to search out something firm underneath.

"There it is," she said to Richard, reaching up to grab his hand for stability as she extended her other foot down into the darkness and gingerly lowered herself through the opening. She disappeared for a while, with only the occasional flash of her flashlight indicating her movement. Richard turned and passed a shrugging glance up at Ronnie and all they could do was sit there and wait. Then after the sound of something heavy scraping across the ground, Camille's head popped up into view again.

"Okay, you can come down," she said.

Both men were larger than Camille, especially Ronnie, but they eventually figured out how to squeeze both of them through the relatively small opening and down into the structure below. Richard and Ronnie both pulled their own flashlights out and started painting the lights over the walls to build a visual understanding of the layout of the room. They seemed to be in some kind of storage closet, with tall shelves lined with various, nondescript boxes.

"What is this place?" Ronnie asked.

In answer, Camille turned to Richard and asked, "Do you remember when you had that rash on your hand, and I told you that you should see my friend Terry, the dermatologist?"

"I also seem to remember you recommending a dip in 'holy water,'" Richard mused, while still understanding where Camille was headed with this story.

In the darkness beside him, he could sense Camille rolling her eyes at him. "This is her office."

"Dermatology? Are you sure a skin doctor will have what we're looking for?" Ronnie asked in a hushed tone, pulling one of the boxes out from the shelf and peering inside with his flashlight.

"It's possible," Richard said, taking his first steps deeper into the room to begin their search. "They sometimes perform minor surgeries. Removing cysts or expressing boils…that sort of thing." In response, Richard heard Ronnie make a noise that generally conveyed disgust. The big man even shuddered slightly at whatever ooey-gooey image had invaded his mental space. Richard personally tried not to think about those things very hard. The important thing was that minor surgeries were still surgeries, and would require certain tools. With any luck, some of those tools might still be lying around.

The detective inspector moved to the door on the opposite side of the closet. He opened it with minimal resistance, poking his head out to find that a piece of the ceiling had fallen against the door on the other side. He managed to get it open and then turned to find Camille right at his back. Ronnie was still farther back in the storage room, rooting through the boxes.

"Go on without me," he said. "I want to check these boxes." As he said this, he brought up a package of sanitary rubber gloves and waved it as explanation.

"Okay, this is our exit point, so we can meet up here before we leave. Let's say in fifteen minutes?" Camille offered and the others seemed to accept this plan.

Richard and Camille ventured out into the hallway and quickly developed an understanding of the small office and its layout. There was a waiting room that had been cleared of its couches, a reception area that still had its many client files and some abandoned computers. Down a short hallway, there were several examination rooms, and these actually held a wealth of treasures. This was exactly what Richard had hoped to find. After only a few minutes, they had managed to collect several scalpels, forceps, syringes, tweezers, and comedone extractors. They even found several vials of local anesthetic.

"Hello," Richard said, something catching his eye on the other side of the room. He walked over to a shelf and pulled down a jar. Inside of the jar, floating in a nondescript clear liquid, there was a large, brown, curved mass, about the size of a ping pong ball. It was labeled "Cutaneous Horn."

"What is that?" Camille asked, even as Richard unscrewed the lid of the jar and carefully took a whiff of it.

Richard snapped the lid closed again, pulling away from it with a shake of his head while his eyebrows lifted high and his eyes closed, as if he was trying to shake his senses clear again. "Well then, that could be useful," he mumbled.

"Why would we need a…horn?" Camille asked, looking down at the jar with barely concealed disgust.

"A what?" Richard asked, and then seemed to notice the item floating in the jar for the first time. "Oh yes, a horn! Well, in fact, we won't need the horn, but rather, the substance in which it's floating. Might prove very useful."

"Formaldehyde?"

"Ah, you'd think that, but no. In this case, we've gotten lucky. It's not formaldehyde; it's trichloromethane."

Camille just folded her arms and looked at him, waiting for him to explain and remembering how much he did enjoy being the smartest man in the room.

"Otherwise known as chloroform," he finished unceremoniously.

"Chloroform. As in, the substance that will instantly knock you out if you inhale it. That is what you just sniffed?"

"That's right. It once had wide use as an anesthetic before it was discovered to have several poisonous properties, especially to the liver, kidneys, and heart."

"And that is good news for us how?"

"Well we've been needing an anesthetic, haven't we?" Richard offered a little defensively. As he secured the lid to the jar tightly and lowered it into his pack, he noticed Camille's lingering look of disapproval. "I realize it's not ideal. But unless we discover a better alternative on this little excursion, it might be the best we can manage. We can't afford to pass up even the bad options, just in case."

