Many, many thanks to all those who reviewed – it was very much appreciated as always.

And to Alaidh, 'Sleepless in Seattle'…is there anyone who knows more about VW campervans than my beta! Thank you for the endless stream of links to every combination of campervans and awnings imaginable and for your fine, grammatical touches.

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DEEP, CHAPTER 8

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Logan gripped Lucy's shoulders even harder. "What are you talking about? You think Poggs is dead?" he stressed, green eyes clearly confused behind the steel framed glasses.

Her only reply was another anguished sob that shuddered its way through her slim body – a slim body that, since yesterday, seemed to have become frail and old beyond its years.

"Lucy!" Logan snapped, trying to hold on to his rising frustration. If there was some doubt about Peter's death, then a quick response was essential. Maybe there was still time…

He looked up abruptly as the sudden roar of a car's engine being revved hard broke the eerie pre-dawn silence. He could see its yellowish headlights in the distance as it approached in an erratic fashion. Sometimes it appeared to be travelling along the main campsite road and at other times veering far enough from it to be nearly hitting trees.

Logan let go of Lucy and grabbed for his gun again. The thought crossed his mind that, not only were the mornings warm and cosy in his apartment, they were also generally remarkably uneventful. He showed no sign of surprise, save gripping the handle of his gun more firmly and a slight tightening of his lips, when the car veered off the path and continued until it came to a skidding halt only a matter of feet from where he and Lucy sat.

Lucy paid no attention at all to the car's arrival. It was as if she'd used up her last reserves of control in running to the Aztek and now she could do no more than sit in abject distress, slumped at Logan's feet.

Feeling considerably tense, Logan held his gun in both hands and trained it on the car as he squinted in its direction. Its bright lights, still on high beam, blazed blindingly in his eyes. The abrupt cessation of the motor made the silence of the morning seem incredibly loud. Where were the birds, he wondered at the back of his mind. Usually at this time of day there'd be the beginnings of a wild cacophony, but this particular morning the air remained eerily silent.

Logan took a long breath as a discordant grind of metal indicated a door was being opened. Without hesitation, he cocked the gun he held steadily in his hand and called out warningly, "Don't come any closer."

"It's just me. Beth," a tremulous voice replied. "I came for Lucy."

"You alone?"

"Uh huh."

Logan slowly lowered his gun and raised his flashlight as the slight figure of the blonde-haired girl materialised from the dazzle of the car's lights to stand a few feet away from him. With a rush of deep regret, Logan could clearly see her anguished expression even by flashlight – her face bore all the hallmarks of unmistakable grief. He had to conclude that Lucy had not been in the grip of some wild, drug-crazed hallucination when she'd rushed up to his campsite – Beth was clearly similarly affected by whatever had occurred.

"Lucy?" the blonde girl was whispering nervously.

"What happened to Poggs?" Logan asked her softly, suspecting now that he was already too late.

Beth, now squatting down next to her sobbing friend, raised a frightened face to Logan and said in a barely audible voice, "He's dead."

Even though he had thought he was prepared for this answer, he still froze for a second with a numbing sense of disbelief. It was less than twelve hours since Poggs had come to his aid by the fire…and now he was dead? A hundred questions raced through Logan's mind – the foremost one being, "How?"

Almost as the word left his mouth, Beth, clearly following her own train of thought, asked worriedly, "Can you help us? What about your girlfriend?" she added hopefully, looking around for Max. "I don't know what to do…Chad, the scumbag," she put in venomously, "an' Lenny are packing. They say we gotta blaze…that they'll be here soon - but how can we just dump Poggs?" she quavered piteously. "How do we just leave him?"

"Who are they?" Logan frowned at once, involuntarily glancing through the final veil of darkness towards the road.

"I dunno, but he said they'll come and if we don't blow now we'll end up in the hands o' the cops, so I grabbed the keys and followed Lucy…figured she might come here to you guys. That SOB was gonna go without her," she finished scathingly, but Logan thought he detected a trace of fear beneath the scorn.

