Animatus
Notes: Thanks for the reviews and keep them coming!
Previously:
"Are you going to come in? I wouldn't recommend staying out here for the night," Giles said softly, smiling a little when he saw relief flood into Faith's face.
"Of course," Faith said, moving forward. The sun slipped below the horizon as she entered the Bronze, disappointed that her original plan had fallen through, but hopeful that the next day would bring better luck.
Chapter Five: Conspiracy Theories:
Faith had entered the Bronze many times during her life in Sunnydale and never had she seen the place so empty or depressing. The normally hopping night club was dark, save for the light of candles that flickered over the dirty walls and bare stage. Faith had expected to see a crowd of people contained within, but found, to her surprise, that only a dozen people lurked in the shadows of the first floor. An aura of fear surrounded them and, of the people she saw upon first entering the Bronze, only Giles would look her in the eyes. "I'm glad that you're alright," Giles said softly, walking beside her. Joyce and Liz were walking just in front of them.
"Thanks," Faith muttered, glancing around warily. "What happened?"
"What do you mean?" Giles asked.
"These people," Faith said, motioning to the ghosts flitting through the shadows, "they all seem so…beaten."
Giles smiled grimly. "Please," he said, motioning towards the stairs, "join me on the second level. We can talk more freely there."
"We can't talk freely down here?" Faith asked in a low voice, suddenly aware of the tension Giles was carrying in his shoulders. The same tension blanketed everyone else in the club.
Giles stopped and pulled her closer, whispering to avoid drawing attention to them. "Do you see those three men in the corner? The ones in the military uniforms?"
"Yeah," Faith whispered back confusedly.
"They're the reason why we can't talk freely," Giles explained.
"Who are they?" Faith asked.
"Just follow me up the stairs," Giles instructed. Faith nodded over to Liz and Joyce, who followed quickly behind the older man as the group ascended to the second level of the Bronze. Four more people lingered on the second floor, claiming various sections of the floor as their sleeping spaces. The foursome stepped around them as they walked towards the back corner, where a girl was sitting. Faith vaguely recognized her.
"Who is that?" She questioned Giles, nodding towards the woman.
"Anya," Giles answered.
Faith wracked her brain, trying to remember where she had seen the girl prior to her coma. "The vengeance demon?" She asked as the memory surfaced.
"Ex-vengeance demon," Giles clarified. "But yes, she's the one that tricked Cordelia into making a foolish wish that very nearly destroyed our reality as we knew it."
"And yet I'm the one you kicked out of the club," Faith muttered under her breath. Giles heard her comment, but chose to ignore it. Despite Faith's willingness to help Joyce and her younger companion, Giles knew that Faith still harbored many tumultuous feelings about her relationships with various members of the Scooby Gang.
"Anya," Giles said, introducing her to the new members of the group, "this is Faith and…" he said, pausing as he looked over at Liz, "I'm sorry, I don't know your name."
"Liz," the teenager answered, smiling amenably.
"I'm Giles," the Watcher stated and then pointed to Anya. "And this is Anya."
"It's a pleasure to meet you," Liz said.
"It's a pleasure to meet anyone with a pulse and a penchant for cooked food," Anya retorted as her eyes fell on Faith. "Aren't you the evil Slayer?" She asked.
Faith smiled patiently and sighed. "Not anymore," she replied.
"What changed?" Anya asked.
"The world was over when I woke up," Faith answered. "Put things in perspective for me, you could say."
Anya nodded. "Makes sense to me," she said.
"Tell me more about the military guys," Faith turned to Giles as the group collectively sat in a circle around a cluster of candles sitting on the floor. Tiny flames flickered in their faces, casting strange shadows. Faith almost expected someone to start telling a ghost story.
"They work for something called the Initiative," Giles answered.
"What is that?" Joyce asked.
"It's a government funded operation designed to study and destroy supernatural beings," Giles explained. "For instance, they hunt down vampires, demons, and other forces of darkness. However, instead of just killing the demon, for instance, like a Slayer would, they capture it and take it back to a facility where they test it and experiment on it. I personally have seen the effects of their experiments. I've seen vampires come out of the Initiative no longer able to hurt human beings without suffering extreme pain due to chips the soldier's have planted in their brains."
"Why am I sensing that all of this isn't a good thing?" Faith asked. Though the idea sounded beneficial, Faith wondered why the government found the need to experiment on demons and vampires. She did not need to learn more about her enemy, she just needed to kill it.