Acquiescing to that logic, Camille merely shrugged and the two of them continued in their looting. It was about another five minutes or so before they were heading back to meet up with Ronnie in the supply closet again. Both teams were eager to share their findings, but Camille insisted that they return to the roof before pausing to compare notes. She went first, scurrying through the opening high on the wall and leaving a rather indulgent view of her backside for the two men down below. Richard (almost) immediately diverted his gaze, looking all over the room and then eventually over at Ronnie, who was giving him a subtle and yet loaded smile.

Richard held up a finger to him and said simply, "Don't."

Ronnie chuckled at the detective and then moved forward to follow Camille through the exit.

Once they were all surface side, they could finally take inventory of what they had collected. Richard consulted the lists Holden had given him. "I can hardly believe it, but we're nearly through this. Two-thirds, I'd say. And we're getting a lot of his first picks too," Richard said, looking back up from the list.

"This stop was a bit of a goldmine, Camille. Well done," Ronnie said.

"Yes, well done," Richard echoed.

Camille bubbled a little at the affirmation and craned her head to look at the list. "So, what are we still missing?"

They ran through the remaining items together and then took some time brainstorming areas of town that might still source them. Ronnie suggested they try his old hardware store next. He didn't recognize the names of some of the items on Holden's preferred equipment list, but a lot of the "creative alternatives" were items he remembered carrying at his store. Twilight had already set upon them, but even that was waning, and the group decided that, if they started now, then they could at least make a dent on the journey to the hardware shop before total nightfall.

Camille led the group across the labyrinth of rooftops for another twenty minutes or so. Somewhere along the line, their little order had shuffled and Richard had found himself at the rear of the pack. He didn't really mind it, however. He found that he preferred the extra bit of concentration it gave him when trying to cross the narrow bridges from roof to roof. There was a part of his mind that had always been divided, conscious of the fact that Ronnie was always waiting just behind him, watching. Knowing that Ronnie was already across the bridge meant that Richard didn't feel quite as rushed, so he took his time a little more carefully. Ronnie and Camille never ventured too far ahead though, and it wasn't long before all three of them were met back up with each other, crouching at the edge of one particular roof.

"Why've we stopped?" Richard asked, joining the others.

"We're trying to decide if we should go on for tonight," Ronnie supplied.

Camille nodded off the edge of the roof, explaining, "This is the end of the first bridge network. To go on from here, we will have to cross some distance on ground level. See that building there? With the blue little window?"

Richard followed the angle of her point and his eyes settled on the building she indicated.

"That's the start of the next network. Not that far. But it's still a walk."

Richard nodded contemplatively. The sleepy sun was painting the horizon in pretty shades of purple, pink, and gold off in the distance. Soon it would be too dark to keep traveling so if they were going to make a run for it, they'd need to do it soon. Richard looked down at the roof beneath his feet. The angle of the roof was sloped and the surface was ridged with clay shingles. If they wanted to get any rest tonight, then they'd have to double back a fair amount to the next flat rooftop.

He looked back up at his compatriots and they both seemed to read his mind. "The next one is flatter," Camille said.

"What do you think?" he asked Ronnie.

The bigger man shrugged, sweat gleaming off of his dark brow. "I think if we're doing it, we need to do it fast."

Camille nodded, "Also, there are no beasts around right now, which might not be the case in the morning."

Richard nodded at them both. "Sounds like we're in agreement then."

Decision made, Camille explained the plan to them, even though they could both guess what she was going to say at this point. "We'll go one at a time. There's a rope here, see? I'll go first and show you how to do it. You'll want to go fast, but don't go fast. Keep your movements nice and slow. Calm. Stick close to the buildings. Wait until I've climbed all the way up and given you the signal before the next one comes."

With the plan understood by all, Ronnie and Richard checked and readied their weapons as Camille prepared to move down the rope. Richard followed her to the edge, taking her pack from her while she negotiated the rope. When she was ready to belay herself backward, Richard finally managed to catch her eye.

"Be careful. Please," he said softly. It was just a placeholder, a substitute for the thing he couldn't bring himself to say. But he looked at her and tried to make his other plea without words.

Camille said, "Of course," and flashed him a smile.

Generally, Richard wasn't a fan of popular cinema, but he recognized that smile all the same. It was exactly the type of smile the self-confident side character always flashed in an adventure film right before the shark flashed up onto the boat and chomped the suddenly-less-self-confident-side character's leg off. Richard was hardly assured by this. When Camille had lowered herself to the ground, Richard eased her satchel down to her and then she was off.

Richard rejoined Ronnie and the two of them both alternated their attention between watching Camille's route and keeping an eye out for cryptos. As the world shifted in the transaction between sunlight and moonlight, Richard trained his eyes onto the shifting shadows of St. Marie. He wasn't sure, at first, if it was just a trick of the light, or if…

No, no that was movement, a distinct bulge in the earth, cracking and rumbling like a torpedo through the road's pavement, heading straight for her.

"Run Camille! RUN!" Richard hollered as he leapt up from his crouching position and grabbed for the rope. He could hear Ronnie open fire, but he knew his bullets would do nothing to slow the creature down while it was submerged.