Logan dropped the flashlight on his knees and gripped his wheels, quickly glancing towards the beat-up Chevy the blonde haired girl had driven up in. His words were thoughtfully terse.

"Where's Poggs now?"

"Our van," Beth choked, blindly reaching out for the hand of her friend so that her grief could be shared.

Logan thought swiftly for a second. His one thought was to get a look at the body.

"Beth, if you'll drive me to your van, I'll do whatever I can to help."

Beth nodded her head at his suggestion, her face suffused with relief at the prospect of help.

Standing up, with surprising strength in one so slight, she managed to pull the still dazed Lucy to her feet, and guided her towards the car while Logan followed.

He briefly considered leaving a note for Max and whether he should leave his laptop in the car or not, but one look at the frantic glances Beth was throwing his way convinced him to dismiss both thoughts.

Max should understand, he reasoned hopefully.

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Logan had only just clicked his seatbelt in place when Beth drove off with an uncontrolled spin of her wheels on the dewy grass.

"Headlight's might help," he suggested helpfully when they missed a tree by a matter of inches.

"Oops," she murmured distractedly as she spun the wheel to take the car back to the road.

"What's Chad so afraid of? Why's he in such a hurry?" Logan prodded her as he kept a wary eye out the front windshield and grabbed onto the door handhold.

"He's scared…big time…and I don't think it's the stuff that's talking either. He's totally lost it," she said quietly, turning briefly to look at Logan seated beside her with a look of total confusion before grinding the gears with yet another screech of protest.

"What do you know about Poggs?" Logan asked gently, even though he was uncomfortably aware of Lucy's presence in the back seat. It was a bit like talking behind someone's back when they were standing right in front of you.

Logan had watched Beth guide her dark-haired friend to the car as he followed the pair. Lucy had seemed to be totally incapable of coherent thought or action – even one as simple as opening the car door. Her sobbing had stopped, for the most part, but now he could hear a constant muttering coming from where she sat, hunched in her own world of misery. For a while he wondered if she was praying, until he realised grimly that her desolate, pleading mantra was, "Don't be dead, don't be dead, don't be dead."

"I couldn't sleep – we were all a little freaked out by what Chad did last night," Beth explained, with an apologetic glance towards Logan that made him wish she didn't consider his feelings, but rather, kept her eyes on the road as they narrowly avoided a huge bush that unexpectedly loomed in front of their car. "But Poggs was really upset by it all. I heard him telling Lucy that things had to change…that he had to change…I think he meant it," she added carefully, as though she was giving testimony to a police detective. "He told Lucy that you'd given him hope…that maybe they could start again. I was so jealous," she added, with a candor Logan found surprising.

"Beth, I need to know how he died."

"I don't have a clue," she responded at once, with ingenious sincerity. "I heard him tell Lucy that he was gonna go for a walk – maybe a swim – then I fell asleep."

"He wasn't meeting with anyone? What about these people Chad's so worried about?"

"I don't know who they are. I've never met anyone up here except the sheriff."

Feeling like he was getting nowhere fast, Logan said flatly, "So there's nothing you can tell me – you woke up and Poggs was dead?"

"We're here," Beth cut in on him in a strained voice as she brought the car to a jerky halt.

Logan looked about warily. He wasn't looking forward to another confrontation with the highly-strung Chad. At least it'll be dawn soon, he thought to himself as he waited for Beth to get his chair from the trunk. For the first time, he had a chance to sit back and discern the almost imperceptible lighter shading in the darkness of the sky. With an unconscious grimace he supposed that Poggs wouldn't be alive to see it.

Not entirely sure of his reception, Logan kept his gun on hand once he'd transferred to his chair. Following the two girls, he cautiously made his way over to where he supposed Poggs was to be found, trying to think up some reason that sounded probable as to why he should be permitted to see the body should the other two men protest.

They'd only gone a few feet before Chad and Lenny came rushing from the van.

