In which we learn what Kyle Crane considers Post-Zombies Self-Care, and Zofia goes fishing in a young Pilgrim's life.
Chapter 4
Pilgrim's Path: Shut out of Paradise
2017
Kyle Crane had always been a barrel full of surprises; a shelf stocked with the oddest of things. And now, with Harran in their rearview mirror, Zofia found this to be particularly true.
Some of those bits and bobs that she knocked off him (or out of him, depending) even baffled her.
Others?
Not so much.
Over the last week's worth of mornings, she'd found how he'd happily live off crispy bacon with a side of more crispy bacon if given the chance, that fogged up mirrors were meant to have masterpieces painted on them at all times, no arguments, we're doing this, and that text in textmessages was optional and preferably replaced by a copious amount of emojis.
She'd also come to terms with him being a very engaged movie-watcher. The sort who whooped. And wagged his chin. And reenacted. Sometimes right there, on the spot, while the scene still rolled.
"Ah! Ah!" he exclaimed at present— loudly —with his long legs coming off the coffee table to land on the floor so he could lean forward and jab his hand at the telly screen. On it, Deadpool committed some grand feat. Most of that feat Zofia missed, what with how she was busy watching Crane.
He laughed.
He clapped his hands together (those scratched up, bruised things).
He proclaimed— loudly once more —how he could totally do that and all the while he looked unbelievably carefree.
And uncannily clean.
His hair was freshly clipped. His stubble almost tame. The t-shirt that sat snug on his shoulders had no holes, and he'd forgotten to add new scratches and nicks, with all his bruises healing steadily. If one disregarded the needle marks on his left arm, at any rate.
Aside from those, he looked like he'd washed Harran clean off him.
Funny, in a tragic kind of way, how all it'd taken to get here had been a murder on a disaster bound train, two broken ribs, and a near-fallen wall. Plus, those few dizzying days Zofia had spent dreading how she'd dreamt all of it. That this quiet, GRE sponsored flat with its plain white walls, the always hot shower, the always stocked kitchen, and an endless supply of things they'd missed out on, was a mirage. Some fever-induced mockery.
That, any moment now, she'd wake up. She'd wake up and Crane'd wear blood again and Harran'd be all around her and there'd be death or something near it and horrible and she really ought to stop thinking.
Zofia, desperate for her thoughts to calm, touched the ring on her finger.
Crane had put that there. Back on Rais's derailed train, with stars winking down at them. And since the ring was real (and still too large), it stood to reason the train had been real, too. And since her approximate everything ached when she moved, that meant her broken ribs were real. And because she hurt at all, that meant she'd lived.
So had he.
Obviously.
Crane turned his head her way. He wore a goofy grin. "Did you—" The grin fell. "— see that? No. No, you didn't see that. You're not watching."
"Am too."
His lips pulled sideways, all crooked like, and his light-brown eyes lit up with a fierce smile.
Zofia's insides reacted promptly. They rearranged to make room for a cloud of bumbling butterflies, and when Crane then wagged his stupid eyebrows at her she near laughed. Near. Because laughing hurt. Biting at her lip, Zofia did what she could to remain unamused. She even counted down from ten, making it all the way to seven before Crane decided now was the best time to encroach on her personal space. He flung an arm around her, tucked her under his shoulder, and landed his cheek on the top of her head.
All of which he did gently, careful not to jostle her.
She huffed.
He smelled of well-mannered, peaty ash having a gentleman's war against peach-scented soap.
A soap he'd asked for. Specifically. Like, you told the man once that you enjoyed peaches and, boy, did he get really into it?
And while she pondered peaches and remained squeezed against his side, Crane used his free arm to quest for one of his prized possessions shoved between the sofa's cushions, next to the remote control and a bag of sour candies: a can. A very tall can of whipped cream, to be precise. He pulled it free, tilted his head back, and promptly sprayed an entire mouthful of said cream into his, well, mouth.
Because that was obviously where cream ought to go.
"It's been a hot minute since I told you that you're a savage, hm?"
Crane beamed. Which made him look ridiculous with all that cream and oh no she was going to laugh, wasn't she? Zofia gave the whole lip-biting thing another go. Harder, this time. Don't laugh, she chided herself. It's what he wants.
"Oan-ou-ohve," was what he had to say to that.
"Tolerate," she corrected.
"Ohve, ay-ee."
And that— right when she'd been ready to reach up there and push his cheeks together to find out what'd happen then —was when the bell rang.
They froze, with her squeezed against his side and him with his head turned to the door, his chin propped up on the crown of her head. They stayed like that for a few hasty heartbeats, until Crane finally choked down the cream and peeled himself away from her.
"I keep forgetting we have a doorbell," he said. "Wild, huh?"
