Animatus
Notes: Thanks for the reviews. Keep them coming! I'm thinking that there will be two more chapters after this one.
Previously:
"There's no one left," Jay interrupted. "We can't waste anymore time."
Giles nodded and maneuvered his way carefully around the burning van. As they past, he could hear the screams of those still trapped inside, and still alive, burning. Jay glanced up into the rearview mirror, his jaw setting grimly when he noticed something. "What is it?" Giles asked, his voice tainted with dread.
"We're being followed," Jay said slowly.
"By who?" Faith asked, glancing up at him.
"Zombies. A lot of zombies."
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The End of the Road:
"Thanks for the ride," Faith mumbled as she stepped out the road and closed the truck door behind her. The truck sped away, leaving her standing in the mist of its exhaust. Faith coughed and covered her nose. She had been hitching rides across the country, always trying to remain two steps ahead of Kakistos, whom she knew was following her even though she had never seen him. Rumors of him traveled with her everywhere she went. Vampires in towns across the country had heard that he was on the move, trying to find the Slayer that had scarred his face and permanently blinded one of his eyes. Though Faith was afraid of him, she was proud that her reputation was preceding her. Vampires were afraid of her. At every town she stopped, the vampires knew her name. She felt like a celebrity.
"A celebrity on the run," she muttered to herself as she shouldered her bag and started walking. The sun was slowly drifting down the sky towards the edge of the world. Most of the drivers that had picked her up had been kind. Some had talked to her, others had left her alone. She had not cared which they had decided to do, as long as they had transported her as far as they had promised. Some of them, however, had made her skin crawl. The last driver, for instance, had been gazing at her intermittently with a raw lust that he did little, if anything, to hide. Though Faith was not above doing whatever necessary to survive, everything about him disgusted her, from the balloon of his belly hanging over his belt to the thin lines of sweat that beaded and dripped down his forehead.
Though he had promised to drive her to Main Street, Faith had requested to be dropped off just inside of the Sunnydale city limits. She knew better than to ignore her instincts, especially those that warned her of danger, and every fiber of her being warned her against the man driving the truck. She had not slept much more than a couple of restless hours a night since she had fled from Boston and the exhaustion was starting to take its toll on her. Her bag felt heavy in her hands, even though she possessed Slayer strength. Her feet seemed to drag on the road and she had to will herself to keep walking. An endless highway seemed to stretch out before her, empty and tree lined. But, finally, she began to see the outlines of buildings.
Before long, she had reached Main Street. The sun was dazzling in her eyes and she spotted some palm trees swaying in the gentle California breeze. She smiled. She had not heard word of Kakistos since she had reached California. Perhaps she had lost him. Whether Kakistos was still pursuing her, she did not care at that moment. She was in California and, somewhere in Sunnydale, her sister Slayer was waiting. She wondered what Buffy Summers was like. She had heard stories of the other Slayer; it seemed as though the girl was infamous. She had even heard rumors that the older girl had used a rocket launcher to dispatch one of her foes. Faith did not know whether she believed the stories or not, but she knew that the thought of meeting her predecessor was intimidating. She wondered if Buffy would be happy to see her, of it the thought of another Slayer would make her jealous and territorial.
Faith stood on the sidewalk for several long moments relishing the warmth of the sun and watching people scurrying back and forth across the streets. Sunnydale sat directly on top of a Hellmouth and, supposedly, contained more vampires, demons, and other evil, supernatural creatures than nearly anywhere else on earth; yet, Faith felt nothing but the calm of the afternoon and the promise of a new future. The heaviness of her bag dragging her arm down towards the ground reminded her that she needed to find someplace to stay. She did not know where the other Slayer lived and, though she intended to find her, she did not intend to bunk with her upon first arriving. Perhaps once they had become acquainted they would become friends. But Faith did not like strangers and she did not trust that the freedom that she relished would not be taken away if she moved in with the other Slayer. After all, Buffy's Watcher was probably not like Kate, who allowed Faith to roam the streets after dark even though it was dangerous because she knew how restless Faith could be.
The dark haired Slayer started walking again and found herself entering a rundown section of Sunnydale that bitterly reminded her of the area in which her mother's apartment had been located in Boston. She smiled though, comfortable in familiar surroundings. Even though her mother had treated her poorly, she still loved her and, sometimes, late at night when she could hear the sirens of ambulances rushing past her window like they had in Boston, she even missed her mother. The older woman had looked at her sometimes, when she was not completely wasted, and Faith could see love twinkling behind her eyes, even if it was only there momentarily.
Finally, Faith came upon the Sunnydale Motor Inn. The place looked like a dump; the walls needed new paint and the roof seemed to be sagging in at places, but Faith knew that it was all that she could afford. Walking into the front office, she sat her bag down on the floor, and hit the bell on the counter. A portly man, who looked to be in his late twenties, wearing a stained, white, tank top, lumbered out of one of the back rooms wiping his mouth with a napkin. "Can I help you?" He asked. Faith could feel his eyes on her chest and she swallowed down the revulsion lumping up in her throat.
"I need a room," Faith replied, trying to keep the disgust out of her voice.
"How old are you, kid?" The man asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
Faith smiled sweetly, pulled a folded wad of bills out of her pocket, and rested it on the desk. "Does it matter?" She asked.
The man looked at the money for a moment before smiling. "Welcome to the Sunnydale Motor Inn. One room?"
