A/N: Warning: This story will contain graphic depictions of violence, mature language, abuse and lemons in later chapters.

Chapter Twenty-One

-There's Something Behind You-

Masen

When I was young, I had a knack for breaking things. Well, less of a knack and more of a penchant. It was a frequent enough occurrence for a crash to sound in the well manicured home I grew up in, only to be followed by my swift exit and muttered curses behind me.

I was always caught. Usually by the housekeeper or nanny. But never was I scolded by the staff, or even tattled on to my parents when they came home exhausted from running the world. I hadn't understood as a boy, why they protected me.

I would hold court with a basketball in the foyer, using the large staircase up to the second floor as a wonderful retrieval system as I bounced my ball off the ceiling. Or on occasion, I would smoke cigarettes in Carlisle's study, flicking ashes on old valuable leather bound volumes and several times accidently setting them ablaze.

But nothing ever came of it. I had been alone in that house save for the hired staff for most of my days. And although my adoptive parents were kind, rich folk…they didn't know me. Couldn't fill the emptiness that grew inside me and instead tried to indulge me as far as they could before eventually sending me away for help they could not offer me face to face. I didn't hate them. I hated the life they enjoyed, we enjoyed.

While my real family rotted in the ground.

It hadn't been fair. I could see the heart break in Esme's eyes when she found the pack of cigarettes in my sock drawer, or when my bloodied arms couldn't be passed as accidental any longer. And I did wish I was better for them. Happier for them.

But I was different.

Am different.

I do not find comfort in lies or beautiful, well decorated finery. I don't enjoy most people, and I certainly don't pretend to love when I do not.

That's why Rose and Emmet had meant everything. My chosen family. After years of service and nights of endless brutal training I had found a brother in him. Found a sister in Rose. They had been broken too. And they understood me. My need for independence, my unrealistic anger towards those who sit on comfortable thrones and pretend those below aren't dragging their brows on the pavement in exhaustion and soul numbing fear.

Losing them… well. It had been proof the God everyone seemed so sure existed either was ambivalent at best or cruel at worst. I meant what I told Doe. I went into those woods with no intention of ever coming back out.

I would take Rose home, and then I would take Leah with me to the farthest reaches of the wilderness to finally forget and to be forgotten.

And then this woman showed up. All big brown eyes and wickedly violent healing wounds.

And what I think really did me in, what made me keep coming back to her day after day… was her bravery. It seems silly. It had never occurred to me as an option.

But Doe just dealt with every blow. Every shard of disgusting painful memories and continued to choose to fight. She didn't just lay down and die in the snow, when I most certainly would've welcomed that abyss…

Everyday she took the punch. Leaned into it, then recovered, and stepped forward.

She would forever be my personal brand of hero. My superman. My wonder woman.

So as I took those steps with her towards the peeling and chipped door of the frostbitten small town clinic, I gripped her hand in mine a little firmer than necessary. Because she was more to me than just a woman in the woods. She was my salvation.

And that salvation had just kneeled with me in the ice moments before, and kissed me wildly as I begged her to let me love her for the rest of my life.

And she had said yes.

My thumb brushed her ring finger as we took a deep breath at the hearth. I would get her the ring she deserved. And soon. Just as soon as I helped her find whatever safety we could for those she loved, and freedom from that fucking monster who still held legal claim to her.

She looked at me after a few seconds. Pink lips still swollen from mine, and pale sweet skin rosy from the cold. Her clear brown eyes roamed my face, thinking and practically flickering with some deep unknown emotion.

I leaned in, kissing her brow gently.

"Ready?"

Her eyes moved back to the door. The silence thick and heavy as nothing but the gentle howling of despondent wind ached through the town.

Without responding, she lifted her small precious hand to the rusted doorknob, and pushed the door open.

The hinges let out a low vibrating groan as the door fell slowly open, unlocked. I wrapped my arm around her waist as we took a small step forward and peered inside.

A small lobby greeted us. A pale blue wooden desk faced the doorway, immediately circled by a few scattered chairs. Some, were metal folding chairs, and others looked to be upturned waist baskets or desk chairs scouted no doubt from other parts of the office.

The seating was numerous, bundled around small tables filled with discarded and empty cups, binders, maps and various medical equipment. Blood pressure cuffs and stethoscopes, glucometers and oxygen masks all draped over surfaces and cushions.

"Hello?" Little bird called out. Her voice too soft for such dank and dreary halls.

On either side of the waiting room, two hallways flanked the reception desk leading only to silent shadows.

No response came from her inquiry and she stepped forward now, crossing the threshold. "Is anyone here? My name is Doe. We are looking for help…for survivors."

My hand on her waist brushed to a gentle whisper as she continued forward.

The dark hallways seemed to beckon us forward and I left Doe's side for a moment to peer behind the desk. I found nothing except for an unserviceable phone and a locked set of drawers labeled with "Patient Charts." I met Doe's gaze as she stepped through the many chairs and came to my side once more.

"It looks like they were holding up in here." Judging from the lobby I'd say maybe twenty people or more.

She nodded. "People must've had injuries from whatever happened, they must've come here and got stuck."