Richard landed on the ground unceremoniously and stumbled out onto the street. "OY!" he called, stomping his feet down on the ground emphatically, "Over here!" He saw as Camille reached the building at a full sprint and frantically tried to scale the wall, her feet repeatedly slipping as the creature closed in on her. Richard took off running towards her, his feet slamming onto the ground, trying to make as much noise as possible. He continued to yell and wave his arms, even firing his gun unto the mound of upset earth where the monster had been.

Miraculously, his efforts sort of seemed to work. The ground torpedo appeared to slow slightly and a moment later, the creature was surfacing prematurely, its head coming out of the rubble and craning around in Richard's direction.

As soon as the crypto's head was in sight, Richard heard four high caliber shots ring out and the creature slumped over in its hole. Richard's ears rang from the loud shots and when the sound around him finally cleared, he could make out the edge of Ronnie's voice hollering at him from the rooftop. "-ard, you idiot! The PACK!"

Richard turned and got his bearings just in time to see four identical earth torpedoes heading directly for him. The "oh hell," he murmured to himself was outshined by Camille's shriek behind him, "RUN RICHARD!"

His blood started pounding in his ears as he took off running again, this time forgoing sound for speed. He felt as though his feet were barely having time to touch the ground before he was pushing off of it again, and the breath in his lungs felt as though it could barely keep up. He wasn't sure how close they were behind him, but he was damned if he would turn to check now.

Richard reached the building where Camille had gone, vaguely registering the fact that she was reaching a hand down towards him. But he just chucked his gun and his satchel up onto her rooftop and then kept running past. He had seen the struggle she had had scaling that front wall, and he knew she was far more athletic than he. If Richard was going to be climbing for his life, he needed an access point that would be a little more hospitable.

He kept running past Camille's building, then past another, until he found one that had an industrial sized garbage container alongside one exterior wall. Richard could hear the beasts surfacing behind him, and the proximity of their snarls made him run a little faster. Richard bounded up onto the hood of a car and from there, he leapt onto the dumpster, jumping up to grab hold of the edge of the rooftop and straining to hoist himself upward. His arms rebelled, claiming not to have the strength, but he didn't let them quit.

He heard two more shots ring out from somewhere behind him and was mortified when he felt the ungodly weight of one of the cryptos sag against his leg. His eyes dilating in fear, Richard used the dead beast's body as a stepping stone to launch himself just a little further up the wall. That minimal distance was enough for his arms to work past the peak of their strain and he was able to pull himself up enough to hoist one leg over the ledge of the roof.

Richard felt another crypto close its jaws around his other foot and his head yanked back with a scream. His knuckles blanched white as he fought to maintain his grip with dogged resolution, battling against a heavy weight that pulled him towards the ground. The creature gave a vicious yank and Richard was screaming again. Then the volume of his own voice was rapidly swallowed by another sharp echo of a third barrage of bullets. He felt the jaws and their horrible weight release him and Richard somehow pulled himself over the ledge, crashing down onto the roof's surface with all the grace of a birthed giraffe. Richard rolled onto his back, hand dropping onto his heart, and laid there, gasping for breath, his unbelieving eyes staring up at the newly revealed starscape above him.

It was several long minutes of panting, and Richard even came to a panic, wondering if he might be experiencing a heart attack because he could not seem to lower his heart rate, no matter how many breaths he gulped. But eventually, he was able to calm down. He lifted his head to look down at his foot, which seemed to be throbbing with a heartbeat of its own. As he pushed on his elbows to rise into a sort of sitting position, he heard activity elsewhere on his roof.

Camille and Ronnie suddenly appeared, and as Camille crashed into him, he managed to register that the roof he picked must have been part of the new network of bridges. He briefly had the thought, "Doesn't explain how Ronnie got here," but he quickly forgot to wonder about this more, because Camille was peppering his face with kisses. First over his cheek, then up to his forehead, then down his nose, then across his eye, all the while, calling him a stupid, irresponsible, reckless, and then stupid again, man!

"Camille! Camille, I'm fine."

But she just pulled him into a hug that was somewhere between affection and strangulation. Richard choked and patted her back reassuringly in an effort to get her to let go of him. And he finally got sight of Ronnie, who was doubled over a few feet away, with his hands on his knees.

The other man looked at him, winded. "So you just decided, 'no' to the clapping plan?"


Author's Note: Thanks once again for reading! I am really curious to know what you thought of this chapter, as I have always thought it was maybe just a hint too long. Trouble is, I really wanted to end on that line from Ronnie, and there were a number of things that needed to happen before Richard got injured by the crypto. So as a result, the chapter ended up being wordier than I would usually allow. My beta assured me this wouldn't be a problem, so I trusted her judgement and left everything in. But I am curious, what did you think of this chapter?