"What the frickin' hell do you two morons think you're up to?" screamed Chad abusively. "We gotta get outta here an' you two blaze with the car!" With a quick movement, he reached out to grab Lucy who was still being more or less supported by Beth, when he suddenly caught sight of Logan.

Preempting a possible explosion, Logan said quickly in a calm voice, "I came to help."

Lenny came running up behind Chad at that moment, blinking owlishly, his curly, brown hair standing up every which way.

"You wanna help a dead man?" Chad laughed out loud as he grabbed hold of Lucy and dragged her towards the car. His laughter continued well after its initial burst, its final notes lingering with the hint of barely restrained hysteria.

"No! Lemme go, Chad," Lucy suddenly cried, pulling away from the other's restraining hands. "I can't leave Poggs. Don't make me," she begged the other with pleading eyes.

"Lucy, Poggs is…" Chad began, only to fall into an uncomfortable silence, scarcely able to look into the eyes of the girl before him.

It was Lenny who spoke and his words held a surprising firmness. "Let this guy look at him. Maybe he can help."

"Yeah, well he can do what he likes. I'm blazin'," Chad snapped ruthlessly. "If any of you wanna get outta here – you come with me…now!"

"Only thing is…I got the car keys," Beth retorted, quickly tossing them across to Lenny, who in turn shoved them into his jacket pocket.

"Looks like we wait a few minutes," he told his friend firmly.

Chad looked from one to the other, nervously flexing the fingers of his right hand. "Okay," he finally relented, as if the choice was solely his. "I'll give you three minutes, but after that…I go," he finished on a warning note.

"He's in the van, right?" Logan asked, looking across to Lenny.

At the other man's nod, he headed around to the other side of the campervan where the stained awning still hung at a crazy angle. Logan could see signs of what he took to be panic and hurried packing both outside the van and inside it.

Under the awning, he had to manoeuvre his way around an upturned assortment of non-matching, dilapidated chairs and a table. He didn't bother to try to avoid running over the scattered remains of a card game; it was unlikely the participants would be hanging around to finish it.

Making his way to the open, sliding door, Logan took a breath and peered inside. Fake, laminated wood, orange and brown check and a liberal smear of filth was the overwhelming décor scheme of the ancient, Volkswagen Campervan. On the wall opposite the door was a small fridge that hadn't been white in a long time and a sink overflowing with unwashed dishes. Looking up, Logan could see a pop-top in the roof of the van that housed a double bed well above his head, but it was the other bed that held Logan's attention.

Peripherally, Logan was vaguely aware of a nauseating, slightly sweet putrid smell emanating from the van, but nothing could detract from the lone figure that he could just see on the bench seat that folded down to make another double bed to the left of the door.

Mindful of Chad's promise that he'd go in three minutes, Logan quickly hoisted himself up and onto the floor of the Volkswagen van.

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He looked as though he was sleeping.

Logan stared at him expressionlessly for a moment before steeling himself for the unpleasant task of actually having to touch him. Now that he was this close, he was surprised how squeamish he felt about what he had set himself to do. Knowing he had so little time, without further ado, he hauled himself up until he was sitting on the bed next to Poggs. The man lay supine, his hands loosely clasped together across his body, as if he'd known he'd be lying in state for a procession of onlookers to mourn his passing.

Only there aren't many here, Logan thought darkly, wondering if somewhere Poggs had a mom or a dad who'd wonder why their son never came home.

His eyes were closed and his face was relaxed in the peaceful attitude of a deep slumber but when Logan placed his long fingers on the other man's neck, the coldness of his skin and the complete lack of any pulse gave evidence of a far more permanent state.

He was wearing the same jeans and brown sweater Logan had seen him in the night before. The grey blanket that had apparently been his only covering was now a crumpled heap over his feet. Lifting it, Logan noted that his feet were bare.

Not exactly relishing the task, Logan propped himself up with one hand and lifted the ex med student's sweater with the other, vainly looking for some sign of violence, something…anything, that might give him clue as to how Poggs had died.