I mulled this idea over in my head. A doll lay discarded at the base of a stool in the corner, and burnt cigarettes lay pressed into the shuttered windowsill.

"However they came here, they stayed. Look at all this. This is a camp. Maybe only for a few days but people lived here. Look." I pointed to a pile of trash hidden inside a decorative large steel vase hugging the left hallway.

"People don't leave this kind of mess if they think they are able to leave."

Doe moved to the case and peered inside, sifting through the garbage remnants carefully. "It's all food wrappers, coffee cups and tea bags." She pulled her hand away suddenly, her nose wrinkling. "Diapers."

I fought myself to hold back a curse. Children. Babies. What had happened to them? Did they also lay with their parents in that graveyard of a highway?

Taking a breath I moved to the left hallway, and flicked on the flashlight I had taken from the gas station earlier. The pale green hallways illuminated, poured concrete floors littered with used bandages, needles and syringes greeted us.

Doe raised her palm to her lips, her eyes widening.

Chaos. Utter chaos inside the walkway to no doubt exam rooms and judging by the empty bottles littering the ground, a lab or a pharmacy. And yet for the chaos… we saw no blood. No gore or violence other than the extreme amount of litter and toppled over furniture.

It was as if a stampede had come and raided the small business and staff for all they had. I looked around us, hoping for a broom or something we could use to push debris aside as we walked. Finding nothing I reached for Doe, pulling her attention with what I hoped was firm comforting pressure on her jaw.

"Watch your step. I'm serious Doe, those needles poke you and we have no idea what, or how, to help you if you get sick. Don't lift your feet until you know where you're putting them. Okay?" I knew I was handholding, I knew as well as she her survival instincts were on par or better then mine. But I had to say it.

Letting her do this, supporting her was a given. She was not a child to protect as the Father seemed to forget. She was a woman, strong and smart and fucking capable.

But she remained my top priority. Above all else I would not let her be taken away from me now if it was not her own choice to do so.

She nodded, and kissed my fingertips in silent acknowledgement. We moved forward together, into the hallway. I went first, letting her place her steps in my stead and peeked into the first of the three rooms.

I felt bile rise up my throat and covered my mouth with the back of my hand as I let out that filthy curse. My eyes burned from shock and an image I was sure for the rest of my life I would not forget.

This room was worse than the rest. Filled to the brim with discarded supplies and trash. But there in the corner, curled and huddled in frozen terror, we're the mummified corpses and skeletons of staff and patients.

Blood had long ago dried to a dark violet stain on their lab coats, and serious gashes of horrendous wounds lay open and gaping to the floor. These people had been attacked. Gutted and killed.

Their now sunken and rotten eyes looking up to a pale gray ceiling in frozen horror. Some had been armed. A few guns, a knife or two scattered among them.

And in the center of the room, covered by another larger body of a man, was a dead wolf. Bloodied paw prints smeared in dried remembrance flitted around the room in horrible brushstrokes of violence.

Had a whole pack descended on these folks? Had they died fighting them all off?

Wolves I knew were misunderstood creatures. Villainized in Hollywood and media as if to depict rabid bloodthirsty creatures hellbent on devouring human flesh. But reality was a different story. For the most part, they hid and fled when cornered. Attacks were rare, especially when unprovoked.

I thought to the bear. The bear that had found its way to Doe in the forest that day. Hunting and starving. A little crazed.

Whatever this was, was more than hunger. More than starvation.

Something was very wrong.

I looked back to Doe as her hand reached out for mine. I realized then I'd been staring at the carnage, still effectively blocking her view.

"Masen?" She whispered up to me.

And just this once. Just this one small thing I didn't want her to see. I just wanted to protect her. She had so many shadows in her dreams, let this not be one of them.

I closed the exam room door behind me. Ignoring the weapons for now, I'd come back later for them later.

"The nurses…and the doctors…an animal attack." My voice was hoarse. "They must've gotten in through the back somehow."

Her face paled and she looked over shoulder to the unlocked front door we had closed behind us, then back to me. Her hand in mine squeezed as her eyes shut for a moment.

Grief for strangers we had never met, and we knew would certainly never receive the dignity of a proper service, lingered in the air as we moved forward.

The next two exam rooms were thankfully less dire. The paw prints still everywhere and over top of everything, but again mostly discarded waste. We picked through the rooms, while Doe flipped through abandoned medical records, I doubled back and gathered the one loaded gun I had found and sheathed a few knives from the first room, before coming back to meet her.

She didn't look up at me as I re-entered. "This man. His name was Jack, in his mid fifties. Never sick a day in his life and then all of a sudden starts having hallucinations. He told the doctor he was seeing men jump to their death from the crane he operated everyday at his construction job, but when he would go to investigate, no one else had seen them fall and no bodies were found."

She flicked a paper over, scanned it then handed it to me as she reached for another one. Ignoring willfully the bloodied paw print on the first page, she flipped a few entries back. "And this woman. She worked at 'Henry's', a breakfast café. She had come in before for minor grease burns and the occasional flu but look at this." She tilted the lined yellow faded paper towards me. Doctors notes scrawled beside dates.

