It's hard not to choke up at the sight of the wreckage, spread out over the expanse of the valley, littered with burnt skeletons that still release smoke into the air. Clarke's eyes scan each body, looking for any sign of her. Her lip quivering as she checks each body.
She knew the chances of that were zero. No body had survived this crash, yet she looked anyway. There had to be some evidence of her. Maybe her wedding ring?
Part of her was left broken by the sight. Her mother was dead, and she hadn't reconciled with her at all. Clarke felt bad for her actions. She wasn't ready to forgive her mother, but she could've at least talked to her.
Clarke came up a hill and looked down at her companions who had volunteered to join her. Finn. Raven. and Wells, who was armed with his rifle, were closest to her, picking their way through the wreckage about fifty yards away. Bellamy and a couple of other armed delinquents as their backup was just behind them, his rifle held against his shoulder apprehensively.
Everything was smashed, singed, and destroyed. The level of destruction was genuinely unbelievable.
The crater left by the exodus ship had burned a hole nearly a quarter of a mile wide. The destructive power of objects falling from the atmosphere was incredible. You didn't even need that big of an object to create a huge dent, assuming the speed was high enough.
"Clarke shouldn't be here." Finn said, staring off at Clarke who was walking around in the distance.
"Her mom was on the ship. She's looking for answers." Wells clarified, looking between Clarke and Finn, adjusting his rifle against his shoulder as he scans around crash site.
"You wanna help?" Raven jumped in. "Find us the black box, hard drives, anything that will explain why the ship crashed."
"Stay sharp." Bellamy addresses the teenagers. "Grounder retaliation for what happened on the bridge is coming, just a matter of when."
"Can you blame them?" Finn shot back at Bellamy. Something had put the spacewalker in a bad mood recently.
"No," Bellamy snapped his glare at Finn. "I blame you."
"Maybe if you didn't bring guns-" Finn attempted to shift Bellamy's blame.
"If we didn't bring any guns, we all would've been killed," Raven pointed out glaring at Finn.
"Why there coming doesn't matter anymore." Wells broke the conversation. "It's our job to be ready when they do. But until then, we're on our own." Wells eyes shifted to Raven, who glances away towards Clarke. She notices Clarke looking down to the machinery she stood beside. It reeked awfully and a weird pink substance dripped from a pipe. She backed away with the back of her hand on her nose due to the awful smell.
"Clarke stop!" Raven shouted, taking off towards the blonde as she could.
Finn and Wells immediately made here way down there as they heard her shout, with Bellamy following behind them.
"Rocket fuel?" Clarke asked glad to get her attention off the inevitable conflict below her.
"Hydrazine," Raven explained as the others approached the scene. "Highly unstable in its nonsolid form. This stuff meets fire, and we're all pink mist." She kneels down and dips a rock into the liquid, before standing and yelling out, "Fire in the hole!"
She tosses the rock over the ridge, into a pile of burning rubble, and an explosion immediately shakes the ground. The delinquents back up as they watched the explosion blast through the air.
Raven turned towards the group. "We're gonna need to clear the area."
"Okay, then." Wells nodded, turning to the delinquents "We move in formation, no straggling, weapons hot."
"We need to get back before dark." Bellamy added.
"Where is he?" Bellamy demanded, practically running into the dropship with Wells, Clarke, and Finn following behind him after Miller told him they found John Murphy outside camp. Wells noticed how Bellamy looked like he was ready to pull the trigger on Murphy at any second. He quickly caught up beside Bellamy just to he didn't do anything stupid. Hopefully, he wouldn't have to do that. The group of people surrounding the boy made way for them to pass.
Bellamy stood over Murphy, who were sitting on the floor, covered in wounds and blood, Bellamy looking down at him.
Clarke and Finn came up beside Wells and Bellamy each with a different expression on their face. They were all thinking the same thing though. They were shocked Murphy was even alive.
"Everybody but Connor and Derek out. Now!" Bellamy ordered forcefully.
Once the dropship Cleared, Derek stated. "He claims he was with the grounders."
"We caught him trying to sneak back into camp." Connor added.
"I wasn't sneaking." John said weakly "I was running from the grounders."