"Please," Faith replied. Once the transaction was complete and Faith had her key in her hand, she grabbed her bag, and walked out of the office. Her room was not difficult to find. Shoving the key into the lock, she opened the door. A moldy, dank smell greeted her and she grimaced. Stepping into the darkened room, she let her bag fall to the floor, and turned on the lights. The bed was spacious, though she wondered about some of the stains on the comforter. A small bathroom was to her left and to her right sat a bureau and a small television. A mirror hung above the bureau and a window was directly in front of her. Stepping further into the room, she closed the door. She was home.
……………………………
"Are you okay?" Faith asked softly after Buffy's sobs had quieted and she had stopped trembling. She heard the blonde Slayer sniffle and, finally, she raised her red and puffy eyes to look at Faith.
"My mom…," she started.
"I know," Faith sighed. "I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault," Buffy replied, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. "It's gonna be okay," Faith said reassuringly, running her hand soothingly through the older girl's hair.
"At least she's not one of them," Buffy muttered, nodding her head towards the back of the van. Faith sighed and shifted her eyes to the rearview mirror, where she could see a horde of zombies trailing after them. Somehow, they were managing to keep up with the van. Her eyes met Jay's and she smiled. He smiled back, but she could see worry behind his eyes.
"Yeah," Faith said absently.
"Are you okay?" Buffy asked softly, capturing Faith's attention again.
"What?" Faith asked, looking over at her confusedly.
"Your back," Buffy stated.
"What about it?" Faith asked again.
Buffy reached her fingers around Faith's back and pressed down gently on the tender flesh that had been burned after the second van exploded and sent a hail of flaming rubble down upon them. Faith winced, breathing in sharply. "I'm sorry," Buffy said apologetically.
"It's okay," Faith said dismissively. "When did that happen?" She asked, reaching around to inspect the wound with her own fingers.
"When the van exploded," Buffy replied. "You don't remember?"
Faith smiled lopsidedly, "I had other things on my mind."
"Like what?" Buffy questioned.
"Like keeping my girl safe," Faith said.
"Faith?" Jay asked, looking back at her suddenly.
Faith forcibly shifted her gaze from the blonde woman sitting next to her to the soldier sitting in the front seat of the van. "What is it?" She asked tiredly.
"We're coming up on something," he said, nervously shifting his glance back out of the front window. "I think you should see it."
Faith quickly rose to her feet to join Giles and Jay in the front of the van. "Have we reached the highway?" She asked hopefully.
"We're a half of a mile into it," Giles replied. "Look ahead."
Faith looked out of the window, gasping slightly. "Is this good or bad?" She asked, looking over at Jay.
"I think it's good," he answered uncertainly.
Lying directly in front of their path, stretching across the entire highway and running perpetually through the countryside was a chain linked fence that rose formidably out of the ground. Faith thought that she saw another quite some distance behind it, shimmering and small. "What does this mean?" She asked.
"It means that someone's trying to keep the zombies in Sunnydale," Giles answered grimly.
"Or keep anyone still alive from leaving," Jay added.
"We've been quarantined," Faith stated, suddenly realizing that they no longer had to question what was happening in the outside world. The outside world was fine. They had been the only ones with the problem. Faith suddenly found herself growing angry. Whoever had quarantined them knew that they were trapping innocent people inside of Sunnydale with ravenous zombies.
"The Initiative?" Giles asked, looking over at Jay.
The soldier shrugged. "Possibly. But I think this is bigger than the Initiative. The Army itself may have set this up."
Giles pulled the van as close as he could to the fence and then slowed to a halt. "What's going on?" Buffy asked from her place in the back of the van. The rest of the people started murmuring confusedly.
"End of the road," Faith muttered.
"What do you mean?" Buffy asked in confusion.
"This is where we get off," Faith said, smiling back at her, though she only smiled to cover the apprehension that she felt. Images of her dreams suddenly came back to her, assaulting her waking eyes. Fire and smoke. The moaning of the zombies. She remembered dreaming of landing on the other side of a fence, her back hitting the hard concrete of the road. The sky had been blue above her. She shifted her eyes back out of the window and glanced at the clear blue sky. She could hear the moaning of the zombies as they neared, speeding up as they realized that their prey had stopped. She remembered seeing Buffy standing on the other side of the fence with blood running down her arm. There was a gun and a shot. Then she had been running.
"What do we do?" Giles asked, pulling Faith from her thoughts.
"Get everyone off the vans. We need to be over that fence before the zombies reach us," Faith instructed.
"I don't know if it's going to be that easy," Jay interrupted.
"What do you mean?" Faith asked.
"If the Army set up this fence, they did it with the intent to keep the zombies from leaving Sunnydale. A simple fence wouldn't do that, not if the zombies got hungry enough."
"What're you trying to say?" Giles asked, eyeing the fence warily.
"If they don't have snipers sitting somewhere waiting to pick off any zombie that tries to climb over it, then they've got landmines set up on the other side to blow up any zombie that does," Jay explained.
"Mines?" Faith asked, her heart dropping in her chest.
"Quite possibly," Jay nodded.
"Fuck me," Faith muttered, rubbing her forehead.
"Faith," Giles said.
"What?" The dark Slayer replied.
"We need to figure out what do to right now," the Watcher stated. "Those zombies are getting close."
"Buffy," Faith said, turning back to her girlfriend. "Grab a gun. Start picking off the zombies."
"Okay," Buffy nodded, grabbing a gun and some ammunition. Throwing open the back doors of the van, she dropped to the ground and walked several feet away. Faith watched her until she started shooting and then turned back to Giles.
"I'll be with her. You two, get everyone over that fence. I don't care if there are mines. I'd rather be on that side than on this one."