"Masen, she was also having hallucinations. And was experiencing…" her finger traced the recorded diagnosis, "severe psychosocial delusions. Around the same time as Jack she started hearing whispers while she served customers. Believed they were planning something. She broke her arm driving home because she thought she saw them chasing after her one night after her shift and swerved her car into a tree."

I read the record she had handed to me as my eyes began to burn again.

"Mr. Lester reports significant visual hallucinations still occurring more and more frequently. Self reportedly worried for his life, as well as his wife's and children. Believes somehow the visions of death he is experiencing is a warning for his own family's impending doom. Refuses medication treatment, refuses psych services. Declines diagnostic testing or imaging. Patient requests he be taken into police custody lest he becomes harmful to family. No abuse currently reported by Mr. Lester."

"Jesus Christ." I muttered rubbing my brow. "Doe, something in this town is causing this. I don't understand it, but something here is making these people sick. Hell, it's making the wildlife sick." I ran a hand through my hair and tossed the file aside. " I've seen a lot of accidents in my time as a ranger. I've never ever seen anything like this."

She nodded, her lips pursed tightly as she slowly set down the chart and rubbed her shoulders, shaking slightly.

I came to her then, wrapping myself around her and letting out a small breath of gratitude and thanks when I felt her small strong fingers wind into my hair, holding my face against her neck as we breathed against each other.

I wanted her out of here.

I wanted to take her and run and make her leave behind any and all hope for finding aid in this cursed place. I didn't know how or why we hadn't gotten sick like the rest of the natural world around us but I knew that whatever it was making this happen, epicentered here.

I pulled back a little and studied her. "Doe, I know you wanted to look around more…but…" my fingers clenched and unclenched at her waist. The searing urge to protect bubbling in my bones. "Fuck…I can't, I don't want to-"

She cut me off with a kiss.

As I learned she was prone to do.

Her lips moved against mine firmly, and I delved deeper not in desire (though that certainly was present), but in need to taste the taste of her. She was not sick. She was not hurt. She was alive and mine.

She pulled away after a moment and looked up at me. "Let's raid the pharmacy. Then we will ride to the station and the grocery store. We leave tonight, and we ride through till morning. We go home. I don't want to stay a second longer than we have to. Okay?" Her fingers still tangled in my hair.

I nodded roughly into her touch and whispered the only thought ringing through my body, my soul. "I love you. I can't lose you."

She didn't smile, she only leaned her forehead against mine. I smelled her scent then. The whisper of lavender and cotton, edged with the uniquely honeyed scent of her hair.

"You have me." She murmured.

We took a moment then, just to breathe each other in. She kissed me once more, this time letting herself taste me, remember me. Her hands wandered over my back, and I felt the tension roll off me as I felt her own heart rate return to normal.

"Okay," I whispered, leaning back and brushing my lips over hers one last time before stepping back. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

She laughed then. Ridiculous considering the circumstances but we both needed it. Releasing each other, we made quick work of the rest of the clinic, pocketing ten or twenty medications and what was remaining of the clean or unused medical supplies.

Doe found the radio in the Doctor's Offices, but it had been smashed to bits. Likely by a frustrated user receiving no response. Still we took it, hoping maybe Ephraim could make some use of the parts or heaven help us, repair it.

We found more bodies as well. These I hadn't had time to shelter Doe from. We found them in the unfinished basement, stacked atop one another in neat rows lined with plastic sheets. It seemed the staff had worked to the very end trying to save those that had stayed behind. I steered Doe away after I saw her eyes linger on a small hand adorned with glittering nail polish, belonging to a little girl that was stacked between two larger bodies hanging limply mid air.

I vowed as we left that clinic, mounting Leah once more that once this crisis was over, I would keep death and grief as far away from her as I possibly could. Her suffering ate at me, and it was all I could do to keep myself from begging her to abandon this mission all together and let me hide her next to me somewhere secluded and safe.

We made it to the police station next, the sky starting to edge towards evening and I knew we would need to be quick.

The pistol I had filched from the clinic was secured at the base of my spine, and I had outfitted my little bird with one of the knives.

As we climbed the steps to the red brick building, we did not speak but I could feel the warrior in us rising to the surface, the soldier in my own. We wanted out. We wanted to get this shit over with and this was just another obstacle we would and could overcome.

This time we didn't utter any sweet words of devotion as she reached ahead, our eyes were steely with purpose as the door once again swung open in response to her touch.

And the lurch my heart made in my chest was a horrible flip of terror.

Pain seized the organ as a two-barrel shotgun met my little bird's temple.

"Who. Are. You."

A/N: Next chapter coming soon. It's… well. I would prepare yourselves now.

This story has two main points of inspiration. The first is "The Long Dark" by Hinterland Studios. There are some elements of this story I am borrowing, but the premise is mine alone. This is a gorgeous, gripping and enchanting game. I highly recommend you play it.

The second is "Washed Up" By xrxdanixrx. I loved this story and the idea of amnesia came from reading. I encourage you all to read this wonderful story.

Stephanie Meyer is the sole owner of the Twilight Franchise, and she owns all related characters you may see here. This is merely a fanfiction of her work.