"Anyone see grounders?" Bellamy asked, holding his gun tighter in his hand. When the two of his boys shook their heads he lifted the gun up "Well, in that case … "
Wells' eyes widened as he quickly pushed the barrel aside and stepped in front of Bellamy. "Are you out of your damn mind?"
"We were clear what would happen if he came back!" Bellamy shouted moving aside and pointing his gun at Murphy again.
"No!" Wells stepped in front of Bellamy again."Have you listened to a word he just said?" the Jaha kid asked in disbelief. "He was with the grounders, probably tortured! Now you wanna kill him?"
"Wells is right." Finn agreed. "If he was with the grounders then he knows things that can help us."
"Help us?" Bellamy asked incredulously, his head snapping towards Finn's direction then back at Wells. "We hanged him, we banished him, and now we're going to kill him. Get the hell out of my way." Bellamy aimed down the scope of his rifle.
"Over my dead body." Wells spat, stepping towards Bellamy with the rifle pointed at his chest.
"No," Clarke jumped in. "They're right." She moved forward to inspect Murphy's wounds.
"Like hell they are, Clarke!" Offended that Clarke isn't agreeing, Bellamy lowers his gun. He keeps his eyes on her as she drops beside Murphy, gently reaching for one of his hands. "Think about Charlotte."
"I am thinking about her." Clarke snaps, she glances at Wells, who looks away, wishing they hadn't brought Charlotte up, she turns back to her patient, "But what happened to her was as much as our fault as his."
"He's not lying. His fingernails were torn off." She looks at Murphy's face, eyes softening, "They tortured him."
"You and the grounders should compare notes."
Wells hears Finn's retort to Bellamy and snorts.
"The grounders know we're at war." Bellamy told him, clenching his jaw then turning back to Murphy. "What did you tell them?" He voice more harsh.
Murphy's lips tremble. His eyes lift to Bellamy, nervous.
"Everything." He says, with an air of finality.
Clarke's hands lift to Murphy's face, inspecting his injuries, before she drops them and steps away from him as she moves to Bellamy, "Once he's better, we find out what he knows, and then he's out of here, okay?" She walked toward the exit.
Bellamy quickly turned toward Clarke and leveled a glare at her. "What if he refuses to leave? What do we do with him then?"
She glances at Murphy then back at Bellamy. "Then we kill him." her gaze dashes back and forth between Bellamy and Murphy and leaves the dropship.
"Goddamn it." Wells muttered as he moves the rifle from around his neck and dashed out the dropship. Bellamy takes one more glare at Murphy, who backs up against the latter. "I'll deal with you later." He too walked out the dropship.
Clarke started feeling nauseous later in the day after the whole Murphy coming back thing. She took a moment to head over to the red and white tent that housed the radio. Hoping the Ark has started communicating again and that someone in Medical could help her. Not her mom though, her mom was dead.
Looking up Clarke was startled to see Raven sitting and fiddling with the radio. "Oh. Sorry. I didn't know anyone was here."
Raven turned to look at Clarke at the sound of her voice. Her eyebrows furrowed at the despondent look on Clarke's face. "You okay?"
Clarke shook her head to clear the sudden drifting thoughts. The nausea started rising in her throat again. Grief could do funny things, and Clarke had plenty to grieve. "Yeah."
Raven turned back to the radio musing on how they still hadn't heard anything from the Ark. "It's like they shut it down from their side. It could be solar flares blocking the signal."
Clarke moved further in the tent. "But you don't think so."
Raven shook her head, finally turning fully towards Clarke. "I got a bad feeling."
Clarke's hand came up to her stomach. Nodding in agreement "Yeah, there's a lot of that going around." Clarke turned to leave before Raven's voice calling her name stopped her in her tracks.
"I'm sorry about your mom." Raven finally looked up into Clarke's eyes. She stood up quickly. "Oh, my God, Clarke, your eyes"
Clarke reached up to wipe the tears off her cheeks, bringing her hand away from her face she saw the blood staining her fingertips. A commotion from outside the tent and Connor's voice calling her name had her rushing outside of the tent. Conner was stooped over coughing up blood.
He looked up to Clarke's eyes, his own widened in fear. "It won't stop."
Raven came to stand beside Clarke. "Clarke! What's happening?"