Seeing his intention, Lenny, who'd been silently watching from outside, stepped into the van, stooping a little because of his height, and helped Logan turn over the body of his friend. Once again, there was no sign of anything untoward to signify a cause of death – no smashed in skull, strange puncture marks on his arms, unusual bruising…nothing.

Logan stared at the body in perplexity. What do I know about this kinda stuff, he wondered a little helplessly. Maybe Max knows something…

He'd just put a hand out to check for a possible blow beneath the man's hairline when he suddenly jerked it back. A singularly unattractive, brownish spider with unusual pale orange markings crawled from Poggs's ear and proceeded to slowly make its way down the side of his cheek. Logan squinted with instant distaste. Of all the places to find a spider - crawling across a dead man's face.

"Damned things," muttered Lenny, reaching out and flicking the spider away with his hand before stomping on it savagely with a huge, black boot. He then twisted his foot and thoroughly ground the carcass into the rubber floor of the van, leaving it to mingle with the ugly, cigarette butts. "They're all over the stupid plants."

Logan instantly had a vivid, fleeting impression of Poggs amongst the plants with spiders dropping onto his head and face like a heavy downfall of furry, eight-legged raindrops.

"The spiders," he got out quickly, "they're not a type I recognise."

"Probably South American," Lenny replied. "That's where the seedlings come from…or so I've heard. There was nothing we could do for him," he continued in a low voice, as he bent down a little towards Logan as if it was somehow irreverent to talk too loudly in the presence of a corpse. Or, Logan thought, maybe it was because it was the body of a man who Logan presumed had been his friend.

"Did he say or do something? Were you all here when he went to bed?"

Beth answered this time from where she sat half-turned in the driver's seat, staring across at Poggs with a scared expression.

"We were all asleep. I only woke up when Lucy started screaming."

Logan looked across to Lucy. It was becoming quite cramped now in the van. She'd perched herself on the very edge of the single seat that was mounted behind the front passenger seat

In the soft light of early dawn, Lucy's face looked horribly white, her eyes swollen and red and ugly.

Well, grief is ugly, Logan thought bitterly, and it was becoming increasingly more prevalent since the Pulse.

With calculating eyes, he wondered how he could connect with her. As a journalist he knew that that was essential in order to break the story, right the wrong…and he knew a little guiltily that he was good at his work. He'd need to be ruthless and force his way past her pain but it was what you did when you had to have answers and there was so little time…there's always so little time.

"Lucy, we need to talk," he told her firmly in a smooth, rich tone that expected to be obeyed.

Something in his voice made Lucy's eyes flicker from the still form but she still seemed to be unable to focus on anything or anyone else.

"Lucy, were you the last one to talk to Poggs?" Logan continued, with more of an edge to his voice, forcing her to focus on his words. "I want to help you."

Not entirely to his surprise, Lucy slid from the seat and knelt in front of Logan, her eyes once again riveted on the too-still form before her.

"His name is Peter," she murmured almost inaudibly. "Poggs was just a nickname. His real name was some Polish thing or something…not sure what." Suddenly her hazel eyes flickered with a sign of emotion – the beginnings of panic. "Does it matter? He never told me…I never thought it mattered, you know. Not now…not since the Pulse. It's like nothing matters now…does it?"

"Lucy. It's okay," Logan broke in quickly on her ramblings. "I'm just wondering what he was doing…what he said to you. If I can help you find out what happened to him, I will."

He watched her take a long, drawn out, deep breath, but when she spoke it was with a surprising amount of resolve. "He couldn't sleep after what happened last night. He felt real bad about what happened…about what Chad did," she explained, almost unemotionally. "He told me that we had to leave here…that we were wasting our lives." Her voice nearly broke on the last word, but she managed to hold it together, grateful for the squeeze of her hand that Beth, now in Lucy's seat, gave her.

"Then he just lay down and went to sleep?" Logan asked doubtfully.

Lucy shook her head at that and continued in a tremulous voice, "No, that was the whole point. He was too worked up…he couldn't sleep. He told me he wanted to go back to his medical studies…find an honest job."