"Wild," she echoed, with her heart kicking like a rabbit's.
Crane— who knew that doorbells were just that, doorbells, and not heralds of some great calamity —kissed the top of her head in a You stay here, I got this, kind of way. Then he got up, dropped the whipped cream into her lap, and left her sitting on the sofa feeling a bit dumb.
She smushed the pause button on the remote, and then she bounced the thing on one knee while eyeballing the can of cream.
Post-Zombies Self-Care was what Crane had called it.
Not just the cream either, no. The stack of BluRays, too. The long, scalding hot showers. The comic books he narrated to her. The criminal amounts of bacon. The candy.
Behind her, the front door opened. "Hey, doc," she heard Crane say.
Oh, and his moaning that he didn't have any video games? That was a part of the whole self-care thing, too. And so was the lying around doing nothing but hold on to her.
"Aren't you a little early—"
Zofia's thoughts piled to a halt. Her throat snared shut.
From one second to the next, her skin had grown cold and her hands clammy.
Run, the rabbit living rent-free in her head screamed, but when she turned to look— hoping she'd imagined how Crane's voice had tightened up with alarm —she knew there was nowhere to run to.
There were men at the door.
They wore armour. Had rifles.
And they'd come for them.
Zofia hadn't known how she ought to have laughed that day. And how she wasn't about to get another chance for a long time to come.
2036
The smoke from the fire itched at Zofia's eyes and the roasting pigeons had gone from smelling delightful and tempting to good as turning her stomach right then and there. Not because they'd spoiled themselves, but because her appetite had been chased to the hills, hunted down, murdered, and then buried in a shallow grave.
All because of the mention of a name: Waltz.
The name of a faceless man; left signed at the bottom of an itemized list.
"You found Waltz?" the Pilgrim who Spike had brought with him said, before he thumped down on the seat right next to her.
Aiden, she reminded herself, eyeing him carefully. He'd hunched forward and had folded his hands, and Zofia thought he had a look about him that made her think of wire pulled tight by stubborn youth. Compact. Lean. With reasonably alert, pale blue eyes, and a score of scars that ranged from your ordinary Pilgrim's accessories to a much more curious set of old punctures covering his forearms like a bad-mannered constellation.
It'd been hard not to notice them when he'd tried to shake her hand.
Zofia shifted her weight on the hard ground (leaning in a direction that'd make her face him) and poked at a pigeon with a stick. It was overdue for eating.
Spike— who'd turned himself into the centre of attention between Crane and Aiden —raised his hands in a placating gesture. "Maybe," he said. "I picked up a call coming out of Villedor a week ago, from a guy named Dylan who's in dire need of a Pilgrim. So I run through my usual with him, try and figure out if he has anything to offer that'd make the trip worth it. Does he have resources? Information? Can he give me anything that'll convince me to send someone out there or are we talking charity run?"
Spike grew weary of standing right about then and found himself a seat, which gave Crane a moment to mosey up to her and the fire, where he scooped up two of the birds. With his bare hands, no less, because Kyle Crane sometimes forgot he had manners. Or sense.
"Hot-hot-hot," he went, rolling and tossing the birds between his palms like the literal hot lumps they were. Then he stuck one into his mouth and offered the other to Spike.
"What, no napkins? No plates?"
Crane grunted and claimed the last remaining seat. "Keebtaukin."
"Fine. Anyway, so Dylan can't pay shit, but when I get to the part where I mention Have you ever heard of Windfall, an X13 or a Waltz, which, you know, usually gets me a lot of nothing, this dude gets quiet. The Oh shit, kinda quiet. A second later he's all Not over the radio, and that's where my interest is officially piqued."
His and Crane's and Aiden's, obviously, with Zofia coming in somewhere at the back because she didn't particularly subscribe to the concept of hoping the stars were finally going to align. Usually, they did that thing where they got near to overlapping and then they all went up in flames.
The universe was a knob like that.
But Crane and Aiden were undeterred by reality. They hung on to Spike's words for dear life — or would have. If he'd kept talking.
Zofia speared a pigeon with her stick. Spike bit into his bird. And then he chewed. And chewed some more. He kept at it, slow and deliberate, with Crane and Aiden staring at him until the silence that'd rolled in felt like an almost palpable and living thing.
One that needed slaying. Obviously.
"What does he want?" Crane and Aiden blurted at once. And because such was the rule of men on a mission of great importance, they traded a furrow-browed glance, puffed out their chests a little, and then leaned back, pretending none of this had ever happened.
Except one had a pigeon of his own to bite into— vigorously, Zofia noted —while the other had to content with shoving his hands between his thighs. Taking pity, she offered him the bird she'd speared, stick and all.