"Because I don't think that it is," Giles said, smiling softly. "The morning of the zombie attack," he explained, "soldiers knocked on my door and told me that I had to be evacuated. The zombies hadn't reached my neighborhood at that time, apparently. I didn't know what was going on until I saw it from the back of a truck as they were transporting me, and several others that are here now, through town. I believe that their plan was to evacuate us from town entirely, but the roads were blocked. They had to leave us here. They left three of the soldiers behind to protect us until they could come back for us."
"When were they supposed to come back?" Liz asked.
"A week ago," Giles answered solemnly.
Faith suddenly realized that he was telling a ghost story. She shivered, partly from the chill that had settled in the Bronze as night fell and sunlight no longer streamed in the windows, and partly from the ghastly images that flashed through her mind of what she thought the morning of the invasion had been like. Though she had not witnessed it herself, her imagination drew her a clear picture. "They never came back," Faith stated.
"No, they did not," Giles affirmed. "We've been waiting ever since. The soldiers," he said, "they know something. They didn't want me to open the door when you called."
"So why did you?" Faith asked.
"I wasn't very well going to leave someone outside to die when night fell," Giles replied.
"You're a better man than they," Anya grumbled.
"What did you mean when you said you thought they knew something?" Joyce asked.
"They know why this happened," Giles said. "It isn't a coincidence that the Initiative soldiers were out in force on the morning of the attack. They were coordinated. They were evacuating people…only something went wrong."
"It spreads too quickly," Faith concluded. "Whatever it is that caused people to turn into zombies in the first place…whether it was a demon or a virus, or God only knows what, it spreads far too quickly to contain."
"She's right," Liz confirmed. "I saw people who were only inflicted with minor wounds turn into zombies within minutes of being bit."
"It would seem then," Giles said, rubbing his stubbly chin thoughtfully, "that whatever causes the transformation is passed through the blood or saliva."
"If there were enough zombies, the soldiers could have held them off for a while, but eventually they would have broken through and started biting people," Faith continued.
"And those people would have turned into zombies, thus causing a complete breakdown in the system," Giles finished.
"We're totally fucked," Faith mumbled.
"Is there anyone else here that we know?" Joyce asked, glancing around the rapidly darkening interior of the nightclub.
"Unfortunately, no," Giles answered.
"Do you know where anyone else is?" Faith asked.
Giles sighed. "I couldn't tell you for certain where Buffy or Willow are."
"What about Xander and Oz?" Faith questioned. Anya stirred, but did not speak.
"Oz was fortunate enough to have left Sunnydale shortly before this happened," Giles explained. "Of course, we don't know how far it's spread. We can only hope that there's a safe place for people somewhere in the world…that this has been contained."
"And Xander?" Joyce asked gravely, though she feared that she already knew what fate had befallen the good natured young man.
"He's dead," Anya said softly. Faith looked over at the former vengeance demon, expecting her to elaborate, but she sat silently for several long moments.
"What happened?" Joyce asked sympathetically. She had always liked Xander. She had been quite happy with Buffy's choice of friends when they moved to Sunnydale. Xander and Willow both had been loyal and kind.
"We were asleep in his room in the basement," Anya said, struggling to keep her voice level. "Someone knocked on the door. Xander got up to see who it was because no one else was answering it," she paused and looked down, forcing her tears to remain checked. "I got up too. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep. The sun was too bright. I followed him up the stairs to get food. Xander opened the door and there was a man standing on the other side. He was one of the neighbors. The lower half of his face was missing," she recalled, shuddering at the memory. "Xander looked back at me and told me to call an ambulance. That was when the man rushed forward and bit him on the neck. He tore a chunk out. There was so much blood. Xander pushed him out of the house and slammed the door."
"Jesus," Faith muttered.
"I ran into the kitchen to get a towel to try to stop the bleeding. When I came back to the foyer, he was lying on the floor. I knew that he was dead. I didn't know what to do. Then he got up," Anya said, her eyes staring at the flickering candles, but seeing something else entirely. "There was something in his eyes," she said distantly. "I don't know what it was, but I knew that it wasn't him anymore. It was something else. He was crazed. As soon as he saw me, he ran at me, snarling. I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a pan off of the stove. I just started hitting him with it until he stopped moving," she said, as tears began to trickle silently down her cheeks. "I killed him."