Logan swallowed hard, pushing himself a little more upright on the bed. He felt an uncomfortable pang of guilt. None of it made any sense. I only tried to give the guy some hope…not somehow kill him.

"He got up about 3am…said he couldn't sleep…that he was gonna have a swim, maybe go for a walk."

"Did he?" prompted Logan as Lucy paused, presumably momentarily lost in the memory.

"Uh huh," she finally replied with a slight start, as if she was suddenly waking. "When he came back, his hair was still a bit wet. He told me the water was freezing."

"Tell him everything, Lucy," Beth urged her as the other girl's courage and self-control began to falter.

Lucy stared into the eyes of the other girl for a moment, her expression unreadable to Logan from his position, but almost immediately she continued her increasingly stilted recollection of events.

"I woke up when he came back. All he said was that he was really tired…that he just wanted to sleep. He was so tired…he could hardly stand…then he lay down…next to me." By this time, both Lucy's and Beth's tears, were flowing freely.

Looking up at Lenny, Logan found the other man's eyes were swimming with unshed tears as well, his lips pressed together tightly to control a trembling mouth.

"Hey, that's it! We've got to get going right now! Sheriff's coming!"

Chad's abrupt yell made them all look towards the doorway to find a panicked Chad, shoving everything out of his way in his haste to reach the others. "Lenny, gimme the keys. Give me the frickin' keys!" he yelled again when Lenny didn't move.

This time, Lenny didn't argue. Without argument, he immediately dug his hand into his pocket and brought out an assortment of keys then reached down and grabbed a dirty backpack from near his feet.

The prospect of the law arriving had all four of them looking frightened, even Lucy.

"Grab your stuff," Lenny snapped at the girls tersely. "Now, or we go without you!" he added with what Logan considered a rather brutal tone.

Beth let go of Lucy and grabbed another backpack. Hastily her eyes roved the van, checking for anything she might have missed, but Lucy stood as one frozen. "I'm sorry Lucy," she told her simply once she was satisfied that she had all her belongings. "This time we've got to go."

Logan watched silently, understanding the girl's obvious reluctance to leave, but he couldn't see what good she'd do by staying. It would be a pitiful waste of a life if she stayed and ended up, for whatever reason, dead like her boyfriend.

"You have to say goodbye," Beth told her softly.

Lucy moved like one in a daze and rose on her knees until she was hovering over her lover's face. Logan watched her stare intently at his white face as if she were trying to imprint every detail indelibly on her memory. Then as Beth, not unfeelingly, hurried her some more, she bent over and let her warm lips touch his lifeless, cold ones.

Strangely, for Logan, he found himself thinking of his dream – only in his dream it had been his lips that were dead, devoid of feeling…like Peter's. He found the analogy disturbing.

Aware of the sudden trampling of feet and the loud revving of an engine, Logan looked up to find Beth disappearing out the sliding door of the van. Only Lucy paused, stared hard at Poggs, then ran off into the now bright, morning light.

Left by himself in the van, Logan suddenly became aware of the cacophony of sound outside. The birds, he now realized, had probably been squawking their good morning for quite some time.

Not overly keen to be discovered alone with a dead body by a member of the law, Logan scooted back quickly towards the doorway and let his legs hang over the side. Two things struck him immediately. The first was the fact that his wheelchair had been pushed well out of his reach, probably by Chad in his panic to get going, and the second thing was the sound of a powerful car engine just outside the van.

Biting his lip, Logan looked around hastily as he tried to think of a way out of his predicament, or at least some excuse as to his presence there. The only thing that caught his interest was a solitary, mud encased, pair of boots. A little struck by the thought that their owner's legs and feet were now even more lifeless than his own, he started to murmur, "Guess you won't need those where you're going," but the words died on his lips as he realised what he was looking at. He barely had enough time to scrape a clump of the dirt that was stuck to the sole and thrust it into his jacket pocket, before he heard the sound of footsteps very, very close by.

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To be continued.