Over across the fire, Spike finished chewing long enough to add that he had no idea at all what this Dylan character wanted in return and that they would have to ask him themselves.
Aiden, his eyes darting from Spike to the roasted bird and back again, hesitated long enough to warrant a wag of the stick/bird arrangement. Even then he stared dumbly at it for another second, clearly worried she was about to change her mind at the last second and yank it away, or that she'd straight up jab him in the eye with it instead. Much like, you know, the universe at large enjoyed doing.
When she did neither— on account of how she'd married an occasional bell end, not turned into one —Aiden carefully plucked the stick from her hands.
"Thanks," he said quietly, his fingers flexing around the stick and his eyes stubbornly set across the fire to watch Crane and Spike.
And over there, Crane traded her a quiet look and a subtly quirked brow. Go fish, that meant, right before he pretended to have eyes and ears only for Spike. "Right. So how do we find him? Where's he at?" And so on and so on and so forth—
God, she hated this bit. Zofia scooted herself closer to the fire, speared herself the last pigeon, and, reluctantly, went fishing.
She started simple: "How's it you know Waltz?"
Aiden went stiff as a board. His eyes cut down. Then right back up, with his lips screwed together tight and his brows pinched. He hadn't meant to tell her so much with nothing more than a brief, subconscious glance, but then here we were and gosh what were we going to do about it?
"Those scars," she continued. "They're injection marks, no? He do that to you?"
A blank look. A one-shouldered shrug. "To me, to my sister, and a whole lot of other kids."
Zofia kept her face expressionless, but there was a pause in the chatter across the fire. Not one that lasted long. Crane picked it all back up quick. They were talking about radio frequencies now. Contact windows, that sort of thing. None of which was her concern. She'd been sent fishing, after all.
"So it's payback you're after?" Join the crusade. We've got group therapy, every Wednesday, at eight. If that's your kind of thing.
He hesitated long enough to tell her the "No," that followed was a lie. "Nothing like that. I'm looking for my sister. Mia. And if anyone knows where she is then it's him."
"Your sister," she echoed before she gave her own roasted pigeon a tentative nibble. Still hot. Still a bit greasy. And woefully lacking salt, because they'd used up all theirs an approximate of five flavourless weeks ago. "When's the last time you've seen her?"
"When we were five? Six?"
Zofia's chest filled with cold sludge. In a snap, she'd glitched through the Earth itself and she'd fallen and fallen and fallen until she knelt, helplessly, on a carpet that grinned at her with happy faces painted on moons and planets and perfect, five-pointed stars.
Theo! Please— wake up— wake up— howled the memory.
She did her best not to listen.
"I know it's a long shot," Aiden said, back in the now. "But Waltz is the only lead I have. Which means if he is in there—" He indicated Villedor's walls rising in the distance with a nod of his chin. "—then that's where I'm going. And I don't need anyone's help." The last bit he'd said with a biting kind of defiance. Like he was a second away from getting up and walking.
She'd not been the only one to hear it.
"Yeah," Spike cut in. "Yeah, you do. This Dylan might not work out, what'll you do then?"
"Go straight in?" was the kid's obvious answer.
"You don't just walk into Villedor, Aiden. Not that it's ever been easy to begin with, but over the last year and a half?" Spike's eyes cut over to Crane. And while the words were likely still aimed at Aiden, it was Crane's attention he wanted. "Something's up in there, I'm telling you. We used to be able to pick up contracts regularly, even had two waystations set up with working coms towers, but then, one day to the next? Everything goes silent and nothing comes and nothing goes. No contracts, no trade, nada. Anyone who tried their luck comes back saying the city sealed all its ports up tight. Or, you know, they do manage to get in and then I don't ever hear from them again."
Aiden's mouth squeezed into a thin line.
"What I'm saying is—" Spike turned his eyes back on Aiden. "—that if this Dylan is a dead end, then these two are your best shot at getting over that wall."
"Under," Zofia said while she twisted the stick between her fingers, turning the pigeon like it was performing an exit-pirouette to its short pigeon life. "You go under, never over. What you do is you find a sewer or a train tunnel or whatnot, and none of those ever get a lot daylight. And then you play tag with whatever's nesting in there and hope no one's bolted shut every single door or hatch or sewer grate between you and the way out. That— that last bit there— that's where most everyone dies."
All eyes turned to her — and Zofia promptly regretted having opened her mouth, what with how everyone's undivided attention was about the last thing she wanted.
Crane snorted. "Damn, Fi. You're really selling this."
"'s the truth though and you know it," she said and turned to her pigeon for rescue, hoping they'd all look away once she took a bite.