"You didn't kill him," Giles said reassuringly, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder. "You freed him."
"You keep saying that and yet..," she replied, shaking her head.
"Have you seen anyone in your travels?" Giles asked hopefully.
"Not seen, no," Faith answered. "But I know where Buffy is."
"How?" Giles asked in surprise.
"I can feel her," Faith said softly. "It's hard to explain."
"I think I understand," Giles nodded. "You have a connection, as Slayers. There have never been two Slayers alive at the same time before. You share the same consciousness."
"She's at the college," Faith continued. "We tried going there today, but the place is overrun with zombies."
"Is it?" Giles asked thoughtfully.
"What're you thinking?" Anya asked, eyeing him warily.
"Nothing…it's just," he started, "I'm convinced that the Initiative had something to do with all of this, whether it was inadvertent or no. It would make sense that there would be a large number of zombies at the college."
"Why?" Joyce asked.
"What's so special about the college?" Liz added.
"The Initiative is located underneath U.C. Sunnydale," Giles explained. Faith looked over at him with wide eyes.
"You're shittin' me," she said. "There's a secret underground government lab under the college?"
"I only learned about this a short time ago as well," Giles acknowledged. "I was quite surprised myself."
"If the Initiative is responsible," Faith concluded, "the zombies must have come from the lab."
"They could have turned all of the workers and come up through the access tunnels," Giles elaborated, his theory finally coming into fruition. "They would have had thousands of college students to feed on. I can't believe that Buffy is still alive," he said shaking his head.
"She's a survivor," Joyce commented softly.
"I'm going back tomorrow morning," Faith announced. "I have to try to find her."
"I don't know if you can," Giles said. "The soldiers might not let you leave."
Faith smiled. "They'll let me leave," she replied. "I think I can convince them."
"Why do I have a feeling this is going to end violently," Giles muttered.
"It probably is," Liz stated.
"Liz and I are staying behind this time," Joyce added. "We're not meant for fighting zombies."
"I'm going with you," Anya said suddenly, looking at Faith intensely.
"What?" Faith asked. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"I don't really care what you think," Anya objected. "I'm going. They killed my Xander. I may not be a vengeance demon anymore, but I can still inflict some vengeance of my own."
"I think you should let her go," Giles agreed.
"Why?" Faith questioned.
"You'll need someone to watch your back," Giles explained. "Anya is efficient with weapons. She's assisted us with many demons since…," he paused, wondering if it was wise to acknowledge Faith's coma and, thereby, acknowledge the events that caused it.
"So she has experience," Faith concluded.
"Remember when I said that Buffy may not react well to seeing you again," Joyce reminded the dark haired Slayer.
"I remember," Faith answered.
"She'll react much better if you're with one of her friends," the older woman concluded. "Anya can vouch for you."
"I will," Anya jumped in. "I can see that you're not the evil Slayer anymore. Evil Slayer would throw us all out for the zombies. She wouldn't care about trying to rescue people."
"Can you handle a gun?" Faith asked.
"I wouldn't want to be the zombie that gets to find out," Anya retorted.
Faith smiled. "Alright," she said. "You can come. But don't slow me down and don't get in the way."
"I won't," Anya promised. "I just want to kill some zombies."
"I think we're on the same page then," Faith said. She did not know the ex-vengeance demon very well, but she was starting to like her. She had attitude. While most people would have been too devastated by such a horrific loss of a loved one to jump into action, Anya was ready to fight.
"When do we leave?" Anya asked.
"Tomorrow morning," Faith replied. "We'll head back to the college and poke around, see what we can find. No matter what we find, we come back here before nightfall."
"We'll need guns, ammunition, food, and water," Anya listed aloud. "There's plenty of food and water here."
"And I have plenty of guns and ammo," Faith added.
"You should get some sleep," Giles recommended. "You're going to have a long day tomorrow."
Without electricity to provide light, and with the darkness of night closing in around them, Faith found herself growing tired. As she glanced around the Bronze, she noticed that most of the other people holed up within were bedding down for the night. The soldiers had taken up guard by the front and back doors, which were blocked with pieces of furniture. The rest of their small group looked tired as well. Grabbing a blanket from one of the packs, Faith placed it on the ground and laid down on it. The candles danced in front of her eyes. She could hear the groaning of the zombies start from outside of the Bronze. Closing her eyes, she willed herself to sleep.