Another kid from the other side of camp started coughing. Clarke stood still as she surveyed the camp. The nausea, the bloody tears, coughing up blood; they had finally found the retaliation from the grounders. Turning to look at Raven while she walked away from her. "Raven, get away...stay away from me, from us."
Raven looked confused. "What?"
Clarke looked back at the boys who were coughing up blood. "They were the ones that brought Murphy in. Get them in the dropship now!"
Clarke moved as quickly as she could back into the dropship before falling to her knees near Murphy, who were throwing up blood. She shook him awake. "Murphy. Hey. I need you to look at me." She brushed his hair out of his face. "I need you to tell me how you got away from the grounders."
He shakes his head, "I don't know. I woke up, and they forgot to lock my cage. There was no one there, so I took off."
Clarke thinks of the Grounders, and all of their tactical ability and intelligence, and her stomach sinks to the floor.She looked away from him. "They let you go."
"Clarke."
Wells enters the dropship. Clarke turns to him and see his shock as he registers the blood around her eyes. She lifted her hand as he gets closer, warning him. "Wells, stay back."
"Did he do something to you?" He asked her as Bellamy dashes into the dropship with the rifle also still in his hand behind Wells. She shook her head.
His eyes drop to the pool of blood beside Murphy. "What the hell is this?"
Clarke mutters from beside Murphy, "Biological warfare. You were waiting for the Grounders to retaliate for the bridge? This is it." She turns her gaze back to Murphy. "Murphy's the weapon.
Bellamy pins Murphy with a glare after he helped carry Derek into the dropship because he got infected too. "Is this your revenge? Helping the enemy kill us?"
Clarke drags a wet cloth across Murphy's face as he answers, "I didn't know about this. I swear." He grits out.
"Stop lying!" Bellamy snapped. "When are they coming?"
"Murphy, think, all right? What can you tell us that's useful? Did you hear anything?" Clarke begged, Murphy made eye contact with her.
"They're vicious, cruel." John said weakly, his words only making Bellamy angrier.
"You wanna see vicious?" Bellamy steps towards Murphy, anger written all over his face. He looks ready to kill him on the spot. Wells wasn't going to let that happen as he quickly put his hand on Bellamy's chest, stopping him. "Hey, don't. Whatever this thing is, it spreads through contact." He told him.
"Clarke!"
She turns at the call of her name to watch Finn stumble inside, stopping abruptly when he sees Clarke alive and breathing. Worries squashed, he breathes out and braces his hands on his hips.
"Finn, you shouldn't be in here. No one should."
"I heard you were sick." He shuffles back and forth on his feet, cataloguing who was in the room. "Clarke. What's going on?"
Clarke sighs, knowing she can't keep the vital information from everyone, especially from Finn. "I don't know. It's some kind of hemorrhagic fever. We just need to contain it before-"
A loud thud causes them all to tense.Derek retches from the other side of the room.
Clarke swayed as she turned to move towards the coughing boy. Finn reached out towards her to steady her. "Hey, don't touch me. You could get sick. Wash your hands. Now."
She grabbed the moonshine and poured it over his hands. They turned at the sound of Derek retching up blood. Finn looked up at her in shock. "What the hell is happening to him?"
She looked around at the others. "I don't know."
Derek vomited more blood, his chest heaving desperately. Clarke moved in closer as Derek struggled to try and sit up before falling over with a gasping breath as he clutched his chest. His eyes widened as his breath got more and more strangled. He finally stopped breathing.
Wells looked at her in surprise. "Is he -"
"He's dead." She met Wells' eyes. Holding out the moonshine again she poured it on Bellamy and Wells' hands as well "Here. Alcohol. Hold out your hand." Just in case.
"What do we do?" Finn's voice broke her eye connection with Wells.
"Quarantine." Clarke said, before turning to Wells and Finn "Round up everyone who had contact with Murphy. Bring them here." They nodded as they left the dropship.
"And everyone they had contact with?" Bellamy's voice took on an edge of hysteria.
"Well, we have to start somewhere." Clarke's voice turned soothing as she looked at her gathered friends. She turned to Connor who still had blood pouring from his mouth. "Connor, who was with you when you found him? Who carried him in? Think."
"The first one there was Octavia."
And just like that, Bellamy is out the door in five seconds flat.
To be continued