They kind of did. Crane because he had follow-up questions about Villedor having clenched up so tight, Spike because he was happy to oblige, and Aiden because— well, Zofia had no clue. He looked a bit glum, at any rate. A bit out at sea. A bit wistfully looking over to the Villedor walls and jaw clenched in determination. A bit lost.
But at least he remembered that he had food and finally decided to try it. One bite though and he must have come to the same conclusion as her; because suddenly he shrugged his pack off, zipped it open, and rummaged around in it to pull out a tinted jar. He stuck it between his knees, twisted it open with one hand — and then he pinched a few white flakes from it.
Salt.
Zofia froze mid-teeth-tearing-at-crispy-pigeon-skin, watched him sprinkle some of that salt on his food, and then eyed him still when he held the jar out into her direction.
And because things liked going in circles— round and round —it took Aiden shaking the jar once before she managed to unstick herself. "Ta," she said, grabbed a generous pinch with her good hand, and carefully dabbed the salt on her meat in an attempt to not get any into her lap.
"Don't mention it," he said and past that they ate in silence.
Zofia quickly found out that the Aiden kid gobbled down his food at about the same pace as Crane. That was to say it was here now and then you blinked and it was gone, which left him sitting around quietly until Crane and Spike had stopped hashing out the details about what'd happen to their gear while they were gone.
Wasn't like they could take the bike.
Or much of anything else, really. Essentials only and whatnot.
When Crane eventually got up to join her by the fire (he took the pot off the grid so the water they'd been boiling could cool), Aiden traded places with him, handing Spike a package which ought to make it to Garry or some such thing.
"You okay?" Crane asked and got down on his haunches. He leaned in close.
She nodded once. A motion that gave his mouth permission to curl into one of his small, crooked smiles.
"So, what do you think about the kid?" he asked.
"You heard what he said," she whispered back, her voice so low it might as well have been an opinionated exhale. "About Waltz? And you saw the marks, no?"
"Sure did. And you know what that means? That we're getting closer." Crane, for his part, didn't bother keeping quiet.
"But don't you think this is an odd— "
"Coincidence?" he cut in. "No, Fi. This is all Spike. He's known the kid for six years. Six Waltz-obsessed years."
Zofia opened her mouth, then snapped it shut again. Momentarily, anyway. "Wait. Wait just a second. You knew?"
"That we aren't the only ones looking for Waltz?" He sounded almost offended. "Yeah. 'course."
"And you didn't tell me."
"I mentioned it," he protested. "In passing. Look, I didn't know who and I didn't know why. It's not like Spike tells on his Pilgrims, and that's a good thing, yeah? I sure as hell don't want everyone to know we're the ones asking about Windfall and X13."
Busy with cleaning a fragile pigeon bone of any and all meat, Zofia simply nodded.
"But back there, when you asked him?" Crane shrugged a shoulder into Aiden's direction. "Pretty sure he wasn't lying about why he's looking for that asswipe. And you know what? Finding a lost sis? I'm in."
A surprise that was not.
She fixed him in a stare. "And forget all about why we came here?"
"What? No. Of course not. Cross my heart." He did, in fact, cross his heart, and all the while flashed her another smile. One of those he came armed with whenever he needed her to say yes. To agree to one thing or the other, because it was hard not to when he levelled it right at her.
"Fine," Zofia said, punctuating the word by chucking her pigeon's carcass into the fire. "So what's the plan then? We stay here for the night?"
"Nah. Spike mentioned the old waystation by the antenna—" He pointed at the red/white structure poking out into a dusky blue sky. "—is still rigged for a safe zone. Plus, it gets us closer to where we're supposed to try and raise Dylan in the morning."
She raised her eyes to the antenna. A lot of it was tucked out of sight, concealed by a respectably tall hill. "If we want to get there before nightfall…"
"…then we need to get going. Yeah. But don't worry. Spike'll get another one of his Pilgrims out here to help with pulling out the Slow'n'Serious and getting our shit stashed at his den until we've finished here."
"That's considerate of him."
"Mhm. He'll also send word south, down to Morrow's."
Zofia squirmed on the spot — and Crane settled a hand on her arm. His grip was warm. Gentle. A lifeline for her to lean against; because sometimes her thoughts ambled off to do unkind things when she wasn't paying close attention.
"Keep them from thinking we're dead," he added. "For when we don't show up with the snow."
She tried on another nod, but this one barely made it halfway before she looked up at him and asked him the impossible. "Promise you won't do anything— you once we're in there?"
His right brow kicked up. "Clever? Impressive? I can't just turn that shit off, Fi."
. . .
"Meddling, Crane. I want you to not meddle. Can you do that?"
Crane's head leaned to the side and his eyes snatched at hers; still as bright and eager as when she'd first met him. And still wearing the truth in them while he went ahead and lied.
"Promise."